All Mad Here

“All Mad Here” by Emi Davis is the second place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss.

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It’s very difficult to write a story that grows out of and incorporates another story—that is, to write intertextually. But Emi Davis, the author of “All Mad Here,” does it in a creative, effective, and ultimately heartfelt way. Once I realized that the story referenced Alice In Wonderland, I had the fun of following clues and solving a puzzle—how exactly did this story relate to its intertext, and what did that mean for this story’s Alice? While reading, I imagined Emi as a tightrope walker holding a pole for balance. On one side of the pole was this story’s Alice, and on the other side of the pole was the original. Would the author fall from the tightrope? Nope. Both sides of the pole remained perfectly balanced, and the end of the story had me sighing with satisfaction at a job well done, a narrative well written. —Theodora Goss

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They find her on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass, bleeding from her forehead. Her mother says she kept running into the mirror, over and over again.

Why did you do it? her mother sobs.

“I don’t know,” says Alice.

How could she ever explain that there is another world in the mirror? How could she ever tell them about a place that is hers and hers alone, where the rules stand on their heads and fall apart like a deck of cards? How could she ever say that this world, this real world, feels more false all the time? She is desperate to go back, but she can’t find the way. She is homesick for a place that is not her home but feels more like home than home ever did.

She is locked in her room after the incident with the mirror. She doesn’t sleep. She barely eats. She lays on her bed most of the time, wondering.

When her sister unlocks the door, Alice is on her hands and knees, searching the walls for rabbit holes.

Her mother and sister sit her down in the parlor. We’re worried about you, they say. You’ve been acting so strange.

“Not strange,” says Alice. “Curious. Curiouser and curiouser.” She has always been curious. It’s how she found the other world in the first place.

Her mother and sister glance at each other. This is what we mean, Alice, they say. You haven’t been yourself.

Alice agrees with them on this point. “Of course,” she says. “I am not myself.” She is only herself when she is in the other place, and so she hasn’t been herself for a long time.

They are glad she understands. They tell her that they are going to speak to a doctor, and he will figure out how to help her.

The doctor comes Sunday afternoon. He is an old man, as tall as a tree—a Tumtum tree, thinks Alice, in a tulgey wood. He has gray hair and bulging eyes like a fish, and a mouth that melts into a thin, wet smile. Hello, Alice, he says. I’m told you’ve been acting strangely?

“Not strange,” Alice insists. “Curious.”

The doctor smiles again. Your mother tells me that you ran into a mirror?

Alice tilts her head like a bird, a Jubjub bird. “I was trying to go through it.”

And you couldn’t?

Alice looks down at her hands. “No. I can’t find the door. The looking-glass isn’t the right one, and there aren’t any rabbit holes.”

The doctor nods. It makes his spectacles shimmer. He opens a black bag and looks Alice over very carefully, and he asks her many strange questions.

Then he tells her mother that she is mad.

Her mother tells her that she is going to go to the Institution for Lunatics, which is a place where people will help her. When you come back, Alice, you will be perfectly normal again.

Alice goes to the Institution with the doctor, but not for the reasons they think. This house has no looking-glass, no rabbit holes. Maybe a place where they put curious people will have them.

The Institution for Lunatics is big and imposing and ugly. Alice feels very small looking at it. It’s built all of gray stone and black brickwork, with ivy creeping over the edges. “All mimsy were the borogoves,” Alice whispers when she sees the vines. The doctor overhears and tells her not to speak nonsense.

They are met at the door by a woman with very red hair in a very tight bun that dips in the middle. Like a heart. Alice stares at her for a long time.

Alice, says the doctor. This is Nurse Hart.

Nurse Hart smiles at Alice. Alice doesn’t like the way she does it.

Nurse Hart takes Alice into a little room she calls the receiving room. She asks Alice many questions and writes down the answers. Then she takes Alice through a little door into another little room. The doctor is there again. He has Alice stand on a scale and then writes down her height and weight.

Well, Alice, says the doctor when he’s finished, I wish you a speedy recovery. Nurse Hart and the rest of the staff will take very good care of you. Nurse Hart, good day and good luck.

And off he goes through the little door. Alice thinks that the door might be a rabbit hole. “But the doctor isn’t late,” she muses out loud.

Nurse Hart tells her severely, Enough with the nonsense, Alice. Everything Alice says seems to be nonsense to everyone else, although it makes perfect sense to her.

