Chapter 11 #2
Eventually, we walked into the room, half hoping to find something useful. Something that would look like the proof Kohen was so sure we’d find here. Russ was hoping we’d find food, too, but there wasn’t any. Just china and dust and a longing for something neither of us knew how to put in words.
So, we didn’t say it.
Instead, Mimi said, “I think I’m going to find the kitchen.”
She slipped out the doors and left us to follow, and we eagerly did. The ghost of whatever it was that remained in that room made me more uncomfortable than anything we’d seen so far.
Then we were walking around the palace, half lost, half perfectly aware of each turn and each room and each doorway, each set of stairs.
Perfectly aware that we just might be all alone in here, even though people had seen us last night.
Then we found the grandfather clock, the same one at the junction, but…
“You guys, that wall wasn’t there before…was it?” Mimi said.
“Neither was that.” The junction had led to five different hallways, except now there were only three because two had been shut off by walls. Actual walls that looked identical to the others by their sides, ivory colored and solid. We went and checked.
“The palace,” said Russ with a triumphant grin. “I told you, didn’t I? C’mon, let’s find that kitchen.”
We did.
As strange as it sounded to my own self, we actually found the kitchen while following Seth again, behind what could be the main stairway of the palace, even though there were no actual entrance doors anywhere around it.
Just walls and windows—and double doors that led us to dark corridors, and then a giant white kitchen with five islands and three fridges, and cabinets full of crackers and chocolate, fruit and drinks.
We didn’t stay long, even though the whole room was empty.
We ate standing around the first island, and as we chewed, we asked each other if we remembered anything (nobody did).
As familiar as this whole place was to me, it was also brand new.
Every tile and every cabinet, every taste of the food I put in my mouth. Brand new.
Then we were off again, down the corridor that led us to a different place when we walked out, not the main stairway. At this point none of us was surprised. So long as we didn’t run into people, we were okay with new walls popping up and corridors leading us to different places.
We tried to come up with ideas about where to look for proof.
Some thought it would be some kind of a book or a notebook, records someone wrote down, and others thought it would be pictures or drawings.
A few thought it would be our very memories hidden somewhere.
I personally hoped for the last but was pretty certain it was the first. They said proof, and proof would be written down.
I had no idea in which form, but I thought we might actually find it if we searched every inch of this palace.
If we didn’t, the Labyrinth was a big place, wasn’t it? We could search outside, too.
Then…
“You draw.”
I turned to the side, to March, who’d been walking a step or two behind me—I thought maybe on purpose—but he was now right beside me, eyes on my face.
“How…how’d you know that?” Because I hadn’t said a single word about my drawings…had I?
“Your hand,” he said, looking down between us. “The lines of your fingers. Under your nails, too.”
I raised my hand to better inspect it—and of course, he was right.
“Graphite,” I muttered absentmindedly. The faint gray stains that never fully washed off no matter how hard I scrubbed. I’d stopped noticing them years ago, the same way I’d stopped noticing the callus on the side of my middle finger where the pencil pressed. “I do, sometimes. I draw things.”
Lie. I drew all the time.
“What things?”
You, I thought, but luckily caught the word between my teeth before it was out there. I wanted to tell him so, so badly, but… “Just things.” Because what if he thought it strange? I would have. I’d have found it very strange if someone I didn’t know drew me.
And I hoped with all my heart that he didn’t ask again.
March analyzed the side of my face for the longest time, but I didn’t dare turn to meet his eyes. I just looked at the others who walked ahead of us, turning corner after corner, talking to one another.
“What you said this morning,” March then whispered, and I flinched involuntarily. Silly, silly Ora… “What exactly did you mean? Do you…remember something?”
Lie, lie, lie.
I should have and I wanted to and I could have so easily. I could have just said no, that I was half asleep, that it didn’t mean anything—I was just being silly, that’s all.
But the pressure. It was too much, coming from within.
It was the words themselves, desperate to come out of me, so what I said was, “I draw you a lot. Your face, your hair, your hands.” My heart slammed so hard against my ribs I was certain he could hear it.
“I’ve been drawing you since I got home, but I don’t know why. There’s just…something about you.”
There. All those words that had been weighing me down were out there now. They belonged to him, too.
Suddenly, March was right in front of me, and I had no choice but to stop walking. To look up at him.
I expected laughter or a strange look, and I expected questions. A lot of question.
What I got was, “You’ve been on my mind since the second I laid eyes on you that day.”
My breath caught. His fingertips touched my cheek just slightly. I leaned in—impossible to help it.
“I know your freckles, the colors of your eyes. I know the feel of your hand in mine. Your lips…I’ve dreamed about them every night. I know all eleven of your smiles.”
Eleven, he said.
My eyes closed. My blood rushed.
“Why?” March whispered, and that small word broke my heart because it was so full. As full as I was empty.
“I don’t know,” I said, and when he stopped touching my cheek, I looked up at him again.
Disappointed. Sad. A little angry.
March lowered his head. “I keep making the same heart out of glass over and over again. The same one, every night—but it’s never right. Something’s always missing, and I don’t know what, and I can’t stop.”
Word for word, I knew exactly how he felt—exactly.
So hopeless. So…broken. Incomplete.
“So, when you said you know me, I thought maybe you remembered,” March said.
“I do know you. But I don’t remember how,” I said in half a voice, resisting the urge to grab his face in my hands, to get closer.
“Would you like to know?” His hand came up again, but this time he didn’t touch me, just hovered his fingertips along the shape of my face.
“Very much,” I said, smiling because it was painful. “I would like to know very much.”
March nodded. “I would like to know you. Regardless of what was before—I’d really like to get to know you.”
My smile released the pain but remained on my lips. Yes, I’d really like to get to know you, too, I thought, but never got the chance to say it.
“Hey! You two coming or not?” Mimi’s voice echoed from somewhere ahead.
March looked back for a second, then turned to me. Raised his hand between us, palm up.
I didn’t even hesitate before I put mine over it.
The way our fingers knew how to intertwine. The way our palms felt pressed against one another. The way my hand fit in his.
We looked at them for a second, and I thought, I’ve drawn this before. The same lines, the same way his fingers curved over my knuckles, the same fingernails.
We’d held hands before, March and I. If I’d had any doubts about it, they were all gone now.
“When this is over…” I breathed, not entirely sure what the rest of that thought was—but he did.
“Maybe we’ll…stick around Neverwhen for a bit?” he offered. “Together.”
And it sounded exactly right.
I nodded. I smiled.
He smiled, too, almost involuntarily. Said, “That one’s my second favorite.”
He was talking about my smile.
Then he turned around and pulled me down the hallway while I reminded myself to breathe.