A/N: Hello everyone! I'm not dead! I'm so sorry I fell off the face of the earth for a while. . . I promise I'll get to replying to PMs and reading your amazing fics very soon.
Thank you to Star-Shaped-χ, BlissfulNightRain, and bubblegumbxtch for encouraging me to start this new crack series. I won't label it this time, but know that it will be 3-4 oneshots long.
Anyways, here it is! Thank you for your patience.
-x-
There is a new girl in Isa's class, with golden tresses and polished shoes.
Her name is Alice.
Isa doesn't know much about her, although it is obvious that she is an anomaly in the classroom.
She dresses more conservatively than the teachers, in white stockings and blue pinafores despite the fact that they are in middle-school.
He watches as she rests her elbows on the desk and gazes whimsically towards the ceiling, sighing sweet-nothings about too-big flowers and unbirthday parties and a place called 'Wonderland'.
She capers down hallways, her periwinkle skirt ballooning slightly around her frame—until she bumps into someone. A dainty white hand flies up to mask her gasp and she apologizes profusely until she has flown off into a tangent.
No one else seems to notice her.
Isa, on the other hand, thinks she's a complete nuisance.
-x-
He stows his books away at 3:30 PM sharp, a stickler for punctuality in contrast to his lazy peers.
Maybe he's a bit of an anomaly too. But if Isa doesn't pick up the slack, then who will look after his idiot of a best friend?
Sighing (though with a small smile), he continues stowing his books away into his backpack with efficiency, savoring the silence of the classroom. There is a reason he enjoys studying at the library after-school, despite how Lea often laments his decision.
A rustling noise breaks his concentration. His eyes slide over to regard the intrusion.
"Oh, dear me," Alice murmurs, looking curiously at her feet. "I seem to have dropped my headband. Wherever could it be?"
Isa's eyes drop instinctively to the ground, where a black headband gleams beneath a dusty cubby. He is not gentleman enough to pick it up for her. As the seconds tick by, however, and her murmurs become a mantra, he thinks he's had enough.
"Hey. Is that what you're looking for?" His voice is only slightly cross as he points to the culpable headband.
Alice casts her gaze towards the cubby and gasps. "Oh, yes, yes it is!" She stoops forward and and extends a lily-white hand to retrieve it, dusting herself off thereafter. She wipes away the grime in the folds of her apron and sets the headband in her hair with a smile. "Silly me! I do have an odd habit of losing things. However can I thank you, sir?"
"Isa," he corrects distastefully and continues about his business.
"Isa," she tests the name on her tongue. "What a peculiar name!" Her hand flies up to her lips. "Oh goodness. Where have my manners gone? My name is—"
"Alice, I know." He turns to regard her fully, gazing upon her with icy eyes. "Honestly, do you not even know the names of your own classmates?"
"What a rude thing to say to a lady." She folds her arms across her chest. "I'll have you know that Manners Mistress says I am very good with names; in fact, I know the name of every single inhabitant of Wonderland—even the daisies and petunias." She punctuates her retort with a huff and turns to look at him. Her eyes widen in astonishment.
"Why, the moon on your chest reminds me of the grinning cat in the forest. And that hair!" She giggles to herself. "It's blue! I suppose you could be an inhabitant of Wonderland, too." She looks awfully pleased with that statement.
Isa closes his eyes and counts to ten. What is it about him that attracts loquacious idiots like moths to flame?
"Listen, I don't have time for this," he says as nicely as possible. Which, really, isn't very nice. "I have to be home soon."
A pout decorates her lips, and she twists a lock of golden hair idly around her finger. "Oh, but how I wanted to tell you the story of the Caterpillar and his hookah . . . He looks an awful lot like you, what with his strange blue hue—though that isn't to say that you are strange! Well, perhaps a little strange, but I do find your company to be rather pleasant." She blinks up at him through her dark lashes. "May I tell you the story tomorrow, then?"
Isa doesn't know how to respond to that; he feels awkward, stinted without his catalyst of a best friend. He's never had to deal with girls before because Lea has always been the center of their attention.
"Um . . . maybe. If I have time after I finish studying tomorrow." She perks up visibly and he quickly adds, "Don't get the wrong idea, though. I'm not promising you anything."
