It was one of the longest, most boring experiences she had ever sat through. She knew opera was singing, of course, but not that it was nothing but singing. There was no story to follow, no dialogue, and even if there had been, it was all in Italian. The voices were annoyingly loud and frilly, as if racing up and down ladders. No sooner would a voice reach the top than it would trill its way down to the bottom again. Angie’s mother was on stage often—first with one man, then another, back and forth, and they seemed upset much of the time.
She glanced at Angie out of the corner of her eye, at the perfect curve of her spine, in rapt attention like her father. Rae day-dreamed through most of it. She focused on Jackson’s clues thus far: G, E, I. Then there was the as-of-yet unsolved Clue # 3 and the most recent, entirely baffling Clue # 5:
Look overhead in Springtime
For the Great Bear in the sky
A tilt of your head
(You should be in bed)
Marks who-what-when-where-why.
She’d gotten nowhere with these and, frankly, she was beginning to lose interest. The clues were too hard. Jack was too smart, and she wasn’t, and so much had happened since the game’s innocent beginnings. Still, his game was a welcome distraction from the pain of missing Penelope. As the musicalities carried on, she found herself pondering Clue # 3 for the hundredth time. “A lady’s fine porch display / for many years and a day / needs neither sunshine nor water / whether cold or much hotter / these blossoms are here to stay.”
What kind of blossoms don’t need water or sun? Surprisingly, the answer jumped out at her. Fake ones, of course! The basket of purple flowers on Doc Goodman’s porch—they’d been there forever, long before his wife died. Violet’s violets, duh! The plastic bouquet had been there when Raelyn bicycled to his house way back when, only to learn she was too late. G,E,I, and now a V. She played with combinations, V,I,G,E; V,I,E,G; V,E,I,G. Disjointed images floated up and down the ladder, mingling with the clues and the operatic voices: E. . . her English homework due tomorrow. . . . her Igloo project made from sugar cubes. G. . . Dad’s famous grape jelly pancakes. Jack’s Viola bow that Penelope ate once. Penelope. . .the postcard and her parents’ mega smiles: See you soon, woof, woof!
Her wanderings abruptly stopped. Did you miss that? What did it mean, See you soon? There was no mention in the postcard of a release date. There still were no visiting hours, yet six weeks had passed.
The theater went ice-cold. The postcard was a sham! The stage became a blur of color, and the voices scattered.
Suddenly, the place was hit by thunder. “Bravo! Bravo!” Angie was standing and shouting, her curls bouncing. The entire house was on its feet: “Bravo!” Then the endless curtain calls: dramatic curtsies, bows, and blinding color. Rae was lost in an eruption of deafening cheers, clapping, and whistling.
“So what did you think of my mom?” Angie asked, breathless.
“She was really good.” After a pause, she asked, “Did she die?”
“Of course she dies! Why else would she sink to the floor like that in the end?” She grabbed Rae’s arm, laughing. “Come on, Gigi. Let’s go see her back stage!” She acted as if they’d never stopped being friends. As VIPs, they were escorted down steps and through a hall where the star, Gloria Quinn, met them. Mr. Quinn handed the roses to Angie, who in turn gave them to her mother. This must be the way they did it. “Bravissimo, Mom!” Angie was beaming. Her mother was a fright close-up. She had an outrageous amount of make up on (particularly around the eyes), which made her look freakish.
Rae dreaded ever being asked to the opera again, but the very next weekend, she was: another skimpy olive branch from her former best friend. She’d have to work a little harder than that. Apparently, Angie was offering her another crack at the storyline, since she’d clearly missed it. Rae sought advice during a visit with Jack—not about the dubious friendship (no one seemed to notice), or the lack of visiting hours with Penelope (no awareness there either), but about La Traviata.
“I don’t blame you. Yech!” her brother cackled.
“Opera isn’t for everyone,” Dad agreed. “You could always decline.”
“I’ll tell you what!” Mom had a great idea. “You can tell Angie that you have other plans—and it will be true.” She raised her eyebrows with a mischievous smile. “You and I can go shopping that day. How’s that?” Peck, peck, give the young one a worm.
“Thanks, Mom!” As clueless as her mother was, she came through when Rae needed her most.
Sometimes.