Nurse Hart takes Alice into a bathroom. There is no mirror in the bathroom, which is disappointing. There is a bathtub, and Nurse Hart runs a bath and tells Alice to get in. Alice does what she’s told, and Nurse Hart says Good girl, Alice. She looks Alice over very carefully after the bath and tells her that she doesn’t seem to have any diseases. Or vermin, thank heavens. The last girl was riddled with them, Nurse Hart says. Nothing to be done about it. Off with her hair, all of it. She opens and closes a pair of wicked shears as if she’d very much like to cut someone’s head off with them.

She gives Alice a bundle of clothes and tells her to dress herself—quick now, Alice, I haven’t much time to waste. Alice puts on the cloth shoes and the linen underthings and the petticoat, but the dress is too coarse and heavy, and she doesn’t want to put it on. What’s wrong with you? snaps Nurse Hart. Get dressed, stupid!

Alice puts on the dress. It is not entirely ugly, at least—it has blue flowers printed on it. But it is shapeless and feels like a flour sack, and she hates it on principle.

Nurse Hart gives her a nightdress and tells her, Come along, Alice.

They go through the little door the doctor went through. It turns out not to be a rabbit hole, but Alice is more and more sure that she will find one here somewhere.

You missed supper, says Nurse Hart, so I’m taking you to the ward straight off. Almost time for bed anyway.

“I don’t sleep anymore,” says Alice, although truthfully, she does feel very sleepy. It hurts too much to sleep now. All she dreams about is the other place, and she always wakes up more desperate than ever.

Nurse Hart looks at her sharply. Well, then, you’re to lay in bed and be quiet.

She takes Alice to a dormitory full of other girls and shows her to a bed. Alice obediently changes into her nightdress and lays down on the bed, letting Nurse Hart tuck the sheets tightly over her. It’s too tight, and she can’t move, but Alice shuts her eyes and pretends that it’s all right.

“Are you mad, too?” asks a voice, and Alice opens her eyes.

There’s a girl sitting on the next bed over, dressed in her own nightdress exactly like Alice’s, dangling her ankles off the lumpy mattress. She has startlingly green eyes, and her dark hair has been cut very short, as short as a boy’s.

Alice remembers what Nurse Hart said about cutting the last girl’s hair off because she had fleas and lice. “I don’t think I’m mad,” she says. “I’m just curious.”

“Well, I’m mad. It’s a shame that you’re not,” says the other girl. “All the best people are.” She gives Alice a smile—her smile is too big and too sharp for her pointed little face. It’s the first smile Alice has liked in the Institution. “I’m curious, too, though. Curious as a cat.”

“I have a cat,” Alice tells her. “Her name is Dinah.”

“My name is Kitty,” says the girl.

“My name is Alice,” says Alice.

The girl—Kitty—grins again.

Nurse Hart and two other nurses come into the room and tell everyone to stop talking. They turn out the lights, and Alice tries not to sleep.

But sometime during the night she drifts off and falling asleep is like falling down the rabbit hole all over again. Rings of smoke wrap around her and carry her away; she is plunged into the sea and runs a race to dry herself off; she grows and shrinks and changes and becomes something that isn’t Alice, something that isn’t anything at all except herself.

When she wakes up in the morning, Kitty has reached across the space between their beds to hold her hand.

***

The nurses make everyone get up at exactly six o’clock. They comb everyone’s hair very roughly and tell everyone to get dressed. Kitty slips over to Alice. Her dress has the same flower pattern as Alice’s, but in green. “I won’t be at breakfast,” she says under her breath. “I have to help the cook. But find the tall woman wearing a hat and sit with her.”

“Is she mad, too?” Alice asks.

Kitty grins her too-big grin. “Naturally.”

She disappears after that, and Alice and the other patients are herded downstairs to a dining room. Alice looks around and, sure enough, she finds a tall woman with a top hat perched on her head. She sits down next to her—the benches are hard and wobbly.

“Your hair wants cutting,” says the woman with the hat. She picks up her mug and frowns at it.

“You should learn not to make personal remarks,” says Alice. “It’s very rude.”

The woman with the hat opens her eyes very wide. “Well, well,” she says. “Fancy that. Have you a teacup?”

“Just a mug like yours,” says Alice.