"Oh, yes, I understand. Dinah will be very pleased to hear that I have made a new acquaintance." Alice curtsies slightly. "Until tomorrow then, Isa!"
He merely nods in response and watches as she capers out the door with a smile on her lips.
He sighs.
-x-
It's half past three on the following afternoon.
Isa is stowing his books away like usual, though he is more meticulous than efficient. He organizes all of his assignments from A to Z, and then moves on to the monstrosity that is Lea's cubby because he knows Lea won't mind. Rolling his eyes, he pulls out a frisbee emblazoned with flames and scoffs affectionately.
When he lowers it, there is a girl with a heart-shaped face standing beside him with a curious smile.
He doesn't have to say much, because she fills in all the empty spaces with strange words and dainty gesticulations. She tells her stories with a vast repertoire of expressions; one moment she is huffing in frustration, and the next she is shaking with laughter.
He listens intently as he organizes Lea's cubby, hiding beneath the guise of his trademark serious expression times twenty. Maybe he is envious of how freely she is able to speak, when he can manage nothing but measured words and half-moon smiles.
Her stories are a pleasant hum in the dreariness of the classroom. She stops suddenly and clasps her hands together.
"Say, would you like to hear the story of the caterpillar and his hookah? I believe I brought it up to you yesterday."
He pauses to consider this. "Is it as absurd as the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter?" His lips quirk into a smile. "If so, I think I'll have to pass."
"Oh no, no, nothing like that. It is a much simpler tale, one that I am rather fond of."
"Okay." He closes his eyes. "I'm listening."
She looks entirely too pleased. Her eyes light up, and her features become animated once more.
"Once upon a time, there was a caterpillar . . . he was blue, just like you! And a bit of a grump, too. He sat on a great big leaf and puffed away through his hookah: the letters 'I', 'Y', 'U'. Goodness, I can still smell the stink from those fumes!" She pauses to wrinkle her nose, and then continues with a softened brow.
"But you know, I think he was a very lonely caterpillar; for when I tried to leave, he threw himself into a tizzy and revealed his true hues: pink and blue. And when I returned, he had metamorphosed into the loveliest butterfly."
There is silence. Isa feels affected somehow, but he doesn't want to say it.
Alice merely giggles, dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks. "The inhabitants of Wonderland are strange creatures, wouldn't you say?"
Isa's first instinct is to scoff. He stands with his arms akimbo, gently chiding as he looks at her. "What is it with you and Wonderland? It sounds like a place of nonsense to me."
"Oh yes, everything in Wonderland is most nonsensical," she beams, twirling a lock hair round her finger. "Everything is what it isn't. The flowers sing and the Queen rules over the King."
As a boy who leads a life of rigidity and order, Isa cannot help but smile.
"Would wonders ever cease," he remarks dryly and returns to Lea's cubby, a wonderland in itself.
Alice begins to twiddle her thumbs, suddenly bashful. "Well, if it bothers you so, then I will stop telling my stories. Manners Mistress tells me I have a habit of rambling needlessly."
He casts her another glance. Worriment mars her features.
"I don't mind," Isa finds himself saying. He internally scolds himself for his lack of discipline, and then quickly adds, "Just because a story is nonsensical doesn't mean it's insipid. If I felt that way, I doubt Lea and I would be best friends." He closes his eyes and smiles. "He tells the most useless stories."
"How very curious," Alice says, tapping her plush bottom lip with the tip of a finger. "Lea, you say . . . ? Oh! You mean that loud-mouthed boy in our class? Why, he is even chattier than the Mad Hatter at his tea party!"
A laugh spills from Isa's lips. Perhaps he does attract loquacious idiots like moths to flame; though he is beginning to suspect that he has a penchant for them.
-x-
They meet many times after that, though it is never planned. Isa stows his books away at 3:30 PM sharp; Alice appears without fail.
She speaks to him of many things: bread butterflies and card soldiers and rabbits who are not quite on time for their appointments. She paints pictures of foreign landscapes and colored trees and hedge mazes with red-colored roses.
Isa remembers when he liked these stories as a child. He is amazed at the sheer amount of detail that she has imbued into her world—as nonsensical as it is—and she tells her stories with such vivacity. Isa has long forgotten the world of imagination, but he finds her undying muse to be admirable, nonetheless.
