by P. J. Night
Her parents were silent.
“She’s such a drama queen!” Emmy exclaimed as tears sprung to her eyes. She didn’t even feel like finishing her meat loaf, which was one of her favorite meals.
“Oh, honey,” her mom said. “That sounds really hard.” Her dad nodded in agreement.
“Did your day have a high point?” her dad asked. Emmy had to think hard to find something good to say.
“My math homework was really easy,” she said reluctantly.
“That’s great,” her mom said. “You’ve been doing really well in math this year. Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you do something nice for yourself tonight? Since you’ve finished your homework, why don’t I set up the TV in your room and you can watch a movie before you go to sleep?”
Emmy had to admit that sounded pretty good.
“Can I watch it too?” Sam asked.
“For a while,” Emmy said.
Sam smiled, pleased. “Hey, cool nails,” he said to his sister.
“Yeah, honey,” their mom added. “That’s a bold new look for you.”
“Thanks,” Emmy said, holding out her fingers and admiring them.
Later, as she got under the covers and her mom popped in a DVD, Emmy felt like she could stay in bed forever. In fact, it felt so good to be in bed that she found herself nodding off and falling asleep before the movie even really got going.
She had crazy dreams, bits and pieces of weirdness that she wouldn’t even be able to remember—much less describe—when she woke up. But one part she would remember. It was about Lizzy.
Lizzy, sitting at her kitchen table, a bowl of strawberries next to her and a bunch of rainbow-colored permanent markers strewn about. She didn’t look like her usual carefree self. She looked horrible—terribly unhappy. She clutched a bottle of black nail polish reluctantly but so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.
Slowly, Lizzy pried open the bottle and began painting her thumbnail black. The way she was acting, it was as if someone was making her do it, as if she was being forced to proceed but was trying to fight it. Once she had applied a few strokes, Lizzy held out her thumbnail and examined it, frowning. She repeated this procedure for each of her ten nails and when she was finished, she held out her hands and grimaced.
“What, you don’t like it?” Emmy asked, looking on. She felt wild and cruel. “I think it looks cool.”
Emmy woke up with a start and tried to fit together the pieces of her dream. Too often, remembering her dreams was like holding a handful of dry sand—when she tried, the sand just slowly slipped through her fingers. All she could remember about her dream was that it was about Lizzy, and that Lizzy was very unhappy about her fingernails. But Emmy remembered very clearly what she had said to Lizzy at the end of the dream:
What, you don’t like it? I think it looks cool.
Those were the very words Lizzy had said to her after the horrible haircut. Emmy remembered feeling very happy in the dream . . . happy about Lizzy’s unhappiness. She wasn’t proud of this feeling, but there it was. Maybe that’s why I had the dream, she figured. I’m wishing bad things on Lizzy. She felt bad about that, too, but couldn’t help it.
There was something else she couldn’t help doing. Something she had never done before. She got out of bed and peered out her window and into Lizzy’s room, breaking their rule against spying on each other. Lizzy seemed to be getting ready for school, just like Emmy. She was taking books off her desk and putting them in her backpack. She definitely didn’t see Emmy, which was how Emmy wanted it. Forget about the no-spying rule, she thought. She’s been so horrible to me she deserves it.
Later that day Emmy sat with Hannah at lunch like usual, and like usual she felt lonely. She didn’t eat much. Her mouth was starting to feel sore from her braces being tightened yesterday. She looked over at Lizzy’s table. Sophie and Cadence were looking at Lizzy’s hands and laughing. Lizzy seemed embarrassed and looked like she was trying to hide her hands. What was going on? Emmy had to know. She got up to bus her tray and walked slowly past their table, glad for once to be ignored by them.
“It’s just really not your color,” Sophie was saying to Lizzy with a note of disdain in her voice. “What were you even thinking?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Lizzy answered. “I got in a really weird mood.”
“So you went out and bought black nail polish?” Cadence asked, incredulous.
“Um, no,” Lizzy muttered. “I used a black Sharpie.”
