LEGENDS OF THE STONE
[]Sythlight has entered the waterlands.
[]Sythlight: You guys up for a dungeon run?
KittyKat: actually, I’m really tired. think I might sleep.
MEGAdawn: It’s only 10pm!
KittyKat: I know. I’m just so tired. and I need lots of sleep if I’m going to survive the new year’s thing.
MEGAdawn: Fine. <3 <3 <3 good night party pooper!
[]Sythlight: Good night.
KittyKat has logged off.
MEGAdawn: you still want to play something?
[]Sythlight: Actually, I might head off too.
MEGAdawn: of course you will
[]Sythlight: What?
MEGAdawn: never mind
MEGAdawn: good night
[]Sythlight: Hey, thanks for always texting me when you guys are playing.
MEGAdawn: np
[]Sythlight: OK. Ciao.
MEGAdawn: bye
[]Sythlight has logged off.
KAT
Mom. Dad. Luke. |
Mom. Luke. Dad. |
Luke. Mom. Dad. |
Luke. Dad. Mom. |
Dad. Luke. Mom. |
Dad. Mom. Luke. |
There are six different ways to organize the set, but no matter which way I choose, there are still only three items in it. We’re already halfway through Christmas vacation, and I’ve only done three tests. I have no idea how to go about the others.
Granddad is fine with a tablet, but not so great with a mouse, so despite his offering, he’s out. Which means I’ve run out of family-member lab rats. Meg’s extended-family Christmas party is in a few days, and she swears she can get fifteen tests done just from her cousins alone. I have cousins too, but they’re older. And in different provinces. And countries. I always got along with Tarah, my youngest cousin—youngest, but still seven years older than me—but she’s in Kenya for a year delivering babies or building schools or something. I don’t think she can even get email, let alone do a speed run in LotS. Maybe I should try her anyway.
“Kat.”
Then again, even if she did find some internet café, the connection might be too slow.
“Kat! Earth to Kat!”
I blink, bringing the world outside my head back into focus. A snowman mug, ringed with the powdery remnants of my hot chocolate. An LED screen boasting a flickering countdown.
New Year’s Eve at Meg’s house.
Everyone—Meg, Grayson, Grayson’s buddies, even Luke, who had nothing better to do and decided to come along—is gathered by the front door, all peeling off their socks in some foot-fetish orgy. The living room couches around me, packed with people just moments ago, are deserted. The noise hasn’t stopped, though. Everyone’s still laughing and talking like they’re on a radio show and can’t have dead air.
Meg bounds barefoot across the room toward me and starts tugging at my socks like I’m some obstinate child refusing to change for bed. “Come on, come on,” she says. “It’s almost time.”
“I can do it.” I hook my thumb under the topmost stripe and slide my sock away to expose my wintry-pale, naked flesh. “We’re all going to get pneumonia,” I mumble, just loud enough so that she can hear me but the weirdos by the door can’t. I fold my socks and set them in a tidy pile on the rug.
“Then we can be hospital buddies,” she says. Before I can protest that we might pass the pneumonia on to Granddad, she grins, grabs my arm, and hauls me to my feet. “Come on.”
We draw up to the front door just as Grayson starts the countdown, reading from the TV screen like it’s a teleprompter. “Ten . . . nine . . .”
Everyone joins in. Luke’s sonorous tenor harmonizes with Grayson’s gruff bass. Luke has always had a knack for blending into groups of strangers.
“Six . . . five . . .”
Meg’s hand hovers on the front door handle. It’s not open yet, but already my toes curl, retreating from the winter wind. This—this ridiculous midnight celebration Meg has convinced us to do—is bananas. I’ve gotten swept up into some alien culture that shoves aside all reason in favor of a herd mentality of recklessness. Foolish idiocy.
“Two . . . one . . .”
With a shout of “Happy New Year!” Meg whips the door open and the alien cows lumber past me with surprising speed, bursting out onto the porch, then onto the snow-piled lawn. There’s no time to flee. Meg latches herself onto my arm and kisses me on the cheek—actually kisses me on the cheek, the silly fool—and then we both tumble out the door and into the snow. Barefoot.
MEG
I WILL GO ON RECORD AND SAY IT: THIS IS THE BEST NEW YEAR’S SNOW RUN of my life. Big white flakes flutter down and settle on our heads like sprinkles on cupcakes. A passing car hoots and honks, chiming in with our cheers of “Happy New Year!” And the snow has a crispy pie-crust top that lets us walk on it and race a lap around the house in record time—all except Roman, who ends up waist deep in a drift. We have to backtrack and hoist him out by his armpits, which sets everyone laughing.
Kat grabs my arm and huddles up to me, hopping from one bare foot to the other. “Okay, we did it, jerkmuffin. Can we go inside now?” Her teeth chatter, but the corner of her mouth twitches upward.
“You liked it!”
“Shut up!” She scowls, but her eyes twinkle. “I’m going inside!”
“Okay, I’m com—” A force collides with my shoulder and pushes me backward onto a cushion of snow. Grayson’s face is inches from my own.
“Kat, help, I’m under attack!” I call out to her retreating back.
