little prince

Zara shrugged at his response. “In the Middle Ages they’d salt-cure all of their meats to prevent spoil and rot. Didn’t help much, to tell you the truth.” She returned to picking at her dinner and sighed, decided to pick everything up and set herself down directly in front of Lee. “And I used to go here, just came back. We’ve gotten a new kitchen staff, I see.” She glanced over him apprehensively. “I see you’re not eating either.”

“Uh—huh.” Lee’s fork smoothes out the edges of his mashed potato Vesuvius. He is listening — it just doesn’t show. But she’s talking about history, and this is something he knows, something he’s well versed in, so he’s showing more active interest than he usually does. ( Not the Middle Ages, specifically, but Lee has never been picky with history — and he’s got a book on it somewhere. ) “The Black Death happened under their watch, so I guess they didn’t have the best ideas about much.” He looks up from the mess he’s made, pleased, and catches the girl’s eyes. “Budget cuts, maybe. Or maybe they just don’t like us Dumfries kids.” He stabs and scoops up the top of the volcano. Adds some more gravy, till it overflows like it’s erupting — the sight makes him smile. “No — I’m not usually hungry. Don’t have an excuse good as yours.” Engage, Dr. Muñoz’s voice sounds off. “Where’d you go?”

Zara looked at the boy seated a ways away from her, one of the only other people in the dining hall, his plate filled with scraps mixed into a mess. She regarded it with a raised eyebrow. “Really? You like it?” She glanced back down at her plate. It was more starches and sodium than she was used to; couldn’t God grant her a salad or something? “I just want normal food for once; this is so much salt and potatoes. It’s like we live in the Middle Ages again.”

You like it? Deep in his mind, where nobody ( not even him, sometimes ) Lee grins. He’s got the same amount of food on his plate as her — his is just a war zone, where hers is still all neat and organized. It was strange, really, to remind himself she was a witch. “S’pose so.” His eyes narrow, and move back to his volcano — using some particularly smashed potatoes, Lee adds a layer above the pool of gravy. “Middle Ages?” It seemed like the average meal at Dumfries. “Are you — new here? Like — us?”

“Um—,” there was a hesitation, an obvious reluctance to go through with whatever was bothering Farrah. Fidgeting hands clung to the fabric of her sweater as she glanced back and forth down the hallway. It was just them within earshot, but Farrah knew better than to assume that they were certainly alone.

“I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to tuck in your shirt. Uniform policy,” she said with a pained smile, as this wasn’t the first time today that Farrah had to rectify an instance of uniform misconduct. “I don’t want you to get in trouble so this is going to be a warning, okay? But you should really know this by now…”

It was no surprise that Lee had floated through the day in a dream —not happily, not really, but in his usual state of detached contentment. He supposed Wardlaw was strange, but it wasn’t a change he could really feel just yet. ( His body and mind would catch up eventually, but for now that foggy brain was focused on getting through the day

Lee hadn’t noticed the hall had cleared out, much less that he was in someone’s company — for how long had they been alone? ( Pay attention, Lee. Did you miss your lunchtime pills? Did you really take them — was that real? Check your bottles. Count them out. ) He catalogued the thought away for later, and instead followed the orders, lazily shoving the ends of his shirt below the belt of his pants. “Uh—huh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t —” really here, “thinking.” Lee thinks of what a normal person might do. He can’t force himself to outstretch a hand, but he makes another ( small ) leap. “I’m Lee.”

Zara sat down at her seat in the dining hall with unusual slowness. Almost everyone had cleared out from dinner by then, but she was just beginning to sit down. A plate was brought to her and she looked at it with a dispassionate glance. Beef in a gravy sauce, potatoes, roasted carrots. Zara unfolded the napkin and placed it in her lap with a sigh.

“How disappointing.”

Lee, even back at Dumfres, was often left alone in the dining hall by the end of each meal ( at least the ones he attended ). It was so easy to sit alone, to pick at his food, to not worry about existing for a moment. No dent had been made in the pile of food on his plate — instead, he’d already completed construction on a volcano made of his mashed potatoes, and had begun installing lava into the small hole carved into the pile of potatoes, using the gravy.

How disappointing. “Is it?” Lee was used to that word, and so it was rare now that he felt any impact from it. “Seemed sort of popular.” His eyes rose up from his project to look at the girl who’d spoken — a freckled thing, with hair redder than his. Lee hoped she didn’t expect much from him — people at Dumfries had known to only sit with him if they desired silence, but perhaps the memo hadn’t yet been spread through Wardlaw.

“You could have my dessert, if you want it.”