“He can have that fixed. Everyone in Hollywood has their teeth fixed. Brad Pitt had awful teeth. Brad Pitt had medieval teeth.”

  The locker combination. Did I stil know it? How could I? How could I remember something so trivial when my head was filled with the dragon’s liquid fire?

  “Now how on Earth do you know anything about Brad Pitt’s teeth?” I asked. Going through the motions. Saying the right things.

  Like a long-running play where I’d done the same lines a thousand times.

  Magda ignored that question since she found it inconvenient.

  “You don’t want Mario, I’ll take him. I’m not proud, I’ll take your castof s. I’l take him, and by the time I’m done with him you won’t want him back.”

  I Spun the numbers on my locker. Twelve. Six. Twenty-seven. Still there in my brain.

  “What do you know about Sir Galahad?”

  She looked blank. “Is that some guy’s nickname?”

  “No, I mean the real Galahad.”

  “There’s no real Galahad,” Magda said. “Just a story. King Arthur and Camelot and al . Although Galahad has a separate story: You know, the whole quest for the Holy Grail. He was supposed to be the perfect knight.”

  Magda tries hard to pass herself off as a sort of tough-girl slut. In reality, or at least in a part of her reality, she’s a National Merit Scholar who uses her intellect mainly for sleazy double entendres.

  But then you ask her something obscure and she has more information than you’d expect from a girl who wears midriff-baring everything to show off the strand of barbed wire tattooed around her waist.

  “Galahad? He’s a myth.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But if the point is you’re looking for a man of steel with a big lance …”

  I pulled out my new chemistry book. My old one had gone across with me. We’d traded it to the Coo-Hatch, an alien race of obsessive metallurgists.

  “How about dragons?”

  Magda closed my locker door and gave me her serious look.

  “April, what’s up with you?”

  I spun the lock. Held on to the little numbered dial. Stared at the blank steel door. I could tel her. I could. I could say, “Magda, I am split in two, spending one life here and most of a life in an alternate universe.”

  And she’d nod and pretend to believe me and slowly but inexorably pull away, put distance between us, be unavailable, busy,

  “Sorry but I already promised to hang with Tyra, no, I don’t think I’m in the mood to go shopping …” And word would spread: April?

  Nuts, Insanity is the limit of friendship. I tell my friends everything.

  Every dream, every disappointment, every crush, every fantasy. I tel them things that go right to the heart of who I am, things that I could not stand to have known by strangers. Everything, except about Senna, except about our childhood together, but everything else, everything from my real life. Magda, Elspeth, Jennifer, Tyra, Alison, Becka, ‘Suela, they knew me, I knew them, to various degrees.

  My friends were mostly drama dub. We performed together. We took classes together. All those lame “pretend you’re a tree”

  exercises, we did all that together. When we had to act scared, or act happy, or act hurt or despairing; when we had to imagine ourselves as mothers or old women or prostitutes or businesswomen or Danish princesses driven mad by loss; when we had to reach deep to come up with raw emotions, we could do that because we were we. Because we trusted one another and supported one another.

  What was I without friends? Something, I was sure. I mean, I wouldn’t disappear if I was alone. But I’d never tried it.

  “April, whatever it is, you can tell me, it’s me, it’s Magda, come on, spill it, you’ll feel better.”

  I forced a smile. Not just any smile, either, a smile was never just a smile. I gave Magda a

  Julia-Roberts-lying-through-her-teeth-in-My-Best-Friend’s-Weddin g smile.

  “Just wondering how happy I should make Mario Saturday night.”

  Chapter

  IV

  School.

  Rehearsal. We were doing Rent. We were doing it in a week, and I was playing Mimi. She’s a junkie with HIV. Not exactly a case of playing myself. And the singing … I had to find a wildness, a reckless despair that had never been part of me.

  And then, I had a date. Mario. He was going to pick me up at 8:00. We were going to see La Dolce Vita down in the city at a theater that showed old films.

