Rules for Stealing Stars

by Corey Ann Haydu

  Dad likes reading and pondering and note-taking and concluding things from those books but never actually looking at what’s happening in real life. It’s sort of sad if I think too much about it.

  I have an idea.

  I rip a bunch of pages out of a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Dad has a million copies; he won’t miss this one.

  I head to the basement. I know exactly what I’m looking for.

  In the pile of discarded toys that we moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire for no reason at all, I discover our old Barbies. Twelve of them. Mom would be livid if she knew we had twelve Barbies, but Dad always used to buy them for us when she was Away.

  I come across Halloween costume tiaras and never-used ballet slippers and a pair of pink heels I’m sure Mom never wore but that maybe princesses could have worn. I bring a bowl of water that I hope will turn into a lake, because as I read the pages I ripped out of the book—the story of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”—I learn that they took a boat across a lake to make it to the dance. I find one toy boat. It’s small and plastic, and we probably used to play with it in the tub.

  The fairy tale also says the sisters floated by trees of gold and silver, and I think of the gold in Eleanor’s hair that one morning, and wonder if maybe we really are those princesses.

  Of course I know we’re not, but I wonder what it would feel like, for an afternoon, to live that story instead of our own.

  I bring the tiaras and shoes and Barbies and book pages and everything else I can gather up from the fairy tale into the closet. I hang silver and gold chains from the hooks that used to be used for coats. I use some of Astrid’s supplies and hang tinsel and sheer fabrics from the closet bar and place the bowl of water on the ground and float the little blue ship in it. It rocks back and forth.

  I almost close the door and enter the world alone, but I don’t. I miss my sisters. Even Marla, who is impossible and scaring me, but is one of us.

  If I am going to travel inside a fairy tale, I want my sisters with me.

  I close the closet door and wait on the stairs for Marla and Eleanor and Astrid to come home.

  Mom wanders out of her bedroom after a few minutes, and I go cold and tense. I try not to smell her. I try not to look directly at her.

  “Where are your sisters? You should all be together!” Mom says instead of hello, because somehow by sitting on the stairs alone I’ve done something terribly wrong. She’s screeching, and I don’t know why. It’s frightening in the way that being lost in the woods is frightening. I don’t know what’s coming next. There might be bats or owls or a ditch or it might be fine, there might be a lit-up cottage with something baking inside right around the corner.

  “I don’t know, I got up late and—”

  “What’s wrong with you? We came here to be a family, and you’re doing a terrible job! You’re not all taking care of each other!” she screams. My heart’s pounding. If anyone’s doing a terrible job, it’s her. My mouth is aching to say it. My tongue and lips are moving and drying out with how badly those words want to emerge. “You don’t deserve sisters. Any of you,” she says. She sounds like a snake. Hissing.

  “What do you know about sisters? You don’t even talk about yours! Astrid and Eleanor have no idea you ever had one! You forget all about her!” I say because I can’t hold it in anymore. I throw my hand to lips, sticking the whole fist inside to shut myself up. I bite on the fingers, I can’t believe what came out of my mouth. We don’t talk about secrets. If Mom doesn’t talk about her sister, it’s because we’re not allowed to bring her up. I know better.

  Mom’s hand raises into the air. It’s going to come down on me. I curl into a ball on the stairs. I make a squealing pig sound I didn’t even know was inside of me. But at the last minute Mom shifts her arm so that her hand crashes against the wall instead of me.

  She falls to pieces.

  Mom sits on the stairs and crumbles. She holds her own hand and cries. The house has never felt bigger or lonelier. I should do something, but I don’t know what. I guess I sort of deserve this, from looking away when it happened to my sisters. We’re all in it alone. I have to stay strong.

  No part of me wants to touch her, but I stay next to her and look to make sure her hand’s not bleeding or anything. For a minute, a really long one, I try to be Eleanor.

  “We have to get her out of the closet,” Mom weeps. It’s muffled and I could be hearing her wrong, and I certainly don’t want to ask any follow-up questions. “We have to get her unstuck.”

