This is a preview if Chapter 1 of Beauty Sleep!
Divorce had become a forbidden word. It hadn’t even appeared in the emails telling Alice that she was going directly to the Case’s for Christmas break and that she would be remaining there until the school year started. Now that she was here, it was a topic that would not be brought up, though it seemed that there were more than a few close calls in the first couple days.
Alice wondered if that was for her benefit or if she was going to have to tell them that not talking about it wasn’t going to stop it from happening.
It was a little sad, but she could understand why they didn’t want her there right now. She hoped that she could see her parents one last time before she was taken away forever. They wouldn’t miss her, though. She wasn’t sure they would miss her even if they did remember that they had a daughter. She had caused them a lot of problems, had likely been the cause of their divorce despite what Lori tried to tell her. Maybe with her gone they could work out their problems and be happy. Just one more semester.
She could send them an email or call them before the Bandersnatch took her away. Evan’s disappearance had taught her that the Bandersnatch didn’t seem to be as good at cleaning up electronic evidence. Not that either of them would know what her email was about after June.
Again, she found herself wondering if there was really a point to trying to say goodbye to anyone before she was taken away. The point was to give them some closure about her disappearance and to let them know she was thinking of them and sorry, but it meant nothing once she wasn’t there anymore. When he took her, it would be like she never existed.
Statistically, there was a chance she might be able to figure out a way to get around the Bandersnatch. There was likely some way to convince him to leave and to win the bet, but all of her looking through the books and trying to work out a method of trapping him or throwing him back into Wonderland had so far proven fruitless. She didn’t have any more ideas.
There was nothing to do but try to finish as much as she could before she was gone once and for all. Hopefully Adam would come back without too much of a fight, and she could find Matt before it was all over. She should do something about the Queen of Hearts, but Wonderland could probably figure that out without her. She would need to teach someone else to return hearts, but that was it. If she could just finish that, maybe she could find some time to have a bit of fun before she faded away.
For right now, though, she tried not to think about it, even though it continued to creep into her thoughts at every waking moment now that she was enjoying her very last Christmas. Adrianna was off with one of her brothers doing something else, leaving Alice and Lori to hang out with Ryan and Travis as they prepared cookies for tomorrow. Again.
Cookies had become a thing Alice was making more or less constantly while she was here, seeing as they were eaten with fair regularity. While the people in the Case household were mostly their usual selves, kind and friendly, there were still flashes of hostility that came out of nowhere. Peter had shown her which flower would dispel that and so she had made it a point to be in the kitchen at least a little each day to sprinkle a some of the cure in the food so that she would not have to deal with that any longer. She wasn’t sure how much longer the flowers would last, but she had far too much on her mind to be worried about that as well.
“My baby sister’s almost in high school!” Lori said, pleased as they put the cut cookies in the oven and set the timer. Alice was careful to be the one to make the dough, remembering all too well how Lori tended to forget ingredients like sugar when she was baking. “New classes, new dorms, new everything.”
“Except Addie,” Travis told her. “You don’t get to lose her just yet.”
Alice smiled, though she felt a pang of guilt at the reminder. She was going to be abandoning Adrianna to high school all on her own. She would be all right, going in with plenty of friends who could give her a hand and without Alice to distract her from her classes any longer, but perhaps she was someone she should say farewell to before she left. Or maybe not. If she was gone the next day, it would be easier for everyone and they wouldn’t have to be sad at all.
“I have to get there, first,” Alice reminded her, a smile on her face. It was out of her hands now, and there was no reason to make anyone else worry about it. She would be gone no matter what happened. And it was Christmas in a house that really liked celebrating the holiday with family. Who had basically been adopting her the last few years. And with a sister that she thought she might never see again. She could let herself relax at least a little.
“You’ll get there,” Lori said, ruffling her hair a little. “Ms. Miller taught you all this stuff years ago. You could probably have jumped right into high school with her help if you really wanted to.”
“Does that mean she can tutor you in Chemistry?” Ryan asked, looking over at the pair of them. “Because I saw that last test.” He smiled gently, though Lori looked embarrassed about her grades and stumbled through an explanation.
“Not my fault that teacher hates me,” she said. “I missed one question on the test and the whole multiple choice was off after that.” She looked and sounded irritated from the whole thing, but Alice still smiled and tried to gently calm her back down. She didn’t want Lori to be upset during their last Christmas together.
“Can you retake it?” Alice offered.
“Yeah, I’m doing a makeup exam with a different teacher in January,” Lori told her. “No scantron, so I shouldn’t screw it up this time around.” That seemed to calm her down, or at least she pushed the feelings back down before they could boil over. Alice could tell she had already been stressed about this enough, so she didn’t press any further. Ryan looked like he wasn’t sure if he’d said something wrong, but neither of the girls would say anything.
“Is your girlfriend coming tomorrow?” Alice asked, trying to divert the subject to something a little happier. She did like seeing her sister happy, and knowing that she was in a relationship and watching her light up talking about it was one of the things Alice had come to enjoy. It was great spending so much time with Lori this year, but she did hope that she wasn’t taking her away from other people in her life. Well, maybe she was okay with it since it would only be one last time. “Her name is Jennifer, right?”
“She’s coming by for lunch on Boxing Day,” Lori said, already looking excited. “But I’m going to be heading there for dinner tonight. You’re okay with putting up with all these guys without me for a night, right?” She smiled, looking up directly at Travis, who looked offended.
“Hey!” he snapped back at her, but he was smiling as he said it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know exactly what it means,” she told him.
“I think you need to elaborate.”
“I think you need to learn how to peel a carrot again.”
Travis jumped and realized that he wasn’t so much peeling the carrot anymore as he was whittling it into a very sharp point. Ryan laughed as Travis put it casually to the side, patting it like it could keep his secret, and moved onto the next one. “You know, if someone tried to attack us right now, I could protect us all with Frosty’s nose. You should be thanking me.”
“Thank you for turning a nose into a murder weapon,” Ryan told him, giving him a light whack on the back. “Now, if you could continue cooking like there were still two extra ravenous mouths to feed, that would be great.” Even as he said it, confusion flickered across Ryan’s face like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to make of it. He shook the thoughts away. Alice looked back at the timer for the cookies.