Finally, slowly, Regan said, “I can talk to horses.”
“All horses, or only special horses?”
“Only special horses at first, but…” Regan hesitated. “There was a door.”
Sumi nodded encouragement. She wanted to rush the other girl, wanted to remind her that there was always a door someplace where a door wasn’t supposed to be, there was always a sign saying to be sure, there was always a choice. They didn’t have much time before the matrons realized they were missing and started flicking through the camera feeds, and then …
The punishment for this was going to be enormous. Sumi rejoiced, because when they got punished, they were going to be punished for doing something, not just for being who they were and not who the adults around them wanted them to be. Doing was always better than just being. Doing was a choice.
“I didn’t mean to go through,” said Regan. “I knew it wasn’t right, a door being where a door wasn’t supposed to be—where a door couldn’t be. Who puts a door next to a creek? It’s silly. It doesn’t make sense. But it was there, and I was so alone, and I thought, what can it hurt? No one’s going to miss me. And then, on the other side, I could talk to … not horses, because there weren’t horses there, not really, but anything with hooves; and anything with hooves could talk to me. They all wanted to talk to me. And they were such amazing things. Centaurs and hippogriffs and beasts like horses but with all kinds of different wings, and kelpies and silenes and it was … it was home, you know? I went home. I finally knew where home was, and it was so good, and I was so happy.”
“And then you found another door, and you wound up where you’d been in the beginning, but now you knew there was something better out there, and it was like trying to go back to nothing but oatmeal after you’d finally tasted cake,” said Sumi sympathetically. She was snipping off the tail of Regan’s story and she felt bad about that, she honestly did. Time was running out. “We haven’t met before. I’m Sumi. You were on the morning announcements. You didn’t get to go home. Why didn’t you get to go home?”
“Because if I’d lied to that many people, I don’t think I would ever have been able to be sure I deserved to go back,” said Regan. “I want to go back. More than anything, I want to go back. I don’t want to be here—I hate it here—but I miss my home.”
Cora frowned. Had she been doing the same thing herself, all this time? What made lying different when she did it? Did denying the Drowned Gods mean she was no longer worthy of the Trenches?
Sumi nodded, quick and tight and understanding. “Your world isn’t Nonsense, is it?”
“Nonsense?”
Cora sighed. “They call it ‘Delusion’ here.”
“Oh,” said Regan. “Um, no. I didn’t go to a Delusional world. I went to a Compulsion world.”
“Logic,” said Sumi, satisfied. “That makes sense. I bet if I cut one of your horses open, they’d have different throats.”
“Please don’t cut any horses open,” said Regan. “I don’t think it’s their throats. I think it’s my ears, because a week after I came back to the house where I grew up, I got to go riding on my old mare again, and I could understand every word she said. She’s not a really good conversationalist—she mostly talks about food and where she itches and how much she wants another apple—but I know what she’s saying, and no one around me does.”
“Ears, brain, what a pain.” Sumi glanced at the camera in the corner of the classroom. Was it her imagination, or was the lens pointed at them? “How did you get here all by yourself? During my orientation, they told me we were never supposed to be all by ourselves.”
“I was supposed to go home today,” said Regan. “They didn’t know what to do with me after they sent my parents away. They already pulled me out of all my classes. So the matron told me to sit here and think about how much I’ve disappointed everyone who was counting on me to get better.”
“Okay,” said Sumi. “Okay. I have to hit you now.”
Regan recoiled. “What?”
Cora blinked. “What?”
“The cameras watch but I bet they don’t listen, I think they don’t have the people to listen, so they can see us, you and me talking, but they don’t know what we’re saying to each other. They won’t blame you if they think I’m the one who started it. I want to talk to you more. If they think you want that, too, they’ll never let us be alone anywhere together, ever again. So I have to hit you now. Okay?”
Regan looked like this was anything but “okay”： like this was, in fact, the worst idea ever voiced in her presence. But she was easily half again Sumi’s size, and there was no question of who would win if they got into a real fight; she wasn’t in any danger. So slowly, reluctantly, she nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
Sumi moved faster than seemed possible, moved with the speed that had carried her across the Candy Cane Fields and seen her the sole survivor of the Battle of Gingerbread Gorge. Her hand lashed out, catching Regan squarely across the face, and if it was more sound than actual impact, it didn’t matter, because Regan toppled over anyway. To the cameras, her surprise would look like pain and fear. Cora danced back, away from the spray of blood from Regan’s nose. Cameras could lie even when they told the exact truth, because cameras couldn’t record everything. Only the surface.
“Find me when you can,” whispered Sumi, and turned, run ning out of the room as hard and fast as she could. Her shoes were too heavy. They slowed her down. She did the math in her head, measured the temporary delay against the loss over time, and turned her run into an awkward hop, untying the laces of her school shoes and kicking them away, then yanking off her socks, leaving them discarded in the middle of the hall.
The feel of tile against her bare feet was rejuvenating. She laughed with the sheer joy of it all, untying her tie as she ran for the distant shadow of the exit. The buttons on her shirt were next, and then the buttons on her skirt, layer following layer until she was running naked down the middle of the hall, hair streaming behind her, adrenaline and cold tightening her skin, making it feel like her own again.
A matron stepped out of the shadows next to the door, wrapping an arm around Sumi’s middle so tightly that the air was knocked out of the smaller, girl, leaving her gasping, still laughing, drowning gleefully on dry land. She kept laughing as she was hauled away, as she was slung into the plain white room of solitary to think about what she’d done.
They might not be going home, but they weren’t going to stay here. Sumi was sure of it.
Eventually, her laughter burned itself out. It was a sudden blaze, not a sustained bonfire; it could never have lasted. She curled up in a corner of the plain white room, tucking her arm under her head, and fell into an uneasy doze.
But Cora: ah, Cora. Cora had always been a runner, and this time, she didn’t run. She helped Regan back to her chair and stood, placidly silent, until the matrons came and dragged her to a plain white room of her own. Eventually, she fell asleep, and there were no shadows here, no corners for the Drowned Gods to claim and colonize.