Alice in Wonderland High (30 page)

“Alice, your old friends never understood you. Trust me, you should hear some of the things they say about you.” He raised his eyebrows, as if that bit of info would make me feel better about this and not, you know, like discarded gym clothes left rotting in a locker. “It was the perfect opportunity to school them. You'd rather take the blame yourself?”

“Someone innocent shouldn't have to take it!” I dropped onto the nearest bench, my legs too shaky to stand up any longer.

“Don't be mad at me. I've made you a present out of everything I said tonight.”

“Why did you target my house then? To get back at me? Or . . . something else?” I held my breath, hoping the answer would be the former, even though I already knew it would be the latter. I could see it in his eyes. What Quinn had seemed worried about on the croquet field—she was right. Kingston, for some nonsensical reason . . .
liked
me.

“Two birds. Quinn figured out you were involved with reforesting her house. I overheard her talking about pressing charges, which is when I realized how to fix both things. Convince Quinn to get revenge on you instead of involving the police, and then use that revenge to cover our tracks.” He smiled, proud of his genius. “I knew she liked me. Everyone does. Well, almost. So it wasn't that hard to pretend to date her. It was make-believe, like the rest of my life.”

“Why did you want me to come to the dance?” I couldn't look at him. “To witness this?”

“That was part of it.” He came over to where I was sitting and stood there for an awkward moment before lowering himself onto the seat next to me, head tilted in my direction. I stared straight ahead, at the gallery on the wall. “I thought you'd be impressed by the trouble I went through to clear your name.”

I swallowed hard. I knew I should get up and try to stop Lorina, but Kingston was sitting here, talking openly, and I wanted answers. Plus, without the answers, I didn't know how to undo what he'd done without getting Whitney and Chess in trouble. “And the other part?”

Kingston sighed, leaning back. “There is no other part.”

“But you just said there was.”

“
Was
was the keyword.
Was
means it isn't, and in this case, it ain't. Never was, never will be. If a part is a whole, I only have half.”

“You sound like Whitney. Can you repeat that, but in a more straightforward way?”

“You're going to make me say it?”

Clearly, no. He was going to make
me
say it. “I don't understand,” I said. “I thought you hated me. But now . . . ?”

“The opposite,” he finished.
Wow, Kingston, might want to write down that romantic declaration of feelings and send it into Hallmark.

My heart beat fast. This was nonsense!

But it also made a lot of sense. It explained why he'd never turned me in when he could have. Why he'd gone to such elaborate lengths to make sure I was never on the security cameras. He kept finding excuses to touch me that night. And that's why he was such a fussy baby whenever I flirted with Chess—he was jealous! He wasn't collecting evidence about me. He was keeping photos of me! Because he wanted to look at them!

“You feel the same way.” He placed his hand over mine.

I snapped my hand away. “That's absurd. No, I don't!”

“Then why are you getting all defensive?” He cocked his head toward me.

“God! I'm not!” Okay, that did sound pretty defensive. But I was pretty freaked out right now. It was hard to reason with someone who's delusional. “Let's back up for a sec. Can you please explain?”

“Birds of a feather flock together.”

My eyes were filled with questions. “Okay. And . . . ?”

“Must I?” He mumbled something to himself. I asked him to repeat. “Mustard,” he said. “Only, wait. Mustard isn't a bird. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Good point.” And the point was: ask him direct questions to get direct answers. “Don't you hate me?”

He sighed. “I really did hate you at first. You had no obligation to keep my secret, whereas the others did. They don't have lips, and that made it easy to trust them.”

I assumed the
others
in that sentence were inanimate objects and not his stepsister and best friend.

“I was obsessed with proving you wrong. It was all I could think about.
You
were all I could think about. And then . . . you proved
me
wrong.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “You never turned me in. You never breathed a word to anyone, not even your best friend. You always had my back even when I was a jerk to you. And somehow, during all that, my feelings shifted. Man, I was pissed off when I realized.” He laughed. “I'm not sure they're real, though. I'm not sure anything is.”