"You should write a book," he tells her one day, half-serious half-not. "Or else you may forget when we grow older. After all, responsibilities take precedence over all else."
Alice stops and wrinkles her nose at him. "I shall not forget! And if I do find my memories growing rather hazy, I will simply take a tumble down the rabbit hole and pay my friends a visit."
". . . You're insane," Isa says, smiling.
"We're all quite mad here," Alice agrees, a mischievous twinkle to her smile.
-x-
They don't speak during the day. It isn't that Isa particularly cares what anyone thinks; it's because she spends her time during class lost in her little world and Isa seldom approaches others, preferring to keep to himself.
Though that doesn't mean he doesn't watch her curiously from the corner of his eye whenever Lea isn't babbling in his ear.
"What'cha lookin' at, Isa?" Lea stops mid-tangent and cranes his neck forwards to get a better look.
"Nothing," Isa snaps a little too quickly, grateful that he is not foolish enough to watch someone blatantly. At least, not blatantly enough for Lea to pick up on. "Shouldn't you be working on problem 40, Lea? Or are you too much of an idiot to figure it out on your own?"
"Wha—? Oh, come on, Isa. Stop avoiding the subject," Lea says. "You've been acting really weird lately. Is it a giiirl?"
Isa chooses to ignore that question.
"Attention, everyone," Lea rises from his seat with a pearly grin. "Guess what? My friend—"
Isa pulls him back down by the sleeve and hisses, "Yes. It is. Now quit fooling around before I decide to change seats."
Lea plops back into his chair with a satisfied grin. "Okay, then. Who's the lucky girl?" He casts a cursory glance around the room, before his eyes land eagerly on a girl with auburn hair. "Kairi. It's Kairi, isn't it?"
They both turn their attention to the violet-eyed girl, surrounded by hoards of female friends giggling inanely. Lea claps him on the back.
"Isa, you sly dog! . . . Isa?" Lea surveys his friend's vacant expression with mild concern. "Hey, no need to be ashamed or anything. If she's special to you, then who are we to judge?"
". . . I'll keep that in mind," Isa replies quietly.
-x-
He and Alice begin walking home together once Isa has run out of cubbies to organize, once he's filed all of his assignments (and Lea's) from A to Z and tucked them away into neat folders.
He has no excuse anymore.
It doesn't bother him as much as it used to.
"You were absent during class today," Isa points out. His voice is only slightly cross, his strides long and dutiful. "Why did you come back?"
"To see you, of course," Alice replies with a giggle, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. He forces a scowl to hide his embarrassment.
"That's no excuse. You should be taking class more seriously—you and Lea both."
"Oh, Isa," she sighs. The way she says his name makes his heart flutter. "You sound just like Manners Mistress! I'm sure she would be delighted to learn that she has such an astute pupil."
His face flares up and he folds his arms. "Well, if there are two people telling you the same thing, that means you need to get your act together, Alice."
"Yes, yes, I know." She twirls a lock of golden hair round her finger and walks with a slight bounce to her step. "Oh, but you see, I was helping the Mad Hatter set up his tea party today. It was very important."
Isa quirks a brow in disbelief. "More important than our test?"
"Why, yes! Much, much more important. Today is the day of my unbirthday party!"
Isa doesn't know which is more alarming: the fact that she deems her unbirthday party more important than their test, or his actual knowledge of the term 'unbirthday'.
"Don't be ridiculous," he retorts. "There are 364 unbirthdays in a year. What makes today so special?"
"That may be true, but the Mad Hatter and the March Hare are quite unreasonable! They insist on celebrating their unbirthdays 363 times a year, so that only leaves me with one unbirthday party per year."
". . . Idiot," Isa quips affectionately, but she has already gone off on another tangent.
She tells him about the Queen's castle, about how utterly unfair and unjust her rules are.
"And they're not even real rules! They're imaginary ones, and yet if we choose not to follow them then it's off with our heads!"
It reminds Isa a little bit of how socializing works in school. He never fit in quite right with the rest of his peers; Lea was simply a miracle that manifested in the form of red spikes and loquacious vocals.
Alice notices his detached expression and switches to something lighter: the Lotus Forest, where strange creatures reside and magical mushrooms grow, where pretty lilies sing on golden afternoons.
