Chapter 29
There are several appropriate ways to greet royalty. There are also several ways to greet other humans without looking like a dick. "We were expecting you two hours ago," is not one of them.
Rapunzel makes an attempt at a laugh that comes out more like a startled croak, hoping at any moment this man with sunken eyes and sunken cheeks and a sunken heart with beam at her and shout "just kidding," before pulling her into a welcoming hug.
Eugene doesn't hold on to any such hope. His whole life he has only heard two kind words from the headmaster. One of them was sarcastic. The other was directed at someone else.
Usually Eugene would respond to behavior like this by rolling his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, and ignoring the rudeness until it came to an end. But with Goldie around – and shit, is she shaking under this asshole's glare? – he can't just let that pass.
"Well," he says, "You know how time flies when you're doing very important things."
The headmaster ignores him and continues to address Rapunzel. "I didn't realize that we were so low on your list of priorities."
"Oh no! It's not like that at all. We were just-"
"Excuse me." The headmaster pushes past her to approach the carriage and berate the accountants. Rapunzel stares after him, looking utterly confused, a sight that makes the knot of dread in Eugene's stomach solidify into a hardened mass and start oozing some chemical that makes him feel queasy.
"I don't think he recognized you," she murmurs.
Eugene snorts.
A few moments later the headmaster returns leading a procession of two accountants and three guards carrying a chest full of gold. He pauses to give Rapunzel a look that is not quite a glare, but close enough to make her mouth go dry.
"Excuse us," he says, his tone far from polite, and Rapunzel scurries back a few feet to allow them to pass into the building.
"Uh… excuse me," she says, bringing the stomping procession to a halt. "We were supposed to have a… uh… a tour?"
Poor thing, she's trying so hard. It's a miracle she's even still on her feet considering how pale she is.
"As I said in my budget request, we are short on staff. If you can't live without a tour, then I suggest you have Fitzherbert give you one. Now if you'll excuse me, I have very important things to attend to."
The guards give her pained looks out of the corners of their eyes as they pass, and Rapunzel's eyebrows twitch together as she watches their retreating forms.
Eugene slides next to her, slipping a comforting hand on the small of her back as they stare into the building.
"He is not a very nice man," she says.
"Nope. But he recognized me." He doesn't really know where the joke comes from. His brain isn't functioning enough to process anything more than, "I'm back at the orphanage. Oh no. The orphanage. Oh no." It's almost as though some disembodied spirit is controlling his actions now.
For a moment they both stare up at the threshold, where an arch of flowers are carved into the stone to droop ominously over them.
Eugene clears his throat, then holds out his elbow for her. "Shall we?"
She nods, threading her arm through his so they can lock elbows and hold hands as they step inside, into a narrow hallway that leads all the way to the back of the building. The lack of windows makes it dreary and the low, ancient ceiling gives the impression that something is dripping. The sound of overlapping screams from a dozen children echoes toward them like a physical force in the confined space.
Eugene squeezes her hand as another surge of anxiety washes over him. Being back here is a bit like nostalgia if nostalgia made you want to hide.
"So," he says, "Do you want to start the tour with screeching kids, or end the tour with screeching kids?"
"End the tour," she murmurs.
He nods, sets his jaw in a determined grimace, and leads her to the rickety staircase. On instinct he steps over the fourth step, but Rapunzel doesn't and it cracks with a sound like a small explosion, causing her to yelp and grab for him. She scrambled up his back as best she can, which isn't very well considering her fancy dress, and after a moment of her heavy breathing against his neck and her eyes squeezed close in anticipation of some deadly blow, he turns his head to look at her.
"Bum step," he says.
"What?" There's a whimper to her voice, as if she's too frazzled, too far gone to even know what he's saying.
"It always makes that noise."
She looks down at it like it's a snake reared back to strike at her, and she lets out a pitiful little laugh, forgetting that she ought to climb down. Eugene sighs, tucks one arm under her leg and carries her up the rest of the stairs before setting her down on the landing. She immediately grabs his hand again.
"Ok. Well. Over here is the girls' room." He gestures at the room on the left, a long, wide room, housing a row of bunk beds and broad windows that let in the last rays of sunlight as it settles over the city, illuminating the scattered clothes and books so that they glow with accentuated color.
"Can we go inside?" she asks.
"No. That's the girls' room."
She blinks up at him and it takes him a second to realize what a stupid thing that is to say. It's just been beaten into him so many times that now, back in this sad little building, it's like a reflex.
He scratches his head in confusion, then wordlessly guides her across the hallway. Best not to think about it. "You can look around in here. It's the boys' room."
