Part three of three

He wasn't supposed to be in her room.

The one of many rules Marie's father had in place regarding David's visits was he was allowed nowhere near Marie's room. David took a wild guess as to what Mr. D'Ancanto's reasoning was and came up with a few ideas, enough of them to solidify his thought that Marie's father gave her the freedom of a two year old.

It all started with a pencil. "Honestly David, it'll only take one second," she laughed as she saw his hesitation, refusing to step on the staircase, "he's not even home."

It was true; he was still at work and her mother sat oblivious to anything and everything as she happily stroked the piano keys.

But once he entered her room he was spellbound. It was just so Marie, a place where she was able to express herself in colour and art, paintings and sketches, most of them by her own hand, lined her walls. The thing that caught his attention most however, was the map on the wall above her bed: a map of North America.

As she mumbled under her breath while going through countless writing utensils on her desk and failing to find a sharpened one, he sat down on her bed. On the map was a beaded trail from Mississippi to British Columbia, following along the coast of the Pacific to Alaska. Printed pictures and notes were scattered across the country, scrawled in Marie's penmanship; tidbits of distances and temperatures, town names, pictures of beavers and caribou. He smiled, even one of a polar bear.

"Aha!" Marie crowed triumphantly as she wheeled around, the elusive sharpened pencil firmly in her grasp, then she caught sight of David and what he was looking at. She blushed and sat down on the bed next to him. "Bet you think it's silly huh?"

"No, of course not." And he meant it.

She smiled, "Remember what I said a year ago, about going to Canada? I meant it."

"I can see that."

They sat there looking at each other until he said, "Show me where you're going."

Her face lit up and she kneeled on the bed, her finger pointing to where the bead-rope began. "We are here." Sure enough, two stick people waved from the dot labelled 'Meridian.'

"We?" David chuckled.

She shrugged, "I thought it would be polite to include you; you started all this."

David nodded, "Fair enough."

Marie continued, "To Niagara Falls, up the Canadian Rockies, and then it's only a few hundred miles to Anchorage."

"Won't it be kinda cold?" David may have failed Geography but he at least wasn't stupid.

"Well that's the point stupid; otherwise it wouldn't be an adventure."

"And when are you going to do this?"

Her face fell and she laid on her stomach looking at him. "I don't know, after High School, before College…"

David twisted so their faces were mere inches apart. Flashes of his first day in Meridian whipped before his eyes like fireworks; his 'kiss' with Marie sticking in the front of his mind. He couldn't help but hope maybe, today, it wouldn't just be on the cheek.

He leaned closer, close enough to see her pupils dilate. He leaned closer, then she leaned closer still and for one second they kissed. Then all her heard were screams.

'Marie, don't cry. I'm alright. It's not your fault.'

Two lives ended that day; David Williams was pronounced D.O.A. at Meridian Country Hospital at 11: 17 a.m. Marie D'Ancanto however was reborn as a small girl in a green cloak somewhere in Laughlin City as Rogue.