Then Emmy got a glimpse of the focus of the conversation: Lizzy’s fingernails. They were black. It was a very dramatic look against her pale skin.
And Lizzy also looked sort of horrible, actually, like she hadn’t been sleeping. For a minute Emmy felt bad for her. She knew how it felt to be spoken to that way. And she really missed Lizzy. So when she saw Lizzy in the hall a few minutes later as they both headed to English class, she gave Lizzy a gentle nudge and slowed down to her pace. Lizzy walked pretty slowly with the crutches, and today Sophie and Cadence weren’t carrying her bags or helping her. Would they really be ignoring her just because she had black fingernails?
“How are you?” Emmy asked, trying to sound casual. But Lizzy didn’t hear her. She seemed distracted.
Emmy repeated herself. “How are you?” she asked Lizzy a little louder this time. Lizzy slowly looked her way, a totally blank expression on her face.
“Hell-oooo?” Emmy waved her hand in front of Lizzy’s face. “Earth to Lizzy, oops, I mean Liz,” she said. She wanted Lizzy to notice her fingernails.
“How crazy is it that we both decided to try black nail polish on the same day?” Emmy asked Lizzy, laughing nervously.
But Lizzy still ignored her as she walked into the classroom.
So Lizzy didn’t see the look on Emmy’s face as her expression of hurt and anger at being ignored suddenly melted into shock as she began to make the connection between yesterday and today.
The buying of the black nail polish, the applying of the black nail polish to the little doll, the dream in which Lizzy was putting on the black nail polish as if being forced.
It’s like whatever happens to the doll, happens to Lizzy, Emmy thought.
The next thing she thought was that she was crazy for thinking such a ridiculous thing. As she sat down in her usual seat behind Lizzy, she took her notebook and English textbook out of her backpack and listened to the chatter around her.
“I broke my leg in third grade,” a boy named Max was saying to Lizzy.
“How’d you do it?” Lizzy asked Max.
“Skiing in Vermont,” Max said. “How did you break yours?”
“I fell down the stairs,” Lizzy answered, rolling her eyes. “I’m such a klutz,” she added.
Whatever happens to the doll does happen to Lizzy, Emmy thought again. And this time the thought was like a bomb exploding inside her head. She couldn’t take a full breath.
Spinning the doll around on my desk made Lizzy throw up. Sam threw the doll down the stairs, and she broke her leg. I painted the doll’s fingernails with black nail polish and Lizzy did the same to her fingernails.
She’d forgotten until this moment that the woman in the shop had told her to give the doll a name, and Emmy had said the first name that popped into her mind: Lizzy.
What a doll, she thought, remembering the phrase her grandmother sometimes used when someone went out of their way to be nice. But in Emmy’s mind, at this moment, the phrase sounded nothing like her grandmother’s expression. It sounded sinister. It was indeed a special kind of doll that could do special kinds of things.
And then one thought reverberated in Emmy’s head as she directed it like an invisible laser beam right at Lizzy’s sassy and stupid short blond haircut:
You’ll be sorry for what you’ve done to me, Lizzy Draper. You’ll be sorry for what you’ve done
.
CHAPTER 8
On the walk home Emmy thought about Sophie and Cadence. Besides being angry with Lizzy, she realized just how angry she was with Lizzy’s new best friends, too. It seemed like they had influenced Lizzy to not be friends with Emmy—that they had swooped down and plucked Lizzy away from the little nest of friendship she and Emmy had once shared, like she had seen birds of prey do on the nature channel. Everything had been going fine until Lizzy had become friends with them, at which point she had totally blown Emmy off.
I just want things to be the way they were, Emmy thought. I just want it to be me and Lizzy, best friends, no one else. Lizzy’s the only friend I need, and I want to be the only friend she needs.
And now, astonishingly, there seemed to be a way to make anything happen, as far as Lizzy was concerned. How could this little doll have such magical powers? Emmy knew there had been something very strange about that woman in the back room at Zim Zam.
