by Richard Peck
“And that’s a good thing?” I said.
“The best. High school goes on too long. Anything’s better. But you need a plan. Mine was to get a walk-on part as somebody’s daughter. I’ve got a lot to learn. If the play closes before fall, I’ll enroll in the theater program at NYU. Thanks to your mother.”
What? What did she say? My mother again? “My mother?”
“She’s helping me with my application. And my backup. We e-mail a lot.”
The world was wobbling so much that I may have gripped the sink.
“It’s what she does, you know.” Alyssa was studying me in the mirror. “College counseling and placement, helping with people’s applications? Advising about the essays? Freelance?”
I nodded. I knew that. In a way, if I ever listened or noticed. That’s what all those college catalogs coming in our mail were about. It’s what my mother did on the computer all day in the room off our kitchen. It’s how she made a living. Our living. I knew that.
But I was sinking fast. Sinking at the sink. Alyssa was saying, “I auditioned for the part in October. Took a couple of days off school for that.”
In the mirror she found my eyes. I was working my hands with more stringy soap out of the dispenser—working and working and trying to think.
“And I got the part,” she said. “To celebrate, Spence and I came into the city, to the Village and the parade Halloween night.”
Halloween night. Yes, Tanya had known Alyssa was in the city that night, while I was—
“Then I graduated early so I could go into rehearsal.”
What was Alyssa saying? That she’d been out of school two days to audition? That she’d graduated early to rehearse? Was she telling me there never had been a—
“And you know what, Kerry?”
We were talking too long at the sink. People were pushing in behind us. Pushy people with elbows. We ought to get go—
“The funny thing is that Spence Myers and I are just friends. Tanya didn’t have to worry about me after all. I wasn’t standing in her way. The only person standing between Tanya and Spence was Spence.”
I could feel myself going paler and paler. I wouldn’t look me in the eye in the mirror, or Alyssa.
“You know what her worst problem was?” Alyssa said. “Tanya never knew what friendship was. She died not knowing.”
Now I was pale as . . . death. I’d looked past Alyssa, and there in the jammed restroom door Tanya stood. And coming in behind her was Natalie. And probably behind them Makenzie. All Alyssa had to do was turn and look, to follow my gaze. I couldn’t have stopped her or distracted her or anything. I was totally locked down. All Alyssa had to do was see across that distance, ten or twelve feet of filthy floor.
But she’d need to look fast—right now. Because Tanya saw us. She saw me there at the sinks in the hard light and Alyssa with me. Through all the crowds she saw us.
Tanya spun around. She pushed the others back. Their skirts furled. Natalie’s hair swirled. And they were gone like they’d never been there to begin with.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Makenzie’s Kilt
I GOT AWAY from Alyssa as soon as I could. I more or less ran for my life. They’d seen Alyssa. What if they saw Spence? What if Spence stepped out of that party room again, this time into Tanya’s arms? I didn’t know what that would mean. How could I?
My head felt terrible, like I really had been drinking. All I could think about was finding them, and getting away. There were too many worlds here, and they were getting all mixed up. My head was.
Now I was out in one of the giant blue cube rooms, under the sequin stars. I elbowed my way through to that staircase again, to look down on the packed dance floor. But they weren’t there.
I looked everywhere, on every level, in the little alcoves where couples sprawled in black leather banquettes. I looked high and low and along the bar. A big hand with hairy knuckles and a class ring came out of nowhere and closed over my arm, but I twisted out of its grasp and kept moving, as fast as I could. When the panic began to take charge of me, I started looking for real air to breathe. Then I couldn’t find that curtain in front of the door. Then I could, and I was outside, past the bag check and that bruiser with the tattooed neck.
It was still dark out here. It ought to be broad daylight by now, but it wasn’t. People were still lined up, waiting to get in, taking pictures of each other with their phones, drinking things out of sacks.
And I was out here, gasping for breath, holding on to a parking meter. Then it hit me hard. They’d left me.