  My heart thumps. The closet, she said. Mom thinks someone is stuck in the closet.

  I’m caught between asking more questions and leaving her alone.

  I’m weak and scared and not good enough to actually do anything useful, so I leave her on the stairs like that.

  Seventeen

  I don’t know where to go, so I go to the lake. Marla and Astrid are there. Eleanor must be with her secret boyfriend.

  I don’t tell them everything that happened. Just that Mom is upset with me and Dad is at work and I had to leave. And that I have an idea for my closet, whenever we think we can go back to the house.

  I don’t tell them that Mom basically said her sister, who we didn’t even know about, is stuck in a closet. I’m scared if I say anything like that, Eleanor and Astrid will decide the closets are too evil, and they’ll lock them all up. It’s too sad to think about. We need the closets.

  We watch the lake but don’t swim.

  Eleanor joins us later. We don’t talk all afternoon.

  When Eleanor stands up, we all follow. We’re turning into zombies.

  When we get close to the house, we slow down even more. We walk with straight legs and hunched backs and nervous fingers.

  But when we go inside, it’s empty. Mom’s gone.

  The place that Mom hit on the wall looks the same as the rest of the wall, but it seems like it should be marked. There should be a hole or a scratch or a warning sign. Mom didn’t leave a note, but her car’s gone, so we know she’s traveled farther than down the street.

  We stand in a circle in the hallway with no idea what to do, until I realize I know exactly what we should do.

  “I’ve been thinking about one of Dad’s fairy tales,” I say. They’ll think it’s a strange and stupid thing to say. And I definitely hate the sound of my own voice: too high and too breathy and always sounding like a question instead of an answer. I’m doing this all wrong, as usual.

  “Not you too,” Marla says. She doesn’t get Dad and his fairy tales and his studies and the way he tells stories instead of ever talking about real life.

  “It’s a fairy tale about closets,” I say. “So I made it. In my closet.” I’m not making sense, and Eleanor’s getting all sweaty worrying about why Mom is gone, and it’s not the right time. But I’ve said it and I can’t take it back.

  “You want to be in a fairy tale?” Astrid says. She tries to sound nice.

  “Exactly!” I say, latching on even though she has no idea what I’m talking about. “There are these princesses, in this fairy tale, and I think maybe we’re them. Or we’re like them.” I try to keep my voice calm. I try to lower the tone and make the words steady like a certainty instead of going up like a question.

  Marla sighs.

  “Not really them. But I think it would be fun. To try to make the fairy tale. It’s all about sisters and closets and disappearing to a place no one can find you.” This all made sense when I was in the basement finding plastic tiaras and half-dressed Barbies.

  It’s not making any sense now. Not even to me. Instead it’s a sign that I’m being the desperate kind of Silly. The one who comes out when Mom’s sick.

  “Oh,” Eleanor says.

  “Okay!” Astrid says, though it sounds forced.

  “I know how it sounds,” I say. There’s that breathiness back in my voice again.

  “This is stupid. We need to find Mom,” Marla says. “Why were you so mean to her?”
She’s glaring at me. “We don’t have time for fairy tales right now, okay?”

  “I thought you loved all the closets,” I say. I’m careful to emphasize the word all so that she knows I could tell Astrid and Eleanor everything about her secret adventures in Astrid’s bad closet. I don’t like her high-and-mighty attitude.

  “You don’t care about Mom,” Marla says like she always does. She clutches my arm on the word Mom, and I feel the squeeze in my stomach, in my heart, deep below my eyes.

  “We all care about Mom,” I say. “But she’s not here right now, and we can do something cool in my closet.” I give her a look to remind her she doesn’t even have a closet that works, so her opinion doesn’t matter too terribly much. It doesn’t convince her of anything. She’s fuming, but with Eleanor and Astrid agreeing to come inside, Marla’s not about to be left out.

  It’s cramped with all four of us in my little closet. All four of us and the Barbies and shoes and tiaras and bowl of water and everything else I’ve gathered to re-create the fairy tale. Before I close the door, I make my sisters read the story out loud. No one seems very convinced by the similarities.

