I shrugged, not quite knowing the answer myself. “What if it’s someone’s pet animal, and it escaped? I just wanted to make sure it didn’t get hurt or anything.”
“And it’s still here, you think?” Heather crinkled her nose, looking sceptical.
“I think so.” I knelt down, lifting up the hems of some of the dresses to peak underneath. “Here, bunny, bunny!”
“Maybe we should go get a carrot,” Heather suggested. “My cousin has two bunnies, and they devour everything they can get their greedy little paws on.”
“I don’t see it anymore.” I dropped the dresses, and got back up. Despite feeling a bit deflated, I tried to rationalize that it was just a bunny, and someone would find it sooner or later.
“No, no, no,” Heather said while she put her arm around my shoulders. “I refuse to let you be all doom and gloom because of a rabbit. It probably tried to escape with all the people here.”
She gestured around us, and she was right, the shop was pretty crowded. So, why had no one else noticed the rabbit?
God, I hoped I wasn’t losing it. Not today on all days. I was completely fine with going berserk tomorrow, or next week, but today, on prom night, I had to be as normal as can be, and seeing rabbits that weren’t there just couldn’t be part of the plan.
“You’re right,” I said to Heather, while I put on my biggest smile. “So, you found a dress yet? That one looks pretty cute.”
Heather shrugged. “Everything looks pretty cute when I’m wearing it. But I’m not going for ‘cute’. I’m going for ‘bazinga’.”
“What the heck does that even mean?” I asked while I walked after her, laughing. “Bazinga?”
“I just want people to look at me and go all like ‘wow, hot damn, baziiiiiinga’,” Heather said.
“So, basically it means nothing?” I laughed as she answered, “Yes, pretty much.”
As we walked back toward the fitting rooms, I glanced over my shoulder once more, wondering if that rabbit had been real, or if it had been a figment of my imagination—and if so, what the heck was wrong with me.
Chapter 3
Three Days in Wonderland
The guards tossed me into one of the bunk rooms, named like that because they were filled with bunk beds. Said beds, of course, were occupied by a variety of creatures native to Wonderland, each of them stranger than the other.
All of them here for one goal, and one goal only. To participate in the Tournament, and hopefully win their freedom.
I fell on the ground, a sharp pain shooting through my leg.
“Good luck, rebel scum,” one of the guards said sarcastically. Then, they all laughed and closed the door behind them, leaving me with my fellow competitors.
“Don’t you worry about them, lass,” someone said from behind me. “Those dimwits wouldn’t last one second in the Tournament.”
I turned around to face the speaker: a hare, roughly about my height, wearing a costume vest that was ripped in several places, and pants of which the bottom parts had been shredded. He didn’t wear any shoes, but he did wear a hat, with two holes in it for his ears to pop through.
The hare seemed slightly taken aback when he saw me. “You look as if I should know you, but I don’t,” the hare said, extending a hand to help me up. “I’m the March Hare. You might’ve heard about me.”
“Hare, chillax,” someone said from atop one of the bunk beds. “No one, and I mean literally no one, has heard about you.” A reptilian face appeared from the side of the speaking bunk bed. “Hello, there,” the reptile said, extending a four-fingered hand covered in green, leathery skin. “I’m Bill the Lizard.”
I shook his head, flinching when his cold skin touched mine. “Nice to meet you, Bill. I’m Alice Carroll.”
“Alice Carroll…” The Hare shook its head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Say, Bill, is it tea time yet?”
“It’s always tea time, Hare,” Bill said with a melancholy smile. Then, he jumped off the bed in one fluent motion, landing right in front of me. “Tell us about yourself, Alice,” the lizard said while he sat down on the floor, stretching his toes. “What brings you here?”
“Same thing that brings us all here, I imagine,” a third voice interrupted our conversation. A creature looking like a strange mix between a chicken and a turkey, waltzed over toward us. It wore a white wig that made it look like an Honourable Judge, which would be downright hilarious in any circumstances other than these. “Crimes and misdeeds.”