What did that feel like? It was just like Halloween night in Alyssa’s bedroom with her mother blocking the only door. That moment when I heard Natalie’s car start up and drive away over the mashed leaves. I was being left behind again. Dumped.
But it wasn’t the same at all. It was totally different. And I wasn’t in Alyssa’s bedroom. Far from it. I was standing all by myself on a sidewalk in New York City, dressed to kill. And I could be.
Here came the panic again, and I was ready to run into the street. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t take much to break the heel off one of these ridiculous shoes. Then where would I be?
A cab or two went past, down Second Avenue, and I thought—take a cab. It can’t be that far. It can’t cost that much. I pulled the bag off my arm and unzipped it and poked around in it. But of course my money was in my backpack, at Aunt Lily’s.
So I just began to walk back the way we’d come, along the line of people hoping to get into Fabian’s. It was colder now, a lot. A sharp night breeze blew straight through my sequins, and my arms were bare.
On Seventy-second Street dog walkers were out and people were carrying newspapers out of the deli. I practiced regular breathing and not looking anybody in the eye. I so looked like a girl who’d just left Fabian’s by herself.
Look like you live it, I heard in my head. And Spence saying, That’s not you, is it? Is it? And Alyssa saying, High school goes on too long. And what had Tanya said? You don’t just give everything up and walk away, do you? Do you? You hang on to your life. Mirror here, mirror there, Natalie chanted in my head. Mirror, mirror everywhere.
My feet were killing me. I couldn’t remember when I’d sat down last, except in the restroom stall. I could hear Makenzie in my head, clearly—
I feel reasonably sure I won’t be able to walk a step in these shoes.
I had to sit down a minute, anywhere. The shoes were cutting my feet in four separate places. Right there an iron gate opened onto a postage-stamp garden, and steps up to somebody’s front door. A stoop. I turned in and sat down on the bottom step and tucked my skirt. I sank into a pool of darkness. The next people walking past didn’t even notice me there. Invisible again.
There were still all these voices in my head, and I couldn’t untangle them. Shut up, I thought. Shut up. Shut up. I had to figure this out on my own. I had to get to what was real and decide what I needed to do. But I was no good at deciding things. And terrible at being alone.
I wanted to go home. It was Halloween night again, and I was drifting in the dark, trying to get to Linden Street. Or to Dad’s in White Plains. I was out in the dark on my own again. For somebody who’d do anything to belong, why did I keep ending up alone?
And one more thing just like Halloween night: I didn’t have any money.
The step, the stoop was freezing. I had to go back to Aunt Lily’s. Of course they were there. Did I expect them to wait around till I got away from Alyssa? What if they ran into Spence like I did? Of course they left. They hightailed it out of there. I ought to get over myself.
I had to go back to Aunt Lily’s for my backpack and my money and the train ticket and my normal clothes. How could I go home looking like some little . . . club bunny? Some little wannabe. And how far could I get in these heels?
It was only another long block and a half to Aunt Lily’s canopy. No doorman at this hour, and the front doors were locked tight. I rang the bell. While I w
aited, I looked out under the canopy to see if there was any light in the sky yet. Any daylight over there in the east. But the night was still dark blue velvet.
I must have known then.
There wasn’t any dawn yet, but surely something was dawning on me. Something had happened to time, something to do with Tanya. She could tamper with time. It was one of her talents. It always had been, even before . . . the apple tree.
She could make moments—whole hours—stand still. She used to do it at lunch all the time. And those hours we’d spent at Aunt Lily’s, over dinner, then trying on all those clothes, right up to the moment we came down in the elevator. Hours and hours. Then at Fabian’s we’d been there ages before I ran into Spence. This was time Tanya had stolen. It had to do with the hold she had on you. It had to do with always getting what she wanted. And we’d helped her. We went right along, living in the moment, her moment. I did.
Now I knew that much. But it wasn’t much. It wasn’t enough. I rang and rang the bell. Finally the night man came out of wherever he was. He was mostly unbuttoned, with a newspaper in his hand. This morning’s paper? Last night’s? He unlocked the door.
