Chapter 33: 33 Nowhere Shines, Part Four

Was it wise to explore on her own? No. Was she doing it anyway? Of course.

Angharad had a candle in hand, like the women on the front covers of Gothic mysteries, and looked wherever she could, in each little corner and dark room she came across. It was hard to explore anything when she didn't want to take the chance that any room she went into on her own might lock its doors as soon as she was inside and swallow her up for days. But she did what she could, without stepping over any thresholds.

Wow, there were a lot of creepy, dark rooms in the hospital.

Downstairs seemed the creepiest of all. She knew which room led to the morgue and she had no interest in going down there. Didn't even want to open that door, in case the taint of death it held within would blow out and surround her.

Many of the rooms seemed like empty, dark concrete shells. There were no hidden doors as far as she could tell. What she didn't get was why there were so many underground rooms, each with its own separate stairwell. What kind of crazy architect thought that was a good idea? Not that she knew anything much about architecture beyond what she liked and what she didn't, and even that she only knew when she saw it.

She didn't see the point in checking anything on the ground floor – she'd been in all those rooms already, after all, longer than she'd like, and if any of them had changed to reveal new and exciting doors in places they'd never been before then they would all have much bigger problems.

She patted the edge of her jacket. The lump of the half-filled notebook full of algebra problems she'd set herself rested in one of the pockets.

"I can solve problems," she said to herself, her voice barely more than a shaky breath.

The stairs up to the first floor were not blocked off by a door. They were open and empty, with walls and floor painted a dull white that turned a sickly cool, pale grey in the underwhelming light that part of the hospital received.

She breathed in deep, checked her grip on the candle, and walked up.

The first floor up was almost a mirror of the ground floor. Quiet rooms, empty of people. Plain white bed linen, fastened to the beds with severe tucked corners. Emptier storage closets than on the floor below, and not nearly as deep. Windows that looked securely shut, and curtains all approximately halfway up the window, letting in plenty of the outside light and the uninspiring view.

She breathed out deep and took the next set of stairs, up to the roof.

She didn't need the candle on the roof, so she stopped cupping it in her hands and let the light breeze blow it out. The roof had a rail around the edge, rows of metal bars high enough that she'd felt free to practice the waltz with Tsuyoshi before that utterly wretched party without fear of falling, for all the good that did in the long run. He became nervous when he danced, told her his uncle Tim would be ashamed to see how bad he was at it. And the only dancing she'd done as a small child was one year of toddler ballet, so she didn't have the posture for ballroom. What a sight they must have made for anyone who tried to look up at what happened on the hospital roof.

But why would anyone look up? She looked up to the barrier humming against the sky as she stumbled forward, and the way it rippled against the glare only hurt her eyes.

From the roof she had a good vantage point of the entirety of Zapville. She watched Tabitha and Tsuyoshi walk towards the library, and yearned to be down there with them like a sensible person. Instead, she was up on the roof like an idiot, watching other people move.

In the far distance, people were small blobs. Vague blurs of colours whose features she couldn't make out.

From behind came the sound of steps.

She turned, slow and cautious. Darren stood near the opening to the stairwell. If she wanted to go back down she'd have to brush past him.

"Hi. We haven't officially met, but I'm Darren."

"I know. I saw you with Sophie."

"And you're Angharad. Do you have a nickname?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Absolutely none."

She let the conversation drop to see how he'd react. He smiled the same kind of generic, friendly smile she received from boys whenever she started a new school, and stepped closer.

"It's a nice day to be up on the roof with a beautiful woman."

"You're not my type."

His smile didn't drop. "Of course, my romantic attentions are only directed at your friend, but I don't think there's harm in letting a young woman know she's easy on the eye."

"Isn't there?" Somebody out there probably fell for this. She supposed he had an easy smile that led to some level of superficial charm, not that she got what Sophie saw in him.

Would she be smiling so wide to hide her unease if Dr Yeoh hadn't led her to wonder what his deal was?

"No harm is intended, Miss Silver. I only wish to get to know Sophie's friends." He shivered all over, then moved another step, smile still wide like he hadn't noticed.

"We're you injured in the crash?" she asked.

He shook his hair out of his eyes and took another deliberate step. "Who wasn't? I've heard you were in need of urgent medical care in the immediate wake of the accident. I was unfortunate enough to go the wrong way and become trapped."

She let her face go flat and crossed her arms. "You should probably get the doctor to look at you, just to make sure nothing's wrong."

"Do you think so?" Something about the tilt of his head reminded her of the way James would look at her when he was trying to test her.

"I mean, yeah. You could have all sorts of things go wrong with you without even knowing. You could have a brain injury. You could have a blood clot you don't know about. There are, like, tons of things that could go wrong. And it's her job to make sure none of that gets worse."

He stood up straight. Moved another step.

"She's correct, of course." Dr Yeoh's clear, low tones announced her arrival before she appeared through the door of the stairwell. "And how convenient that I find you here in my building."

Angharad patted the notebook as she watched the doctor grab Darren by the elbow and drag him back down. Some things she could solve.

The doctor leaned back out of the stairwell and said, "Come down from the roof, Silver, you'll hurt yourself."

*

It wasn't weird for Jin to lie down alone in the dark, right?