“Oh, Snark, don’t start,” Bill said, waving at the chicken/turkey combination dismissively. “You wouldn’t be able to commit a crime if your life depended on it.”
The creature seemed offended by the Lizard even suggesting it wasn’t capable of any misdoings. “Might I remind you, Bill, that I’m a feared criminal mastermind,” it said while straightening its wig. “I, myself, and in my lonesome, snuck into the bakery and stole a cupcake!”
“That’s our criminal mastermind, ladies and gents,” Bill said while looking around the room. “Steals cupcakes for a living.”
The little creature turned as red as a tomato. It squished its mouth shut, and seemed to gather more and more air into its lungs, growing like a balloon.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked the Hare, while backing away, afraid the creature, which was by now as round as a bowling ball, could explode any moment.
“It’s a Snark,” the Hare said, as if that explained everything. People in Wonderland had the obnoxiously annoying habit to give simple explanations to complicated issues, without explaining anything at all.
“Calm down, you’ll make yourself explode again,” Bill said, not bothered in the slightest by that his prediction seemed to be coming true. “We all know how devilish and daring it was from you to go stealing that cupcake.”
The Snark finally opened its mouth, and the air wheezed out of its little body. He deflated like a ripped balloon. “Devilish and daring, for sure!” he said. “It was a plan alike no other, meticulously detailed, and no one could’ve pulled it off but me, the Snark!”
Although I wouldn’t say it out loud, the little creature—the Snark, whatever the heck that was—was extremely cute. If I said that, though, it would probably turn bowling-ball-sized again and threaten to explode.
“You see, Alice Carroll, we’re quite a fearsome bunch here,” Billy the Lizard said from his position on the floor. “Unlike the little Snark, I was caught red-handed while trying to burglarize the house of my good friend here, the Hare.” He gestured at the Hare, who didn’t seem annoyed in the slightest that his supposed-friend had tried to break into his home. “It was a case of mistaken identity, to be honest. We’re next-door neighbours, and during tea time, I had looked too deep into the wrong kind of glass, the alcoholic type, if you understand my meaning.”
He took a moment to breathe, which the Hare took as his queue to ask, “if it tea time yet?” His question was met by a collective groan from most of the people present in the room.
“So, the Playing Cards arrested me, brought me here, and that’s that,” Bill concluded.
“Then why are you here?” I asked to the Hare, wondering how someone whose primary concern seemed to be when tea time was, could end up imprisoned by the Queen of Hearts.
The Hare took off his hat and dusted it, trying to avoid looking at me or anyone else while he told his story. “I…Well, you might find this hard to believe, but…”
Oh God. He was going to tell me another story of how he had broken into his friends’ home or stolen a cupcake, as if any of those offences warranted a one-way ticket to a death trap masked as an event called the Tournament.
“Come on, Hare, spill it,” Billy said. “You know it’s better to come clean about your sins.”
The Hare took a deep breathe and looked me straight into the eye. “I run an illegal tea-trafficking ring.”
My eyes turned wide, and I wondered if I had heard him correctly. “An illegal tea-trafficking ring?”
“Tea can do all sorts of things to people,” Billy explained. “Especially the wrong kind of tea. Now, our Hare here, he worked for the big lord of crime, the Blue Caterpillar. Ever heard of him?”
“No, can’t say that I have,” I said.
“What?” A duo of squeaky voices stated from one of the lower bunk beds.
“You better watch out,” Billy warned me.
“For—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence before two tiny, round-bellied boys rolled out from under the bed, tumbling against my feet.
“You don’t know—” The first one said, as he lay at my feet and gave me a dumb stare, “The Blue Caterpillar?” The second one chimed in, who was stranded right next to the first one.
“Don’t mind them,” Billy said, while he shooed them away. “They’re Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and each of them is more stupid than the one before.”
