Skylar Dorset - The Girl Who Never Was

'Well, it's an unlimited pass,'I say, 'so, technically, I paid at the beginning of the month. What happened to everyone in my life? My father, my aunts, Kelsey?'

Ben looks blank. 'What do you mean?'

'Were they all just figments of my imagination?'

'Of course not. They all exist. Everything you knew exists. It was just the perceived normalcy of you that was enchanted. I mean, who has the energy to enchant people

into existence? Just getting you a timeline was very impressive work, let me tell you, not just anyone could have pulled that off. You should see the effort it takes just to keep that sweatshirt of yours intact.'He nods toward my sweatshirt and starts walking away from me, toward the stairs leading down to the Red Line.

I don't follow him. I look down at my sweatshirt, my simple maroon-with-white-Boston hooded sweatshirt he gave me on my birthday. 'This is an enchantment?'I say.

Ben stops walking, turns back toward me. 'Yes. A protection. One I've managed to hang on to despite your attempts to weaken me as much as possible, and it would be nice if you would just leave that one alone, thank you very much. Come on.'He holds his hand out, wiggling his fingers.

'No,'I say. 'Wait. Hang on. If everything I knew exists, what happened to it?'

'Oh, it's all still there. We just have to get back to it, which is what we're doing now. You just peeled off your layer and threw it away, so now I have to get us back to all the other layers.'

'How?'

He gestures toward the stairs to the Red Line. 'Have to go catch a train.'

'The subway,'I say flatly. 'We're going to take the subway.'

'Well, it isn't just a subway. It's never been just a subway. It connects the Thisworld and the Otherworld. You never noticed it because it was one of the layers I didn't let you see.'

'You've been controlling what I see and don't see?'

'Yes. That was my job.'

'Your job,'I echo hollowly, my stomach sinking. There's so much about this that is unbelievable, but it's the idea that Ben was only friends with me because it was his job that hurts. 'Who made it your job?'

'I promise we'll reveal everything after we get out of this mess you made and I get us back to Boston.'He says it goodnaturedly, with a smile, waggling his fingers at me in invitation.

The smile undoes me a bit. I am angry and confused and scared, but he is Ben, and he is smiling at me. He is waggling his fingers at me. How can Ben being adorable be wrong? I close my eyes, feeling overwhelmed.

'You're'confused,'Ben says, and he sounds confused that I'm confused.

I open my eyes, disbelieving. 'Yes, I'm confused. Listen to the things you're saying to me, Ben. That your 'job'is to make everything in my life a lie''

'It was an enchantment,'he corrects.

'That makes it more confusing, not less,'I point out.

He regards me for a second. 'I did too good a job with your enchantment,'he concludes. 'You really had no idea.'

'Wasn't that the point?'I retort.

'Yes, but''He looks at a bit of a loss, which I've never seen him look before. 'Let's just get back to Boston, and then we can all tell you together.'

'Who 'all'?'

'Your aunts, of course.'

'So my aunts know all about this,'I realize. 'All about you.'

'Yes.'

'Why didn't you ever say anything?'

'Because not saying anything was basically the purpose of the enchantment.'

'And my father knows too.'

'Yes.'

'So he'll help explain it too.'

'Well. Not really.'

'Why not?'

Ben looks at me like this is obvious. 'Well, because he's insane.'

For some reason, this surprises me. I thought, with all the craziness in the world around me, that surely, in the middle of all this, my father must now be considered sane. 'Oh,'I say and try to deal with this.

'Can we go now? We really should keep moving. We're on the wrong side of the boundary right now. I need to cross us back over.'

I swallow and make my decision. None of this makes any sense, but I seem to be all alone in a deserted subway station with only Ben for help, and what else am I going to do? I take a deep breath and put my hand in his.

It feels like a momentous occasion. He threads his fingers through mine and gives my hand a little squeeze, and I feel breathless. I've been feeling that way for a while, given the

pace at which things have been happening around me, but this is an entirely different sort of breathless.

'Thank you,'he says to me, and his smile at me is warm and genuine, and everything is ridiculously confusing but I still feel flushed at that smile.

Ben starts walking, and I follow, and yes, I still have no idea what's going on, but Ben's holding my hand and could it be that that's really all I need to feel like things are moving in the right direction now? I hate the fact that that might be true, but I can't deny that I'm much more pleased right now than I was just the minute before.

'This is why my aunts didn't want me asking questions, isn't it?'

'Well, yes,'Ben answers.

I want to ask him about my mother, but maybe it's better to wait until we're back with my aunts. We walk in silence down the staircase to the Red Line, stand on the platform, waiting patiently. Except that I've never been all alone on the Red Line platform before, it feels like a normal day. I stand with Ben's hand in mine'okay, not completely normal'and gaze down onto the tracks, waiting. And after a while, I realize something. 'The rats all disappeared too?'Normally you can stand on the platform and watch the rats scurrying all over the tracks.

Ben laughs, and then he says, 'You are delightful,'and his voice is warm, and so I am warm. I am sure I have blushed bright pink with pleasure, and I wish it were dark so Ben wouldn't be able to see me.

'Why?'I ask.

'Because. All the many questions you could have asked me next, and what you ask me is about the disappearance of Boston's rats.'

'If the rats were part of the enchantment, I could have done without them.'

'Don't blame me for the rats; that's Will. He's obsessed with all creatures like that, rodents and reptiles and such.'

'You mean Will from the Salem Which Museum?'

'I mean Will from the Salem Which Museum.'

'He had an iguana.'

'Not surprising,'says Ben.

'So he's involved in this too?'

'It was all his idea.'

'He was the one who gave me the books, the books with my aunts in them.'I pause. In a world where Ben is talking seriously about enchantments, this seems like a perfectly normal question. 'Are my aunts immortal?'

Ben hesitates. I look at his profile'since he's looking at the tracks, not at me'but his expression is unreadable. Eventually he responds, 'You should wait and ask them that question. It won't be much longer.'

Which means the answer has to be yes. I ponder that, trying to make that sound like something that could be true.

I decide to change the subject.

'So. The T connects'what did you say?'

'The Thisworld'the world where mostly humans

live'and the Otherworld'the world where mostly nonhumans live'two worlds, existing side by side, but only overlapping in certain places.'

'And Boston is one of them?'This seems difficult to believe. Boston has never seemed especially magical to me, but maybe that's because I've been enchanted to think otherwise.

'Boston is one of them,'confirms Ben. 'Park Street station happens to be one of the busiest portals in the Otherworld. Haven't you ever noticed how people pop up here out of nowhere?'

I have, but I've always just dismissed that. More of my enchantment, I guess. 'What's a portal?'I ask.

'A safe place to go when an enchantment is dissolving and a way to get from one enchantment to another'and one world to another. It would have been much easier for us to get back to Boston, though, if you hadn't named me a few times and then rained on me for good measure.'