CHAPTER 11
Angelica’s Secret
NOW I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT my most terrifying dream. It was so frightening that it chased my Glitter away. I was six, and my brother and I were playing catch with a big red ball. The ball got past me, and I ran after it. “Stop!” he called, “let it go!” In front of me was a hole in the lawn I’d never seen before. The ball rolled right into it and was gone. “It’s a Bottomless Pit!” he screamed. I knew what he meant. He had teased me about the Bottomless Pit my whole life: no end, ever. You never hit bottom, no matter how far you fall or for how long. I tried desperately to catch myself at the edge, but it was too late. I lost my balance and plunged feet-first into the void.
I fell, like Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole. But unlike Alice, I would never tumble to a stop. My descent was fast and horrifying, and my stomach leaped out of my throat. I could have been traveling through a black hole in outer space, but I was plummeting into the endless bowels of the Earth.
Night after night for a time, this dark dream tortured me: the sheer panic at the precipice, the terror of the fall. I began to hunker down, anticipating the daunting drop and the hopeless recognition of no way out. I concentrated for the Glitter to come—to rescue me, protect me from my fate—clutching Iggy, eyes squeezed tight. But there was blackness, nothing more.
Over time, the nightmare became an essential part of my bedtime routine: pajamas, brush teeth, kiss family good night, close eyes, and fall into the abyss.
UNLESS SHE HEARD JACK’S VOICE, Raelyn ignored landline phone calls. They were never for her. They were either robo calls about never-ending, upcoming elections, or they were for her parents. But that time, it was Angelica’s voice on the machine. Rae had been declining her texts. It wasn’t intentional, necessarily, just her typical avoidance when situations were messy. There had been the uncomfortable opera weeks before. There had been the Pet Lover’s Club and stealing Megan and Cierra from her. There had been Miss Popular, Ginnie Harper, and the ultimate betrayal—the orange armband meetings.
But when she heard the squeaky voice in the kitchen, she knew her ex-bff finally must be desperate. She’d come back begging, tail between her legs. Rae picked up the phone, slightly triumphant. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me. Angie.” As if she didn’t recognize the voice she’s known since she was five; as if caller ID didn’t read Quinn.
“Okay.” Rae would keep the burden squarely on the caller.
“Um,” Angie said quietly, “I need to talk to you.”
“Oh.”
“But not on the phone.”
“Then why are we on the phone.”
There was a pause. “Um, I wasn’t in school today. I was sick.” Another delay interrupted by a sniffle. “Gigi, we need to talk.”
“You just said that.”
“In private, I mean.” A choking sound. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”
Already, Rae was feeling like a horrible person.
Angie whispered, “There’s something you’ll want to know.”
This piqued Raelyn’s curiosity; nothing was more enticing than a good secret, if that was what Angie was getting at. “What?”
“It’s what I can’t tell you over the phone.”
So the burden shifts to me, Raelyn noted, defeated but still dying to know. Life was so unfair. “Okaaay, so. . . ?”
“Can you come over? Please?”
“Right now?” Rae was already slip
ping on her boots—what a sucker.
“Uh-huh.”
She made herself sound terribly bored. “I guess.” She zipped up her coat.
“Oh, thank you!”
Rae mentally kicked herself as she pedaled around thin patches of snow on the sidewalks. She always stuck herself with the dirty work, jumping through the hoops, doing the favor—even when the gain was for someone else. Even when she was on top, she ended up on the bottom. She wondered what was so important that it had to be told in person. A long overdue apology, perhaps, a kiss at her feet, a gesture of humility.
Angelica was waiting for her at the window with a finger to her lips. She let her inside in her baggy pajamas, lavender cup-cakes bouncing all over the fabric.
“Dad, it’s Gigi. She brought my homework,” she called out. A little white lie, it barely counted. But Angie would confess it at church the very next Sunday, just in case, and dutifully follow through with extra Hail Marys. She would never lie to her parents.
“Make it quick, girls. We don’t want Raelyn to get whatever you have.”
The girls ran upstairs, and Angie shut the door. She stood with her back flush against it and again thrust her finger to her face. “Shh! You have to promise you will never tell!” Her face was puffy and pink.
“What is it?” This wasn’t the mea culpa Rae was expecting.
The girls sat on the unmade bed. Angelica began to whisper, “You know how I’m not allowed to stay home alone yet, right?” Rae didn’t respond. “Well, I didn’t feel good this morning, and my Mom is away, so I went to work with Daddy like I sometimes do, right?” Rae didn’t respond. “The police station always had a room with a cot, and—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rae said.
