“I’ll admit I’m glad I’m not dying in your maze,” I tell her.
“Don’t be silly. Nobody is dying in my maze,” Lady Beaumont says over her shoulder. “No one has died in the maze in... oh... at least fifteen years and that was an accident. Now come on, follow me. I made everyone wait for dinner until we had retrieved you, and LordB does get awfully grumpy when he’s hungry.”
It takes about three minutes to exit the maze.
“Oh,” I say, looking at Forrest. “That’s quite embarrassing.”
“Let’s just say we made it to the middle and got attacked by a bear on the way,” he mutters, giving me a lopsided grin. I’m smiling back at him before I can remind my mouth that he is not our friend. And by then it’s too late.
Chapter Thirteen
“There you are!” Rani runs down the steps from the terrace to me, her burnt orange skirts flaring around her. She thrusts my discarded shoes at me, like a disgruntled fairy godmother. “Put those on. I’m starving.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” I tell her as I use her shoulder to balance and put the shoes back on.
“Oh, I knew you were fine,” Rani says. “I saw Forrest going into the maze to look for you, and I thought, ‘Ava is going to be fine.’”
“You knew I was in the maze?” I ask.
“Well, I didn’t 100 percent know,” Rani says, leading me purposefully towards the dining room, “but you know if there’s acres of open parkland to run around in or a maze to get lost in, Ava Green is statistically most likely to end up lost in the maze. That’s just maths.”
“That is not maths,” I tell her. “No wonder you failed maths.”
“Listen, it’s not me who always chooses the most complicated option available, and anyway, I was on the way to rescue you. I thought it might be nice for you to hang out with Forrest for a bit. Maybe mend some bridges.”
“Maybe burn some bridges,” I mutter.
“I mean he explained why he was so upset about the shirt.”
“Still, he said what he said,” I say with a shrug. “There’s no excuse for making another feel small or inferior. Not ever.”
Rani nods. Rani gets it. She wasn’t there during those times of my life, my God I wish she had been. But she saw me on the first day of uni, staring at a room full of kids my age as if I was starring in a horror movie about getting eaten alive by college students, and she got it right then.
“Scary, aren’t they?” she said, handing me a beer.
“You’re scared of them too?” I asked her, in amazement.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “So let’s stick together, okay? For safety.”
After that night we shared years of conversations, stories, and memories. All the reasons why we felt pushed out onto the other side of the glass all our lives. Rani has built a bold and beautiful life, despite it. I am doing my own thing, my own way. And there are some parts of me that are ingrained too deep to ever change. My mind is made up. And my mind is not easily altered.
“Ava!” Hal enters the dining room from the opposite end. “I went to look for you in your lab! I was sure that was where you would have gone!”
“That would have been a better plan,” I say, blushing as the rest of the dinner party file in. “But I wasn’t really thinking logically.”
Then taking me completely by surprise, he wraps his arms around me and hugs me. Normally that kind of uninvited display of affection from a virtual stranger would freak me out, but for some reason, it doesn’t with Hal. Instead, it feels like all the noise and stress of the room have faded away to silence, just for a moment. And it is a moment. He releases me almost as soon as the hug has begun. We stand there looking at each other, neither one of us sure what to do next.
“Sorry,” Hal says. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was just really pleased to see you.”
“Um, that’s okay,” I say, determined to avoid Rani’s eyes, which are currently bulging like a cartoon character’s. “Thanks. Nice hug.”
It’s Forrest’s eyes that meet mine across the table as he takes a seat opposite me, and they are unreadable. He did come and find me in the maze, and he didn’t leave me there. He’s obviously been through some difficult stuff. But also, I don’t get even the slightest impression that he cares what I think of him, so I don’t think I’m under any obligation to try and actively like him, especially after he called me stupid.
“Right.” LordB clinks a silver teaspoon against a wineglass to get our attention. “We’re finally all present and correct, are we? No one else done a runner, what?”
“Get on with it, darling.”
“Right then, here’s a toast to our first full day of this year’s Beaumont International challenge. May the people in this room bring the change the world needs. And after dinner we have a little surprise for you, as my good lady wife will be revealing... after dessert!”