Everyone outside was so loud. Laughing, smiling, crying about friends and family they missed whose voices they were waiting to hear when they got out. Talking about faces they were waiting to see outside of pictures.

He put an arm over his eyes, as if there were anyone to hide from.

Even Freya, the person who'd held him while he'd sobbed, loud and ugly, wasn't here to see him or hold him. That stupid barrier! And he had come no closer to figuring out how to take it down or why he was still there, breathing loud like an idiot while almost everybody he'd ever loved was dead.

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But at least it was quiet.

Eventually, he heard a knock at the door. The idea occurred to him that maybe the knock had been going for a while, and he had come unstuck from time, floating away on something not-quite-reality, until the sound of Angharad's voice asking if he was awake made him realise he'd been asleep.

"Yeah, I'm awake," he said, and struggled upright.

He rubbed a hand over his face and tried to flatten his hair down before he stumbled to the door. As soon as he pulled the door part of the way open she fell against the arch of the doorway, like she'd been waiting for something to lean on. He kept his hand on the door so she couldn't get in his room.

"Have you been cutting your own hair?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You need to stop doing that. Like, immediately. It's not good."

His hand flexed on the door handle. "Did you come here to tell me that."

She pushed herself upright and stretched, like she was just as tired as he was. "I spoke to Darren. Or, like, he spoke to me. Whatever, same thing."

"What? Why would you do that? Alone?"

"Since when are you the boss of me, Jin? I can speak to people alone if I like. It's not the end of the world."

"He's dangerous." He pushed her forward with his shoulder and slammed the door behind him. "Anything could happen."

"You know, we don't actually know that he's dangerous. You're just, like, guessing, because you think any unknown is dangerous. Theoretically an unknown could be an adventure. I mean, not this time, because he was just kind of annoying, but in theory an unknown totally could be an adventure and not a disaster waiting to happen."

"Why would I trust your sense of danger?"

"I'm actually usually pretty good at figuring out when a guy is a creep. I mean, I do think Darren is maybe kind of a creep. I don't know, his vibe was weird. It was not a good vibe. He, like, followed me up onto the hospital roof."

"What did he want?"

"I don't know. It was so weird. But, whatever, the doctor found him, and I think maybe she just wanted us to make sure he actually got a check up, and he totally can't escape from that now that he's in her lair. So, I guess we close the book on that. But, I don't know, he said something that was just off."

She shook her head and looked off into the distance, then patted at her jacket. It frustrated him to watch.

"Just tell me what it was."

"I mean, I can't remember the exact words." She bit her lip and let it go. He'd noticed her do that before whenever she tried to figure something out and it was... annoying. It was really annoying, noticing the shape of her mouth. "Something about, like, going somewhere and being trapped after the crash? Like he knew I was investigating or something? I mean, whatever, I told him he probably had a brain injury and he should get his head checked by the doctor."

"Wow, I see why guys like you. Is that how you scare them off?"

She pushed at his shoulder but all it did was make him laugh.

"You haven't even begun to see all my methods for scaring guys away. They are efficient and plentiful. Because I'm just so hot that this is a serious issue for me. Be afraid."

She moved past him and skipped down the hall before he could shove her back.

He had to follow. "You're right. That Darren guy is weird. I don't trust what he says. We need to figure out more."

"I'm almost always right."

She smirked as she pushed through the door at the end of the hallway. The outside light poured all over her.

"We can't trust him alone with Sophie."

"Sophie doesn't want to be alone with boys. She's saving herself for marriage. I don't think you have to worry."

"If he could corner you, he can corner her. You're sensible. She's not."

He nearly slammed into her when she turned around. "You have that the wrong way around. She's the sensible one. I'm the reckless one who takes chances because she's not afraid enough of the consequences and too curious to stop."

"Then I'll hover over your shoulder, too."

She grabbed his shirt by the neckline and pulled. "If you want to make sure I'm not alone, then let's go be where people are."

"Where Sophie is?"

"She's in the cafeteria with Josephine and Mac. She'll be fine. We're going to the library.”

*

As soon as Jin opened the door and pushed Angharad through he heard Tabitha and Tsuyoshi burst into laughter. The regret over letting himself get dragged there was immediate.

Angharad sat down on the rug. Since when was there a rug in the library? he wondered.

He looked back at the open door, then at everyone in the room: Tabitha leaning against a shelf, her expression both haughty and expectant; Zelko, ignoring him to look down at his book; Tsuyoshi, still laughing, his head in danger of falling off Zelko's knee; Angharad, back straight, hair flowing everywhere. Oh, god, the rug was probably her doing.

"Fine," Jin said, and closed the door behind him.

"Zelko is doing a dramatic reading of his spy thriller," Tabitha informed him.

"Great," Jin said.

He sat next to Angharad and tried not to look too annoyed when Tabitha poked his knee with the edge of her shoe. He sighed, heavy. The second time he sighed Angharad pulled something out of her jacket and gave it to him. A notebook? He expected her notes on the mystery of Zapville, not a bunch of quadratic equations, messy scribbles and looping graphs. Great, on top of everything else that annoyed him, she was a hot girl who did mathematical problems for fun; she and Freya were never allowed to meet because clearly they were soulmates.

He started checking her answers and ignored Zelko's reading.

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