Rules for Stealing Stars

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “You were right,” Marla says, and she smiles with her chin out and her eyes sparkling.

  “I was right? About us being the princesses?” I touch the top of my head like a crown might have appeared there. There’s only frizz.

  “Even better. Wait. The castle’s coming,” she says. Marla picks a flower from a vine hanging overhead. It is the most delicate thing I’ve ever seen. Gold and crinkled and so fragile she has to hold it only by the very tip of her thumb and forefinger. “It’s all like this. Breakable. Crumbling. So be careful.” She rubs those two fingers together only the tiniest amount, a small, gentle gesture, but the petals turn instantly to dust, gold fragments floating down to the water.

  I fidget uncomfortably in the boat. Try to put as little weight as possible on it. I don’t want it to crumble beneath us like that flower.

  “What do we do?” I whisper, panic mounting. First Marla brings me into Astrid’s terrible closet, and now we are in a vanishing world. A world that will turn to gold flakes if we move at all. I try not to breathe.

  Marla laughs. “The boat is fine.” She has a little too much delight in her eyes; they are shiny and gold and strange. “And the castle is fine. But everything else, everything beautiful, is crumbling.”

  “I want to go back,” I say. I’m still whispering, just in case my voice carries and its shakiness vibrates and destroys a tree or a bush or a golden bridge.

  “We’ll go back soon. You have to see first,” Marla says. She won’t stop smiling. She rubs her knees with her hands, and I hate looking at her hands because then I look at her wrists and then I remember our mother and the bruise that was underneath the bracelets and all the letters Mom chose not to write Marla. And then I have to wonder if there are bruises anywhere else. If maybe I’ve been missing them all along.

  I can’t wonder too hard. The palace appears in front of us. Exactly like the fairy tale said it would.

  Twenty-Seven

  I do not turn into a princess the moment the double doors to the palace open. If anything, I turn invisible in the sea of floor-sweeping ball gowns and tuxedos and gold columns and silver silk draping the entire hall. Dozens of people walk by without giving us a second glance. They hold hands and sway to the music and fix their hair as it slips out of complicated knots and braids and buns.

  “Where are the princesses?” I’m still mostly concerned with the fairy tale, and my theory that we are living in it somehow. I need to know if that’s what is happening to us.

  “You have to wait,” Marla says.

  “How’d you find out your closet works? I thought your closet was the only one that wasn’t magical. When did you try it without us? And why?” Marla is nodding along with the music, but she doesn’t answer. More than that, she seems to know what’s going to happen before it does. She looks to her right, and a moment later a beautiful woman enters. Marla looks to the left, and on cue, someone starts dancing there.

  “It’s a memory,” Marla says again. “It’s a place that holds memories.”

  “The closets give you what you need,” I say, repeating the very first rule I understood, and realizing how desperately Marla wants to know about the past. So badly, apparently, that her closet only shows her things that have already happened. Although I can’t imagine why she thinks this is memory and not a fairy tale.

  She’s counting on her fingers and surveying the ballroom. “Almost time.” She nods at the door with a huge grin.

  Twelve princesses walk in.

  I guess I don’t know for sure they are princesses. They certainly don’t look like sisters. They are different shapes and sizes and shades. They do have long, wavy hair, all of them, and pretty dresses that they look surprised to be wearing, and thrilled at the prettiness. They walk on tiptoes. They do not have tiaras.

  “It’s them!” I say. I grab Marla’s elbow.

  “It’s her,” she says. She gestures to the last girl in the line of twelve.

  Silver shoes. Pale-blue gown. Long chestnut hair. Pale-blue eyes. Sloped nose. Cheekbones even higher than mine.

  “That’s—” I can’t stop looking at her face. Familiar and foreign all at once.

  “Mom,” Marla finishes my sentence for me.

  It is Mom. Before.

  Before “unwinding time” and afternoons of sleeping and stringy hair and a puffy face. Before Arizona and Away and moving to the New Hampshire house. Before everything went wrong. Before us.