“Pity.” The hat woman sets down her mug. “They’ll bring tea around soon. You are new, aren’t you?”

“Very.”

“You don’t happen to be mad, do you?”

“Why does everyone keep asking that?”

“Would you like me to ask something else? How about a riddle—why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“I don’t know,” answers Alice.

“What day of the month is it?”

“The fourth. Isn’t it?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. That’s why I asked you,” answers the woman with the hat, smiling. Her smile is not as nice as Kitty’s, but Alice finds herself returning it all the same. The woman holds out her mug as Kitty comes around with a kettle of tea.

“Alice,” Kitty says, “this is Hattie. Hattie, this is Alice.”

“Fine tea party, isn’t it?” Hattie asks, clinking her mug against Kitty’s kettle. “If only Dormouse and Rabbit and March were here.”

“Who?” Alice asks.

“Other friends,” Kitty explains. “Dormouse is a girl from our ward. She’s asleep—she’s terribly sick all the time so they give her medicine to keep her sleepy. March is Hattie’s friend from the women’s ward, and Rabbit’s one of my friends from ours. They’re both getting looked at today, so you won’t meet them until tonight.”

“Poor March. Poor Rabbit,” sighs Hattie. “They gave up trying to treat me long ago. And they think Kitty’s as cured as she’ll be. You’ll see what it’s like soon, Alice.”

“Isn’t treatment a good thing?” Alice asks.

“No,” says Kitty sharply. “Not for us.”

Alice looks around. “Us? What do you mean, us?”

Kitty drops her voice to something almost like a purr. “Those of us who have been to the other place,” she breathes. “Hattie and I have been. So have Dormouse and March and Rabbit. And you. You have all the signs.”

“Dreaming eyes,” says Hattie.

“A mind that works nonsensically,” says Kitty. “And you’re searching for all the things from there.”

“Looking-glasses.”

“Rabbit holes.”

“Games of croquet.”

“Decks of cards.”

“White roses painted red.”

“And off with her head,” they finish together.

Alice smiles. “Off with her head, indeed.” She picks up her mug and raises it. Hattie lifts hers again, and Kitty clinks the teakettle against them both.

Kitty, calls the cook, what are you doing over there, girl?

Kitty grins goodbye at them and disappears. Alice and Hattie are left to their breakfasts of brown bread and butter. Hattie gives Alice her slice, and in return Alice hands over her mug of tea.

At dinner she meets the others. Kitty and Hattie bring her over to the same table as before.

“Alice, this is Dormouse,” Kitty says, gesturing to a girl even smaller than herself. “Dormouse, Alice.”

Dormouse is tiny and dark and has the curliest hair Alice has ever seen, gathered in two puffs on the top of her head like mouse ears. Her eyes are sleepy. She says “M’name’s Dorcas” in a squeaking little voice, and then puts her head down on the table.

“It’s Dormouse,” says Hattie, unconcerned with the correction. “And this is Tabby. She’s Rabbit.”

Tabby is a very tall, very thin girl with pale hair tied in pigtails at the crown of her head. She has a pair of wire glasses perched at the end of her nose, which twitches nervously as Hattie speaks. “Don’t say that word!” she hisses. “It isn’t safe. My name is Tabitha or Tabby. It is not Rabbit. And Dorcas is not Dormouse. And you’re Harriet, not Hattie, and Kitty is Katherine, and March is May. And Alice is—well, Alice, but the point is it isn’t safe!”

“I’m not May, I’m March,” says the only member of the group Alice hasn’t met yet. March is an old woman, with graying hair and wrinkles around her eyes. “My name is actually May,” March tells Alice, “but I like March better.” She smiles. She is missing two of her teeth. Alice doesn’t mind.

“And if you’re late to supper again, we’ll have to start calling you July!” says Hattie, which makes no sense at all, but Alice is learning that Hattie’s idea of sense is a very nonsensical sense. March cackles and slaps Hattie on the back. Tabby sighs, fiddling with a gold pocket watch which she wears around her neck like a locket.

It’s a bit too much sense and nonsense for Alice. It feels a little overwhelming, not like it did in the other place, where everything made perfect sense. Alice can’t tell if she’s fitting into the Institution or if the Institution is fitting into her.

