I Kissed Alice

by Anna Birch

  Last online: 3d ago

  This is the first stage of Rhodes’s plan: We’re heading up to Nashville for the Capstone Award early, one day ahead of my family, the other contenders—and the night that could make or break the next four years of my life. Rhodes and Griffin are both flushed with sleep, Rhodes with pillow creases on her right cheek and Griffin with a piece of leftover toast tucked into the front pocket of his shirt for later. We’ve packed our bags as well as we can, and coordinated with our parents, and fifty-seven fragile, paper-cut tarot cards are packed in boxes loaded with Styrofoam peanuts in the back of Rhodes’s SUV.

  The interstate is still dark with sunrise, the trees skeletal silhouettes against a burgeoning sky. Streetlights flicker off two at a time just ahead of us, the radio is shut off, and no one has spoken since we left the Conservatory parking lot.

  I wouldn’t be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little relieved that we’d be hours away from Kiersten and Sarah. They’ll have no way to know what Rhodes does or doesn’t know about my identity—and even if they do figure it out, they’ll be too far away to screw it all up.

  Kiersten’s words loomed in the back of my mind all night, every time one of our phones dinged with notifications, any time we heard steps in the hall. I was poised, waiting for the other shoe to drop—but it never came. My fear of telling Rhodes who I am shifted at some point during the night: before, I was afraid to tell her because I knew I’d never have a chance with her, not with the state of our relationship as it was. Last night, it occurred to me that she might believe I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness.

  The truth of the matter is that I have been afraid to tell her because I love her.

  Hearts are fickle things. Hate is complicated.

  Her face has been etched on the surface of my heart for as long as I’ve known her, and I don’t think I’m ever going to know where hate ended and want began—because is there really that much of a difference? Does it matter what I call the way I feel about her, as long as I know she’s flavored most of my thoughts?

  I judged Sarah’s preoccupation with her so harshly, but looking into Rhodes’s eyes last night, it occurred to me that I wasn’t judging her at all.

  I was jealous.

  “Your gas light has been on for, like, thirty minutes,” Griffin tells Rhodes from the front passenger seat.

  “Stop micromanaging me! It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine,” Griffin says. “You’re going to run out of gas.”

  “I’m sorry, have you seen an actual exit with an actual gas station in the last hour?”

  “I just saw a billboard for a Love’s in five miles.” Griffin tilts back his head and turns up his cup for the last drop of coffee from the Styrofoam Milo’s cup in his hand. “That was two miles ago.”

  Rhodes shoots him a glare across the console, then turns her attention to me from the rearview mirror.

  “Iliana”—Griffin curses Rhodes under his breath, and Rhodes swats the top of his arm—“when Bootsie asks you why your entry doesn’t look like how you pitched it, don’t tell her about the ink.”

  Rhodes flicks on her turn signal and merges into another lane to pass an eighteen-wheeler with its hazards flashing.

  “Come up with something froufrou about your vision shifting,” Griffin says.

  “You don’t think I should tell her someone tried to sabotage me?” I’m sprawled out across her spacious backseat with my messenger bag stuck under my head. My tarot cards nudge just behind my right ear, and I reach inside to pull them free. “I’d think they’d want to know that.”

  Rhodes frowns. “They’re not like you—”

  “Hey!”

  It stings. I know that better than anyone.

  I still don’t particularly enjoy hearing it.

  “No, not like that! I mean, they don’t handle anything up front.” She sits back in her seat. “To women like Bootsie, drama is the necessary, unsavory underbelly of society. If you can’t avoid it, you have to at least act like it isn’t affecting you.”

  “That’s not how the women I grew up around are at all,” I say. “My mom and grandma and all my aunts just … fight. It’s a huge blowup, and then it’s over and we all move on. They don’t believe in leaving things on to simmer.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Rhodes says.

  “Mom and Aunt Gina just go weeks without talking to each other,” Griffin says. “We didn’t see Grandma for three Christmases in a row once, because Grandma said something at Easter dinner about Mom needing to get her lips done.”

