The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(37)

An archway to the left of the elevator opened onto a corridor lit by a single orange-shaded bulb, honeycombed on either side with wooden mailboxes. I traced my way to box 549. Inside it was a heavy ivory envelope, unaddressed. I teased out the trifolded page and read it standing up.

Dear Alice,

It’s hard not to think of these letters like I’m writing in a diary when I don’t know if you’re reading them, or if they’re really just for me. I had a therapist once who made me keep a diary, except she wanted me to bring it in each week and read it to her. So mainly I just used it to write Dragon Age fanfic. I won’t do that to you.

Instead I’ll tell you a thing I can’t stop thinking about. When I was little my mom used to make me pray, and I’d always pray for magic to be real. And when I wished on stars or at 11:11 or blew on a dandelion I’d say it in my head: let magic be real. But ever since I found out it’s very very real, I don’t wish anymore. I don’t pray. I want things, but I don’t wish them. I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know that I really have a point. I’m just thinking about it because the world keeps getting bigger, so much bigger than I thought it could be even when I was wishing. I’m using world as a euphemism, of course. I just realized I’ve seen almost as many worlds now as I’ve seen states in the U.S. My dad would hate that. He always acted like life ended outside of New York. I’ve thought about writing to him, too, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s better writing to you. I like pretending I’m talking to you. I like imagining you making your don’t-waste-my-time face when I do it. That was a good face. Generally speaking, you’ve got a good face. Now I’m just rambling.

Maybe I should tell you more. About where I am. Why I am. What I’m doing.

I left the Hinterland. Did I tell you that? It’s hard to remember what I’ve written and what I’ve just thought about. I’m talking to you all the time in my head now. When I go to sleep and when I wake up.

Days run together, but I guess it’s been a couple of months since you left. In my head you’re in New York now, and it’s May. You’re sitting in Washington Square Park eating a paleta from a cart and you’re wearing what you were wearing that time I saw you in Central Park, those jeans with the holes in the knees and that striped shirt. You’re using my letters as bookmarks.

I want you to know that, all promises aside, I’m going to write to you again.

It took me a while to see anything but the letter, hear anything but my own breath.

A couple of months. As the days counted down on my side of the divide, just two months had passed in the Hinterland. Finch was seeing me through the haze of sixty days, while out here, nearly two years had gone.

I hid a while in the cool of the corridor, hearing the words in his voice. Unsure if I was even remembering it right. How did the magic work? Could I write back to him somehow? I turned the letter over and dug a pen out of my bag, pressing the page against a bare patch of wall.

What would I say if I was sure he would read it?

I forgive you.

Do you forgive me?

I talk to you all the time in my head, too.

Maybe I’d pick up somewhere in the middle, wherever we’d left off. He’d always done more of the talking. It was a minefield for me, making conversation. I’d spent too much time with people who forgave me my conversational sins: Ella, who loved me anyway; Sophia, living by the arcane rules of another world; Edgar, so deeply eccentric he wouldn’t know inappropriate if it jumped out of a first edition and bit him.

Finch was different. We’d wanted things from each other, we’d been using each other. He seemed stable enough to steel me when Ella’s disappearance left me entirely alone, and I thought I was trespassing on his kindness, his curiosity, and, yeah, his crush, but the terrain between us was more complicated than that. When I learned he’d been using me for my magic—for my proximity to magic, my ability to pull him into the whirlpool of Althea’s worlds, which looked a whole lot prettier from the outside—I might’ve shut the door on him.

But he put himself in the way of the wrong kind of enchantment, and got himself killed.

Or so I thought. Instead he recovered, somewhere, somehow, and dragged me kicking and screaming—and scratching, if I remembered it right—from my tale. I’d barely had time to thank him. I’d barely had time to let the new shape of him impose itself over the old one in my head. The Finch I carried around with me was somewhere between the narrow, restless prep school kid I’d known, and the scarred, strong, steady-eyed man I only got a glimpse of.

That version of him had looked so grown. So complete. But I bet he was just wearing another kind of armor.

Here’s what I would write to him. If I knew how to deliver the letter.

I always knew magic was real. It might be cheating to say that now, but I really think I did. I just didn’t call it that. I didn’t think it could be benevolent, except in books. Magic was a bully that made my mom cry and followed us at night. In the daytime, too. It was the thing in me that made it hard to get calm again, once I got angry.

One time I counted it up, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen thirty-one states. Some places I’ve only seen their gas stations. Some places that’s all there is to see.

I wrote fanfiction, too. If you find me I’ll let you read it I’ll tell you what I wrote it about. If you find me I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.