Isa listens to her silverbell laughter with the hint of a smile. She makes him feel . . . different. Better. He loses himself to the sound of her voice and the sun in his eyes.
"Would you like to see it?" Alice asks suddenly.
His eyes slant in confusion. "See what?"
"The Lotus Forest, of course!"
Isa stares at her for a long time. "Um, no."
"Why not?" she huffs, jutting out her lip. "I've been so very eager to show it to you for a while now. Oh, please? As an unbirthday present?" She gazes imploringly at him with azure eyes.
He releases a sigh. "Only if you promise not to cry if I start laughing."
Alice beams brightly and gestures for him to follow her into the town park. She leads him a little ways into the woods and he complies in spite of his disbelief. They stop at the base of a tall oak tree.
Isa expects her to either declare these woods as the 'Lotus Forest', or whip out a crude drawing of said forest, complete with childish smudges and stick figures.
What he doesn't expect is for Alice to point to a hole at the base of the tree. He gazes dubiously upon it—a rabbit hole, and a rather large one at that.
"Well?" she asks eagerly. Only then is he stricken by her implications.
". . . Forget it. I don't have time for this."
Isa turns around and begins to head back, disappointed by the extent of her immaturity. It is only minutes later that he realizes she is not with him. He calls her name, but she is nowhere to be found.
"Oh, for the love of . . ." He turns back around, and stalks back to the rabbit hole like the calm before a storm. It takes Isa longer to convince himself to climb inside than it does to complete his algebra homework.
It's dark and cold and smells faintly of lemons, which baffles him to no end. The blue-haired boy continues to crawl through the tender earth until his right arm takes a dangerous dip, and suddenly he's fall, fall, falling and he thinks he's dying and wonders if Alice is already dead and he briefly laments the end of his ten-year friendship with Lea. All of these feelings dissipate the moment he lands on a soft patch of dirt.
He takes a moment to compose himself, never one to panic in the face of danger, and surveys the environment with caution. He appears to have landed in the middle of a path in a dark forest.
Alice is already waiting for him. She claps her hands together and bounces lightly on the heels of her feet.
"Oh, Isa! I knew you would come tumbling down eventually. Lovely little place, isn't it?" She gestures to the forest of colorful trees and meandering paths. There are dozens of little signboards tacked onto the trees and Isa can barely make out the words, 'UP', 'OUT', and 'YONDER' written in childish scrawl. One in particular catches his eye.
'WELCOME TO WONDERLAND'
He takes a deep breath and sews his eyes shut. This is a dream, he tells himself, quite rationally. Believe nothing.
"Well, we've no time to waste," Alice chides and ushers him into the circle-shaped clearing up ahead. In the middle is a long pink table littered with teacups and cookies, surrounded by a multitude of chairs. Already seated at the head of the table are a man and a hare.
"Oh! Alice!" says the man with a very distinct lisp.
"You're here!" chimes the hare. They scamper across the chairs to greet her with a pair of wide grins.
"Who's this?" They stare at Isa with curiosity bordering on disdain, and Alice quickly tuts her disapproval.
"This is my—"
"—Boyfriend?" they chorus, staring at him comically with googly eyes. Isa crosses his arms and Alice shoos the thought away with a blush.
"No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Boy friend, as in a friend who happens to be a—"
They gasp.
"No room, no room, no room!" The hatter and the hare scurry back to the table in a flurry of coattails, much to Alice's ire and Isa's dismay.
"Excuse me? There is plenty of room! Why, there is enough room to seat an entire orchestra! Besides, my friend-that-is-a-boy is here to celebrate my unbirthday party." She turns to him with hopeful eyes. "Right, Isa?"
"Like I have a choice," he quips, smiling in spite of himself.
"Ohhh. Well, why didn't you say so?" The hatter pushes him into a chair and the hare pours him a cup of tea. Alice seats herself in the plush armchair beside him with alacrity.
"I suppose it's your unbirthday too then, hmmm? Sonnyboy?" asks the hatter.
Isa is about to correct him on that irksome nickname, before Alice chimes in, "Why, yes! Yes it is!"
"Then let the festivities begin!" The hatter and the hare lift their respective cups of tea—saucers and all—and begin to sing cheerfully.