“They’re twins,” the Snark explained with an excessive amount of disdain, as if being part of a twin was horrible.
“The name’s Tweedledee,” the first one said, holding out a hand toward me. He was so small he could barely reach my waist, but what he didn’t have in height, he certainly made up for in belly fat. The twins looked as if someone had attached their heads, arms, and legs to a basketball.
I shook Tweedledee’s hand, trying to be polite.
“And I’m Tweedledum,” the second one said. We also shook hands. Apparently the boys were happy with lying on the floor and staring up at me, because neither of them made an effort to move.
“What are you two in here for?” I asked them, curious why two children—because despite their impressive waist size, they were obviously still children—could be sentenced to such a cruel fate.
“Don’t underestimate the cretins,” Snark said, its hands on its hips. “These two rascals managed to kill two Mome Raths!”
Tweedledee rolled backward, then forward, trying to get up. His brother started doing the same, their movements hindering each other more than helping each other. If we were anywhere but here, I would’ve thought it was hilarious.
After some struggle, Tweedledum got to his knees, promptly to be thrown back to the floor by Tweedledee, who was desperately trying to hold on to his brother so the latter could pull him up.
“Okay, I’m sick of it.” Billy jumped up from the floor, grabbed the twins by their necks, and lifted them to their feet. “There you go. Next time, less cupcakes, more exercise.”
“We did not kill those Mome Raths!” Tweedlee said, holding out a finger.
Tweedledum was nearly choking due to lack of air, so he chose not to comment on his brother’s remark.
Tweedledee, after shooting an annoyed look at his brother, continued. “These Mome Raths had sat down on the bench where we usually take our tea.”
“Tea?” The Hare’s ears jumped up, and Billy poked him in the side to get him to focus again.
“We hadn’t even noticed them when we sat down,” Tweedledee said. “And unfortunately…”
“They squished them,” the Snark concluded. “Squished the poor creatures!” The Snark grabbed its wig and threw it on the ground in an over-the-top reaction that almost made me giggle, even though I did feel bad for those poor Mome Raths.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but can you tell me what a Mome Rath is?”
The Snark stopped mid-tirade, and frowned at me. Slowly, it lifted up its wig again and placed it on its head. “You don’t know what a Mome Rath is?”
“Sorry.”
“A Mome Rath looks a bit like a pig, a bit like a mole, a bit like a bird. It looks a bit like everything yet nothing at all,” Billy replied, with the Snark too busy staring at me to bother with a response.
Eventually, the Snark said, “how can you not know what a Mome Rath is?”
I took a deep breath, realizing that if I wanted my plan to work, I would at least have to be honest with these people. And lizards, hares, and Snarks. “To be honest, I haven’t been in Wonderland very long yet.”
“You mean you were born only recently?” Tweedledee asked, who I was starting to consider as the smartest of the two brothers.
“No,” I said, licking my lips. “I mean that I only came to Wonderland a few days ago. Before that, I was somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else?” The Snark started jumping up and down furiously. “There is no somewhere else! How can there be somewhere else than Wonderland?”
“Relax, guys,” Billy said. “Wonderland is just a place; I’m sure there are many more places. It would be stranger if there was just one place rather than a great many places, wouldn’t it?”
“Now you sound like the Cheshire Cat,” the Hare said. “Always talks in riddles, that one.”
“If you’re not from Wonderland, then why are you here?” The Snark’s initial enthusiasm over meeting me seemed to have transformed into wariness and distrust in a matter of seconds.
“I’m glad you asked,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “I’m here to win that Tournament.”
Billy snorted. “You can’t win the Tournament. No one can.”
I purposely ignored him, and repeated what I said. “I’m here to win the Tournament, and to save Wonderland.”
Chapter 4
One Day Before Wonderland
“You look amazing,” Mom said for the eleventh time. Armed with a camera, she had taken half a million snaps of me already, and she seemed to have zero intention of stopping anytime soon. “My baby girl. I can’t believe you’re all grown up now!”
