The Fall of Never(113)

“A small one. Hidden.”

“Where is it?”

“Behind you,” he said. “Down the path.”

She craned her head around but could see only dense foliage. “Liar.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“What does it look like?”

Simple Simon rolled his pale shoulders.

Kelly’s eyes lit up. “Can I see it?”

“Fine,” he said, standing up. His image flickered briefly in front of her eyes, like a poor electrical connection. “Come on.”

She stood and skipped after him down the path, deeper into the woods. The boy didn’t necessarily walk; rather, he seemed to simply appear ahead of her, materializing at certain points along the path. Not once did he look back at her. And Kelly, herself, was lost in this secret wonderland. She thought of the kids from Spires, the kids who played football and attended regular school and had friends sleep over their houses on the weekends. A year ago, such ruminations would have saddened her. Thinking about them now, however, caused her to actually pity them all—unfortunate that they would never know the wonder and appreciation of living in a fairy tale world, where football and school and sleepovers didn’t matter. Where nothing could get you. Where you were safe.

“What do you think it will look like?” Simple Simon called back to her only once.

Kelly didn’t answer out loud. Instead, she summoned an image of the imaginary boy’s house: a tiny gingerbread cottage with sugarcane windows and cookie shingles and candy canes laid in Xs above the front door. The doorknob itself would be a giant gumdrop…the flowers with candy petals…

She laughed out loud.

“Here,” said Simple Simon, and stopped walking. The boy faced a clearing in the woods, the floor bedded with orange pine needles and dead, crispy leaves. There was no house here, Kelly saw, and thought it was a joke at first…but then there it was, right in front of her eyes, and just as she had imagined it. She stood there, staring at it like a child discovering her presents beneath the tree on Christmas morning, her heart pounding dramatically in her chest. It was there, all there, all real. How in the world could it possibly exist?

“Oh,” was all she was able to force out. Her breath had abandoned her.

It was a small, square, one-level house tucked within a crook of trees. Its siding and roof were indeed made of gingerbread, enough to feed all of Spires for months; the roof itself was shingled in ginger snaps and had been whitewashed in icing, now hardened, and sprinkled with lemon drops and peppermints; two enormous candy canes, perhaps six feet high and five inches thick, stood like sentries on either side of the front door; and the front door itself was constructed of what appeared to be a million square crackers all joined together by icing and sprinkled with cinnamon.

“Oh,” she repeated. Slowly, Kelly moved around the house, the extent of her astonishment apparent in her lethargy. “How did you make this?”

“You made it,” he said. “You thought it.”

“Is it…real?”

He told her to touch it and she did. It was solid. Some icing came away on her fingertip and she brought it to her mouth, sucked it off. It was sweet and warm. Before she knew it, a tremulous giggle had broken through her throat, and she began running circles around the squat little house. It was real. Glenda had been wrong: places in fairy tales really did exist.

She paused at the front of the house and scurried up the walk. (The walk was a collage of enormous chocolate chip cookies, assembled to suggest cobblestones.) “What does it look like inside?” she said, grabbing the gummy doorknob and pulling open the gingerbread house’s front door.

She stopped, her smile fading.

There was nothing inside the house. Not even a back wall. Through the open door, she could see straight out into the trees on the other side. For a few confused moments, she watched the cool summer breeze rattle the leaves.

“You haven’t thought up the inside yet,” Simple Simon said from somewhere behind her.

Dream it, she thought. Dream it.

“We can make this place wonderful,” she told him.

“We can,” he said. “But I want something first.”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

She turned. Simple Simon was standing behind a waist-high hedgerow, his skin white and sickly in the light of midday. “What?” she asked again.

He didn’t answer; instead, he rolled his tongue and spat a gob of green snot onto the ground.

“Disgusting,” Kelly said.

“That’s never happened before,” he told her. “It started today.”

“What?” She didn’t understand. “It’s spit. Spit and boogers.”

“From where?” Then: “From me.”

“So what do you want from me? Kleenex?”

“No,” he said. “Food.”

“You’re hungry?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just want to know what it’s like to eat. I want to eat.”

“Let’s have a tea party—”

“Damn it, no!” His outburst startled her. She could see veins throbbing in his temples, his bald scalp riddled with them. “I want real food. I’m tired of make-believe, Kelly.” He paused, then added, “Kellerella.”