"A very merry unbirthday!"
"For me?" Alice asks.
They turn to Isa. "For you!"
"A very merry unbirthday!"
"For me?"
"For you!"
The singing continues on for quite some time. Isa never joins in, a mere spectator of all shenanigans; though he thinks he might not mind in light of the sheer joy upon her face.
The teapots whistle their merry tune and Alice laughs, clapping her hands in tandem with the beat. The song concludes with an unbirthday cake exploding in a myriad of sparkles. A dormouse floats down with a tiny umbrella, and Isa begins to seriously question his own sanity.
"Now then, would you dears like a cup of tea?" The hatter asks, already tipping back a steaming teapot towards a porcelain cup.
"Ooh, yes! Please!" Alice replies. "After all, what is an unbirthday party without a cup of tea?"
"Precisely!"
Isa declines politely, already possessing a full cup of tea. He watches as Alice lifts the teacup to her lips and follows suit, not bothering to question its contents. Maybe if he drinks the suspicious liquid he'll wake up sooner. Before the boy manages to take a sip, however, the hatter and the hare are already up in a frenzy.
"Move down, move down, move down!"
"What? Why?" Isa asks, clearly miffed. The hatter pushes him into a new seat before he can argue.
"Clean cup, clean cup! Everybody move down a chair!"
Alice giggles like it's a game and moves into Isa's seat. Isa notes with disdain that the hare is the only one who appears to have benefitted from this change. He gazes into the hatter's half-empty cup and wrinkles his nose, all prospect of tea-drinking lost to a slobbery rim.
"How I wish Dinah were here," Alice sighs wistfully. Isa arches a brow and spares her a quick glance. She is stirring a splash of milk into her tea, no doubt reminded of her beloved cat.
"Tea parties are hardly fitting for house cats," Isa chides. Suddenly, the lid of a random teapot clatters to the table and out pops the dormouse.
"Cat?!" he shrieks. "Cat! Cat! Cat!" He begins to scurry all across the table in terror.
"Catch him!" the hare cries. Everyone but Isa jolts to life and begins chasing the dormouse across the table. Teapots clatter to the ground and hot tea spills from shattered porcelain. Isa steps cautiously away from all the ruckus.
"Isa! The jam!" Alice cries as they finally corner the mouse. "Dot his nose with jam!"
The jam?
Isa casts a quick glance across the table for the jar of jam (he won't even begin to question why applying jam to the nose of a mouse will end its frenzy; "dream logic," he supposes), but the clutter of shards and cutlery makes it nearly impossible to divine its location. The hatter and the hare stuff the dormouse into a teapot and Alice rushes over to grab the jam. She fumbles with a butter knife and manages to slather some onto the rodent's nose.
Everything slows to a stop as the dormouse drifts back into the teapot with a weary sigh. The others do the same; equally weary sighs filter through their lips once the commotion has settled.
The peace is short-lived, however.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," huffs the hatter, and the two waste no time as they round on their new guest.
"See all the trouble you've started?" The hare shakes a fist at him, catching Isa off-guard. "Don't you know that mice and cats don't get along well with one another?"
"And the jam!" the hatter exclaims distastefully.
"Ah yes, the jam, the jam! Everyone knows the jam is located next to the butter! And you were standing right in front of it!" They both stare at him accusingly. Isa's face forms into a scowl, despite all his efforts to remain civil. He is about to respond with a scathing, very logical quip before Alice interjects.
"Oh, no matter!" She waves a hand in a motion that is far too frantic to be mistaken for dismissive. Isa can't justify the pang of hurt he feels right then, deeper than any he's felt thus far, so he remains silent. "One cannot have a proper unbirthday party without a good story to along with it. Let's move on, shall we?"
"Hmm, yes, excellent idea." The hare settles back down in his chair and the hatter follows suit. Alice does the same, smoothing her skirt of wrinkles and breadcrumbs. Isa doesn't budge an inch; he merely crosses his arms in concealed anger.
"Why don't you start then, sonnyboy?" asks the hatter. They gaze at him expectantly. Alice's gaze is nearly imploring, bright blue eyes limpid and hopeful. Isa stares at those eyes for a long time, before inwardly cursing his propensity to forgiveness. He blames it on a decade of Lea and his antics.