  Then we’d get some coffee, maybe a snack somewhere, and talk. We’d talk about the movie, and about Rent, and about acting, and I’d tell him about going to New York and seeing Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh, and Mario would tell me about meeting John Malkovich once when he came to Chicago to direct a play.

  Then we’d drive home up Lake Shore Drive and he’d act cool, and I’d act ditzy even though I was trying to be cool, and then the big moment would come, the big kiss, and would there be tongue or no tongue?

  “Why bother to go if you already know every scene?” I berated myself. “You don’t know: It might not happen that way.”

  I stared at my closet. It contained three types of clothing: stuff that made me look fat, stuff that made me look desperate, and stuff my dad would actually approve of.

  Wardrobe. Then makeup. Then on to the set to deliver my practiced lines. “He was amazing! He was born to play that role!”

  Or, “I’ve always felt that people underrate Susan Sarandon.” Or,

  “No, I, um, well, Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut? Um, I uh, I guess I could play a part like that.”

  Blush.

  “Stop it, April,” I snapped at the reflection of my half made-up face. “Just stop it. He’s a nice guy. He has talent. He’s hot. So shut up and enjoy the date.”

  The clock showed 7:49. Eleven minutes, if he was on time.

  Eleven long minutes. More, if he was late.

  I applied lip gloss.

  Any minute now. Any minute now, Mario. Any minute now I would open my eyes over there, open my eyes and discover … what?

  I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t let my real life be eaten up by the knowledge that I had another life entirely.

  I was getting angry now. Where was he? It was 8:00. No, it was 8:01. He was late. At any moment I, a part of me, would suddenly be there, not here. Only I would be here, too. Half of me would go on a date. Maybe the other me was already there, already gone? How would I know until she, me, I, reappeared with yet another update?

  “Oh, hi, April, have a nice date with Mario? Yeah? Wel , guess what Galahad and I did?”

  Madness!

  I sat down on the little chair outside my walk-in closet. Sat there in my not-too-easy outfit and stared down at my bare toes cold on the wood floor.

  Here. There. It was too much. One life was enough. I didn’t need two.

  “Go away and leave me alone,” I whispered.

  The clock said 8:07.

  I felt alone. Had she left? I couldn’t know.

  A discreet knock on my door. “April? Your date is here.”

  My mom. She still had her “mourning” voice. We were mourning the disappearance of Senna. Weeks had passed in the real world.

  The agreed story, the myth we all paid lip service to was that Senna had always been independent, that she had gone of on her own, no doubt in search of her birth mother.

  We were all very worried. My mom. My dad. Long faces, soft voices, downcast eyes, shuf ling tread. Very worried. My dad would turn on Prosier and feel like he had to say, “We could use some cheering up.”

  Lately, the last couple of days we’d begun the segue into the “I’m sure she’s fine, she always did take care of herself” phase.

  The police had no body, after all. No dead Senna had turned up in a ditch. And frankly, everyone was ready to move on, tired of the tedious job of playing sad and distressed.

  I dreamed of sitting down at the dinner table and saying, “Let’s all cut the b.s.. Mom, Dad, we’re all relieved she’s gone. Besides, I know exactly where Senna is.”

  But that wasn’t in the script

  What was in the script was my mom saying, “Honey, I think it’s good you’re starting to have fun again. Senna would want us to move on with our lives.”

  I squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. We gave each other smiles tinged with loss.

  I went out with Mario. We saw the movie. We talked. I had a mocha and a pannini made with hummus. We talked some more.

  We drove home. Mario stuck his tongue in my mouth and his hand inside my blouse. I stopped him. I don’t even know why. Half my life I was in hel , and the other half I was still trying to be a good girl.

  I tried to remember every detail because Magda and Elspeth, Jennifer and Alison, Becka and Tyra and ‘Suela would want the details, down to the last word and sensation and private thought.

  I got home a little after midnight and moments later, just as I was climbing into a steaming-hot shower, I was there.

  Chapter

  V

  Bed.

