Rules for Stealing Stars

by Corey Ann Haydu

  The light is different than it looks from outside the closet. Warmer. More orange. Like fireplace light or candlelight or the light that comes from a perfect New Hampshire sunset that you watch from the woods, through the trees, out camping with Mom and Dad when Mom and Dad used to take us on camping trips during summers when Mom was doing well.

  Then I see that the glass ceiling fixture looks all wrong. It’s clear and delicate-looking, like a bubble about to be popped. It does not look anymore like something that has been screwed into the ceiling and has gathered dust for months. And the lightbulb inside doesn’t look like a lightbulb anymore. It looks like the sun. A fiery one. A little terrifying, like it could fall from where it’s floating above my head and crash into flames around me.

  It’s levitating and glowing and sort of bouncing from corner to corner in a slow, deliberate dance. Magic.

  No diorama necessary, I guess. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do anything in here without a diorama and without the rest of my sisters, but if anything, it’s even stranger and sparklier than Eleanor’s closet. It’s not an imitation of a place in the real world. It’s a brand-new thing, something I’ve never seen before. I knew orange and pink and gold existed, and I guess I’d seen them bleed into each other in certain sunsets, but never like this.

  This is a new color. And a new quality of light. A new series of movements.

  I close my eyes, like maybe the vision has something to do with my tiredness or the fact that I have glasses I got and broke and never really wore. But when I open them again, the lightbulb is even rounder, pinker, oranger. It’s happening, I think.

  I throw the door open. It’s not that I don’t want to spend hours looking at the transformed, moving light. I do. But I also want the world to make sense, and with the door open, it does again.

  With the door open, the light is a lightbulb. The fixture is dirty ceramic, a gray that used to be white. The closet is once again a closet with dust bunnies and water damage on the walls.

  My closet is magic too, I think, over and over on a loop. My closet is even more magical, I think after another minute. I don’t need dioramas. I have something else. I don’t know what, but it’s something all mine.

  Or maybe I only have a magical lightbulb. Who knows? Even that would be enough.

  I’m thrilled and terrified at the same time, and I didn’t know how wonderful these two things could feel when mixed together. It’s like the first time I ate peanut butter and honey, or when Eleanor made me an apple and cheese and mustard sandwich.

  I step all the way out of the closet and slam the door shut. My legs won’t stop twitching, even though I take deep breaths. I bend my knees, doing weird aerobics the way Mom used to do in the living room sometimes when it was blizzarding outside and she couldn’t go for a run.

  Mom hasn’t gone for a run in a long time.

  “Eleanor?” I call out. She and Astrid should be home by now. It must be pretty late, and they wouldn’t stay away all night, I don’t think. They wouldn’t do a sleepover without asking permission, even though they could get away with it. But she doesn’t answer. “Astrid?” I try. I’m not even sure how loud I’m calling. It could be a whisper, for all I know. I’m too overwhelmed to really assess anything. But Astrid doesn’t answer either. I mean, she barely hears me when we’re in the same room and I’m making eye contact with her, let alone when we’re in different rooms doing entirely different things.

  “Marla . . . ,” I say. This time I know it’s a whisper. I’m not sure I actually want Marla to come running, but I’m sort of out of options, and at least if she were here, I wouldn’t be alone with whatever it is that’s happening. “Marla!” I call, louder this time.

  And of course it’s Marla who appears, pushing my door open when she hears her name. Her eyes are rimmed in pink. It’s from crying, although there was a period of time a few months ago where Eleanor was sporting that look on purpose. Someone told her pink eye shadow was in. She didn’t believe us when we said it looked weird.

  Same went for the black eye shadow phase, when it constantly looked like she had been punched in the face.

  “We do our best to learn stuff without Mom, you know?” Astrid said when I was making fun of Eleanor. It shut me right up, that’s for sure. I almost tell Marla that I’m thinking about all this right now, but it’s not the right thing to say, and I know it. She’s sad and I’m freaked out and exhilarated, and our sisters will be home any minute, so I need to get out what’s happened now so that I can fight the impulse to tell Eleanor and Astrid that I broke the rules.

