The Water and the Wild by Katie Elise Ormsbee

course this all still had to be a dream. Lottie left the terrace and plopped back down on the settee inside. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and poked herself in the ribs, hard, in an attempt to wake herself up.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    Lottie’s eyelids fluttered open. Oliver had followed her back inside.
    She stared at him. “Nothing,” she said, and she stared some more.
    Despite the bruises splotching it, Oliver’s face was a nice one, framed by curly hair the shade of bronze. Lottie was sure that if Oliver attended Kemble School, he’d be a prime topic of swooning and giggling for Pen Bloomfield and her crowd. Lottie noticed that the boy’s eyes had changed color again, this time to a pinked shade like fresh salmon. Lottie noticed, too, that Oliver was standing quite far from her, like she was about to sneeze and he didn’t want to get covered in the snot.
Perhaps
, she thought miserably,
Mrs. Yates was right about first impressions, and now Oliver is afraid I’ll pull another face on him
.
    â€œSo, how’d you hurt your arm?” she asked at last, pointing to his bandaged elbow.
    â€œSame as anyone does,” said Oliver, but he was looking at Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer, not her. “I had an accident.”
    â€œOh, did you?” An urge was bubbling up Lottie’s throat, threatening to pop loose. Suddenly, it did. “And were any
flying squirrels
involved in your accident?”
    Oliver was quiet for a moment.
    â€œWhat makes you say that?” he asked.
    â€œI was there at the pub,” said Lottie, “when you and your friend—Flute, or something—came into the break room. You were all bloody. I know it had to be you, so don’t deny it.”
    Oliver’s eyes had gone bright blue again. “So
you’re
the one who went running out of the coats.”
    Lottie nodded.
    â€œFather didn’t say you’d be so nosy,” Oliver muttered, and this would have hurt Lottie’s feelings, except that she thought she saw Oliver smiling when he said it.
    Suddenly, the wooden doors by the settee flew open, and Adelaide came leaping out.
    â€œLottie, you can—oh! Hello. Sweet Oberon, what happened to your arm?”
    Oliver shrugged.
    But Adelaide wasn’t waiting for an answer. She had turned her attention right back to Lottie. “Father will see you now.”
    Lottie cast a glance at the portrait of Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer. Was the letter-writer going to be like
that
? Pompous and ugly and intimidating?
    â€œHe,” faltered Lottie, “is a good person, isn’t he?”
    â€œUgh,” groaned Adelaide. “Stop asking so many questions.”
    â€œBe nice, Adelaide,” said Oliver. “She’s just naturally nosy.”
    He
was
smiling.
    â€œGo on, go on,” insisted Adelaide, pushing Lottie toward the double doors. “Of course he’s nice, he’s my father. He’ll answer your questions. He might even ask you some, too. After all, he’s curious about you.”
    â€œWe all are,” Oliver said.
    â€œWhat?” said Lottie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    But Adelaide only shooed at her impatiently. Lottie, reasoning that this was certainly not the strangest thing to have happened to her tonight, walked past the doors. They closed behind her with the faintest of clicks.

CHAPTER FOUR
Otherwise Incurable

    LOTTIE FOUND HERSELF in what looked a lot like the abandoned laboratory of a mad scientist. The ceilings were high here, but there was not a window in sight. The floors were caked with so much dust that Eliot’s green sneakers made an impressive
poof!
with each step that Lottie took. Hundreds of vials of all shapes—squares and ovals and diamonds and wonky pyramids—lined shelves running so high up the walls that Lottie could not see an end to them. There were even more colors in the vials’ insides than there were shapes