Rules for Stealing Stars

by Corey Ann Haydu

  It’s quiet, aside from the popping sound of bacon frying and the creaking house.

  “Where?” Eleanor asks. Her forehead shines. She looks like she can’t decide whether she’s happy or sad.

  “Arizona,” Dad says. “For one month at least.”

  “But why?” Marla says. Astrid starts humming a song that’s been on the radio a lot.

  “The police said she has to,” Dad says. He doesn’t say that he thinks she needs to, also. “I don’t want you worrying about this, though. Everything’s fine.” He coughs, like that will erase what he said.

  “We made pancakes,” I say, when no one speaks.

  “I can see that,” Dad says. He doesn’t make a move to serve himself or us. I pile more pancakes off the pan and onto a plate and think how sad it will be if they go to waste.

  I don’t think about Mom or what Dad’s saying about police and stuff. I want to take the blueberries into the closet and watch them glow or grow or turn into a lake of blueberry juice.

  Astrid slips out to the porch, and Marla stomps up to her room.

  “She didn’t say good-bye!” Marla yells on her way up the stairs.

  I get the syrup and a few pancakes and dig in.

  Eleanor and Dad do too.

  “I’m sorry,” Dad says, but I don’t know for what. There are so many things.

  Twenty-One

  I hear from Mom first. A postcard comes in the mail four days later. The image is of brown land and a green cactus and a bunny with ears that stand up straight instead of flopping. It says ARIZONA! in big red block letters. The exclamation point seems especially cruel.

  So many bunnies here! Mom writes. I know you love postcards. And I love you. I’ll be home soon.

  Mom hasn’t said I love you to anyone in months.

  Instead of writing Mom back, I write a postcard to LilyLee. I tell her my mom is Away again, and that I wish I could come over to her house. I know LilyLee will think it’s cool that I’ll get more postcards from Arizona. But I’ve never been very interested in Arizona.

  “You get a postcard from Mom and don’t even write her back,” Marla says. “It’s not fair.”

  Twenty-Two

  Dad gets a letter a few days later. He reads it in his room and doesn’t come out for the rest of the night, so we get to order pizza and watch an R-rated movie on TV.

  “When’s Mom going to write me?” Marla asks when the movie’s over and the pizza’s gone. She seems extra-aggravated, so I know she hasn’t been in any closets. We’ve all been staying out of them. I don’t know why, except it’s hard to do much of anything the first few days Mom’s gone. It’s too strange. We mostly sleep and watch TV that we’re not really even watching.

  But I’ve been holding my star for a few minutes a few times a day. The warmth from it travels through my whole body, and I love the almost unhearable buzz it makes all night long.

  Twenty-Three

  Next Mom sends a package for Astrid and Eleanor.

  “No,” Marla says when she sees it on the counter.

  We’re lake-wet and frizzy-haired from a morning spent splashing in the water, and we’re tracking footprints into the kitchen because Dad’s too out of it to tell us what to do.

  “A package came for the twins!” Dad says, oblivious.

  “We’re not one person,” Eleanor says, when she sees the address written out in Mom’s messy handwriting. Eleanor’s in her new bikini, with nothing but a pair of tiny jean shorts over it. The bikini is red and ridiculous and obviously for her secret boyfriend. “You open it,” she says to Astrid.

  Astrid’s hair is dripping onto her legs and the floor, and she looks more like a mermaid than a person. I hope I look that way too.

  “No, thank you,” Astrid says. We stand over the package and watch it. It does nothing, of course. It’s a package, not an animal.

  “What about me?” Marla says. There is nothing on the kitchen counter for her.

  “I’m sure you’re next!” Dad says. He is guzzling coffee and says he wishes he could take the day off to hang out. He thinks this is a very cool turn of phrase that will make us think he is a friend and not a dad, but he’s got on his long jean shorts and “Don’t Take New Hampshire for Granite” sweatshirt, which is some extremely sad joke, and a Mets cap that looks too new to be cool. When he wears that hat, people ask him if he’s from New York. He’s not.