She also knew this: Sophie and Cadence were mean, and so it would be easy to turn them against Lizzy. It was just a matter of how. Then Emmy could come to Lizzy’s rescue and be her friend again. The only friend she needed.
And tonight was the perfect night to begin. It was Thursday night and the beginning of a long weekend. She’d overheard Lizzy in the hall telling someone she was having a sleepover party at her house that night, with Sophie and Cadence. The sting of what had happened at one of Lizzy’s sleepovers last weekend, and not being invited to this one that would be going on just a few yards from her own room, gave way to a different feeling, and a plan took shape in Emmy’s head.
After dinner that night Emmy stuck her head into Sam’s room. He was at his desk, drawing.
“Hi!” she said, just a little more friendly and cheerful than the usual way she spoke to him. He looked up, surprised and, it seemed, more than a little pleased.
“Hi,” he said. “What’re you doing?”
“I came to see if you wanted to play,” she said.
Sam’s face lit up. “Sure. Let’s play zoo,” he suggested, referring to a game they had played with their stuffed animals when they were younger. Sam dutifully began organizing the huge pile of stuffed animals as if they lived in a zoo.
“Actually, I have another special toy to play with,” Emmy told Sam.
“A stuffed animal?” Sam asked.
“Not really. It’s a doll,” Emmy said. Sam wrinkled his nose.
“No, it’s that new doll. You know, the little one? It’s a cool game, I promise,” Emmy added quickly, trying to sell Sam on the idea of playing with it. “Look.” She ran into her room, grabbed the doll, and rushed back into Sam’s room, wiggling it around in the air.
“Okay,” Sam said. “What’s the game?”
“Um, I don’t have a name for it,” Emmy began, “But let’s play in my room, okay?” Sam nodded a bit reluctantly but grabbed a few of his favorite stuffed animals and then followed Emmy into her room. And that’s when Emmy took a good look out her window . . . right into Lizzy’s room.
Lizzy, Sophie, and Cadence were all there. A big-screen television sat in the corner of her room. Emmy wondered if Lizzy’s parents had bought it for their darling, popular Liz as a get-well-soon present, or if they were just allowing her to borrow one from another room for her big sleepover with her real best friends.
From what Emmy could see, the three girls were gearing up to watch television, play video games, and eat junk food, which was available in huge amounts. Three sleeping bags were spread out in front of the television. Emmy could feel the expression on her face morph into a scowl as she remembered all the times she had spread out her sleeping bag on Lizzy’s floor.
Emmy turned her attention back to Sam. “Look what I can do.” Emmy threw the doll up high and caught it. Sam smiled, impressed.
“Now you try,” Emmy said, tossing the doll to Sam and then peering out her window again. Sam gladly accepted the challenge and began throwing the doll up and catching it. A few times he threw it so high that the doll hit the ceiling. And a few times Sam missed and the doll landed with a thud on the hardwood floor.
As Sam tossed, threw, and twisted the little doll around, Emmy continued to watch what was happening in Lizzy’s room. The girls were sprawled out and relaxed on their sleeping bags, but then something crazy started happening. Lizzy sprang up and began jumping up and down as high as she could, cast and all. She jumped and jumped like she was on a pogo stick, her cast banging on the floor.
Cadence’s body language suggested that she was telling Lizzy to sit down, and Lizzy sat down sheepishly. But about five seconds later she started jumping again. A few times she lost her balance and fell hard on the ground. Now Sophie and Cadence were staring at her as if she’d completely lost her mind.
Emmy turned her attention back to Sam, who had started making the doll do a funny little dance.
“What else can you make it do?” Emmy prodded her brother, who had begun making a stuffed monkey stand on its head. He shrugged. He seemed to be losing interest in playing with the doll and was more interested in his animals. Emmy had to do something.
“How about making the doll stand on its head like your monkey?” Emmy asked. She knew it was a lame little game, but Sam was just a little boy and he seemed happy to have the company and to please Emmy.
“Yeah!” Sam said, and began balancing the doll on its head, where it stayed for a few moments before eventually falling over.
Time to look out the window again, Emmy thought with glee.
