Beware the Little White Rabbit

by Various

  “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.”

  She does not sleep, partially because she has never slept, but mostly because she is far too excited.

  The first thing the girl with no name does in her life is wake up in the middle of a disused park.

  The second thing she does is wipe the grit from her eyes and stand up.

  The third thing she does is try to remember.

  The fourth thing she does is she doesn’t.

  The fifth thing she does is stumble, unseeing and unseen, to a shed she knows is abandoned and unlocked. The fifth thing she does is not understand why she knows about the shed. The fifth thing she does is curl up in the corner of a half-rotted wooden bench. The fifth thing she does is cry, inconsolably, for a period of hours, because she has no past and no future and very likely no present. The fifth thing she does is nothing.

  The sixth thing she does, several days later when hunger is tearing up her insides, is realize that, in a very real sense, she is nobody. She walks to a river and stares at her reflection. She wonders about her nice coat, her blond hair, her rabbit hat. She thinks about the person she might have been.

  She realizes it isn’t important. It can’t be, if she is going to live.

  She gets a bus downtown with money she begs from a pedestrian. She sits on a corner that no one else is using, and she puts an empty cardboard box she finds in a dumpster in front of her.

  Later, she will write “Have nothing, please help” on the side of the box.

  She takes the last bus back to the shack. No one else seems to be using it. Not even the homeless bother with her park. Or the other homeless, she corrects herself.

  In the months to come she will learn how to layer stolen clothes to keep warm at night, or at least keep from freezing. She will learn how to steal. She will learn to suck in her cheeks and keep her box empty even on a good day.

  She will learn loneliness so complete that she forgets the sound of her own voice.

  She will learn the precise layout of the park, and she will learn that, beyond a few half-feral stray cats, she is practically its only inhabitant. She will learn that it is a safe place.

  She will learn that it’s probably best to have a weapon around, just in case. She will learn that an abandoned construction project nearby has a lot of lead pipes lying around. She will learn to keep one in her shack.

  She will learn to live, more or less.

  She will not learn who she is, and she will almost forget that she has forgotten. She is the girl with no name. She lives in an abandoned park, and she begs for change downtown. She keeps what she doesn’t spend on food in a sock, as if she had something to save for. Her blank stare makes people uncomfortable, so no one speaks to her and she speaks to no one.

  She will almost forget that she has forgotten.

  Almost.

  At 6:00 a.m., Alice hears her alarm and sits bolt upright. She savors the sound for nearly five full minutes until she gently presses the button and, in the same motion, rolls out of bed.

  It takes her nearly an hour to choose an outfit, and another forty-five minutes to do her makeup. Another ten are spent staring motionless in the mirror, mouth agape.

  She greets her mother at the breakfast table with an enthusiastic hug.

  “Alice, dear?” Is everything okay?”

  “Mom. Mom. Everything is so great. Like, you have no idea.”

  “I suppose not, dear.”

  “You’re the best, Mom. Never change, unless it’s, like, narratively significant.”

  “I’ll certainly try.”

  Alice pours herself a glass of orange juice and some cereal. It tastes perfect, and her mother seems not to notice when she cleans out the bowl with her tongue.

  Alice meets Katherine, who seems put off by her relentless enthusiasm for very nearly everything, to walk to school. She isn’t sure about Katherine. She was a major character at age fifteen, and Alice isn’t sure if she really fits. Technically, she supposes that Katherine is her best friend, but she really prefers Eli, from age twelve. His arc was far more interesting. She supposes he’s in Peru now, and hates her, but that isn’t terribly relevant.

  “Alice, are you okay? You’re weirdly…happy.”

  Alice makes up her mind. Katherine is holding the plot back. Really, she’s doing this for everyone.

  “Katherine, if you’re going to question my happiness, I don’t think I want to know you anymore.”

  “I just meant – ”

  “Not. Interested.”

  Alice stalks off, beaming. She’ll fix this story yet.

  At school, Alice turns her 50s and 60s across the board into 90s in a matter of weeks. Her teachers ask her why she’s improved so dramatically. She answers with a giggle that she’s cut sleep out of her schedule. They laugh with her and tell her to take care of herself. She says not to worry.

  Being the best possible version of herself is her number one priority right now.

  Alice and her mother are getting on famously. One afternoon when the two are watching something silly on television, her mother brings up university.

  “I’m not sure, you know?” says Alice. “I think I know where I want to go, but I think I might just, like, do a couple of courses in different areas? Like, English, philosophy, maybe sociology? That sort of thing.”

  “Dear, your father and I always wanted you to go into biology, like he did. You know you always liked animals.”

  “I know, Mom, but I don’t really know if that’s my thing.”

  “Alice, you know your father would be terribly disappointed.”

  Alice knows precisely how disappointed her father would be. She’s counting on it. She waits a number of seconds designed to maximize tension and walks out.

  Time to get this story properly going.

  Alice graduates high school close to the top of her class. She decides not to make any more friends. It’ll be more interesting if she starts her next arc with no attachments. She’s accepted at a prestigious university a few provinces away and decides to take English, philosophy, political science, sociology, and psychology courses in her first term.