  She is so beautiful.

  She looks exactly like Marla, when Marla isn’t grumpy.

  “I wanted to know when Mom was happiest. And it showed me,” Marla says.

  “Are there other memories too?” I say. I want to ask if we are in any of her happy memories. But Marla doesn’t seem to be thinking about why Mom’s happiest times are before we even existed.

  “I think so. But I haven’t tried. I only want to visit this one.”

  I want to know everything. I want to visit everything. And I guess I could, but I stay in the memory Marla has chosen for now, knowing I’ll be back for more.

  Princess Mom wanders farther into the room. The gowns are a forest of taffeta and silk and tulle, and every texture brushes against my arms and tickles. No one looks our way, not even when my arm hits theirs. I feel them, but they can’t feel me.

  “It gets even better,” Marla says when we are in the center of the room, a little lost in all the beauty.

  “Is it really her?” I say. I have so many other questions, but I only know how to ask this one.

  “I think it has to be. Because . . . look.”

  I look to where Marla’s pointing. Up a staircase that is marble with gold railings and a swooping, curvy shape. It seems to practically reach the ceiling, which is painted with clouds and blue sky and angels and skinny trees with too many leaves.

  In the same way the twelve girls paraded into the room, so does a line of boys in puffy shirts and coats with long tails and shoes so shiny they are practically mirrors.

  “No,” I say, when the last one reaches the bottom of the stairs. I recognize him. “No way.”

  “And now they dance,” Marla says. She is smiling, a whole new Marla, one who is truly happy and squinty-eyed and sweet.

  The last boy to make his way down the stairs is my father. He doesn’t look as different as my mother does. His hair is a little blonder and more filled in on top. He doesn’t have a shadow of stubble on his chin or little lines around his eyes. But otherwise, he’s Dad.

  My mother and my father are dancing in a room of gold and crystal and marble and magic. Dad has one arm around Mom’s waist, and the other arm is held high in the air with her hand in his. They are straight-backed and shiny-haired. They are perfect dancers. Neither of them so much as looks at their feet. They are too busy staring at each other to look anywhere else. They are falling in love in front of our eyes.

  They are the people Dad reads about in books. They are their own fairy tale.

  “This is why Mom is going to be fine,” Marla says. I was going to say the opposite. This is why Mom doesn’t like the life she’s living now.

  “Mmm,” I hum in response, so that I don’t lie but I also don’t let her down too hard. “How’d Dad get in here?” I say. My mind is flooded with information and confusion, and I have to swim through it a bit. “I mean, Mom makes sense—it was her closet when she was little. But why is Dad in here?”

  “It’s a fairy tale. Don’t ask so many questions,” Marla says. “That’s what Dad would say, right?”

  She’s wrong, of course. Dad would say the opposite. It’s a fairy tale, so think about every little bit of it really, really hard. Marla doesn’t get him at all.

  But I wish I could feel how Marla does right now: like the details and reasons don’t matter because it’s all so pretty and romantic and nice. But with my drowning mind and my pounding heart and my open eyes I think of all the times Dad has strangely avoided telling us where he’s from. I think of the Mets hat that isn’t because he
loves New York and the fact that we don’t have aunts or uncles or grandparents. That all we have from his family is that one beautiful magical-looking mirror.

  I think of all the fairy tales Dad loves and the way that they are sometimes more important to him than anything else, than real life. That he can understand every nuance of “Sleeping Beauty” or the myth of Echo and Narcissus, but not his own daughters, not my mother, not the way real life is falling to pieces.

  “Dad isn’t from the real world,” I say.

  I want to rush at them, and I suppose I could, but they wouldn’t see me. We are spectators here. In the other closets we are everything, but here we are nothing. We are meant to watch, but not meant to participate.

  Another one of the twelve princesses sweeps past me. Her full skirts hit my legs with such force I trip and fall. It would be embarrassing if anyone could see. But they can’t. I scurry back into a standing position and hold Marla’s hand as our parents dance circles around everyone else.