“Mom.” I rolled my eyes, blushing madly. I just wished Mom would stop by now, the pictures were fun for the first one hundred or so, now it was getting annoying.
The door bell ringing saved me from further embarrassment.
“Mom, I have to go.” I pushed her out of the way softly, and rushed past her, downstairs. “Coming!” I yelled just as Heather rang the bell again.
Mom followed after me, shooting picture after picture. “I want a picture of both of you!”
I opened the door, and threw my arms around Heather. “You look stunning.”
“Right back at you.” Heather held me at arm’s length to get a better look at my outfit. “The blue is killing it.”
“Pose!” Mom said from behind us, and we linked arms and smiled for the camera.
“We don’t have that much time left,” I told Mom. “We don’t want to be late.”
“I don’t get why your date isn’t coming to pick you up,” Mom said. “When your dad and I went to prom, he hired a limo and everything.”
Mom and Dad had split up a few years ago, but despite that, they were still friends, or at least they acted friendly enough toward each other when I was around.
“Times, they are a’changing,” I told Mom. “Limos are so old-school. No one does that anymore.”
“She’s right, Mrs. E,” Heather said. Although my Mom’s name was Eileen, Heather had called her Mrs. E. ever since we became best friends in kindergarten.
“Besides, I’ll see Finn at the school.” I shrugged as if it was no big deal, and Heather grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the door.
“Come on, let’s gooooooo,” she said, drawing out the ‘o’.
“Bye, Mom!” I shouted over my shoulder.
“Bye, sweetie. Be careful!” Mom yelled back at me, shooting me a kissy-hand.
As Heather and I got into the car, I thought about what Mom had said about Finn not renting a limo or anything to take me to prom. I was all right with it not being a limo, as those were freaking expensive, but at least Finn could’ve offered to pick me up in his own car. He drove a red convertible that his fancy-as-heck parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday.
He hadn’t even offered, and even if I didn’t want anything to bring down my good mood, and I planned to enjoy today to the fullest, I had to admit it still stung a bit.
“Goodbye, Mrs. E!” Heather shouted through the open window of the car, waving at my mom before we d
rove off toward school.
It was a sweltering warm day, so Heather kept the windows of the car opened as we cruised along. I was lost in thought, wondering why Finn hadn’t even suggested he would come pick me up. Chivalry was really dead, wasn’t it?
I was half-occupied by thinking about Finn, half-daydreaming when suddenly something white flashed by in front of the car.
“Stop!” I screamed, a command Heather followed right away. She hit the brakes so hard the car halted immediately, and we both smashed forward before the seatbelts snapped us back into place.
“What the hell!” Heather yelled. She looked me up and down. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the car door, and half-tumbled outside. Glancing left and right, I scanned the street for any sign of the white furball I had seen run in front of our vehicle.
“Alice!” Heather got out of the car too, slamming the door shut on her side. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I…” I shook my head. Why was the rabbit nowhere in sight? Was it even a rabbit I had seen? It went by so fast, flashing in front of my eyes, vanishing in the blink of an eye. “Sorry, I thought I saw the rabbit again.”
“The rabbit?” Confusion was written all over Heather’s features, until it started to dawn on her. “You mean… The rabbit from this afternoon? In the clothes’ shop?”
I leaned against the car, scratching my head. “It’s crazy. I’m going crazy. Why do I keep seeing a bloody rabbit everywhere?”
“What are the odds of the same rabbit turning up in a clothes’ shop, and then jumping in front of our car like a kamikaze person?” Heather asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Even if you saw a rabbit twice, chances of it being the same rabbit are abysmally small, I’d say.”
I turned to her. “Did you see it? The rabbit? Crossing the street?”
“No.” Heather paused, maybe trying to remember if she saw something that could’ve looked like a rabbit or not. “Nothing remotely like it. The street was completely clear for me.”
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