Page 28 of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

“Directions from birds and running away from dinosaurs;this is the most normal day I’ve had in forever,” said Sumi brightly. She waved to Stephanie. “Glad we got to see you again, glad the dinosaurs didn’t eat you, glad you’re not coming with us.”

Stephanie waved back. “Be careful out there. There’s a lot of things around here that don’t realize you’re not food.”

“What a fun way to say goodbye,” said Cora, as they began walking after Antsy. “Not ominous at all. Nothing about this is disturbing. I’m having a wonderful time.”

“Aw, c’mon.” Kade elbowed her lightly in the side. “You know you’re enjoying this. A wild adventure, a quest—”

“Don’t the school rules say no quests?”

“Has that actually stopped us at any point?”

Cora sighed. “No. But I keep hoping it will.”

“You’d rather sit around being bored all the time?”

“I’m rooming withSumi. I’m never bored.” Cora linked her hands behind her head, looking up at the sky as they walked. Hudson flew loops overhead, unhurried, easily keeping pace with the slower bipeds below him. “I was talking to Emily earlier, about why she didn’t want Antsy to find her door; she wanted her door to come to her, when it thought she was sure enough. And I realized, I want the same thing.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Is that silly? Maybe. I don’t know. Is it falling into that awful pattern of self-denial, where I have to be good enough to earn the treat I’ve promised myself before I’m allowed to have it? I think there’s a good chance. Never eat dessert before dinner, or you’re being naughty.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sumi eat anythingbutdessert,” said Kade.

“From the things she’s said about her childhood, she got all her dinners out of the way a long time before she wentto Confection, and now it’s dessert all the time, forever. But anyway. I worried about my parents missing me the first time I was in the Trenches. I worried about how much it must be hurting them, not knowing where I was, afraid they’d lost me. I worried about what the other kids at school would think. I worried about a lot of things. I think that’s why I wasn’t sure enough. That’s the trick, really. We ask, again and again, why the doors take kids, and I think it’s a combination of things—kids are more flexible, they adjust better to things like ‘Oh hey, I’m a mermaid now’ or ‘Oh hey, that’s a dinosaur,’ or ‘Oh hey, the world is made of candy.’ They don’t argue that something can’t exist when it’s looking them right in the eye.”

“That’s one thing. You said it was a combination.”

“Oh. Yeah. I think it’s easy for adults to assume kids have less to lose, but they don’t, not really. It’s just that the things we have haven’t been around as long, and that means they’re not guaranteed to stay. If you’re not sure because you want to eat your grandmother’s pie one more time, and you come back and she’s gone, well, now you were unsure for nothing. Your favorite dolly may be a good enough reason to want to go home, but there’s a pretty solid chance your parents threw her out while you were on the other side of the rainbow, and she’s gone for good. And I think kids know that. Kids know the things they love weren’t here yesterday, and they’re smart enough to see how that can easily mean those things won’t be there tomorrow.”

“Huh,” said Kade. “I always thought kids had less to lose.”

“Did you, when Prism took you? Or did you miss the things you didn’t have anymore?”

“My folks used to ship me off to the cousins every summer, said it was good for me, would build character, and Daddythought I needed character. Helped that my cousins were all girls—Jenny was even a horse girl—and all my friends in the neighborhood were boys. So I was already used to having the things I cared about taken away whether or not I said I was all right with it.”

“That’sterrible.”

“That’s why I was always sure. They didn’t boot me because my faith wavered. They did it because I wasn’t who they wanted me to be, and I’m not forgiving them for that.”

“I just… One day, I realized I didn’t remember what bread tasted like anymore. Dry bread, eaten in the air, not soaked through and swept overboard during a storm. And remembering bread made me remember my mother, and that I loved her, and then I felt bad for needing bread to remind me she existed.” Cora shrugged. “I guess I lost conviction over a hug and a sandwich.”

“More’s been lost for less, Cora. Do you still want those things?”

“Bread wasn’t anything like I remembered it being. And I do love my mother, but she stopped calling a few months after I went to school—said it was too hard for her. I think she just can’t handle the fact that I’m not going to be the kid she wanted me to be. It was always hard on her, when I didn’t fit her ideas of the perfect, pretty, petite little daughter.”

“And that’s why you won’t ask Antsy to find your door?”

“Yeah.” Cora lowered her eyes, looking at him. “My parents didn’t choose me after I went and got myself lost. I didn’t choose them, either. I want the Trenches to choose me. I want them to take me home because they know it’s where I’m supposed to be. If I have to wait a long, long time for that to happen, so be it. Eleanor’s proof that the doors don’t have deadlines.”

Their flight from the big predator had taken them deeper into the jungle than they’d realized at the time, but they were walking out of it now, holes appearing in the canopy overhead to let the primordial sunlight come slicing through in shafts of buttery, oxygen-rich light. Little insects danced there, glorying in their world and their time, and Kade wondered abstractly if they would ever reach a point in their development where they had thoughts and dreams and things to run away from. Were there doors for things he’d never recognize as human? Did butterflies sometimes find themselves swept away to worlds where the flowers were sweeter, or stranger, or sang them sad flower songs?

That was a question without an answer, and so he just nodded, shot Cora an encouraging smile, and said, “Hope’s still Sumi’s least favorite word there is, but you’re not Sumi, and I hope you find your door one day. I hope that when the time comes, we’ll be able to say goodbye.”

Cora knew he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Nancy, and so she only nodded, and kept walking.

13 THE LONG WAIT

CHRISTOPHER FELT AS IFhe’d been sitting with his back against the shelf of other people’s lost possessions forever. His butt had certainly been given plenty of time to go numb, and the skeletal mice and beetles he’d piped out from under the shelves were no longer gamboling around his feet but moving slowly back and forth, rolling dust bunnies out from under the shelves and dredging crumbs out of the cracks in the floor. Watching them was something to do, at least, and so he kept them awake and moving.

---