  Four thick, dark oak bedposts, a sort of feather comforter over me, no sheets, just a soft, down-filled comforter under me and the same over me and over that a coverlet or something, mostly maroon with faded traces of gold.

  There was a fire in a huge stone hearth, more coals than flames.

  The smell of salt water. The sea. We were near the sea. Were those waves I heard? Waves crashing on rocks? Or just an echo, a distortion?

  The walls were stone, granite, I suppose, I’m not a geologist. The floor was stone softened by a scattering of reeds and, hey, flower petals. Well, that was nice.

  There was a faded tapestry on the wal . I think it showed a guy in armor kneeling before a woman in white. No way to tell for sure with the colors all washed out.

  There was a single window, tall and narrow, a pointed arch at the top, like something you’d see in a Gothic cathedral.

  It was day. Bright blue filled the window. Morning light. That’s what it felt like. But the light had little impact on the gloom inside.

  It barely grayed the blackness in the high corners of the room, twenty feet above me.

  I wasn’t wearing sneakers.

  I threw back the covers, a sudden, convulsive gesture. I sighed. I still had my clothes on. A weird lit le outfit consisting of the clothes I’d been wearing down at the lake and the odds and ends I’d picked up from Vikings and Aztecs.

  I was a bag lady. All I needed was a shopping cart ful of cans and a personal relationship with the Martian high council.

  I tried to slow my racing, panicked heart (Would I ever get used to these transitions? Would I have to?) Things couldn’t be too bad: I was in a feather bed and had my clothes on.

  I swung out of bed and almost fell, surprised by the distance to the floor. There were my sneakers. I stuck my feet in and tied them quickly.

  The headache exploded about then. Pounding, pounding, but fading as I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. It was the remains of a much worse headache.

  I felt the back of my head where the dragon’s tail had slapped me. There was a bump the size of the yolk of a sunny-side up egg.

  “Okay, you have clothes, you have shoes, and there’s your backpack. This is good, April. This is better than some Everworld wake-ups.”

  I was alone, I was pretty sure of that. Where were David and Christopher and Jalil?

  I grabbed my pack, fished for the bottle of Advil, and swallowed two dry.

  I headed for the door. It was chilly in the room, despite the fire.

  It took me a few seconds to figure out the door handle. There was no knob. Just a sort of iron latch. I lifted it and, wincing at the creaking sound, pulled the door toward me.

  A hallway. Stone walls, stone floor, narrow, high.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. Part of me wondered if there was a phone by the bed.

  I could cal down to the front desk. “Hi, I don’t know my room number, but could you send up a pot of coffee and some toast? And some ice water?”

  Old Marx Brothers movie, maybe 1929 or whatever. Groucho’s at the desk of a hotel. Phone rings. Caller asks for some ice water.

  Groucho says, “Ice water? You want ice water? I’ll send up some onions. That’ll make your eyes water.”

  Bad pun. But it was 1929. Probably not Groucho at the front desk of this place. Maybe a trol . Maybe Loki. No, I’d be dead.

  “Shut up, April, you’re babbling because you’re scared.”

  “Shut up? I wasn’t even talking out loud.”

  “Well, you are now. You’re talking to yourself.”

  I stepped cautiously out into the hallway. Left or right? I heard nothing to guide me. But the hal way ended in darkness to the right and was bisected by one of the tall, arched windows to my left.

  “Go into the light, April,” I muttered.

  I padded silently down the hall, stepping unconsciously over the cracks between the stones. After all, I didn’t want to break my mother’s back.

  A door, identical to mine. I leaned close.

  “Hello?”

  Was I up too early? Was that it? No, I must have been unconscious a long time. A concussion? Did things like that just go away or was some big blood clot just waiting to bust loose and kil me?

  Dead of a stroke. Probably not the most likely thing to worry about in Everworld. So many other, more dramatic ways to die.

  I knocked on the door. Nothing. I turned away intending to look out of the window. Then I heard a creak. Spun around and saw David, wearing pants and no shoes and no shirt.