The boys' room is remarkably similar to the girls', except the view is not as nice and the mess is a bit more sprawled. He pulls her over to a bed near the middle of the room. "This one's mine."
"Really?" Her eyes light up, and she quickly bends to inspect it, running a hand over the thick, blue blanket.
"Yeah, look." He sits down on the bed and leans back to show her the underside of the top bunk where his name is carved into one of the slats. He had trouble with the curves in the U and the G and they look ragged and feral, as if the boy who carved them was desperately trying to own something, to put his mark on anything.
Even as he points at it his short lived burst of pride fades and his face melts into a frown.
His name has been inelegantly scratched out, and above it someone has written "TIM."
Rapunzel scoots next to him to look, resting her cheek against his shoulder. "Who's Tim?"
"I don't know... But I hate the little shit."
"Eugene," she chides, "He's just a child. And you're not using your bed anymore anyway."
"That's beside the point," he says. It's also besides the point that some twenty-odd years ago he scratched out the name "Terrence."
"You have a better bed now anyway. This one's kind of small."
This is a very good point, and he pushes himself off the bed to lead her back into the hallway where he points out the headmaster's room/office and the caretaker's room/storage cupboard. When they traipse back downstairs, he stops her to point out the spot that held the record for the highest place someone had jumped over the banister to land on the first floor without serious injury. Then he stops her again to point out the trick step. Then he says, "Look at these hardwood floors, Blondie. They're original." And then he realizes that he's stalling.
She realizes it around the same time and leads the conversation along as she guides him down the hallway towards the noises of a small riot in the dining room. "What's on this floor?"
"There's the kitchen, and the laundry, and the dining room."
"So we're going to have to talk to people now, aren't we?"
He runs a hand through his hair. "I could give you a tour of the laundry room."
"Is it interesting?"
"No."
She thinks on it for a second. "I do like laundry, so let's go look at that."
He pauses to look down at her, her face still bloodless, her lower lip pulled into her mouth. "I love you. Have I told you that?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Never mind then."
She smiles slightly, then takes his hand as they head down the corridor. Maybe they could hide in the laundry room until it's time to leave. And by "hiding" he means "release tension through necking."
But of course it's the day from hell so this doesn't even come close to happening.
As they pass the dining hall, someone shouts his name, causing him to freeze before he turns around to see the caretaker jogging up to him between tables crowded with messy haired children. The caretaker's bulk makes his jog more like a waddle and the fine layer of sweat that Eugene remembers from childhood is still smeared across the man's forehead. He's supposed to be the caretaker for the building, not the children, and his job description entails fixing broken windows and ordering supplies and shoveling snow. However, he finds very little time to do his actual job since he is always too busy trying to maintain peace among the children's various factions and between the cook and the headmaster or the headmaster and the children or the headmaster and the neighbors. Child care is not his thing, but it's what he's done every day for the last thirty-five years, and this fact makes him look more and more like a hot mess every day.
"Eugene," he huffs, coming to a stop in the doorway and leaning against it as casually as he can while he tries not to look as though he's catching his breath. "Eugene. I heard you were coming."
"Yeah. How 'bout that?"
"You have to help me."
No, "Oh, Eugene! It's so good to see you again." No, "Who's your friend? Oh hello, your highness. What a pleasure. Eugene's so lucky!" No. None of that.
Eugene rolls his eyes, because talking to the caretaker is like stepping backwards in time to when he was one of the oldest kids who hadn't run away yet, to when he was always being called upon to look after the little guys, to when his response to anything the caretaker said was an eye roll and begrudging agreement.
"What do you need?"
The caretaker sags in relief. "Just watch them. Ten minutes. Dinner's a disaster and Harold's busy with the accounts and the furnace is acting up again. Ten minutes, Eugene. That's all I need."
Eugene is well aware that ten minutes is usually more like a half hour and "watch them" is more like "make sure they don't light anything on fire or stab each other or bite the babies and make sure they all get a bath." But for some reason Eugene finds himself nodding as the caretaker grins and rushes off to the basement to work on the furnace (with which Eugene is also painfully familiar.)
"What do we do?" Rapunzel whispers. Briefly she wonders if anyone here knows who she is, but then she decides that that's a vain thought and drops it.
"Well," he says, taking a deep breath and giving into the tragic fact that his plan to be Flynn all day has utterly failed. "I'm going to watch them, and you're going to find out who Tim is." And with that he marches into the room.
The kids aren't silent as they enter, but all eyes are focused on them, each child confiding a different theory to a neighbor. The strangers are a noble couple here to adopt, so everyone needs to look cute and well behaved. They're from the board of directors (a mythical group of omnipotent men whose word is law but are never seen) and they are here to shut down the orphanage. They have nice shoes, which means they must have items worth stealing on their person.
