Chapter Text
There were two feelings fighting inside Belle, both of them nearly strong enough to overtake her completely. She’d almost gotten used to how much these two feelings struggled for control in the past couple years, though, so she was able to wave over her shoulder to her dog as she headed toward the bus stop. Gold’s muzzle and whiskers were all white now, and he barely stirred himself from his nap on the porch to see her off to school anymore. Belle didn’t mind too much, really, because she knew who was waiting for her ahead.
The two feelings got stronger and stronger as she looked back up the street toward the tree-house perched in a dark, tangled tree. Rum supposedly lived in the house behind the tree-house, but Belle had never actually seen him inside that house. He was always in his tree-house, or playing in her yard with her and Gold, or occasionally, when she could talk him into it, slipping into her house for dinner.
David and Mary were whispering together at the bus stop, Emma standing next to them and rolling her eyes a bit, but that was all per usual. At the top of the hill, a car pulled away from the big house that looked down on everyone else’s; Regina would, like always, beat them to school.
Belle smiled politely in case anyone looked her way, but for the most part they all ignored her. Her dad told her it was because she read too much, always carrying a book tucked away under her arm and three or four more in her backpack, but how could Belle help it? The characters in her stories were always so much more interesting than anyone in real life.
Well, anyone except Rum.
For all that Belle looked for him the whole way from her house to the bus stop, he always managed to surprise her when he appeared at her elbow. Belle liked to tease him that he was a mischievous sorcerer, and once she explained what mischievous meant, he’d started giggling and waving his hands through the air to make magic for her.
This morning wasn’t a mischievous morning, Belle realized as soon as she heard Rum’s quiet whispered “Belle,” from behind her.
It was a secretive morning.
The two feelings in Belle collided and recoiled so that she smiled to see Rum and felt her belly go wriggly and cold at the way he kept his head ducked so that his hair hung in front of his face.
“Hey, Rum!” she said. Even though it looked like a morning when the sick feeling would be bigger than the happy feeling, she still made sure to sound as excited as she felt to see him. Rum had a hard time believing that anyone liked him, so Belle was always careful to make sure he knew how much she loved seeing him.
“How’s Gold?” Rum asked, like he always did.
“Tired,” she said. “He likes to run in his sleep even though he hardly runs at all when he’s awake.” Then she asked what she always did. “How’s Bae?”
His lips twitched at the way she whispered so no one else would hear about the bear he kept hidden safe and sound in his tree-house. “Good. He’s thinking about changing his name.”
Belle giggled. Rum hadn’t known any stories when they first became friends, and he still liked listening to her talk about her favorite books rather than reading himself, but somehow, he always came up with the best stories about Bae Bear.
The bus pulled up, though, and Rum had to step aside to avoid Leroy bumping into him—and that was when Belle saw it.
She’d known it was there, of course. Whenever he wouldn’t look at her, on the secretive mornings, it was because he was hiding something he thought would make her sad. Rum hated making her sad, which was nice, she supposed, but she wished that he knew it wasn’t him that made her sad. It was the bruises he felt like he had to hide. The secrets he kept about what went on in the house he supposedly lived at. The way his mom seemed to drink too much and kept a boyfriend who liked to play with sharp objects and make fun of Rum.
Belle bit her lip to cover her gasp at the sight of the dark bruise and pretended she was just impatient to get on the bus, crowding close to him and letting her hand bump up against his. On the secretive mornings, Rum didn’t like to be hugged or touched, didn’t want to hold hands or sit too close. So Belle had learned how to be sneaky, jostling close while looking the other direction, pointing to things that let her hand brush up against him, pretending to trip so she could lean on him. Because no matter what everyone else thought, Belle knew Rum’s secret.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be hugged.
It was that he was afraid any hug would turn into another bruise.