  Her mother is not pleased.

  “Mom, you just don’t get it. I know Dad always wanted me to go into science like him, but he isn’t around anymore!”

  Her mother is tight-lipped, arms folded. She exudes maternal disapproval. Alice basks in it.

  “Your father and I talked about this, Alice. If he were here right now, he’d be extremely disappointed.”

  “Mom. This is happening. I loved Dad, but he can’t tell me how to live my life and you can’t either.”

  “If you go to that school, you won’t be welcome in this house.”

  “If that’s how it is.”

  Alice goes to bed, which is to say she goes to sit quietly in her room until dawn. Her mother is left standing in a doorframe, at a loss. She begins to cry, very quietly.

  Alice hears and exults.

  Alice hauls her garbage bag of possessions into her dorm room. She hadn’t wanted to take anything her mother had bought her, for symbolic purposes. She drops the bag on the bed and collapses. She tries to feel tired and lonely. Really, she’s elated. This is exactly the sort of interesting development that she’d been lacking from thirteen to seventeen. She can’t wait to see where this story goes.

  The door opens and a girl lets herself in. She’s half a foot shorter than Alice, and her hair is black and cut very short. She looks like she smells nice.

  “Are you Alice?” the girl asks. “I’m Daisy. I think we’re roommates. Can you give me a hand with my bags?”

  “That’s me,” says Alice and covers her face. Right, she thinks, I’m supposed to be sad. She allows a few tears to leak out through her fingers.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m-I’m – ”

  She sits down heavily on the bed.

  “Just…give me a minute. I’ll help you with your bags when-when – ”

  She bursts
into tears. The girl sits down on the bed next to her and hugs her. Alice leans on her and sobs into her chest. She does smell nice.

  A month into their cohabitation, Alice comes back to the room quite late and quite drunk. She’d been to a mixer for the sociology society, and then a mixer for the English society when the sociology society’s was shut down by campus security. In a state of utter bliss, she’d flitted from conversation to conversation, dazzling the other drunken students. She’d made dozens of friends. An hour later, she’d wandered home and found Daisy up doing homework.

  “Daisy. Daisy.”

  “Oh hey, Alice.”

  “Do you think I’m pretty, Daisy?”

  “I think you’re loaded.”

  “That’s beside. Besides. The point.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Wanna make out?”

  Daisy’s head whips around, her expression going from shocked, to elated, to crestfallen, back to elated, then finally settling on resigned.

  “Wanna talk about this in the morning?” she says.

  “Noooooo…”

  “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Alice does not resist as Daisy guides her to bed, though she does lean more heavily than she necessarily has to. And perhaps she slobbers on Daisy more than appropriately – which is to say, at all – but neither mentions this. Daisy tucks Alice into her own bed and then goes to leave.

  “Daiiiiiiisy.”

  “Alice, I swear if you’re just playing with me and you’re straight in the morning, I am going to – well, I’m probably just going to cry and then never mention this again.”

  “But – ”

  “Tomorrow, Alice.”

  It turns out that while Alice can’t actually sleep, she can drunkenly pass out.

  “Hey, Daisy?”

  “Yes, Alice?”

  “Can we talk about it now?”

  Alice is standing behind Daisy, leaning up against the counter in their very tiny dorm kitchen while Daisy cooks eggs.

  “I suppose. Do you want some eggs?”

  “Eggs are okay, but you’re a much more attractive option right now.”

  Daisy puts the frying pan down, turns, and kisses her with a mix of hesitation and forcefulness that Alice finds utterly adorable.

  After she breaks the kiss, she looks up at Alice and says, “Is this for real?”

  “Yes,” Alice says.

  “Your tongue is really weird.”

  Alice loves university. She loves being with Daisy, and she loves her courses. She has a few close friends and dozens of peripheral ones. She does well. She makes connections with professors, and people begin recommending grad schools. She is very happy.

  She is terrified that the story is beginning to stagnate.

  She resolves to do something about it. This arc needs shaking up.

  “Daisy. Daisy. I know you’re upset. You love me. Obviously. And I love you too. Basically. But it’s just not interesting anymore. No one’s invested in our relationship. Our ship doesn’t even have a good portmanteau. I mean, really.”

  Daisy stares at Alice from between her fingers. Her eyes are red and raw, and she’s soaked a small mountain of tissues throughout the conversation.

  “Listen, I gotta go. It’ll be okay. We might even have a plot later on where we make a misguided attempt to rekindle things. Before my true love turns up, anyway. That’s something to look forward to.”

  Daisy howls and presses her face into a pillow. Alice gives her a little pat on the head.

  “Later, Daisy. You’ll always be fondly remembered by a tiny yet vocal section of the fans.”

  Alice walks out of her dorm room.

  Odd. She doesn’t feel nearly as satisfied with that resolution as she thought she would be.