And what a scene it was. First Lizzy was doing a weird little dance, her arms and legs flailing about as though she were a puppet on a string. And then, without a pause, she went straight into a headstand, balancing awhile before falling and knocking over a bowl of potato chips with her big cast. The chips landed all over the floor and in the sleeping bags.
Sophie got up to clean up the chips, looking extremely put out. Maybe they won’t be able to sleep with all the crumbs in their sleeping bags, Emmy thought. Oh well. Too bad.
And then Lizzy went right into another headstand, her rainbow cast sticking high up in the air. Sophie and Cadence stared at her, their mouths wide open in shock. Then Cadence whispered something to Sophie and they both laughed.
After her second headstand, Lizzy went back to her place on the bed, like she didn’t know what had come over her all of a sudden. Like someone else had taken over her body. She sat down for a minute and looked at the television screen.
Oh, no, thought Emmy. I’m not done with you yet.
Emmy turned around. “My turn!” she crowed to Sam. By now she had positioned herself in such a way that she could see into Lizzy’s window and play with Sam at the same time. “Look what I can do with it.” She threw the doll against the wall so hard that it bounced off and landed with a loud plunk on the floor. Emmy picked it up and did it again as Sam laughed and laughed. This was the most fun Emmy could remember having with her brother.
Then, like a jack-in-the-box, Lizzy popped off the couch and ran straight into the wall, hard. Then she collapsed on the floor in a heap.
Sophie hit a button on the remote control, pausing whatever it was they were watching. Sophie and Cadence continued to look annoyed, and they looked like they were yelling at her. Emmy could just imagine their snobby voices: Would you stop! Seriously, what is your problem? But Lizzy ran into the wall again and again. Depending on how Emmy threw the doll, sometimes Lizzy would slide feet first, sometimes she’d slam her shoulder into the wall. Each time, she hit the wall so hard that she’d fall down. But each time, she’d get up and do it again. She looked like a little kid who wasn’t getting enough attention and had resorted to doing crazy tricks.
Finally, she stopped and sat there on the floor, confused. She looked dazed. More specifically, Emmy thought, she looks like a cartoon character who has just hit its head. Stars and swirls might as well be c
ircling above her. For a split second Emmy worried that maybe she went a little too far. After all, what if she had given Lizzy a concussion? But then Emmy shoved the thought out of her head. Lizzy was just getting what she deserved, Emmy figured.
Then Lizzy’s mom entered the room. She looked concerned and more than a little perplexed. She bent down next to Lizzy, and Cadence and Sophie looked like they were explaining something to her. They still looked totally annoyed, but also a little scared.
How’s your fabulous sleepover going now? Emmy asked Lizzy in her head. Guess it’s not going exactly the way you’d planned. Guess you hadn’t planned on being a total spaz.
Lizzy sat up straight and looked like she was trying to collect herself. Then Emmy saw Cadence and Sophie rolling up their sleeping bags and putting on their backpacks. They walked slowly out of the room as Lizzy’s mom gently tried to put Lizzy in bed and tuck her in under the covers. She must have thought she had a fever or something. She must have thought she was delirious.
And that seemed to be the end of Lizzy’s sleepover party. Emmy laughed out loud, forgetting that Sam was still in the room. She couldn’t help herself. It was probably the last time Cadence and Sophie would ever talk to Lizzy again.
Emmy went to sleep that night unable to stop herself from feeling wildly pleased by her actions with the little doll. What a fool Lizzy had made of herself at her own sleepover party!
The next morning Emmy felt more energetic than she had in a long time. She enjoyed her weekend. She was in such a good mood she offered to help her mom do the grocery shopping and her dad sort the recycling. She also helped Sam with his homework, which pleased her parents to no end. All the while she kept the doll on her desk. She was just waiting for inspiration. What else could she do to Lizzy with this magic little doll?
Monday morning finally rolled around and for once she found herself not dreading going to school. As she approached the school building, she noticed Lizzy making her way through the front door on her crutches . . . alone. Where was her usual entourage? They were nowhere to be seen.