“It’s the last day of school,” Belle reminded him in case whatever had happened to him last night after she went home had made him forget. She shuffled a bit closer to him on the seat, craning her neck as if she were just trying to look out the window. In the reflection the sun made on the glass, she could see Rum looking at her with that little smile on his lips he got a lot around her. She could also see the dark purple color spreading up his sharp cheekbone and nearly touching the crooked part in his nose that had happened on a terrible day a few years ago. She still remembered climbing up to his tree-house and finding him curled up and trembling in a corner, crying silent tears while he hugged his bear so tightly Bae’s eyes had looked sad and angry all at once between the scars where she’d sewn him back together. Bae’s fur was still stained red from where the blood had dripped from Rum’s face.
“Summer starts tomorrow,” Rum said super quietly. “You’re going to have so much fun, Belle.”
Belle frowned at him and only just stopped herself from grabbing his hand. “We’re going to have fun, Rum. Remember? We made a whole list of fun things to do—and I’m going to get you to read the Animorphs series. I know it’s long, but really, Rum, it’s so good, and it’s not just good versus bad, because even the heroes have to do really bad things—”
“Belle,” he said, so seriously, so sadly, that Belle’s voice froze in her throat. “I have something to tell you. A secret.”
“Okay.” Belle ignored the way her belly quivered and scooted even closer to Rum, until she could feel his whole body shaking against hers. “Is it a good secret like Bae? Or a bad secret like…like…” She tried not to, but her eyes darted to the bruise where his mom—the person who should love him, who should be taking care of him—let him be hurt.
“It’s bad,” he whispered, and only then did he look straight at Belle so she could see that there were tears swimming in his big eyes. “Belle, I’m really scared.”
Leaning her head against his, careful not to touch the bruise, Belle curled her hand very slowly around his fingers. A bit of her sick feeling eased when he turned his hand around so he could hold onto her. “I’ll help,” she said. Without Rum, she was just a little girl, strange and lonely and more comfortable with fiction than reality. But with Rum, she was brave. She was strong. She was capable of taking care of him and reminding him of all the good things he so often forgot.
“You can’t,” he said. “My mom doesn’t want me anymore. She said she’s leaving with Killian. And she’s not going to take me with her.”
The two feelings always fighting inside Belle when she was with Rum suddenly evaporated.
“You can live with me,” she said, sitting up straight while she tried to make plans in a hurry. “Or, really, you can live in the tree-house, but I’ll take care of you. I can bring you food like I do for my dad, and Gold and I will make sure you have anything you need, and you won’t have to worry about going back inside that house or—”
“My dad came back. Last night. He said that we’re going to go on an adventure.”
Belle stared. She hadn’t even known that Rum had a dad. “For how long?”
Rum made a strange sort of sound, almost like a hiccup. “Forever. He said we can’t stay here and be held back. He said we need to find a place as good as Neverland.”
“But…” All Belle could think in that moment was that Neverland was a place for Lost Boys, not for girls. Even Wendy had only gotten to stay for a little while. “You can’t go.”
“Papa said we’re leaving tomorrow. Killian doesn’t like him and Mom wants him gone, so…” Rum looked very small as he shrugged, a gesture so sad and resigned that it made him seem a whole lot older than Belle.
“But we were going to be best friends forever,” she finally whispered.
Rum pulled his hand free of hers and looked away, out the window, toward adventures she’d never get to go on. “I guess nothing lasts forever.”
The night was so dark that even the stars were just blurry, more the hint of light than real light, and if Rum weren’t so used to being alone in the night, it probably would have scared him. It didn’t, though. Rum was used to curling up in his sleeping bag, alone in his tree-house, with only the round form of his bear to keep him company. He was used to waking up alone when the stubborn sunlight managed to find its way through the twisted tree branches to touch his face and make him squinch his eyes tighter shut. He was used to brushing his teeth with the bottle of water and toothbrush he kept out here, straightening his own clothes, trying to fix his own hair without a mirror—never mirrors, not after Regina’s mirror and the way she’d made fun of him in front of everyone at school—and then climbing down into the morning to make his way to the house three from the corner.