  “I did it,” I say. I can’t put words to the specifics, so I take her hand and try to pull her into the closet.

  “Stop! What are you doing? Don’t grab at me!” Marla has a hitch in her voice, confirming the crying she’s been doing since I left her with Mom. Between Marla and Mom, we could fill all of Blue Lake with tears.

  Of course the lake down the street is called Blue Lake. As Astrid’s always saying, most people in the world have a serious lack of imagination, and I guess New Hampshire is no exception.

  Meanwhile, I haven’t cried at all. I couldn’t fill a thimble, let alone a whole lake. I considered doing it when we moved, but decided I didn’t really need to.

  “Are you okay?” Marla says. I’m not sure Marla’s ever asked me that. She’s usually very worried about her own big huge feelings, and not so much concerned about anyone else’s. A little bit of me warms up inside, seeing her eyebrows all scrunched together.

  “Something happened in my closet,” I say.

  “No,” Marla says with some force, as if she could change what’s already happened by saying No with enough feeling behind it. “You’re not anything special. Your closet’s not anything special. I don’t know what you think you saw, but it probably wasn’t real, and you should probably forget all about it.” Even Marla knows how flat her argument sounds. In the pause after her words, I reach out a hand and put it on her shoulder, the way Eleanor might. Marla leaps away from me.

  She doesn’t leave my room, though, doesn’t cover her ears with her hands and scream at me to shut up, which she has definitely done before, so I think I’m allowed to keep going, even if it stings a little.

  I’m trying to work out the feelings, inside and out, and I need to say them to one of my sisters. “It was warm and strange. It was better than what’s out here.”

  Marla doesn’t reply, but her eyes go wide and glassy, and I wonder if maybe she’s about to have another sobbing situation right here and now. Her fists are tight at her sides and I should stop talking, even if she isn’t telling me to.

  Maybe I’m a very selfish person or am so stunned that my mouth won’t listen to my brain, but I keep going. It’s like I shook up a can of soda and opened it, and now that the words and feelings and complications are fizzing out, it’s not like I can twist the top back on to make it stop. It’s too late.

  “It was weird,” I say. “Like a dream or a nightmare. But not scary, except sort of scary, because it was in my closet and I didn’t know what was happening, and it would have been pretty if I was, like, outside watching the sky? Or if I had made it come to life from a diorama, but I don’t know what might happen in there. It has a mind of its own. Eleanor’s seems all comfortable and safe. Mine’s different. It’s impulsive or something. It’s in control.”

  “It’s so unfair,” Marla says before throwing her hands in the air and stalking out of my room. I don’t call after her; I wouldn’t know what to say.

  I’m on my own again, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid. But the shakes in my leg have stopped, and a tiny bit of that warm-sun-lightbulb seems to be inside me now. In my veins, sort of. Or my heart. I guess I’m not sure. It’s the beginning of a feeling and not a whole, complete, expressible thing yet.

  It’s almost nice enough to make me want to venture back into the closet, close the door again, stare at that lightbulb that maybe-possibly isn’t a lightbulb, and see what else I
can get. It feels like I swallowed a bit of the warm light. Apparently I needed that. I’ve been cold inside since Mom got sick again. This ugly moment in time comes with its own weather pattern. It comes with a chilly temperature down to my bones and a tightness in my chest and a funny dry taste in my mouth, like I’m craving a gulp of water.

  So the warmth in the closet, the orange light, the hypnotic dance it did above my head, felt especially good. I want more.

  But not alone.

  Eight

  It used to be that we would all sleep through the night. It used to be that once my lights were off and my door was closed, I would be all alone until the next morning.

  I guess it’s not that way anymore.

  Sometime after midnight I wake up and Astrid is sitting at the foot of my bed, and Eleanor is hovering above me.

  “What did I tell you?” Eleanor says. I am waking up from a dream about frogs and princesses, so it takes me a while to figure out what she means.

  “Mmmmm,” I say.

  “I said not to go in any closets while we were gone,” Eleanor says. Astrid doesn’t say anything. She does, however, keep a warm hand on my foot, which has snuck out from under the covers. I decide it’s her way of telling me she’s not as mad at me as Eleanor is, or maybe even that Eleanor isn’t as mad at me as she seems to be.