She turns, shakes her head at me. The porch light illuminates the grin that she’s finally given up hiding. “Sorry, but you’re on your own.”
I look up at Grayson. The snow obscures his dark hair, giving him a mane of white, and for a moment we’re both seventy, having just raced a New Year’s snow run together for—what, the fiftieth time?
I’ve never done a snow run with the same people more than once. Last year I probably could have rallied some duplicates; I was at a house party and some girls there had done it with me before. But I didn’t even do one, because I was too busy dancing or something.
Next year, though, I’m doing this again with Grayson. And with Kat. Because I’ve finally figured it out, this relationships thing. And we are going to be a big, happy family forever.
“Forever!” I shout up at the snow or the stars or maybe both.
“What?” Grayson asks.
“Nothing.”
Grayson shakes his head at me, then leans forward and presses his perfect mouth to mine. His familiar heat grazes my lips, skips to my heart, and floods right down to my toes. My feet suddenly burn as if they’ve been stamped with a cattle brand—but one of ice instead of fire.
“Get off. Hurry, hurry, hurry.” I smack Grayson’s arm until he hops up, snow showering off him like a life-threatening dandruff affliction. “So cold!” I yelp, leaping up after him. I grab his arm, spin him around, and hop up onto his back, liberating my feet from their prison of snow. “Mush, mush! Hurry! Inside!”
He laughs, his chest rumbling under my own with each “ha,” and piggybacks me inside to warmth.
KAT
I RAN THROUGH SNOW. SNOW. IN MY BARE FEET. AN ABSURD, STUPID THING to do, but I can’t stop grinning.
I ran through snow in my bare feet, and I didn’t die.
I can do this, too.
I can ask Roman to do our science fair test.
He stands beside me in the kitchen, swirling powdery grains of chocolate into warm milk. The otherwise-empty room echoes with the clinking of metal on ceramic as I stir my own mug of cocoa. Roman doesn’t love LotS like I do, but I know he’s played it before. And it wouldn’t be poaching one of Meg’s subjects; she’s doing all of hers at her family party in a couple of days. Asking him should be easy.
I rest my spoon against the side of the mug and rehearse the question in my head. Would you be willing to—
“Mini marshmallows?” he asks, holding up a bag.
I blink at him. “Oh, um, no thanks,” I say. Which is stupid, because of course I want mini marshmallows. Who doesn’t want mini marshmallows in their hot chocolate?
“Okay,” he says, then starts to hum along with the cheery song that trickles in from the living room radio as he pours a stream of marshmallows into his own mug.
I can just change my mind. Ask for the marshmallows. Though really, I should skip that and ask about our science project before I lose my nerve. But is it rude to interrupt someone when they’re humming?
I grab my spoon and give my hot chocolate another vigorous stir.
We both look up as Roman’s girlfriend, Leila, waltzes into the room. Their relationship is all new and shiny; they smile every time they see each other, like some Pavlovian dog’s response. Leila’s grin makes her high cheekbones and thick dark eyebrows even more striking; Roman’s makes no difference—he’s a teddy bear whether he’s grinning or not.
“You making one for me?” she asks.
He lifts his mug as if toasting her. “This is for you.”
“Aw, you’re so sweet.” She kisses him on the cheek, then takes his hand and leads him out of the kitchen.
I stand there, alone, for a moment or two. Stir my hot chocolate. Listen to the melody of clinks. The cacophony of voices floating in from the other room. Leila’s giggle. The dissonant chorus of multiple stories being told at once. Meg’s cheery “Shut your mouth!” Roman’s hyena laugh. Everyone’s boisterous laughs.
I peek my head around the corner. People are settling in the living room, a scattered mishmash of still-bare feet, snow-damp clothes, and adrenaline-laced voices. Leila sits on Roman’s lap and squeals as he tickles her. Luke is squashed on the couch between Grayson and one of his friends, waving his hands about as he tells some apparently hilarious story. I search for Meg and spot her by the radio in the back corner, wiggling her hips as I swear three different songs come on at once. She’s partly hidden by the tree, which blinks with red and yellow and blue. Every light in the room is on. It’s after midnight, and still the whole place bursts with it—light and noise and chaos.
I’ve had enough. I want to be surrounded by darkness. Smothered by it. Not in a suicidal kind of way, just in a floating-on-a-noiseless-matterless-void kind of way.
One eternity . . . two nonexistence . . .
I pluck my hot chocolate from the counter, step out into the hall, and turn left instead of right.
MEG
I DANCE INTO THE KITCHEN JUST AS KAT DISAPPEARS OUT THE OTHER DOOR. I hurry to catch up to her. We could follow each other from one room to the other—kitchen, hallway, living room, kitchen, hallway, living room—never meeting, if we went at the same speed and in the same direction.
Kat doesn’t turn right toward the living room, though. Instead, she swerves off course, up the stairs. Her blond ponytail waves good-bye before she disappears into the darkness. I want to skip after her, draw her back to me like a kite on a string. But she has rambled on enough times about needing “alone time,” and I suppose she deserves it. She did let me drag her to my party and out into the snow like yetis, with only minimal kicking and screaming.