  It makes perfect sense and no sense at all. Dad’s from a fairy tale. Of course he is. He’s got that perfect jaw and nice laugh and never-ending vat of hope and a belief in happily-ever-after in his heart and an endless knowledge of princesses and stories we tell and dragons and magic.

  I miss my father.

  And also, I miss my mother. Not the way I miss LilyLee when I haven’t gotten a letter in a while. Not the way I have missed my home since we moved away. I miss my mother in a place further down than that. I miss a version of her that I’ve seen so rarely over the years that I can’t even remember her. I miss her Before, teasing my father about his goatee and playing freeze tag in the backyard with us, and sewing outfits for my stuffed animals with scrap fabric.

  I miss the mother who is dancing with my father in front of me, so close I could touch her, I could hide under the draping of her dress. I miss the mother who was so brave and sure that she would steal a prince from a magical palace and bring him to the real world. I miss the mother who cared so much about love and happiness and wonder, even though I think I never knew her. I miss this look on her face that I’ve maybe never seen before: sweet and excited and something else. Enchanted. Words I would never use to describe the mother I have now.

  “This is just a fairy tale, though,” I say. I don’t like Marla thinking we can save Mom, or that we can get this version of our mother to move from her closet to our house. “This isn’t who she is anymore.”

  “You’re not seeing the most important part,” Marla says. She points to another princess, a shy, small one not dancing with boys.

  One in a blue dress who looks a little like Mom and a little like Marla and a lot like me.

  “Laurel!” Mom says, shouting from Dad’s arms. “I’m dancing with you next!” The girl who looks like me smiles. I wonder if this is what fainting feels like. Dizzy and weak and breathless.

  “I know about your star,” Marla says before I can say anything. I hug myself at the mention of my star. No one is supposed to know about it. I panic, wanting it here right now. I want to get out of the conversation and maybe even the closet, but Marla’s on a mission. “If you can bring that star out of the closet, why not Laurel?”

  “I don’t know what—,” I start, but the look in her eyes stops me. It would be stupid to finish my sentence. She’s seen it. She knows.

  “Silly,” she says. That’s it. Just my name. Or my not-name.

  “The star is something else. It’s special.” The lights in the ballroom dim a little. Candelabras and chandeliers and lanterns hanging from every doorway all darken enough so that the room quiets down. The music lowers too. There is a hush, but the dancing doesn’t stop.

  “She’s special,” Marla says. “Mom’s been looking for her this whole time. We have to bring her out.”

  “She’s not like the star. She’s a person. A memory.” “Why don’t you care about Mom?” Marla says.

  Young Dad spins Young Mom. Again and again, so much that I think she must be getting dizzy. Mom doesn’t lose her step, not once. She finishes in his arms, pressed against him for a moment, and when they resume their dancing stance, they’re both sort of blushing. I have to look away. It feels like something private, something I’m not meant to see.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say, picturing Mom and Dad dancing in our living room to some old-time song on the radio. It would be nice. Embarrassing but nice.

  “Couldn’t you watch this all day?” Marla says. “We could get her back. That’s our mom.”

  Marla’s content to watch only this moment, but I need to know so much more before I’ll know how I feel about it. There’s another tug of longing for that mother, especially when she breaks apart from Dad to go back to her sister. She combs Laurel’s hair with her fingers and whispers secrets in her ear.

  We can hear them talking. Mom’s voice is higher and sweeter. Marla nudges me to listen more carefully, because she’s heard it all before and wants me to feel and think the same way she does.

  “Let’s stay here forever,” Mom says to Laurel.

  “Let’s bring him out with us,” Laurel says. “Would that help you?”

  “You know I can’t,” Mom says. “We tried with the silver leaves and those amazing pastries.”

  Laurel grins, and I feel like I’m looking at myself in a mirror. She can do it. She can bring him out if she wants to. She looks the way I felt when I took the star out. She looks the way I feel about that secret, and I know that she has the same secret.

  Marla knows it too.