  Now it’s my turn to balk.

  I can’t fathom a world where our family would all give up on each other every time we disagreed about something. Our love for each other runs so much deeper than whatever absurd thing we’re fighting about.

  And yet this is the only way Rhodes and Griffin know how to live.

  It seems more apparent now than ever that there is no version of reality where Rhodes will be able to find a way to love me.

  The exit appears out of nowhere, and the Love’s station is a brightly lit oasis surrounded by cattle fields in the near distance. Rhodes pulls up to a gas stall and turns off the engine. “Look—if we’re going to make it there in time to get over to Frist before it closes, we can only be here for ten minutes, got it?”

  Griffin rolls his eyes “I’ve just gotta pee. I can be out in, like, ninety seconds.”

  Rhodes gives him a look that suggests otherwise. She grabs her wallet from the console and steps out to pump the gas, and Griffin and I wander inside.

  Inside, everything is bathed in red and orange, with wall-to-wall, backlit refrigerator cases filled with everything from bottled water to cartons of eggs. I have to stop and take it all in: tables of cellophane-wrapped baked goods with a sign begging us to BUY LOCAL, and aisle after aisle after aisle of metal shelves stocked with shaving cream, and bulk-sized bags of trail mix, and little nefarious-looking glass tubes with silk roses suspended inside.

  “It’s like a Walmart and a gas station had a baby,” I say.

  “Not too different from the last gas station we stood in together.” Griffin watches my face, waiting for a response.

  The blood rushes to my head so fast, my ears burn and my lips tingle. He’s right: The old gas station turned art installation was probably one of these once. It’s like imagining Tim Burton’s Underland: The floors here are pristine, shining gray and orange under the overhead lights. The art installation’s floors were warped and stained every shade of brown. Rain poured through the hole in the roof, and there was an inch of standing water anywhere there was a low spot in the floors. I’d worked hard to forget that night, but everything rushes back, making me realize that I never actually got rid of it.

  Griffin and I both lost things that night. Rhodes did, too, in her own way.

  We all chose to be there, at the art installation that night. No one made us go. We can’t change the way it ended, and I can’t blame either of them for the way it happened.

  “What’s going on with you and Rhodes?” Griffin pulls me back to the here and now.

  Straight up. No pussyfooting around, just fucking asks.

  “What happened to not asking things and avoiding conflict?” I ask.

  Answering a question with another question seems safe.

  “What happened to not leaving things on to simmer?” Griffin crosses his arms and raises his brows. “Come on with it. I saw the way you looked at her when we got in the car. We’re not friends and you don’t owe me anything, but she’s my sister and she’s been through it.”

  He raises his eyebrows and shrugs again, international body language for “Well?!”

  “Rhodes is just helping me,” I say, stunned. There’s no way he knows the truth of things—who I am, who she is. “You already know what happened: Someone ratted her out to the Capstone board for paying that June lady off, and someone tried to destroy my Capstone Award project. I’m trying no
t to assume why she’s helping me, because assuming anything is how Rhodes and I even got here to begin with.”

  Griffin grabs me by the shoulders and stares into my eyes. His are blue, like Rhodes’s, with the same little gray flecks at the center.

  Blue like Alice’s dress in the Tim Burton film, just like my Alice always told me.

  I have to tell Rhodes who I am, and soon.

  “You have to help me.” It fumbles out of me before I can cram it back in.

  For the first time since this all started, I feel myself on the verge of tears.

  Griffin drops his hands and steps closer. For a moment, he wears the distinct expression of someone with the proverbial hamster running in its wheel between his ears.

  A lightbulb clicks on over his head, and I start to cry.

  “You’re Cheshire, aren’t you?” Griffin whispers it, thankfully, small enough for just the two of us.

  I don’t have the chance to respond, though: Rhodes appears on the other side of the automatic sliding doors with her shoulders bunched around her ears, red-faced and practically shaking with irritation.