"Fine," he answers, seating himself in his chair once more. "What kind of story am I expected to tell?"
"Any story!"
Isa thinks it over carefully. He isn't good at entertaining audiences, and he's always hated maintaining eye contact during presentations at school. He stares at an oversized flower and conjures one of his more comical memories.
"Three years ago, my best friend and I were working on a science project—"
"This story is stupid," the hatter interrupts with a frown.
Isa shoots up from his chair, keeping his eyes on the ground. "I'm leaving," he says quietly and begins to stride away.
Alice recovers quickly from her stupor. "Th . . . that was very rude! You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"
They don't look very ashamed. In fact, the hatter and the hare are already back to their usual shenanigans, dancing and singing and drinking tea.
Alice huffs at them like an irate mother, before running to catch up with her blue-haired friend. "Oh, Isa," she frowns. "Please forgive them! They simply do not know any better!"
He stops, silent as the grave as he looks at her. "Couldn't you have made up better friends?"
Suddenly, the manifestations of the hatter and the hare go 'POOF' into thin air. Alice gasps and her eyes go wide with terror, for there is nothing left of her companions but a pile of waistcoats and bowties. An abandoned top hat sits forlornly atop a pair of shoes.
"Why . . . ?" Alice's voice cracks.
"Don't even bother. This is a dream," he assures her. "None of this is real."
At this, Alice grows very angry. "Excuse me!" She stamps her foot like an ill-tempered child. "This is most certainly not a dream! Everything you see here is real!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Isa sneers. "There are no such things as dancing teapots or obnoxiously colored trees. Hares and mice cannot talk. The largest flower on the earth is nowhere near the size of those overgrown monstrosities. Not only is everything in this world wrong, but also impractical and stupid."
His speech is punctuated by the sound of a deep rumbling beneath their feet, like a clap of thunder, and a fissure appears in the mossy earth. It splits the tea table easily in half and swallows its contents like a voracious nightmare.
"Take it back!" Alice shrieks, eyes wide with unshed tears. "I demand you take it all back this instant!"
He crosses his arms and gazes upon her coldly. "I'm only telling you the truth, Alice."
With his steely words as a sickening sort of permission, the very heart of Wonderland begins to falter, piece by piece. The dancing teapots that clattered to the ground and survived through the quake go stark still. Trees of all colors (starting with the most obnoxious) begin to shrivel and die, their leaves blackening to crisp skeletons that vanish with a touch of the wind. The dormouse pops his head up from the lid of a teapot and squeaks his futile dissent. The last to go are the flowers: tulips and silverbells and pretty lilies that sing on golden afternoons. They wheeze out their last musical notes before meeting the same miserable end as the trees.
Isa barely even registers the destruction of Wonderland, overtaken by the paroxysm of his bitter rage. He looks at her and she takes a trembling step back.
"And you, Alice, are nothing but a spoiled little girl who runs away to a world of pretend because she cannot appreciate what she already has. I suggest you abandon this world in favor of the real one, and instead, focus on your duties as a student."
Silence reigns in the wake of his tirade. Her fragile form quivers mercilessly until she finally crumbles, sobbing protests into willowy fingers and clutching her face like a vice.
-x-
Isa awakens in a cold sweat. Pushing the cream-colored sheets away from his form, he lifts himself up onto his elbows and listens to the sound of his heart beating loudly in his ears. He waits for the last vestiges of his blurry-edged dream to fade before rising as per usual. An aching guilt begins to settle in his veins.
The desire to see Alice is overwhelming.
Isa follows through his routine with something like efficiency, though his guilt does not quell in the slightest. He forgoes breakfast and leaves for school as soon as possible.
-x-
Alice is absent today.
Isa notices it before he even notices the date, an aberration in his rigid lifestyle.
He can barely concentrate during class (though he blames it mostly on Lea blabbering in his ear); the letters are starting to meld together and the numbers all look the same. His gaze flits constantly to the empty corner in the room, unfocused as his muggy dream, until the air itself begins to waver and he thinks he might be going crazy.
Rolling his eyes, he wills himself not to brood over it and instead gives his undivided attention to Lea.