Dinner is much better than breakfast. There’s a mug of cold milk for each—Hattie scoffs at hers and passes it to Kitty, grumbling something about tea—and each of them gets a bowlful of soup and a helping of boiled carrots. Kitty hands most of her carrots off to March, who splits them with Tabby. Everyone seems to trade food around in their little group.

Alice finds that she is very hungry indeed. The soup turns out to be mutton and cabbage—mostly cabbage—but it’s hot, and she finishes it. The others talk quietly as they eat, but Alice is content merely to listen.

After dinner is a few hours of time to themselves—“and then teatime,” Hattie says blissfully. They all sit in one of the parlors and talk. They mean to talk about the other place, but Tabby twitches terribly at the merest mention of it—“it isn’t safe!”—and Dorcas falls asleep with her head in Hattie’s lap. So, they talk about safer things, ordinary things, until the bell rings for tea and Hattie jumps up with a whoop, causing Dorcas’s head to bang into the footstool and Tabby to shriek. March cackles. Kitty grins.

Tea is a repeat of breakfast, with everyone getting a mug of tea and a piece of bread and butter, but Hattie seems delighted, and insists on referring to it as a tea party. March obliges, and the two of them fire riddles with no answers back and forth so fast that Alice can barely keep up.

After tea they have to go to bed. Alice changes back into her nightgown, and this time the sheets aren’t tucked too tightly around her. Kitty holds Alice’s hand again, and Alice sleeps easier. She dreams of the other place still, but this time it doesn’t leave her sick with longing when she wakes up.

Routine seems to be the main foundation of the Institution. The days are all very much the same. Alice settles into her new life in the big stone building, and whenever they can she and the others go searching for the door. Between the five of them, they look through most of the asylum. But there are no rabbit holes, and no looking-glasses, and none of them know where to look next.

It’s on Alice’s eighth day that the trouble comes. It comes at breakfast, when Alice sits down at their usual bench and finds Kitty already there, staring off into space with a sweet little smile. Alice is immediately alarmed by that smile. Kitty’s smiles are too big and too sharp, not this insipid little curved-lips smile. Worse, Kitty doesn’t even seem to see her, and she doesn’t say a word when Alice calls her name.

Alice is nearly frantic with worry by the time Hattie plops down next to her, having somehow managed to get two mugs of tea. “What’s wrong with Kitty?” Alice asks desperately.

Hattie looks over and shakes her head. “Leave her, love,” Hattie advises, squinting at her left-hand mug. “It’s a bad day for her.”

“She’s never been this way before,” Alice whispers.

Hattie nods. “Doesn’t happen often. But when it does, best to let her be, poor girl.”

“What is it?”

Hattie looks around to be sure no one is listening, taking a sip from her right-hand mug. “When they first brought her here, she was half-wild. She resisted them on everything, bit and scratched and fought like a wildcat. So, they tried to fix her, keep her docile. Tame her, like.” Hattie shakes her head. “It was a vile thing they did. Icepick through the eye socket. Nurse Hart’s the one that had it done—that spineless doctor does whatever she says, and she said to mess with Kitty’s head. I saw her just after, poor thing. Smiling all sweet-like, silent and stupid like they wanted her to be. They made a pet of her, showed her off to the asylum founders and investors as a successful case. See, they consider it success when a wild girl gets a piece of her brain chipped off so’s she can’t even speak right.”

Alice stares at Hattie in horror.

Hattie lowers her voice to a whisper. “What they don’t know is, Kitty’s come back to herself. Oh, she pretends to still be a good girl, but she’s a wildcat again, and once we find the door to the other place, you’ll see it.” She smiles proudly. “I was the one that helped her come back. Talked much madness to her, reminded her of the other place, and taught her how to be nonsensical again. It’s worked wonders—except on days like this.”

Tabby and March and Dorcas join them soon after, and the five of them eat breakfast. Kitty eats nothing, and sits staring at nothing, and smiles sweetly at nothing, and Nurse Hart comes by and says what a good girl you are, Katherine, and Kitty says nothing at all.

She’s like that for the whole day, and then she wakes up crying in the middle of the night. “Don’t, please don’t!” she sobs once, and Alice finds her hand in the dark and squeezes it tight till morning.

Kitty doesn’t go to help the cook that day. She goes downstairs with Alice and finds their usual bench. Hattie appears immediately, pressing Kitty against her side. When Tabby and Dorcas appear, Tabby moves behind Kitty and combs her shorn hair with her fingers, and Dorcas pats her hand before falling asleep on the table again. Even March, when she finally comes in, bumps her head against Kitty’s like a mother cat with a kitten.