  He says he’s not really from anywhere. When he’s asked about it, he launches into some story about wandering men without homes and the classic trope of orphan stories and the difference between stories set in specific places versus those set in vague settings. Conversations with Dad always turn into academic discussions, never into personal talks.

  When we were little, Mom used to say he rode in on a white horse, like a prince. We believed her for a while. He looks like he could be a prince. Or a duke, at least.

  “Why am I last?” Marla says. Dad takes hot chocolate off the shelf and grabs five mugs and a carton of milk and starts mixing and heating. It’s not exactly a summer drink, and none of us actually want hot chocolate right now, but at least he’s sort of trying to take care of us, so no one complains.

  “Save the best for last!” Dad says, which is actually insulting to the rest of us, but we don’t get prickly about it, because we’re used to this kind of comment being thrown around to make Marla happy.

  “I wrote her a letter and asked her questions,” Marla says. “I sent her a drawing of me and her hiking in Arizona together. It took me all afternoon.”

  “She hasn’t been there that long yet,” Dad says. “Maybe she didn’t get your letter yet.”

  “Why don’t you open the package, Marla?” Astrid says, watching her like she’s a thing that might explode. “I’m sure it’s for all of us.” Marla shakes her head, and we watch the milk for a few moments in silence. When it’s done, Dad puts a steaming mug of cocoa in front of each of us. Marla doesn’t take a sip.

  “She probably assumes we’re all sharing everything,” Eleanor says. “And we are! Everything! Of course!” It’s too much. My ears hurt from the screeching enthusiasm.

  “Can you please open it so we can all move on?” Marla says at last. Dad moves behind Marla and rubs her shoulders, but she shrugs him off, her eyes not moving from the package on the counter. He doesn’t seem to know what else to do to help the moment be less awful, so he heads out to the porch.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” he says. We need so, so much.

  Astrid dives in. She opens the package with the finesse of a small puppy. She tears at corners where there is thick tape, ignores the “Open Here” arrow, and turns a perfectly square box into a pile of cardboard. There’s an envelope on top, and Eleanor picks that up. She reads out loud,

  “Astrid and El:

  Some souvenirs from Arizona!

  It is nice here. Calm and sort of quiet, but the good kind. I miss you terribly and promise I will be home in time to compete in the Sand Castle Contest with you.

  When you go to the lake, watch your sisters. Marla isn’t very good in the water, and Silly is reckless. You know that already, of course, but I’m a mother, and mothers remind you to do things.

  I’m still your mother.

  In one year or five we’ll all remember this as a good summer, one that mattered.

  Be good. Especially you, Eleanor.

  Love, Mom.”

  Neither Eleanor nor Astrid goes through the rest of the box.

  “You can have it,” Eleanor says, handing the whole thing over to Marla.

  “I’m tired,” Astrid says. They both disappear into their room. I’d follow them, but Marla is going through the objects very carefully, and when Marla’s careful, it makes me nervous.

  In the package Marla finds more bracelets, which she immediately slips onto both wrists. There’s also a book called The Roles We Play, which, according to the picture on the front, is about sad siblings and sadder parents, so I guess we’re not the only
ones. There are a couple of Arizona pens and a bug encased in amber and some stones that look historical instead of pretty.

  “I’m keeping it all,” Marla says.

  I don’t want to think too hard about Mom packing all the objects into the box, or whether she thinks they’re enough to make up for everything else.

  Marla’s so engrossed she probably won’t even notice. She’s the only one who wants to see the objects, and she’s the only one who hasn’t actually gotten anything in the mail.

  I don’t really want to think too hard about that particular sadness either. If we were the siblings on the front of the book Mom sent, Marla would be the one tugging on the mother’s shirt while the mother looks away.

  I head back to my room and check on my star, let the warmth hit my face. It calms me down a little, but I need more. So I grab a few art supplies I’ve been hoarding from the cabinet downstairs and head into the closet. I’m ready to go back. I’m ready to snap out of the Mom-daze.