  “You left. You wanted ice cream,” I say. It’s not an accusation, it’s the truth.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Eleanor says. “Marla woke up with nightmares because you went in there alone. She almost went and got Mom. Not okay! Didn’t you listen to Astrid? Didn’t you hear her say that we are maybe all supposed to be in there together? Why’d you have to go and ruin that?”

  “I didn’t ruin anything! I just gave it a try, to see if mine was special too. So we wouldn’t miss out. We can all go in it now!” I say. Maybe I am better at standing up to my sisters when I’m half awake and partly dreaming, because my voice is clearer and stronger than ever before.

  “We trusted you, and you went ahead and did this anyway. We should never have let you in to begin with,” Eleanor says. A small part of me believes her, that I was being bad when I tried out my own closet without them, but then I remember all the summers that they’ve been going into their closet without me. And the last few weeks when they’ve left me alone in the drafty kitchen at breakfast, wondering if Mom has coffee or wine in her mug.

  Even the way they disappeared to get ice cream was wrong. If they didn’t want me to go in alone, they shouldn’t have left me alone. That’s what I’m thinking, even if those aren’t the exact words that get out.

  “It’s my closet,” I say. “Marla shouldn’t have told you, anyway. She had no right to tell you. I thought she was on my team.” Eleanor shakes her head like I don’t understand anything at all, and Astrid squeezes my foot, which either means it’s okay or stop talking. I stop talking.

  “We’re all on the same team. We’re on team Don’t Get Hurt in Some Scary, Unknown Closet That We Know Nothing About,” Eleanor says. “It could be like mine, or it could be something all its own.” She is speaking too loudly for midnight. Astrid tries to shush her, but Astrid is not really the shushing type, so it comes out less like a shush and more like a sigh. “The closets aren’t all good, you know,” Eleanor goes on. Her eyes are slits, and she has the same look on her face she used when we told scary stories last summer using flashlights and whisper voices.

  “Don’t freak her out,” Astrid says in her very quietest voice.

  “There have to be rules! Her closet might be bad like yours!” Eleanor practically yells. I shush her too. My shush comes out more like a regular shush, but Eleanor doesn’t like it, and she wrinkles her nose in my direction.

  “Whose closet is bad?” I say. They said the other closets didn’t work, not that the other closets were something to be really, truly scared of.

  “You think we’re telling you more secrets now?” Eleanor says. She’s too close to shouting, and if she doesn’t quiet down, Mom or Dad might wake up. “We’re wishing we could un-tell you secrets. We’re not about to tell you or Marla more now.”

  “You said Marla and I aren’t a team anyway,” I say. But I always knew we were, and I feel a little bit glad to not be the only one on the outside.

  “Enough with the teams.” Eleanor rolls her eyes, because the twins have never understood why Marla and I would be jealous of their automatic allegiance. Eleanor and Astrid take it for granted, how special they are together, how bonded they are, how full and bright and shiny their private world together seems.

  In some ways, Eleanor and Astrid’s twinship is its own magic closet, filled with mysterious things no one else can see or experience.

  “Show me what happened in there,” Eleanor says. I’m not able to argue with her serious tone, and I think maybe if I tell her all about it, she’ll be excited with me instead of disappointed and angry. So I start describing the lightbulb and the orange glow.

  The warmth.

  “No,” Eleanor says, walking to the closet and opening the door with a flourish. “Show me.” She steps into the closet, turns on the light, and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s sweating. I wonder if it’s because she’s nervous about the closet or if she had a Mom encounter when she came back from seeing her secret boyfriend. Most of Eleanor’s sweating is Mom-related. Astrid and I follow her, and I shut the door behind me.

  “What did you bring in with you earlier?” Astrid says.

  “I didn’t bring anything,” I say. Eleanor looks at me funny. Astrid coughs.