He was used to Belle standing there with her hand buried in Gold’s ruff. Used to her smiling when she saw him and opening the gate for him without even pausing. He was used to getting to pet Gold’s warm, warm fur, his fingers bumping up against Belle’s as she told him about whatever new story she’d read the night before, while she was curled up in her warm bed in her bedroom, tucked in by her dad who wasn’t the best dad, as far as Rum could tell, but who at least tried a little bit.
He was used to being happy.
And he should have known that he wouldn’t get to keep the happy feelings.
Rum curled up tighter around Bae and hoped the bear didn’t mind the tears soaking into his fur. Most of it was worn and threadbare, the darker stitches where Belle had helped mend the rips inflicted by Henry’s playful claws stark and clear. Rum liked running his fingers over those stitches because it reminded him that he wasn’t alone anymore, that he had his bear and that Belle had helped him and liked to hear about Bae and liked talking to him and always smiled at him even without a deal to make her do any of it.
The darkness crept closer, heavier, darker, and Rum wished he could just sink into it.
Tomorrow, he would have to take the one bag his mom had given him to put his stuff in and get in the car his dad said he’d borrowed from his friend Felix and drive away. Forever.
He wouldn’t get to stay in his tree-house ever again. He wouldn’t get to make deals with the kids who knew him and were afraid of him and didn’t even try to beat him up anymore because they were too scared of how much he might ask for next time they needed something. He wouldn’t get to have the summer he and Belle had spent weeks planning, full of swimming and reading and talking and sleepovers in his tree-house.
He wouldn’t get Belle.
The night crept on, no matter how Rum tried to make it go slow. Better the night than the gleam in his dad’s eyes that made him look a little crazy, the way he was always looking away, at something else, something that wasn’t Rum. Better the dark than the way his mom had shrugged in the sunlight and said she didn’t need a kid slowing her and Killian down on their long trip.
“Bae,” Rum whispered. His bear was round and soft and nestled just exactly perfect in his arms. His ear was turned toward Rum’s mouth, ready to listen to whatever he had to say. Bae was always interested in him. Bae loved him. Bae would never leave him.
“I’m scared,” he said into the night, and even though he was holding his bear too tightly, Bae didn’t get mad at him. “I don’t know Papa very well. What if he…”
No. Even this night wasn’t dark enough to trust those secrets out into the open. His cheek ached, his head throbbed, he could still smell blood high up in his nose, and Rum was too alone, too sad, to risk thinking about any of that.
“I wish,” he said instead, so soft Bae’s ear had to turn a bit more toward him to hear better. “I wish Belle could come with me.”
Rum was twelve, though, and he knew that she had to stay with her dad. When he was little, he’d tried to make a deal for her to stay with him, but now he was old enough to know that kids didn’t get to stay with each other. They had to stay with grown-ups.
“Grown-ups,” his papa had said when he showed up the night before. He’d rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “No such thing where we’re going, laddie. We’ll find a place where we can play all day long.”
That seemed kind of impossible to Rum—and he knew better than most that sometimes kids could be just as mean as grown-ups—but no one had asked him. So the bag was sitting in the corner, all his clothes folded inside, the little chipped teacup he’d gotten for Belle so long ago tucked very carefully in the middle, the bag all filled up, not even any more room for the telescope he’d used to see what everyone on his street was up to—and tomorrow, he’d have to leave forever.
It was better that Belle couldn’t come, he decided when he accidentally pushed his cheek higher on his pillow and felt a shock of pain. He’d never be able to protect her, not really. He was too little, too weak. Mom told him all the time that he couldn’t take care of anything, so even if Belle’s dad wasn’t as good as Rum knew she deserved, it was probably better that she stayed with him.