  Within moments, I’m lying on a beach of pink crystallized sand, and there is an ocean made of blue feathers lapping at my feet. It should be a dream. It has all the signs of a dream: hyperactive colors and never-before-seen landscaping and the way I feel calm and light. I feel my UnWorry.

  I’m laughing at the way the feathers tickle my toes when there’s a knock at my door.

  “Hm?” I say. I can’t muster up words. I’m not ready to leave this moment, this place I created with nothing more than a handful of plastic beads and a bag of feathers that Dad bought when Astrid insisted she wanted to be a bluebird for Halloween.

  “I need you,” Marla says from the other side of the closet door. She isn’t whining, which is sort of unlike her lately. I roll onto my stomach and reach my fingertips toward the waves of feathers. I’m not ready to leave. Marla knocks again. “Silly. Get out of there.”

  “Give me a little bit,” I say. I dig my hands into the sandy crystals, then lift them up again. I could do that same movement over and over all day and I don’t think it would get old.

  Marla swings the door open. I jump up and take a step outside the closet. The beach of feathers and crystals is mine, and I’m not ready to share it with Marla.

  Quickly, the feathers turn all fake and cheap, and the sand is a pile of plastic beads that are now cracked and broken, and the light is ugly and the closet smells like feet and the world I created is officially completely gone.

  Marla hugs me. It’s not like we’ve never hugged before, but we don’t do it often, that’s for sure. Her body is skinnier than mine, bonier, all pointy and arrowed, and unexpected. Looking at her is so different from holding her.

  I wonder if I’ll grow straight and narrow like her. I’m not sure I’d want to be so bony. There aren’t any soft parts of her, and I think it’d be scary to walk around the world without a bit of padding. She’s so angular. The angles are how you get hurt, I think.

  “Let’s go,” she says. We’re still hugging, and it’s impossible to talk and hug at the same time, as far as I’m concerned. I take a step back and wait for her arms to loosen, which they eventually do, but after way more time than any sort of normal hug.

  “Go where?” I say. “And why?”

  “I think if I show you more about Astrid’s closet, you’ll get it,” she says. “It’s not evil. It’s maybe a little scary sometimes but in a good way.” I shrug. “And I have an idea,” she adds.

  I shiver, thinking of the little dollop of Astrid’s closet that I have already experienced. The way beautiful turned scary. The rapid speed of the wings flapping. The darkness in Marla’s eyes. I don’t want to experience any of that again.

  “I need someone to help me,” Marla says. “I need you.”

  “I’m good with my closet,” I say as nicely as possible, because Marla looks like she really does need someone’s help. But I’m mostly wondering if I can get Marla out of my room quickly so I can go back in the closet and re-create the world I had going. My hand finds the closet doorknob, grips it tightly.

  Marla notices but doesn’t make a move toward leaving. We’re both quiet and still, each waiting for the other to move. Our house creaks and it makes me jump, but not Marla. Marla is steady.

  “I did your thing for you,” she says. “With the princesses and the boat and stuff. We tried that. Can’t we try this? You and me?” There are rings under her eyes. Like she hasn’t slept in forever. She looks more and more like Mom every day. I don’t bother reminding her how very, very little she invested when we tried to make my fairy tale happen in the closet. She’s right. She did, technically, do it for me.

  “Maybe you should go in with Astrid. Since it’s her closet? Don’t you think?”

  Marla is playing with things on my dresser: a tube of lip gloss, a fringed lampshade, a glass hippo figurine from when I thought I was maybe going to start collecting hippos. Her fingers find the jewelry box with the star inside. I hadn’t thought to hide it. No one ever comes into my room.

  “I don’t want to go with Astrid,” she says. Her fingers rub the velvety top of the box. My shoulders rise to my ears. She cannot open that box. “You know you’re the special one. We all saw what you can do in there, how you’re in control of them. Come on, Silly. I mean, Priscilla. Mom’s always said you’re the special one, and that we have to protect you and make sure you’re okay and love you most of all. Maybe there’s a reason?”