“I’m—”
“Go on up,” he said, and I was in.
Halfway up in the elevator I wished I’d asked him if Miss Garland’s . . . other nieces were already home. Maybe that’s why he’d let me in without a hassle.
The elevator opened on thirteen.
And history repeated. Everything had been going in a circle all along. The door to the back apartment, the old movie star’s apartment, was cracked open again. Again somebody was standing there, just inside in the shadow. That flash of fiery red hair, or fiery red wig. A faded-out apron. No face. The door closed too soon.
I whirled around to the other one, Aunt Lily’s door. It too was open a crack, and on it a Post-it note, stuck at eye level where I couldn’t miss it—
Kerry,
We’re in the penthouse.
Come straight up, one floor.
TTKU
Tanya
TTKU? Oh. Try to keep up.
But the front door to Aunt Lily’s apartment was open. I could go in and change and get my backpack. I could decide for myself what to do before I went up to the penthouse. Or not. This was my time. I was getting so tired in this night that wouldn’t end. But this was my time.
I pushed inside, under the crystal chandelier, and there were too many of me in all the mirrored walls. It was like a mirrored birdcage in here. Too many million winking sequins and all my bare arms, goose pimply from the night air. The rhinestones in my ears were all the stars on Fabian’s ceiling. And all the little purses on all my arms. Empty. Every one of them.
Something about this space was a warning not to go any farther. But I didn’t hear that. I leaned back against the door, and heard it click shut. I wandered into the big living room. The only light came from the entrance hall, but there were the people on the walls, the French clowns and the masked ladies, almost moving. I walked on, around things, through doors. I never learned the layout of that apartment. There was always another hall, another door. Who knew where that back hall off the kitchen went? Then I was in the hallway with the poster women, Rhonda Randolph in Technicolor and Dovima and Carmen and all the others, dimmer and dimmer down the hall.
A light came from the other end, and that must be Lily Garland’s bedroom. A faint lily of the valley scent hung in the air. Had we left the light on in there?
Yes, it was her bedroom with the Cleopatra barge bed and the heavy curtains that were probably still blocking out the night. We’d thrown only a few things around in this room. We’d done our major trying on and dressing in—
Somebody was right there. In the door to the dressing room. A figure stood there in the low light. I was barely inside the bedroom, and there she was at the other doorway. This was worse than that moment in the kitchen. Way worse.
She had me cut off from escape. No, she didn’t. I was standing in the door to the rest of the apartment. I’d cut her off.
And she was holding my backpack.
Could it be Rhonda Randolph’s maid? But I’d just seen her shut her front door. She couldn’t be here now. Could she? And this woman didn’t have red hair. At least not at the moment. Her hair was white and sparse. Flyaway hair. She stood there in a long plain robe with a fringed sash tied around her waist. And she wore glasses with tortoiseshell frames on a chain. She was like any scary old woman, except for the designer glasses. Tall and thin and wrinkled and colorless. Witchy. No makeup.
And she was holding my backpack.
“Who are you?” she said.
I was doomed. Doomed. Doomed. I kept turning up in the wrong house where I wasn’t supposed to be. Then I got caught by women in bathrobes. I would have thought how unfair this is if I hadn’t been more scared than I’d ever—
“I said, who are you?” Her glasses flashed. Otherwise I might have seen something in her eyes. I felt it anyway. Fear. I wasn’t the only one. She took a step back. Her skirts stirred.
“Kerry Williamson,” I said as history kept repeating, word for word. I came close to telling her I was Miss Garland’s niece. I came this close.
“This is yours, then.” She meant the backpack in her old, papery hands. I was still too scared to think straight. I could hardly hear her for the pounding of my heart under the underwire. But maybe I had as much right to be here as she did. She’d been through my backpack. I’d almost caught her at it. She’d seen the copy of Lord of the Flies and my name on the CVS card—all my stuff, my comb and—
“You weren’t in the car,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question, and I knew the car she meant, the BMW. Tanya’s SUV.