“You all look after each other,” Alice mentions to Hattie afterwards.

Hattie nods. “’Course we do. We’ve got to, here. Easier to fight with five in your corner than all on your lonesome.” She gives Alice a smile. “Six, now, with you.”

Alice’s heart grows warm and large, like a loaf of bread rising in the oven, at being counted among their small group.

Kitty stays silent the rest of the day, vanishing now and then like a shadow. Alice can’t understand how she manages to disappear like she does under the watchful eyes of the attendants. Whenever she reappears, they don’t even seem to notice she was missing.

Soon enough, Kitty is talking again, and she comes right back to her old self—whispering to Alice as they get ready for bed, chattering with Hattie and March at breakfast, scaring Tabby with whispers about the other place and grinning her sharp, stretched-out smile when Dorcas shushes her.

And then Nurse Hart appears beside them at dinner, her long skirt attacking her ankles as she walks. Alice, dear, I’d like to try something tomorrow. I think I’ve hit upon a way to cure your delusion once and for all. You’ll be able to go home.

Alice glances back at her friends. Dorcas has picked her head up, looking at Nurse Hart with a frightened expression. Tabby’s nose is twitching violently, and she’s looking very hard at her plate and not at Nurse Hart. March and Hattie are holding hands, both looking half angry and half worried. Kitty looks as though she’s going to pounce on Nurse Hart.

Alice, however, feels strangely calm. “Of course, Nurse Hart,” she says, and watches the woman smile with lips as red as her hair.

Hattie shakes her head, taking a long sip of her tea. “Alice, what have you done?”

Alice watches Nurse Hart’s back as she walks away. “Something mad.”

***

In the morning, Nurse Hart comes to take Alice down to the lowest level of the Institution. Alice follows her demurely, thinking so quickly she can barely keep up with her own head.

Nurse Hart opens the door to a little room with a strange-looking thing that is half a bed and half a chair in it. In here, Alice. She says it as sweet as jam tarts, and Alice obeys. I’ve determined that the cause of your delusion, Alice, is a propensity for nonsensical thinking. But you needn’t worry; it’s curable.

“Nonsensical thinking?” Alice blinks. “Is that what it is?”

Oh, yes. Nurse Hart has her sit in the odd chair. The world works a certain way, my dear, and if you stray from that path, you end up in a place like this, surrounded by people as crazy as you.

Alice turns her head. “I’m not crazy,” she says quietly. “I’m mad. There’s a difference.”

Nurse Hart gives her mocking laugh again. Call it what you will, Alice. The fact remains: you are abnormal, and you do not fit into this world. It’s my job to mold you into something that does fit.

“You don’t use the right words.” Alice closes her eyes. “I’m not abnormal. I’m curious. Curiouser and curiouser.”

You’re whatever I say you are. The nurse bites out the words. I’m in charge here, and you won’t forget it. It’s the only thing you will remember, once I’m done with you. You’ll forget your friends, your delusions, everything. You won’t go looking for rabbit holes anymore, little Alice. You’ll sit quietly and be a good girl, and there will be no more nonsense.

Alice leans her head back and smiles, wide and sharp like Kitty’s.

What’s that look for? demands Nurse Hart as she straps Alice to the chair.

Alice stares up at the ceiling. “I never told you about the rabbit holes,” she says.

Nurse Hart’s mouth forms an ‘O’ shape. Her red lips, drawn tight like purse strings, create the shape of a crimson heart on her face.

“Lovely to see you again, Your Majesty,” Alice whispers.

There’s a click, and then Alice’s mind is filled with blinding pain, white and red and dipping close to black. Lightning dances a polka along her skin.

“You’ll forget!” shouts Nurse Hart. “You’ll forget all about that place! All of you! I’ll go back and I’ll have it all to myself, and you won’t be able to interfere again!”

Gasping, Alice pulls herself up as far as the straps will allow. “You know where the door is,” she says. “The door to—”

Click.

Distantly, Alice is aware that she is screaming and Nurse Hart is laughing, or perhaps Alice is laughing and Nurse Hart is screaming. She can’t quite tell which is which anymore. She convulses on the chair, electricity pouring through her.

When it fades, she is gasping, tears streaking her face.

But she still remembers.