If he slept, it wasn’t very well, and he was awake to watch the sunlight struggle through the familiar shadows of the tree branches outside. The light came closer and closer before touching Bae, sleeping in Rum’s arms, and that’s when Rum finally made himself think what he’d been trying to pretend away all night long.
He had to leave Bae.
There was no room in the bag to hide him, no place to keep him safe, and he had no idea what Malcolm was really like. What if Malcolm decided Bae was a better cat toy than a bear just like Regina had? What if he thought Bae was as worthless as Rum and should be thrown away like his mom had done the one time she’d seen him? Belle wouldn’t be with him anymore. She wouldn’t be able to help him sew Bae up or hide him under her shirt to keep him from getting tossed into the trash. Rum would be all alone, and all alone, he couldn’t do anything to save Bae from whatever happened to him.
Rum didn’t even take time to straighten his shirt and hair before he moved to the board in the middle of the tree-house that lifted up to reveal his secret hiding place. The telescope was still there next to a couple of things he’d been saving for deals with Ruby and David and Jefferson.
“I’m sorry, Bae,” Rum whispered to his bear as he wrapped him in a blanket, snugly so that he wouldn’t be cold. “It’s safer for you here. This is something I have to go do myself. But don’t worry.” Trying not to cry and pretending that he didn’t feel the tears dripping down his face, Rum leaned forward to kiss Bae’s little head. “I’ll come back for you. When I know it’s safe, I’ll come back here and find you and then we’ll be together forever.”
Bae didn’t believe him, though. When Rum laid him in the cozy nest he’d made for him, his face turned away from Rum.
“I’m not abandoning you,” Rum said. “I’m keeping you safe!”
But Bae didn’t look at him. He was mad. Mad and sad and scared and lonely, and Rum knew how all those things felt. They were bad. Ugly. Sick feelings that never really went away.
“I’ll come for you,” he promised again, then he shut the hole back up and scattered a few leaves over it so it looked like the rest of the floor.
The bag was heavy and threw him a bit off-balance as he climbed down from the tree-house. He supposed Regina and maybe a few of the others would probably climb up there and take everything they could find, but he was sure none of them were smart enough to find the secret hiding place. Only one person besides Rum knew where it was.
“Hey, Rum.”
Trying not to show how much she’d surprised him even though he knew she’d be able to tell, Rum turned around to find Belle waiting for him. Gold sat next to her, and his tail thumped excitedly as he licked the hand Rum offered. Belle tried to smile at him, but she’d given him so many over the past several years that he could tell this one wasn’t real.
“Hey,” he said. He sounded like he was sick, which he didn’t like, so he cleared his throat and ducked his face to hide the bruise from her.
“I didn’t know when you were leaving exactly,” she said, “but I wanted to make sure I got to say goodbye.”
He kind of wished she hadn’t. Belle was the only one who didn’t mind that he got scared or that he still sometimes cried even though he was older now, but that didn’t mean he liked her seeing him so weak. Besides, maybe it would be easier to think that he would come back one day if they didn’t actually say goodbye.
“Rum?”
“Oh.” He patted Gold on the head again because he wasn’t sure what else he should do. Gold’s fur was way whiter now than it had been the time he’d led him from Belle’s yard and hid him in the abandoned house on the corner, and with a pang, Rum realized that even if he came back, Gold probably wouldn’t be here to see him again.
Belle fidgeted before reaching out and petting Gold behind the ears. Their fingers bumped, just like always, and Rum felt something squirming in his belly, like fruit in Jell-O. “You already packed?”
“Mom said she only had one bag for me.” He shrugged. “It didn’t take long.”
“Is Bae comfy enough in there?” she asked, and he thought she was probably trying to tease him, but the question made him almost mad.
“I don’t need a bear anymore,” he said. His voice was cold and sharp, like Mom’s when Killian was gone, like Killian’s when Rum tried to get his mom’s attention. He didn’t like it. Belle should never have anyone talk to her that way. But for some reason, he couldn’t change it. “I’m grown-up now, and Bae’s not real anyway.”