  She has offers from a number of grad schools, but she’s still not certain if she wants to pursue sociology as an M.A. She rents an apartment in her hometown for a month to think things over. On the third day of doing nothing much but enjoying her temporary freedom from school, her mother calls. She says she’s heard Alice is in town, and she wants to go to lunch. She sounds tense. Alice says “yes” and tries to keep the triumph from her voice.

  Over lunch, her mother apologizes. She says that she was wrong, that she shouldn’t have used Alice’s father’s memory like that, and that Alice was and is her own person. She says that she struggled with some things while Alice was gone, that some of her vices got the better of her. She’s fine now, but she never wants to lose Alice again.

  She says if Alice’s father were here, he would be proud of her. She says that Alice is the best daughter they could have ever wanted.

  Alice bursts into tears and holds her mother’s hand over the table. After lunch, they share a long hug. Her mother asks if she wants to sleep at home tonight. Alice nods, too emotional to speak.

  More than anything, she’s shocked not to be pretending.

  She makes plans to eat a home-cooked meal with her mother tonight, then says she has things to do, and they’ll see each other later.

  They hug again.

  Alice, walking away from the restaurant, says to herself, “Oh my God. This is such a great resolution.”

  After supper at the house and another conversation that nearly brings both women to tears, Alice says she’s going to go for a walk before bed. Her mother says she’ll be up until Alice gets home, and then maybe they can watch a movie together. Alice smiles and says, “Yeah, Mom. That’d be great.”

  She goes for a walk in a nearby park. The city and the surrounding neighborhood have basically abandoned it. Alice wonders why there aren’t more homeless people around. She did a course on the sociology of vagrancy in her third year, and she finds the topic extremely interesting.

  She thinks about how much work would be involved in doing some proper research into the problem when she finishes grad school. Maybe getting a job in a help center somewhere. She loves academia, but she doesn’t know if she wants to study for the rest of her life.

  She wonders what sort of narrative arc she can develop if she starts volunteering at a shelter.

  Maybe it’s not important. Maybe it’s –

  A noise somewhere in the trees interrupts her train of thought. She licks her lips instinctively, nervously.

  Another noise, from the other side of the path. Her eyes dart to its source. Nothing.

  She descends a set of stone steps. One of the flagstones wobbles precariously, sending her sprawling to the bottom of the stairs. She lands on her arm, badly. She doesn’t like the crunch it makes, and she likes the blossom of pain in her hand even less.

  She lies on her front for half a minute before she glances upward, then back down. She isn’t ready to – Clank.

  The sound of metal on metal. There’s a metal railing on the bridge up ahead, but what’s hitting it? She resolves to get moving. Judging from the sound, whatever’s there is probably still on the other side.

  Clank.

  Closer.

  Alice gets to her feet as quickly as she can with one working hand. She’s just going to go home now. Mom can drive her to the hospital. Alice bets she won’t even hesitate when she gets home, and it’ll be such a great moment when she holds her hand (not the broken one) in the waiting room and – Clank.

  Clank.

  Clank.

  A final clank and then a scuffing noise like something being dragged through gravel.

  It’s crossed to this side of the bridge.

  Alice starts to walk, cradling her wrist. She hears slow footsteps behind her. She hasn’t killed anything in years, and she’s not even sure she knows how anymore. Her body’s not really suited to it nowadays. She walks faster.

  The footsteps don’t speed up, but Alice can tell they’re close. She tries to run, but the movement jostles her hand and she can’t keep it up longer than thirty seconds.

  She’s twenty minutes from the edge of the park. She sighs, tucks her injured hand into the pocket of her hoodie,
and bares her teeth.

  She drops to a fighting stance and turns slowly.

  There’s a girl standing there, a lead pipe hanging limply from her left hand. Her clothes have been ripped and patched back together a dozen times, but her coat was at one time very nice.

  Alice can’t tell how old she is. Her face seems prematurely aged, but she could be as young as seventeen. Their build is nearly identical, but where Alice is soft from studying and drinking and getting enough food, the girl has wiry cords of muscle and is frighteningly gaunt. Her face, as much as Alice can see it through the filth, is so thin her cheekbones look like they could cut glass.

  She is wearing a white hat in the shape of a rabbit. One of the ears has been torn off; the other dangles by a thread. The rabbit once had a face, but the years have rendered it blind and mouthless.

  Alice stares, paralyzed and uncomprehending. The girl stares back. She looks like she’s trying to work something out.

  She nods, and at the same time, Alice remembers.

  “This is the best twist ev – ”

  The girl with no name hits her with the pipe. Alice staggers, and the girl hits her again, across the knees. She crumples, and the girl hits her again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  The girl with no name stops. She lets go of the pipe.

  She doesn’t know what she expected. She’d seen a girl walking around with her face, or her face if she ate regularly. She was going to talk to her, but when she’d actually seen her, she’d felt…something. It wasn’t rage. More like necessity. As if something in her would break and spill if she let this girl live.

  She had precious little substance left in her. She couldn’t afford to break and spill.

  She turns the corpse over with her foot and stares at the face. She goes through the pockets and looks at the cell phone, the wallet, the house keys.

  She finds nothing of herself. She remembers nothing of herself.