“You can’t take the place away from me,” she whispers.

Nurse Hart seizes her by the throat, pressing her head back against the chair. Alice grabs desperately at her hands, struggling for air. “I will have my kingdom again, and you are not going to stop me,” Nurse Hart seethes. “I’ll scrape that place out of your head if I have to. Just like I did with silly little Katherine.”

From the corner, someone laughs.

“Who’s there?” Nurse Hart demands.

The first thing to appear is a grin, too wide and too sharp. Then the rest of Kitty melts out of the shadows, her head tilted to the side, smiling fiendishly. “Did you?” she asks. “I wasn’t mad when you brought me here, only very angry, which is almost the same. But now I’m mad really and truly, and I’m mad at you, Nurse Hart.”

Nurse Hart laughs wickedly. “And what can you do about it, Kitty?”

Kitty grins so wide it looks as if her face has split in two. “Beware the jabberwock, my son!” she hisses. “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” She pounces on the last word, taking Nurse Hart by surprise and knocking her to the floor.

And then Hattie and March are at Alice’s side, pulling her up and supporting her, little Dorcas trailing behind them. “You mad thing, Alice,” Hattie says with her eyes shining, and Alice knows it’s the highest praise.

Tabby comes barreling in, her pocket watch swinging wildly around her neck, her nose twitching as if it’s going to twitch right off her face. “I found it!” she shrieks. “The rabbit hole! The looking-glass! Oh, come quick, quick!” And she turns on her heel and tears down the hallway.

March grabs Dorcas by the arm and hauls her off to follow Tabby, pausing only long enough to holler over her shoulder to Hattie, “Meet us there!”

“Aye, aye, cap’n!” Hattie bellows back. “Alice, Kitty, we’ve got marching orders, let’s go!”

Nurse Hart struggles up from the floor. “No! You can’t—you won’t!”

“Shut up, you old bat,” Hattie tells her unceremoniously. “You had your reign. Now it’s ours, and long live us.”

Kitty’s green eyes dance with mischief. “Off with her head!” she crows, and brings a fist crashing into Nurse Hart’s jaw. The nurse—the Queen—topples backward, stunned. Alice waves gaily to her as she leaves the room.

There’s a door at the end of the hall, plain and simple, but Alice knows immediately that it’s the right one. “All this time it was here in the mad-house,” she says wonderingly.

“Where else would it be?” Hattie replies.

Tabby is standing by the door with Dorcas, jumping up and down. “Oh, hurry, hurry!” she cries. Even sleepy Dorcas looks excited.

“You found the door, Rabbit,” says March, and this time Tabby doesn’t protest at the name. “First step is for you.”

Tabby blushes furiously. “Well, then, I mustn’t be late!” she says, and opens the door. She pokes her head in, gives a little sigh of happiness, and then comes out again, taking Dorcas by the shoulder and pulling the smaller girl back inside the room with her.

They wait for a moment.

“Did they make it?” Alice asks, feeling nervous.

“Of course,” March answers. “And it’s us next, Hattie, old girl.”

Hattie and March go through the door, holding hands and cackling like the madwomen they are and always have been. Hattie leans out at the last moment, tipping her top hat and bowing to Alice. Alice picks up the corners of her skirt and curtsies.

“Well,” says Kitty after a moment, “now it’s our turn.” She puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it, opening the door with only a bit of hesitation, and she and Alice go inside.

It is not a room that sees much use. There is no desk, no chair, no bookcase, no nothing. The room is almost entirely empty.

But not quite empty, for in the center of the room there stands a looking-glass.

Alice knows in an instant that it’s the right one.

“I’m afraid,” she says, surprised to find herself crying and unable to stop. “I don’t know if I belong in the other place anymore.”

“You can say its name, you know,” says Kitty. “Wonderland.”

The word sends a thrill through Alice. “But what if whatever Nurse Hart did to me fixed me?” she ventures. “You have to be mad to go into the other place. What if I’m not mad anymore?”

Kitty laughs. She slips her warm, soft hand into Alice’s and squeezes it tight, gently pulling her toward the looking-glass.

Alice hesitates.

“Don’t worry,” Kitty says. She shows Alice her too-big grin, and now Alice knows who she really is, who all her new friends really are. “We’re all mad here.”

They step hand in hand through the looking-glass, to the wonderful place where the mad ones go.