  “You can bring people out,” Marla whispers. “They did it. You can do it for Mom.”

  The scene fades, the world reorganizing around us, and a moment later we are at the same ball but with different dresses, different music, bigger flower arrangements, more chandeliers.

  “What did you do?” Marla says. She knocks the side of her body against the side of mine, a Marla-shove that makes me stumble. I don’t respond to her hitting me, because when she’s like this it’s pointless to argue with her. Like when Mom has had a lot to drink or is recovering from having had a lot to drink or really anytime at this point.

  “I wanted a different memory,” I say. “I was curious, and I guess the closet was listening to what I wanted—”

  Marla goes for the door. She doesn’t want to see more than the prettiest moment. But I catch a glimpse of what I was wondering about, before she’s able to get through the crowds to the place we entered. There’s Laurel and Dad, holding hands, walking to the closet door together. She took him out for her sister. She tried to save Mom too.

  Then the door’s open and Marla is slapping at my arms.

  “We have to save her, we have to save her,” she says over and over until snot is dripping from her nose and she runs out of breath.

  She doesn’t stop swatting at me. And I let her. It’s what she needs.

  Twenty-Eight

  I hold my star in my hand before I go to bed and the next morning before I go downstairs. It is the perfect kind of warm: not skin-burning heat, but hot enough to get a little beneath my surface. I am holding something strong and powerful.

  I squeeze it and it pulses back at me.

  Something in my head lightens, releases, lets go. And the world brightens, tightens, leaps to life.

  I wore glasses for a few weeks last year. Then I broke them, and I was scared Mom would get mad if I told her. No one remembered I’d ever needed glasses, so I didn’t get in trouble, but I didn’t get new ones, either. But. For those few weeks that I wore them, even though I looked like a total loser, I loved the world a little more. The colors looked brighter. The shapes were sharp and perfect: circles were perfect circles. Right angles were deliberate and satisfyingly straight. I felt like I understood things about the world, that with those glasses on I was seeing so much more and appreciating more and becoming a new person.

  Anyway, that’s a fraction of how I feel with the star in my hand. The harder I squeeze, the clearer and newer and more
beautiful everything is. In a few breaths, I feel like I can manage the day, whatever happens. I can manage the memories from Marla’s closet yesterday and Astrid’s closet before and missing Mom and having to eat Pop-Tarts and cereal and pizza for dinner every night.

  I maybe don’t even need to go into my closet. I have the UnWorry now. In my hand.

  “Who wants to talk to Mom?” Dad says when I’m in the TV room eating my least favorite flavor of Pop-Tart. We are all out of delicious cinnamon. I’m stuck with fake strawberry, which is good, but I’d rather have pancakes.

  I rush to his side and he jumps; he’d been preparing himself for the usual quiet and stillness that follows that question. “Silly?” he says. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since watching him yesterday as a young man wooing my mother, and it’s strange, to have that between us now. To know that he once lived in a magical closet and now he lives out here with us. And I guess we make him happy, even though there are no golden trees or turrets or taffeta. And that’s nice, that he loves his life with us so much that he’s forgotten about his life Before.

  Marla, curled up on a chair across the room, gives me a shut up look, but I ignore it. We didn’t talk after we left her closet yesterday, after she finally stopped hitting me. Instead we stayed in our separate rooms and took separate bike rides around the neighborhood and didn’t speak when Astrid ordered pizza for us to eat so that Dad could go to some dinner meeting at the university.

  “You’re ready to talk on the phone with her?” Dad says, catching some kind of hesitation in the way I’m slow to reach for the phone, and, probably, the way I’m staring down Marla.

  “Yep,” I say, and take the phone from his hand. The cell service is bad, and if I move around too much the call will drop, so I’ll be stuck talking to her in the middle of the room. He rubs his head in confusion, like that will somehow dislodge the thoughts and force my actions to make sense. “Can I do it alone, though?” Dad nods with knitted eyebrows and a frown that’s not sad but is thoroughly flabbergasted.