" . . . and so I was saying, I think it'd be a lot easier if we just flame-proofed our houses and all that jazz."
Isa stares blankly at him. "Lea, you're only saying this because you have a tendency to set things on fire." He sighs and rubs his weary temples. "How did this even come up in the first place?"
Lea looks mildly offended. "Come on. Weren't you listening to me before?"
"Sorry, Lea." His lips curve into a smile. "I was too busy laughing internally at your harebrained theories."
The red-haired boy grins and playfully shoves his companion in the shoulder. "Put a sock in it, Isa. It's actually relevant this time, I swear." He tilts back in his chair, chewing lightly on the end of a pencil. "You hear about that house fire on Pleasant Street?"
Isa's blood runs ice-cold.
"No," he replies, careful to keep his voice as even as possible. Awkwardly, he clears his throat. "Um . . . were there any survivors?"
"I think so. A girl—about our age." Lea's chair lands back on the ground. "But y'know, I'm not really sure about all the details."
Isa's brow twitches. "What do you mean?"
"Word of mouth." Lea supplies, twirling his pencil between his fingers. He shrugs. "Anyways, you still up for that . . ."
Isa turns back to his desk, relieved. Word of mouth is a weak form of communication; facts are likely to change after being passed down so many times. There is simply too much room for error to deem it a reliable source of information.
Lea continues prattling about typical Lea subjects throughout the day, but Isa's mind is stuck in a torpor. The guilt continues to weigh him down until the ink from his pen is weeping across his fingers.
When 3:35 PM rolls around and Alice has yet to show, Isa stuffs his assignments into his bag and runs out the door.
-x-
He finds himself standing in front of her hospital room, bearing white dittanies in hopes of forgiveness. The florist that accosted him in the hallway insisted that he give her tulips to express his condolences (because that was the obvious answer in light of the situation), but dittanies felt right to him for some reason.
Purity, he thinks, upon observing their white and oversized petals, pure and childish and unorthodox. He doesn't know if that's true, but maybe he doesn't want to.
Isa's hand hovers over the doorknob until he finally convinces himself to enter the room. He walks down to the last partition, pointedly ignoring the stares of the other patients, and stands awkwardly beside the bed. He looks out of place here, a splash of blue in all the whitewhitewhite.
"Isa . . . ?" Alice's eyes flutter open. Her skin is pallid and her eyes are lackluster, but she doesn't appear to be in any agonizing pain.
"Alice." He offers out the flowers in a simple gesture, and his gaze flits away. " . . . I'm sorry." Isa doesn't know whether he's apologizing for the fire that burned her house down or the aching guilt or both.
She rolls over to look at him, golden tresses spilling out across the pillows, and screams.
Because the moon on his chest reminds her of the catless grin that took her parents away and his blue hair reminds her of the butterfly that started the fire, flapping his pink and blue wings until her house went up in flames.
Isa watches silently as she writhes and weeps her living nightmare, and then leaves without another word. He stumbles out of the hospital and walks home in a stupor; cars and people and objects blur past him like polychromatic vomit.
When he gets home he sees catless grins in every direction, watching him, mocking him. He takes a pair of scissors and deals with them accordingly.
-x-
"Hey, Isa, what happened to the moon on your sweatshirt?" Lea asks over a half-eaten bagel smothered in jam.
Isa can't help but stare. Lea prods him with the tip of his pencil until he elicits some sort of reaction.
"I removed it."
Lea's forehead scrunches up in confusion. "Why?"
Isa doesn't want to tell Lea that he removed it because it reminded Alice of a made-up creature in a made-up world.
He tells him anyway.
"Alice?" There's a familiar glint in those lotus-green eyes. "She your secret giiirlfriend?"
Isa's face warps into a scowl. "She was our classmate, you dimwit."
His voice comes out more emotional than intended, and maybe Lea picks up on it because his eyes stop laughing and his easy grin vanishes.
"Hey," Lea waves a hand in front of his face. "You feelin' okay, Isa . . . ?"
There's madness in every corner of the room. Their teacher's teapot is dancing and the trees outside are purple, pink, red and the rose in Kairi's hair drips redredred. He closes his eyes and the madness fades.
"Yeah," he says listlessly. "I'll be fine."
He's beginning to think he made her up, too.
fin.