  “Kind of early,” he said. He rubbed his left eye with the heel of his hand and then had trouble opening that eye. “You okay?” he asked.

  Don’t look at his chest.

  “David, where are we?”

  “Galahad’s castle. Or one of them. I think he has more.”

  “So are we … what are we? I mean, are we prisoners? Or are we guests?”

  I said, don’t look at his chest, it’s tacky. Its the kind of tiling a guy would do.

  David raised his eyebrows. “Yes. All of the above, I think.”

  “Are the others okay?”

  “Yeah. Well, Jalil is. Christopher got faced at the banquet last night. Tried to outdrink Sir Perceval. I think he’s in his room puking.

  Christopher, I mean. How’s your head? Galahad’s doctor wanted to put leeches on your face and neck. I convinced him not to. Hope that wasn’t too presumptuous or whatever.”

  I shuddered. “No, you have permission to stop anyone from putting leeches on me at any time. Jeez, so … so what do we do?”

  David glanced back over his shoulder, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “We have to bust out of here. Merlin is coming.”

  I laughed, then regretted it for the needle of pain it sent through my head. “There’s a phrase you don’t hear very often: ‘Merlin is coming.’”

  David didn’t laugh. His eyes clouded. He seemed uncertain.

  Distracted.

  And then I saw the hand come sliding over his bare shoulder and down over his chest.

  She leaned into view behind him, face almost resting on his shoulder.

  Senna.

  Chapter

  VI

  “Well, well,” I said.

  “It’s good to see you,” Senna said. She slid out from behind David.

  I didn’t know what to say. “Wel , wel ” had pret y much used up my possibilities. We had followed Senna into Everworld and been fol owing her, one way or another, ever since. Following without really knowing why, or even what or whom we were following.

  We’d finally caught up with her, or she with us, and she’d had just enough time to sidestep Jalil’s pointed questions, when the dragon attacked.

  Then I thought of something to say. “David, maybe they can get you another room. One without snakes.”

  Senna laughed her mocking laugh. Then her eyes went all sincere. I swear, I worry she’s a bet er actress than I’ll ever be.

  “April, you’re mad because you don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “You’re right I don’t understand,” I admitted. “So why don’t you explain?”

  “I only know part of the picture,” she said. “But what I know is so … so incredible, so powerful …”

  I think I must have rol ed my eyes. Not consciously. It’s just my standard response to b.s.

  “It’s all right,” David said reassuringly. “Don’t worry, you just don’t understand.”

  “Has she explained it all to you, David?”

  Again the wrinkling of his brow, the confused look in his dark eyes.

  “David knows that what I’m doing is important and that I need his support,” Senna said earnestly. But then I saw the cocky smirk that hid beneath the surface. Not such a great actress, really.

  “Where are Jalil and Christopher?” I asked. “Maybe they’re still both men.”

  It was meant as an insult. It was meant to make David mad, wake him up. Senna seemed to have some power over David. Was it strong, unshakable?

  David’s eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t try to provoke him,” Senna said.

  “Don’t try to provoke me,” David said.

  I wanted to throw up. Or throw something. He was her puppet.

  She might as well have her arm inserted up his but .

  “Think I’ll go say hi to the other guys,” I said. I turned away. Headed down the hall. Heard Senna move. Heard her cal to me.

  “Don’t fight me, April. You think I’m bad, evil, but you’re wrong.

  There are real evils here. I’m doing all I can to resist them. You don’t have to like me but you should at least believe that. I saved your lives. Why would I do that if I wanted to hurt you?”

  It was a good point. She’d spoken with sincerity and feeling. A nice little speech. It sounded rehearsed. I stopped walking.

  “Why would you save us? Because you need us. You want to use us.

  That’s why we’re here. Because you need us for something.”

  She was wearing a silky sort of nightgown with wide sleeves, a deep neckline that hung loose from her narrow, vulnerable shoulders, and slits up the sides to show off her legs. Something that just happened to be in Sir Galahad’s closet? Where did she find something like that?

 

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