So I let her go.
I miss her already.
A bag of mini marshmallows sits open on the counter, and I grab a handful. Mmm, sugar.
“Hey, Meg, do you have any lip balm?” Leila stands in the kitchen doorway. The snow has wilted the waves out of her dark-brown hair, though it’s still smooth and shiny. I wonder if everyone has perfect hair in Turkey. (I think that’s where she said she was born. I’ll ask Kat later.) My own curls just get frizzy when they’ve been wet, so my head is probably a beehive of frizz.
“Um, yeah, I think so,” I say. I’ve definitely got some upstairs in my room, but if I go up there, I’ll be risking an “alone time” lecture, and I think I’ve got some in my backpack, anyway, which is probably still out in the hallway where I dropped it like a million years ago on the last day of school before the holiday. “Here, hold these,” I say, grabbing Leila’s hand and dropping my remaining marshmallows into it. Then I step past her into the hall where, sure enough, my backpack sits under the bench, half buried by my hooker boots.
I elevate—no, excavate—it, and unzip the small front pouch. I find only pens and pencils and the mascara I thought I lost. No lip balm. I unzip the main pocket. A big, ugly, red 47 jumps out at me. My math test. I had almost forgotten about the stupid thing. If Mom sees it, I’ll probably be grounded again. I grab it, crumple it with a satisfying crunch, and shove it down into the bottom of my bag with all the other unwanted debris—including my lip balm. I knew I had some in here. I grab the pink tube, shove the bag back under the bench, and march victoriously back into the kitchen.
“Here,” I say to Leila, dropping the stick onto the counter beside her.
“Sweet, thanks,” she says. “Want these back?” She holds out the palmful of mini marshmallows.
“Nah,” I say, waving her off.
“Okay, I’ll just—” She discards them in a little pile on the counter, picks up the lip balm. “Thanks,” she says again, then flounces back into the living room.
I hop up onto the counter, sitting beside the little white mound. I pop one in my mouth. White marshmallows are blah. I should’ve told Mom to get those multicolored ones. Another failure. Bombing a math test or choosing the wrong mini marshmallows—I’m not sure which is worse.
Grayson sticks his head through the doorway. “Hey, you coming back in?”
I shrug. “In a minute.” The snow in Grayson’s hair has melted, leaving tiny droplets of water that sparkle under the kitchen light. If I was a tiny little person living in his hair, I could swim in those droplets.
A burst of laughter erupts in the living room. It does sound like fun in there.
“Okay,” Grayson says, turning back toward the hallway. “Well, I should—”
I reach out and grab his arm. “You should stay in here with me for a minute.” I’m not letting stupid math get me down. I turn him and pull him closer to me. He resists for only a second.
Sitting on this counter, I’m almost as tall as him. I lean forward and kiss him, pressing my lips into his, tracing the inside of his smile with my tongue.
“Phew,” Grayson says, once we come up for breath. “You are—” He breaks off, wordless. And grinning.
At least this I’m good at.
I grin too, then kiss him again.
KAT
LAUGHTER FOLLOWS ME UPSTAIRS, ECHOING THROUGH THE HALLWAY. I SHUT Meg’s door to muffle the sound. Not quite quiet, but close enough. The reflection of moonlight on the snow outside Meg’s window transforms inky darkness into a gray light, illuminating Meg’s room just enough to navigate.
I sink down onto the bed, lean over the side, and trace the divot in the wood post where Meg tied the jump rope on that one fall day, an eternity ago, when we sat on the roof.
I sat on a roof. I can definitely ask Roman to do a speed run in LotS. Not today, maybe, but once we’re back at school. I can do it. I will do it.
My stomach seethes with the urge to vomit. One socialite . . . two . . .
I hop to my feet and stride over to Meg’s laptop, flipping it open. I need to distract myself. There’s nothing I can do about Roman or our science project right now.
I check my email first, out of habit.
My in-box boasts a new message from a “Dan Martin.” The subject heading is “Science Project,” which could just be a bizarre coincidence, but it catches me so off guard that by the time my usual worries about viruses and malware even pop into my head, I’ve already clicked on it.
Kitty,
Happy New Year! It’s already the new year as I write this, but you, being a couple of hours behind, are still in last year. Good news: the future is epic. We all have hover cars.
I wanted to send you this for Christmas, but your email said Redpath sugar cubes and they didn’t have that brand at our supermarket and I didn’t want to somehow screw up your entire experiment, so I had to order them online and wait for them to come in. I asked your brother for the info, and he forwarded me your email. I hope that’s okay. I tried to follow your instructions to a T. If anything’s not quite right, let me know and I’ll fix it. Since you are . . . what was it? . . . the Lord High Empress of the Universe (please don’t chop off my head if I got the title wrong), your wish is my command.
Hopefully we can do a rift run again soon.
All the best,
Sythlight (aka Dan)
I slide the mouse over to the attachment, then click.
A chart—the chart I made and emailed to Luke—filled out with results. Seven of them.
And scanned, completed questionnaires. Seven of them.
Seven.
With my three, we are a third of the way there.
“Happy New Year, Syth,” I whisper into the empty room.