  “Griffin! I know you haven’t used the bathroom yet, and I swear to God, if I have to spend the rest of this trip listening to you complain—”

  Without a word, Griffin turns on his heel and makes his way to the restrooms on the other side of the store.

  Rhodes whirls on me, and for a second I wonder if she heard Griffin after all.

  All she’s worried about is getting to Nashville on time.

  “What’s wrong with you?!” She throws out a pointed finger across the gas station. “Go to the bathroom, for Christ’s sake!”

  I go to the bathroom.

  I lock the door behind me and pray Griffin has the good grace not to tell Rhodes first.

  Grif.ingram 8:40a: so why did you stand her up

  i.vrionides 8:40a: I didn’t *stand her up*

  i.vrionides 8:40a: when I realized who she was, I had to process, too

  i.vrionides 8:41a: I was in love with Alice—that was her name, Alice—and I know how much Rhodes hated me, too

  Grif.ingram 8:41a: she never hated you

  Grif.ingram 8:41a: she hated the way you treated her

  Grif.ingram 8:42a: so why didn’t you tell her later then

  Grif.ingram 8:44a: how do I know you’re not taking advantage of her?

  i.vrionides 8:44a: how do I know you won’t show her these texts?

  Grif.ingram 8:47a: who knows, I might

  i.vrionides 8:47a: don’t be a dick

  i.vrionides 8:47a: I just wanted a chance with her

  i.vrionides 8:49a: please believe me

  i.vrionides 9:15a: please

  CHAPTER 26

  ILIANA

  Username: Curious-in-Cheshire

  Last online: 3d ago

  Three people know about my identity as Cheshire, and not one of them are Rhodes.

  Griffin and I texted back and forth in silence during the rest of the trip, with Rhodes’s eyes trained on the road—and, hopefully, oblivious. We made it to Frist with an hour to spare, just like Rhodes planned—“If I didn’t tell you jerks we only had ten minutes at the gas station, you would have taken an hour”—and between the three of us, it only took two trips to unload the trunk.

  “No one else is supposed to be here until tomorrow,” Rhodes says while hefting a big box. “They didn’t say we couldn’t come before tomorrow, so this will give you the chance to pick the best spot in the room.”

  “Do you know what room it’s in?” Griffin walks between Rhodes and me with my messenger bag over his shoulder. He flips through my Sacred Feminine tarot deck, one card at a time. “How do you know any of this with June gone?”

  When Rhodes turns to face us, her smile is a little wicked. “Because I called June while we were at the gas station. She doesn’t think Bootsie and them would have changed the plans for the weekend—why would they? I’m not a threat. June isn’t going to show up and cause a stink. She told me everything.”

  “I guess we’d better hope you’re right,” I say. I struggle under the weight of another box, and my giant art supply case hangs from its cross-body strap, slamming against the backs of my thighs every time I take a step.

  “It’s going to be okay, Iliana,” Rhodes says. Her eyes are so wide, soft and blue. “It won’t be like last time. You have a really good chance, even June thinks so.”

  “Let’s read our cards,” I say. I want any reason to keep on staring into them. “I always read my cards before something big. I’ll read yours, too.”

  Rhodes gives me a look. “You know how I feel about that.”

  “Do me! Do me!” Griffin drops my bag to the ground.

  Carefully, we make a switch, until I’m holding my cards and Griffin is holding the box I was carrying only moments ago.

  “Ugh, fine.” Rhodes points to a spot on the floor. “Is here okay?”

  “Yeah, anywhere is fine.” I pull the dyed silk mat I sewed from an old scarf out of my bag and stretch it out on the ground. Blues, purples, and pinks dyed to look like a galaxy shimmer under the florescent lights over our heads.

  “Griffin first,” I say.

  Griffin kneels down next to me. We go through the motions: I shuffle the cards until he says “stop.”

  He cuts and restacks the deck, then draws the top card.

  A Woman-King stares back at us, with soft eyes and a strong jaw. Her hair falls over her shoulders like water, and she grips chalices in each hand that sit on the arms of her throne. Instead of legs, she boasts a mermaid tail. Instead of a traditional chair-style throne, she is seated on a throne of coral.