Maybe his mom was right and he was a bad kid. Only bad people lied.
“Rum.” Belle’s eyes were so sad. Her hand landed on top of his, sandwiching his fingers between her and Gold. “I can keep him safe for you.”
He yanked his hand away, wrapping his tingling fingers around the strap of his bag. “Why would you do that?”
Her brow wrinkled. He used to love saying things to make her look like that. He used to love making her laugh. He used to love spending time with her.
But he’d never get to do any of it again, so what was the point?
“Bae’s the best bear ever,” she said. Rum flinched because that’s what he’d told her. “I would love to make sure nothing bad happened to him.”
Rum couldn’t look up. Couldn’t move. He was afraid to even breathe in case it made him break down into a crying mess that even Belle would be embarrassed of.
“Rum.” Belle stepped up so close he saw her shoes edge up near his—hers nice and neat and new, his old and with a hole fraying into the edge of one of the toes—and then her arms were wrapping around his shoulders. She was so warm, like Gold. So soft, like Bae. So sweet and nice and everything good in a way only Belle could be.
Rum couldn’t help it anymore. He dropped the bag and wrapped his arms around her. Her dress soaked in his tears just like Bae’s fur did, and for just a little bit, he felt as safe here with her as he did alone in the dark.
“I’m so sorry, Rum,” Belle whispered into his ear. “I wish I could find a way to keep you here, but Papa said that we couldn’t adopt you from your own family.”
For some reason, that just made him feel worse—Belle, he thought, was the only one who’d ever wanted him to stay with her.
“I’ll miss you,” he whispered. It was hard to get the words out, hard to admit them when usually admitting something real just made it easier for him to get hurt. But her hair muffled the words and her arms hugged him even closer and Rum didn’t mind too much that he was letting her know how to hurt him.
Of everyone in the world, he was sure Belle would be the last one to hurt him.
“Here,” she said, pulling back, “how about this? I’ll make you a deal, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, but truthfully, Rum wasn’t sure what she was even talking about because now he could see that she was crying too—crying for him. Crying because she wouldn’t get to see him again. Rum half-wondered if a unicorn or dragon was going to show up, too, because that seemed just as unlikely as Belle crying over not getting to be his best friend anymore.
“I’ll promise to take care of Bae and always look out for him and keep him safe…if you promise to try to be happy.”
Rum stared up at her, for the first time forgetting to try to hide the ugly marks on his face. “Belle, I don’t…”
“You can be happy,” she said, and now she was really crying, crowding closer and closer, Gold nudging up against them both as he whined. “I know you can. Don’t just be lonely and sad, okay? Try to find a way to be happy because I…I don’t want to think about you being sad all the time. So if you find a way to be happy, then don’t let it go.”
“You make me happy,” he whispered.
Belle sobbed and pulled him into another hug. She was still shorter than him, the shortest kid in their whole class, and even though sometimes it made her frown and pout, Rum was secretly glad. He liked feeling like he could protect her or help her, even if that just meant being a little taller and able to pull out the book she wanted from the high shelf.
“Bae’s hidden in the secret place,” he finally whispered into her ear, soft and low and kind of an excuse to smell the flowers in her hair. She didn’t really wear flowers in her hair, but Rum checked a lot because it always smelled like she did. “I think he’s mad at me for leaving, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“I’ll look out for him,” she promised.
And then his mom was calling his name and Belle was stepping away and their hands were falling apart and Gold was whining again because Belle was crying and Rum was probably crying and he should probably wipe the tears away before his mom or Killian saw him but the bag was too heavy in his hands and Rum thought that he shouldn’t have made this deal because he was never going to be happy again.
Then he was pulled into his mom’s house by his elbow. The door closed between him and Belle. And Malcolm was waiting, grinning and rubbing his hands together and looking toward the car, the road, the distance.
“Ready for adventure, laddie?”
And Belle was gone forever.