“Did you date Quinn to make me jealous?

“Did it work?” His brow lifted.

“You've been spying on me long enough to know the answer to that question.”

“Yeah.” I could feel his sigh before I saw the heavy dance of his shoulders. “But no. You were with Chess. I was trying to get over you. That didn't work, so I set her up.” He squeezed my hand. “I hoped it might impress you?”

Chess. His name sent flutters through my body.

It seemed I'd led Kingston on enough already. I leapt off the bench. “That's crazy. You know that, right? I can't condone that. You can't manipulate people for selfish reasons.” I threw my hands up, and he winced at my words. Once,
selfish
had been a compliment to him, for entirely different reasons. “God! You even tried to trick me into coming to the dance with you!”

He stared at his hands in his lap. I'd never seen him like this, so helpless. Like a turtle without his shell. “I screwed up. And I don't have a lot of time left, so I thought this would be faster.” He started fiddling with his broken watch.

“What's that supposed to mean? Because Lorina's coming?”

“No, Alice. Because I'm dying.”

Well, I didn't see that one coming. “You're dying?” His words echoed and clanged in my brain, blotting out all thought.

He wrung his hands. “I'll tell you but—don't tell anyone, okay? And don't interrupt or anything.”

“I won't.” I dropped my hands to my sides and waited. When you had that many things thrown at you in the span of five minutes, it tended to overload your system. The decision-making part of my brain needed to reboot. The rest of me could use some defragging. Sadly, IT technicians didn't yet have the technology to repair humans.

Remind me not to let boys who aren't my boyfriend fall for me again until computers became self-aware.

Kingston wouldn't meet my eye. “I used to live with my mom over by Chess's farm, near the nuclear-power plant. Long story short, Mom died of cancer three years ago and I had to go live with my dad, who I barely knew, which was stupid since I'd lived across town my entire life.”

“What about Whit—” I clamped my mouth shut, remembering his one request. My brain supplied a replacement word:
last request
. Oh brain, I see you've relinquished your duties for the evening.

He shrugged, as if this was an inconsequential detail. “I'd met her at our parents' wedding a few years ago, but since we went to different elementary schools, I never really knew her until I moved in.”

I wanted to sit next to him, but I was afraid to move, afraid even the smallest sound might make his confession snap like a catapult pulled taut.

“Turns out, the cancer was caused by high levels of lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals that had leaked into our garden, our pipes, stuff like that. My mom and I both ingested tons. I'm sick, too, but I wasn't out there gardening as much as she was.”

I gasped as I remembered Chess telling me his mom had also died of cancer. Kingston lived near them.

“But—you don't look sick.”
Oops.
I stuffed my knuckles between my teeth to prevent further stupidity. With Kingston vacating his role as my archnemesis, I guessed my mouth was vying for the position.

System failure of the body parts.

“That's because I'm not getting treatment. No chemo, no side effects.” He pulled the bag of shiitake mushrooms from his pocket and dangled it in front of me. “Gotta do it the holistic way.” I must have had a question in my eyes because he clarified. “Shiitakes have healing benefits.”

Oh screw it, he seemed to be answering despite my outbursts. “So what are your symptoms then?” Besides the obvious: insanity.

“My emotions are all out of whack because of the lead poisoning—it affects my nervous system. I can't control my anger. I have learning disabilities. That's why I suck at school. Because of the mercury, I have moments where I'm fine and lucid and then . . . moments where I'm not. I can't control it. It controls me. I hear and see things that aren't there. Sometimes I can't tell what's real or not.” His hand flew to his wrist, clasping and unclasping his watch.

We must have been in one of those lucid moments, thankfully. I also understood his preoccupation with time running out and why he wore the broken watch. If he could convince himself that time had stopped, maybe he wouldn't get closer to dying. “Then why aren't you getting treatment?” I resisted the urge to slap some sense into him.

“I'm trying to! That's what these environmental missions are for me.” Kingston bolted to his feet and frantically scrubbed his shirt. “Get it off me. Get this damn curse off me!”

