Page 25 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
“The wordweddingis already included here,” Cyrus says. “I feel like that’s too obvious.”
“Well, three of the four things are red.”
“No,” he says, in the hushed voice of a hero from an action movie upon discovering who the real villain is. “Fourof the four things are red.”
The wedding dress. I had been imagining a white veil and white tulle, but then I remember the qipao my cousin wore for her wedding, and my mind continues racing forward, gathering up clues, leading me to: “The cushions. That one over there.”
We both turn to the only red cushion on the chairs. The ghosts spring back into action, screaming and scrabbling at the space around our heads, but Cyrus dodges them and searches around behind the cushion, his features hard with concentration, then brandishes a key. It’s a dull bronze, slim and barely longer than my pinkie finger, the ridges already starting to rust.
Everything is easy after that. We find the private room with a red poppy painted next to its name and enter it together, slamming the door shut behind us to stop the ghosts from barging in. The room itself is so small as to be suffocating, and I’ve definitely been inside closets that are more spacious, but that’s all fine because the room opens up to a balcony. Or it should, if the glass doors to the balcony weren’t locked. I canseethe sunlight streaming in, the pretty rock gardens out the back, promising fresh air and freedom. I’m just getting ready to make my victory march when Cyrus spins toward me and holds his hand out expectantly.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
He frowns, like he thinks I’m picking an inappropriate time to crack a joke. “The key,” he says, his hand still stretched out in front of him. “You have it.”
“No, I don’t,” I say, wondering if he’s joking. If this is one of those instances where he’ll pretend to fumble around in his pockets searching for it before grinning and waving the key in front of my face. “You took the key. Come on, Cyrus.”
But his expression is as grave as the ghosts on the other side of the door. “I gave it to you just now,” he says. “I wouldn’t waste precious competition time pulling a prank.”
So it turns out that the universe is the only one joking here.This can’t be happening.“That’s just—I mean, that’s simply not true. You never gave me the key—”
“Idid,” he insists. “I distinctly remember passing it—”
“You must be from another dimension, then, because that didn’t happen in this timeline—”
“I’m one hundred percent certain that I handed it to you,” he says.
“And I’m one hundred percent certain you didn’t,” I shoot back. “I guess that makes it two hundred percent likely that you lost the key.”
“Okay, that is—mathematically, that can’t be right. But it does appear likely that the key is missing.”
I bite back a hysterical laugh and pat down my bangs a little more aggressively than I usually would, if only to do something with my hands that doesn’t involve punching the doors. The glass is thin enough that it ought to shatter with one solid strike. Thin enough that it feels all the more ridiculous to be stuck here, separated by nothing except a stupid misplaced key.
“You’resureyou don’t have it?” Cyrus asks after a beat of depressing silence. “Because I recall that we were heading into the room, and I was busy closing the doors because those ghosts kept trying to stick their heads in after us, so I took the key out of my pocket and I held it out—”
“Oh my god, Cyrus, I don’t have the key,” I interject, raising my arms above my head like I’m walking through airport security. “If you still don’t believe me, you’re welcome to feel me up. Go on. Check my back pockets. See if the key is there.”
He flushes. Turns away. “I—I do believe you,” he says. “We should look for the key. It can’t have hopped out of the room on its own.”
But I’m starting to think that the key really did sprout a pair of tiny legs and make a run for it when we weren’t paying attention, because even after patting every inch of the floor and reaching into every odd crack and nook, it remains nowhere to be found.
“This is the absolute worst,” I declare, pinching the bridge of my nose in frustration. I canfeelour chances of winning suffocating slowly in this dark, cramped room as we speak.
“I can think of far worse things,” Cyrus says blithely, checking behind the table for the fifth time. “The year 536, for instance.”
“What happened in the year 536?” Though I’m not sure if that’s even the right question here. The year 536 sounds very well like it could also be a band, or a fancy club for rich people to chat about their yachts, or one of those supposedly profound four-hour-long movies where everyone dies.
“A devastating series of natural disasters,” he says. “There was a volcanic winter and major crop failures as a result. I think about that year often.”
“You think about major crop failures from centuries ago …often?”
He nods. “At least three times a day.”
I have no idea if he’s just messing with me at this point.
“Because I often feel like life is terrible,” Cyrus explains, moving on to check the porcelain vase propped up in the middle of the table. “And then I remind myself that, well, you know, looking back on the long course of human history and everything we’ve survived and haven’t survived, I’m actually very lucky. Helps put things into perspective— Hey, I found it,” he says, triumph blazing through his voice.
I jerk my head up to see him dangling the bronze key between his fingers. Forget the northern lights. Forget Niagara Falls at sunset, snow on the beach, and every Michelangelo painting—this is officially the most beautiful sight to ever exist. If I could, I’d take a photo of this exact scene and hang it up in my bedroom. “It fell into that vase?” I demand.