  “The King of Cups,” he reads from the bottom of the card.

  “This card is telling you to be completely in charge of your feelings,” I say. “It says to listen to your heart and trust your intuitions as fact.”

  Griffin nods with this. He pulls his phone from his pocket to snap a picture of the card, then gestures for Rhodes to sit down next to us.

  She sighs and drops to one knee. Griffin takes the box from her arms, and I guide her through the motions of shuffling then cutting the deck.

  She places a single card, faceup, onto the mat.

  Justitia is blindfolded, as she always is, and she extends a scale in her right arm. She’s dressed in a billowing, white toga, and golden curls hang around her cheeks. On one side of the scale is a heart—on the other, a feather.

  The Justice card.

  My heart forgets how to beat, then scrambles ahead in double time.

  “This card means you’ll have a decision to make,” I say, “and whatever you decide now will affect the people around you in the future.”

  “Isn’t that always true?” Rhodes asks, a taste of the old, snotty girl I used to hate. “Every decision we make affects the people around us.”

  “This is more than that, though,” I say. “It’s kind of cause and effect: If you’ve done harm to someone, that harm is coming back to you. If you’ve been kind, the same.”

  “Or if harm has been done to me,” she says, running one finger down the card. It isn’t hard to guess who she’s thinking about. “Who do you think did this to us?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I have a few ideas—”

  Realistically, I know exactly who did it: Sarah and Kiersten.

  Of course, I don’t know for sure, but it aligns with the only interaction I’ve had with the two of them since the Capstone project proposal.

  Kiersten is still in the running, with her embroidery and dyed silks.

  The fact that it’s Sarah and Kiersten—two out of the only three people in the world who actually know my secret about my identity—means there is literally nothing I can do about it. One shake of the hornet’s nest, and every bit of this will fall around my shoulders.

  But I know from my days with Alice that Rhodes wants so much to believe in the good of people. It would horrify her for me to admit these suspicions to her if
all I have to go on is a hunch. To Rhodes, at the end of the day, everyone is redeemable.

  Rhodes picks up the card from the mat.

  The tip of her finger grazes the insides of mine when she places the card in my upturned hand. A careful glance suggests that Griffin’s eyes are glued to his phone, likely sharing “his” card to every manner of social media. It was a small enough gesture of Rhodes’s that there’s no way he could have seen it for himself, but I feel it down to my toes.

  She’s touched me to push me away, to offer first aid, to help me—but never just for the sake of touching.

  Our eyes meet again, and this time neither of us looks away.

  “Rhodes—” I lick my lips. Now. I have to do it now. “I, I just want to say—”

  Rhodes’s face goes red. I wonder what we look like to Griffin, or the rest of the world, kneeling together.

  She’s close enough to kiss. I could reach out and touch her if I wanted to.

  If I knew she wanted it, too.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Honestly. This year has been hell for all of us.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, thank you, I’m glad, but, that’s not what I mean.”

  We hear high, loud voices on the other end of the hall well before we lay eyes on the people they belong to. Rhodes and I both know one of the voices almost as well as we know our own, the person who at one point was the source of at least half of our problems—Sarah Wade. It hasn’t been lost on me that removing Sarah from the equation has also put a stop to 99 percent of mine and Rhodes’s issues.

  I wonder if Rhodes realizes the same thing.

  “She was disqualified,” Rhodes whispers. “I don’t know why she’s here—”

  “Kiersten,” I say.

  As if on cue, Sarah and Kiersten round the corner and come into view, pushing a cart loaded with several wide, flat boxes stacked on their sides. There’s something performative about the way they cling to each other’s arms, throw their heads back, and laugh. Who knows if there was ever even a joke, as much as a conscious choice to make us feel as though we missed something important.

  Sarah loves this trick.

  God knows how many times we pulled it with Rhodes, on the days Sarah and Rhodes weren’t getting along.