  “Huh,” Astrid says.

  “Oh yeah,” Eleanor says. “I remember this one.”

  Marla is refusing to speak.

  When we close the door, things transform quickly. The bowl of water becomes the lake I had imagined. Trees grow from a few branches I’d laid on the ground. The silver and gold necklaces wrap themselves around the trees, over the walls, around each other. They go from dull to glittering, a quick burn, like they have caught flame.

  The little plastic boat meant for the bathtub grows to fit the lake. It rocks with the small waves, and I climb on. Eleanor and Astrid can’t stop looking at the gold and silver vines, which keep intensifying in sparkle. My sisters try to join me on the boat, but when they try to put their feet on the surface, they slide right off. It won’t let them connect. The opposite of gravity.

  I’m as frustrated as they are. I thought the closet was supposed to give me what I want. And I want them with me. I want them with me all the time. I’m about to say something, but I remember what Astrid actually said about the closets. That they will give me what I need, not what I want.

  Like Astrid trying to climb the flower petals with me, some parts of my closet are only for me. Maybe I need that. Something of my own. The boat buzzes underneath me, changing and rumbling with magic from my touch.

  “You think that boat’s gonna bring you to a prince or something? That’s what you want?” Marla says. She’s grumpy, but at least she’s finally speaking.

  “No!” I say. I don’t want any princes. I wasn’t looking for a boy to dance with. I wasn’t looking to dance at all. I only wanted to know if there’s some other life we could be living. If in some other reality, we are princesses at a ball and not girls stuck in a house with a sick mom and a clueless dad.

  Marla points at the line of Barbies I’d set up near the closet door. “Did you think they were going to turn into people? That they would become our sisters? This is so stupid. Let’s go back into Eleanor’s closet. Let’s make a Rome diorama. You know Rome is Mom’s favorite city?”

  “I thought we could do better than regular boring cities,” I say. “This is better.”

  The Barbies are still only plastic dolls with the pinkest lips and stiff joints and never-changing expressions. The closet did nothing for them. They didn’t become princesses. They didn’t turn into more sisters. They aren’t dancing on the boat with me.

  Maybe if I touched them they’d turn into real people, but I don’t do it. I’m not sure I need any more sisters, now that I think about it. Maybe I’m the wrong one to have the special closet powers. I’m too scared and silly to do anything with them.

  The shoes I brought inside aren’t becoming worn, like the fairy tale, although they are dancing. In the air. Clacking their heels, stepping up and down the walls, tapping and balleting and making complicated patterns in the space above our heads. Astrid and Eleanor can’t stop giggling at them. They are falling over themselves with delight. It doesn’t matter how bad a mood Marla is in. I get to be proud of the way Astrid and Eleanor are smiling.

  “What do you think happened after, with the princesses?” Marla says. “I mean, if you think there’s some meaning there, then what happened next?” She won’t give it up. The boat I’m on has found a perfect lazy rhythm. I want to let it put me to sleep. An UnWorry sleep, the kind I haven’t had in way too long. I don’t let the closet expand to a larger size. I want to stay in the boat near my sisters, not journey on the lake by myself.

  “They lived happily ever after,” I say. Marla’s face shifts, and I guess I’ve given her an answer she likes. She’d never admit it, but she likes the world I’ve created too. At least a little bit.

  “I feel some Happily Ever After feelings when I get out of the closets,” Marla says. We’re all thinking of that dreamy post-closet state, the transformation that I only wish we could hold on to.

  “It’s not Happily Ever After if it doesn’t last,” I say.

  “For now, this is amazing,” Eleanor says. “You’re amazing. We’re amazing!” She grabs my hands as I step off the boat and spins me around. It’s dizzying. The dancing shoes come down to the ground, and Eleanor squeals. I’m not sure she’s done that since she was much, much younger than me. She imitates the shoes, mimicking the steps they’re making across the ground.