No one guesses that Eugene used to be one of them and that none of their tricks of looking cute or asking for a hug or throwing a fit will work. He invented those.
He grabs a free chair, drags it to the head of the room, spins it around, and flops into it, resting his elbows against the chair back.
He stares at them for a minute, then says, "Hey. How ya' doing?"
The kids exchange confused looks with one another. He doesn't blame them. Strangers are rare and strangers that will speak to them are unheard of.
"Who wants to hear a story?" Stories always used to work to settle the kids down and keep them entertained for lengthy periods.
The kids stare at him, a few turning their attention to Rapunzel as she slips into a seat at one of the tables, tucking her skirt in around her legs and looking excited for another story.
"What kind of story?" asks a boy with an upturned nose.
"A good one. One about heroic adventures and daring escapes. And this one is especially good because it's true." Or at least it's true before he heavily edits it.
The kids look skeptical, but at least he has their attention.
"Is there a horse in the story?" asks a girl in pigtails.
"Yes. A big, nasty monster of a horse-" The girl gasps. "-Who turns out to be very nice in the end."
"Is there a dragon?" asks a boy missing a front tooth.
"Yeah." There is now. "One that breathes fire and kidnaps princesses." More girls gasp, which Eugene appreciates.
One of the boys crosses his arms over his chest. "You said this was a true story. Dragons aren't real." This Eugene does not appreciate. Especially when a few of the younger children look as though all their dreams have been shattered by this bit of information.
"Dragons are very real," he says. "They just don't like company and most people who see them get eaten so there aren't any witnesses. But I've seen one and I assure you they're real."
There's nothing more fun than lying to children.
"How come you didn't get eaten then?"
"Because I'm amazing. Now are you going to shut up so I can tell my story or are you gonna keep asking questions?"
The kids shut up and lean forward in their seats ever so slightly, wanting to hear about the real, live dragon, but not wanting their friends to know that they want to hear. Eugene begins to spin his tale, pulling in one kid at a time, building up the drama, laying on the action, until, at last-
"Your horse sounds like a dog."
"Yeah. Horses don't do that."
"Have you even seen a horse before, Mister?"
The story collapses around him as even some of the younger kids are thrown out of the magic and wrinkle their foreheads in confusion over whether anything they just heard was true. It takes him a while to patch the story back together, making an effort to go into less detail about Max (something he thought would earn him a laugh or two.) He gathers the tale back together, weaving it around the children like the backdrop of a play, building up suspense for the moment he would finally introduce the dragon – red and copper, with scales that clink and scratch along the cavern floor, encrusted with dried blood and horded jewels and exotic fabrics from across the globe, smelling like expensive incense and rotten meat and thick smoke, its eyes gleaming like the gates of hell as they settle on the hero and hold him hypnotized-
"I thought dragons were blind."
Eugene blinks at the interruption. "You what?"
"Dragons are blind. Everyone knows that. That's why they live in caves."
He's never heard this piece of folklore before, but several kids around the room nod as if this is common knowledge and Eugene is an idiot.
All these interruptions are a severe blow to his pride. Didn't he used to be great at this? And now one of the kids has taken off his shoes and is trying to put his stinky feet in his friend's face. Another kid is staring off into space with his chin propped in his hand. The far table of kids are flicking pebbles from their pockets at one another.
He's losing his audience and his grove and continues with the story a bit too hastily, throwing off the poetry and letting anxiety creep into his voice. He wraps everything up a bit too quickly saying, "and they lived happily ever after." He hates ending stories that way. It seems too unrealistic, even for a story about a dragon.
There's a moment of silence when he finishes as the kids let his words percolate in their little minds. They exchange looks with one another before one boy voices what they are collectively thinking.
"No way."
Now he's just affronted. "What do you mean, 'no way?'"
"There's no way the princess would run off with the hero. She sounds nice and he sounds like a tool."
Eugene doesn't know what to say to this.
"I liked him," one of the older girls argues. Eugene mentally cheers. "But he doesn't sound like a real person, more like… like someone you would make up. You know?" He stops cheering.
"I liked the dragon," says a boy sporting a severe cow lick. "Can you tell the story again, but have the princess stay with the dragon? I think she'd like that. And the dragon can eat the hero and his horse."
"Not the horse!" screams one of the little girls, lifting her balled fists to cover her mouth.
The kids explode into arguments over appropriate changes that can and should be made to the story – arguments that quickly dissolve into insults against Eugene's story telling capabilities and each other's intelligence and parentage. Then one of the little ones starts crying and two boys collapse to the floor trying to give each other nuggies.
Ok, Eugene decides. These kids are pricks.