And just like that, the lucid moment was gone. Too bad they didn't make Febreze for nonexistent curses.

When he calmed down, I took a tentative step forward, gauging his reaction. “Wait, Whitney and Chess both said Chess's problem was more time-sensitive than yours.” I took another step forward, hovering right over him and forcing him to look up at me. “He needs a house, sure, but if you're dying, that seems just a bit more drastic.”

“I've been lying to everyone. You know what I miss?” He waited for my answer, but I stayed silent. “Muzzles. I'd like to bring them back. It would solve a lot of things.”

“That doesn't really answer my question. And I doubt a muzzle would solve anything.”

“Yeah, you're probably right.” He swatted at the air. I repeated my question, hoping this time for better results. “I was diagnosed at the same time as my mom,” he said, sounding normal. “I'm pretty sure the leak came from the nuclear-power plant, but I can't prove it. Whitney thinks I want revenge on the township only because of my mom, because they covered up the leak and tried to pretend it never happened. She doesn't know I'm sick. I didn't want to worry her. And also, I felt awkward telling my dad. I mean, he never cared for me my whole life and now I have to spring this on him? I know he can't afford the medical bills, so I was trying to take care of it myself.”

“The pot.” I sat back down on the bench, less than an inch away from him. “That's why you were selling it. To make money.” I felt awful that Whitney had thrown it out, but I also hoped it would force him to get a real, government-approved job.

“Well, that, and it's medicinal. But yeah, I need the township to pay for my medical bills. They did this to me. They owe me.”

I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You should have told us. We would have done more to help you.”

His arms responded as if I were suggesting something else, twisting around and caging me into a hug. His fingers dug into my back like he couldn't hold on tightly enough. I felt claustrophobic in his prison-bar arms. But I knew he needed comfort.

“I don't want people to know I'm weak.” He leaned into my shoulder, breathing hard. He smelled like smoke and peach shampoo. Bitter and sweet at the same time, like the photographs I'd seen him with. A beautiful sunset filtered through a streaky window. A rose squashed of its beauty.

“The photographs in your room . . . ”

Suddenly all of his behavior made sense, the way he acted so tough and mean. It was all a cover, a ruse to distract people from what was really going on with him. He'd created an outer shell to disguise his inner weakness, like a mock turtle.

He sighed. “That's a hobby I don't exactly advertise. The photography helps me figure out the difference between what's real and what's not. It's for a contest, cash prize. Probably won't win.” He squeezed me tightly, which was my cue to break free. “But I want to win.”

“Fingers crossed,” I said. I tried to wriggle out of Kingston's grasp, but he held on tightly. My breathing shortened, the panic of being trapped rising up in me. “Get off me!”

He let go, staring at his hands in a startled way, like he hadn't realized they were capable of their actions.

I hopped off the bench and smoothed my skirt down. I needed to sound clinical. Businesslike. I cleared my throat and conjured up the least sexy question I could think of. “Why didn't you get a lawyer—”

“Too expensive. And I don't have enough evidence yet. They destroyed the power plant. They covered their tracks. There's a highway where my house used to be.”

“The files from the township. They didn't have evidence?” Well, that certainly backfired. In my attempt to detach from the conversation by way of snore, I became only more intrigued.

“I found something that helps, but it's not enough. It doesn't prove there was a leak at the plant that made me sick.”

The door burst open. “Your sister's here,” Chess said to me.

“We're. Late,” Whitney sang, code punched into the air. She slipped out of the doorway.

We found Lorina standing in the hallway by the admission table, talking to Di and Dru. Tears streamed down Di's face. Dru donned a scowl. They wore dresses that clearly came from Quinn's instructions. Di usually preferred A-line dresses with poofy skirts that hid her curvy hips. Now she'd squeezed herself into a formfitting mini in champagne, a color that washed out her features. Dru wore an equally tragic, lemon-yellow dress in the same style. When Di saw me, she ran forward. “Alice! You have to tell her it was just the prank on Neverland. We didn't do any of that other stuff.”