  Then Eleanor and Astrid and I are dancing with the dancing shoes. And maybe we are not the Twelve Dancing Princesses, but by the time we are done, our feet are tired, the dancing shoes are worn and have broken heels, and I feel good and pretty and full.

  Close enough.

  Eighteen

  Dad’s voice calling for us is the first thing we hear when we leave the closet and the sparkling lake and golden trees.

  “Girls? Marla? Silly? El? Where are you all hiding?”

  “We’re here, Dad!” I push out of the room and into the hallway without checking to make sure I’m not covered in glitter or water or accidentally wearing dancing shoes. My much smarter sisters stay behind and clean themselves up before joining me.

  “I got a call,” he says. His voice has serious gravel in it, and his face is a wrong gray color. “Everything’s fine,” he says, even though it’s definitely not. “But your mom had a little driving problem.”

  Marla starts groaning. She doesn’t ask questions, she simply holds her head in her hands and groans.

  “What does that mean?” Eleanor asks. She’s sweating above her top lip and all over her collarbone. A slick sheen I’m dying to wipe off for her.

  “She hit a tree,” Dad says. His voice is shaking but he’s got a smile on, and the effect is awful. It’s impossible to guess how we should be acting, with him smiling and turning gray and rolling his cell phone between his hands like it’s clay and not an electronic device. “Tapped it, really. Lightly.”

  Astrid takes a few steps away from the conversation, toward her room.

  “It was a very small tree,” Dad says.

  I start laughing.

  Not because it’s funny. It is far from funny. But I’m still a little dizzy and loopy from the closet, and even I know there’s something terribly wrong with that clarification.

  “No one’s hurt,” he says. He doesn’t seem to hear me laughing. I keep it under my breath, hold it in so hard I’m sure my face is turning red and my shoulders, then elbows, then hands are shaking. “These things happen.”

  “Where is she?” Eleanor says. Her hands are sweating too.

  Dad takes a deep breath. So deep the floor below him creaks. This house is so old and strange it feels things with us.

  “Can we come with you to get her?” Marla says when she’s all out of groans.

  “I’m sleepy,” Astrid says, to no one in particular.

  “She’s with the police,” Dad says. He speaks too low and too fast, the same way I do when I don’t really want M
arla to hear what I’m saying to her.

  “The police came?” Eleanor wraps her hand around the back of her neck, where I assume the sweat is the worst. I’m so distracted by taking inventory of my sisters I forget to recognize how I’m doing. Am I okay? Am I still laughing? Am I crying? Is my heart beating or breaking?

  I’m laughing. Still. The laughs are bigger now. Audible and undisguisable.

  “Silly, stop it!” Marla says. She’s crying and stomping her foot.

  “The police came and got her. She was probably a little too, um, tired to be driving.”

  “Tired,” Eleanor says.

  “Your mom has had a really hard week,” Dad says. Marla nods, but the rest of us don’t respond at all. It doesn’t sound true. And Dad smiles that awful, trying-too-hard smile again.

  “I think Mom’s really sick again,” I say. I can’t quite wring the laughter out of my voice entirely. But I try to sound serious. Everyone looks surprised I’m attempting to talk at all.

  “She’s doing much better since we got here,” Dad says. “She went on a bike ride the other day! Didn’t you hear?”

  I wait for one of my sisters to jump in, but none of them does. They look at the carpet and at the rosebud wallpaper, and I wonder how different our lives would be if the walls were beige instead of flowered.

  “LilyLee’s mom goes to yoga every day and horseback riding with LilyLee every weekend and only ever sleeps at night,” I say. “LilyLee’s mom is taking her to Salem to see the witches, and they never have to move houses to help her feel better or anything.” I think about the postcard I’m going to get from LilyLee’s trip to Salem. Dad always said he’d take us there and tell us all the different witch stories in the world. He hasn’t.

  “Silly,” he says, shaking his head and walking down the stairs, away from us. “You don’t understand.”

  “Is it because of her sister?” I say. He comes back up. Eleanor looks confused. Marla mouths, Shut up. Dad clears his throat.