  “No!” I yell. I leap toward Marla and the jewelry box and the star I’m hiding inside it. Marla jumps and fumbles with the box. It shakes and threatens to fall to the floor, but I grab it from her hands. “You can’t come in here and touch all my things,” I say. Marla’s eyebrows rise up toward her hairline, to her crooked middle part, and she’s either smirking or smiling, I can’t tell for sure.

  “Then let’s get out of your room,” she says.

  I agree. Not because I think it’s a good idea to go in Astrid’s closet. But because I cannot let Marla see that star.

  Astrid and Eleanor take an afternoon nap. It seems impossible. I can’t imagine sleeping, maybe ever again. Marla knows the exact places to step on the usually creaky floor so that it doesn’t creak. She knows how to turn the closet’s doorknob without a sound, and how to breathe in time with Eleanor and Astrid’s deep sleeping breaths so that they can’t sense us in the room and wake up.

  I’m scared of how often this means she’s been in here.

  She’s already brought things into the closet. Leaves are stored in one corner. She’s brought in orange construction paper and black toothpicks, and a few of Mom’s old costume rings.

  And as I should have guessed, everything from Mom’s package. The bug and the stones and the pens and bracelets.

  I spot the photo album that Mom was looking at. The one with pictures of her gone sister. I don’t want to be in the closet with that. I don’t like the collection, and I open my mouth to tell Marla as much, but she puts a finger to her lips and shakes her head. The closet door is still open. If we want to talk, we’ll have to close the door and see what happens. I’m still convinced that if we tell Eleanor and Astrid about this closet, they’ll find a way to lock up all the closets, and no matter how scared I am of the bad closet, I’m even more scared of losing my wonderful closet.

  I have never wanted to leave a place more, but Marla hangs on to my elbow, her fingernails pressing into my skin. The twins breathe and shift in their sleep, and before I have a chance to sneak back out, Marla shuts the closet door with a muffled click.

  We are stuck in the bad closet.

  The leaves go black.

  Black and sheer and veiny and then so, so big. They float up a few inches above our heads and hover there, like they may choose to suffocate us.

  It starts to rain.

  Marla’s smiling. I always forget about the tiny dimple that dips into her skin right next to her lips when she grins. I forget how straight her teeth are, and how she is maybe the prettiest sister, when she is not being the meanest sister. E
ven with circles under her eyes and a strange stringiness to her hair, she is pretty. Healthy-Mom pretty.

  “I caught Mom in here a few days before she left. Looking for something. I think if we find out what she’s looking for, she’ll be okay,” Marla says.

  “She thinks her sister’s in here,” I say. I don’t mean to agree with Marla, but I’m so distracted by thoughts of the sister and what is true that it comes out.

  “Then we’ll find the sister,” Marla says. Her eyes are wide, and she’s bouncing on her toes. It makes me motion sick.

  The walls are rotten-pumpkin orange. I have a headache.

  “I bet Mom sent this all on purpose! So we’d bring it in here! She totally knows!” Marla pulls at my elbow. I’m already paying attention, but she wants more. “It’s like a scavenger hunt! We have all the clues. I’m so positive. This will work. We’ll figure it out.”

  I’m impossibly tired of hearing Marla talk about Mom.

  “What if Mom doesn’t know anything? What if Mom doesn’t want to get better? What if the closets caused all the problems? What if there aren’t any solutions?” I’m yelling even though we are supposed to be staying quiet. It feels so sweet, to feel my throat strain and to hear my own voice filling up the closet.

  “Watch!” Marla says. She leans over the Arizona pens and the bug in amber, which she’s put in the same corner of the room.

  It doesn’t take long.

  The pen leaps up. It triples in size. The bug breaks out of the amber and grows too. It grabs the pen—it’s a bug who knows how to draw, and I’m shaking and covering my eyes.

  The bug starts drawing all over the closet walls. It draws in the air too. Floating designs that aren’t against any surface, but instead simply exist in the air around us. I swear one brushes against my ear, and I yip.

  I work hard to not look at the bug’s legs. There are so many, and they’re thick and black and awful. Marla hates bugs usually. But right now she’s grinning.