No, I wasn’t one of them. And never had been. But I was blocking the door, and she looked like she wanted to make a run for it.
“How do you come to be here?” she said in an old, tired voice.
“Tanya texted me,” I murmured. I’d been eighteen all evening. Now I was fifteen again.
“How could that be?” the old woman said. “How could she do that?”
“The contract on her phone hadn’t been canceled yet,” I said, in a smaller voice still.
There was a sound now above us, something like rolling thunder. A sound of thunder coming in waves, far off.
“Listen,” the old woman said. She dropped my backpack and pointed to the ceiling with an immensely long finger. I remembered all the fingers pointing to the ceiling and the stars at Fabian’s, all the young fingers.
“What is it?” I asked in a whisper.
“Them,” she said. “The three of them. Roller-skating. We used to skate up there years and years ago when I was a girl. My girlfriends and I. Jackie. Lee.”
Did she meant that Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie were upstairs in the penthouse . . . roller-skating? I remembered that day when I came to school all upset after they’d left me behind in Alyssa’s house, and they were wearing pajamas. Pajamas. I remembered that for some reason.
“Go now.” The old woman’s hands jittered. “Here, take your backpack and go. We’ll be all right as long as we can hear them skating. Use the time before it runs out. Call your family and go.”
“I don’t know where my phone is,” I said. I could feel her panic, cold on my face. There was enough for both of us. She looked over at the old ivory rotary dial phone by the bed, which was dead.
“Just go then. Straight home.”
“Not like this,” I said. “I need my own clothes.” She blinked at my sequins. She probably hadn’t even noticed what I was wearing. “There’s no time to change. You don’t have that kind of time. Grab your things and stick them in your backpack.”
“They’re in there.” Meaning the dressing room. I still wanted to keep my distance. I was still scared of her. I didn’t know what was real.
She moved aside. “Hurry.” Her voice was like leaves blowing along a gutter. Dry, dry leaves. “Hurry.”
I had to pick through e
verything we’d left on the floor. All the things we’d rejected, the not-quite-rights and the wrong sizes. You could hear the far-off thunder in here too. I found my flip-flops, and then my school skirt and top. I decided to forget my old underwear. Some crazy voice babbling inside me, some crazy person wanted to keep the underwire bra.
It was brighter in here, dazzling, and there were all the mirrors. Next to my sweatshirt Makenzie’s skirt was in a wad on the floor, a little kilt-style skirt with a buckle.
I’d just noticed it when the old woman pointed down past me. She was standing over me, between me and the thunder. She’d been in such a panic to rush me out of here. Now she said, “Pick it up.”
I obeyed her. I picked up Makenzie’s kilt.
“Smell it,” she whispered.
I held it up to my face, the handful of tartan wool. It smelled like it had been in a fire. It smelled of burning, but not leaves in a gutter. Worse than that. Way worse. It cut my eyes. It was awful, and I dropped it.
“Go right now,” the old woman said in my ear. And I went.
I couldn’t run. In these heels? But I made tracks, and she followed me, all the way up the poster hallway. We were in the glaring front entrance now, lots of us. She reached past me and got the front door open.
Then we were out in the shadowy hallway with the Chinese wallpaper and the shaded lights. Again, she reached past me to hit the elevator bell with a long finger. We were this close.
“Do you know who I am?” I felt her breath on my face.
“No,” I said. “Are you the old movie star’s maid?”
And at this exact second, the door to the back apartment opened, more than a crack. Standing there was the old movie star’s maid, in the faded apron and the flame-colored wig. She gestured to the old woman to come into the back apartment. Quick.
But the woman’s hand had closed over my wrist. I’d been afraid all along she’d do something like this—hold me back or something. Grab me. Where was the elevator? But she had something else to say, one last thing.
“I have lived a long time,” she said. “And I am very near the end. But I have never known anything like this before, never seen anything like this.”