  We wait for the closet to do its thing, and soon enough the light turns a pinkish color and the orb spins and lowers and the whole thing is much more frenetic and hyper than the lovely, slow dance from earlier. The light flickers a speedy rhythm, like a strobe light; then the spinning hastens and the orb that used to be a lightbulb shrinks to the size of a dragonfly, grows wings, and buzzes around the room, goading us on. Eleanor presses herself against the wall and looks like she wants to leave, but I chase the bug that used to be a light. It’s like trying to swat a mosquito when it’s buzzing in your ears, but instead of waving my arms around to scare it into leaving, I’m waving my arms around trying to outrace it and get it cupped in my palms.

  “I don’t like this!” Eleanor says. “This isn’t relaxing! This isn’t why we do this!”

  Astrid sits with her back against the wall and giggles, watching me. I think this is exactly why we do this. My heart’s pounding in the good way, the way that lets you know you’re alive and capable of having fun.

  “Look at Priscilla. Stop thinking about yourself. Look,” Astrid says to her twin. I am getting out of breath, racing back and forth. The closet expands to accommodate my burst of energy and my desire to play tag with this thing. At first it’s only a few steps wide, then large enough to fit all the happiness I feel and the frantic energy of the buzzing orb. Larger than the whole house, it seems. I can’t ever get the little thing in my hands.

  “It’s crazy enough out there,” Eleanor says, gesturing to the closet door. “Why would you want more craziness in here?” I’m not sure if she’s asking me or Astrid, so I say nothing and continue running and waving and letting my heart buzz in time with the orb’s little wings.

  I can’t believe we’re letting Marla sleep through this. We are terrible sisters.

  But she’s a terrible sister too, for telling them I went inside without permission. So I guess none of us really know how to be good at the sister thing, which is weird, since we’ve been doing it our whole lives.

  “This closet is Priscilla’s,” Astrid says. She looks so pleased, so ridiculously glad that I am having fun. I stop for a moment to catch my breath, and the orb keeps zipping around me. I liked Eleanor’s closet, but Astrid’s right, this one is distinctly mine in a very different way. Not homey and sweet, but buzzy and fun and thrilling.

  Eleanor’s eyebrows look like they are working very hard to reach each ot
her across the bridge of her nose. I get the feeling there are still more and more secrets they are keeping from me, but it’s hard to care when the orb buzzes near my ear and then dashes to the far corner. I sprint after it and laugh when it takes a sharp turn, changing directions and tripping me up.

  “Don’t you want to have fun?” I call out, but Eleanor leans against the wall and crosses her arms as I flop on top of Astrid in a giggling fit. Astrid tickles me, and for a moment we are younger and sweeter and sillier than we’ve ever been. I think if we were brothers we would play like this all the time: raucous and physical and piled on top of one another. But my sisters and I usually stay in our own spaces, touching for brief moments, then releasing.

  I try to pull Eleanor into our wrestling, so that we can be a mess of limbs and laughter on the ground. I wouldn’t mind watching the orb from down here—letting it do a dance above our heads. Swatting at it from our backs.

  “Don’t be scared,” I say. It’s the oldest I’ve ever been. But Eleanor shakes her head.

  “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” she says. “You don’t know about the bad closet.” I can’t stop myself from shivering, even in here.

  “My closet—,” Astrid starts.

  “Not now,” Eleanor interrupts.

  Can’t anything be just wonderful and nothing else?

  “It’s time to go to bed,” Eleanor says. “We’ll discuss the closets, all of them, in the morning.”

  I don’t necessarily want to leave the warm, pink-lit space, but I’m too tired to put up a real fight.

  The orb lands on my shoulder, and I wonder, for a moment, what would happen if I took it out with me. If it would fill my whole bedroom with its pulsing glow. I have a feeling that even though the diorama went back to normal when the door was open, this might be different.

  I might be different.

  I can’t do it now. I’m certain Eleanor has all kinds of rules about that, too. But I don’t have whatever creeping feeling she does about the magic. I have the sense that it would be okay if I took things out of the closet and into my world. Maybe Eleanor simply doesn’t understand the closets the way I do. Maybe that’s why her closet needs a diorama and mine doesn’t. I let myself smile for three seconds, with the delicious idea that I know more than Eleanor for once.