Free Death of the Mad Hatter by Sarah Pepper

Vida Maude’s sister.”
    “ More information would be abundantly helpful!” I said and slammed my fist against the door, next to her head. She pinched her eyes shut and braced for impact. “For years, no one knows about my dad and then you show up and act like you’ve known him for years! Explain!”
    “ Zola Maude and Vida Maude are my aunts,” Alice Mae said, and slowly opened her eyes. “And my legal guardians when I stay in this part of the country.”
    “ Where are you from?”
    Sucking harder on her candy, she nervously picked up the edge of her shirt. “I might as well live in a completely different world from you, Ryley. We’re obviously different to understand each other, much less communicate with any measurable civility.”
    Suddenly she jerked her head toward an opened window on the far side of the classroom. She rolled her eyes like it annoyed her that it was open in the first place. “Chez, I don’t need a babysitter!”
    S he looked from the window, to the floor, until she stared at her shoes. It was like she was watching an invisible person crawl through the window, onto the floor and stop at her feet.
    “ I’ve already made too many fatal mistakes, I shouldn’t tell him anything else,” she mumbled to herself and then looked back at me like she forgot we had been in the middle of a discussion. “I shouldn’t have piqued your curiosity. It was cruel because I can’t tell you anything else.”
    T he door opened. Mrs. Dotson dropped her sheet music when she saw me and Alice Mae unaccompanied in the classroom. “What are you two doing alone ?” she asked, suspiciously.
    “Practicing,” Alice Mae said at the same time I said, “Just leaving.”
    I quickly shoved my hands into my short pockets and stepped over Mrs. Dotson’s fallen papers. I was halfway down the hall when Alice Mae called out my name. She peered from the door frame.
    “ Did you like my dance? I’ve been working on it for years, per the Joker’s request,” she said and bit her bottom lip like she was trying to seduce me.
    “ I don’t like you.”
    “ That’s not what I asked.”
    “ Frustrating isn’t it? Getting answers to questions you didn’t ask, but are noteworthy nonetheless.” Why couldn’t I get this girl out of my head? What was I doing? I asked the first, random question that popped into my head. “Do you like me?”
    She smiled, but I couldn’t tell if it was an I like you back smile or I enjoy messing with you smile.
    “ I never really knew my father, or my mother for that matter,” she said. “I came to live with my aunts when I was just a girl, but I know if I had the chance to see them again, I would take it.”
    “ You have no right to tell me how to run my life,” I said, cynically. “You don’t know up from down, so that you have the audacity to offer unwanted advice is comical.”
    “ Why would my sense of direction matter when we are discussing family members? Besides, I just thought you might need some advice—you know, from a friend to a friend.”
    “ Let’s get this straight right now. We are not friends.”
    “ I just thought that since you were finding reasons to hang out with me…” Her voice trailed off. Her bottom lip trembled. She pulled out another piece of wrapped candy and popped it in her mouth. The sugar seemed to calm her. When she was no longer shaking, she turned around and walked briskly in the opposite direction. The halls echoed, so I could hear her arguing with Mr. Ruth about the theory of relativity and where jerk-faces fit into the time and space grid.
    “ I disagree, Mr. Ruth,” she said, dramatically talking with her hands. “Ryley absorbs more space every time I talk to him. I would suggest that he’s a catalyst, like a black hole to which we will all get discombobulated if we aren’t careful and keep our distance.”
    I wouldn’t have thought Alice Mae had the cognitive ability to understand Einstein’s time and space relativity theory.