“I’m trying to say,” Angie began. She opened a top drawer and turned to Raelyn with an orange armband. She dropped it in the waste basket, then turned to her again.
Rae shifted slightly. “That’s what you had me come all the way over here for?” In truth, she was pleased that Angie seemed to have come around from the “dark side,” but there was no need for gloating or drama. She wasn’t about to applaud, if that’s what Angie was after. Plus, this hardly amounted to an apology.
“There’s more.” Angie sat back down on the bed. “You knew my dad was transferred to the Compound, right?”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“When?”
“A while ago. I didn’t want to tell you, ‘cuz I know how you feel about Penelope and canines and everything.” She looked frightened when she said this, as if Rae might bring an axe down on her head. But she didn’t (not yet). “He got a huge pay raise. I’ve never been there.”
Rae was ready to walk out. “Why are you even telling me this?”
“Until today.” Angie’s palms jumped up to cover her face, and then just as quickly fell, as if she’d never done it. She gulped. “You have no idea. No one does except the workers there. It’s top secret.”
Rae leaned forward. Secret carried an irresistible allure, even in such a distasteful context as this. “. . .What is?”
Angie glanced at the door. “First, there’s a tall wire fence with metal knots along the top. My dad has a code to get in. A guy in a hard hat tells my dad that construction’s finally done. He’s nervous he’ll get in trouble because of some delay. Daddy says, You’ll have to take it up with Ollie. That’s Chief Jerkins.”
“I know that.”
“Anyway, in the security building my dad gives me this lecture.” She lowered her voice to a faint whisper. “I have to stay in a small room. If I need to use the bathroom, he’ll arrange for it.”
“That’s messed up,” Rae said, borrowing her brother’s phrase.
Then Angie whispered something directly in her ear.
“No way!”
“Shush.” Angelica eyed the door again.
“Like a prisoner? Has your dad gone crazy?”
“There’s more,” Angie continued. “So there I am locked in this room. And I hear my dad on the phone, but I can only make out a few words.” She shut her eyes to better access her memory. “Something about the ‘pit’. And ‘ready to roll.’”
“What does it mean? What’s the ‘pit’?”
“No clue. But there’s a window in the room, and it’s painted black. I scratched a little section so I could see outside.” Her face went pale. “It’s not what people think.”
Rae’s eyelids closed. Then they opened. Then they closed and opened again, but nothing had changed. “. . .What do you mean?”
Angie grabbed her hands and held them tightly in her own, her gaze on the interlocked fingers between their laps. “Gigi, there will never be visiting hours. When I asked my dad, he laughed.” Her hands began to tremble. “And on and off, I heard this strange wailing sound. Like a siren somewhere, or a high wind. Then I realized.”
The girls fell into complete silence. The normal rhythms of thought were way off, like an at-risk, irregular heartbeat. Unlike Rae, who had sprouted upward like a bean, Angie hadn’t grown much over the past year. Curled up, she was a pale pink mouse to her towering friend. A thin trickle curved down her cheek and her eyes were watery slits, barely open.
“Stop.” Rae clamped her ears like a vise, her fingernails digging into her own scalp. “Stop it!”
“Shush!” Angelica’s fist came down on Rae’s head. “Shut up!” She fled to the door and pressed against it as if her petite form, cupcakes and all, could hold back a raging torrent.
Rae stared at the dizzying stars in front of her, feet dangling off the bed. Rubbing her head, she muttered, “Why did you do that?”
“You’d better go.”
Rae proceeded to the door, massaging her scalp. But the door remained closed. “What are we going to do.”
“Not me. I’d be grounded for life.” Angie had gathered herself somewhat. “But you,” she said flatly, staring down at her cupcake slippers, “I mean, I guess I can help a tiny bit, but that’s all.” Raelyn was nodding without realizing it. “And if you ever say anything, I swear, I’ll never talk to you again. I will deny, deny, deny.”
“I know.”
“I will never let anything happen to my dad. Or my mom. Or me.”
“I know.”
“Sorry about your head.”
“I know.” In a surprise move, Rae brought her fist down directly onto Angie’s crown.
“Oww-wuh!”
“Now we’re even.”
They met Mr. Quinn at the bottom of the stairs. “I was just about to check on you.” His gentle voice had never before sent shivers. He lifted his daughter’s chin. “You’re getting worse, Pip, I can see it in your eyes. Maybe we should see the doctor.” He glanced at Rae with equal concern. “You don’t look so well, either. You’re like a ghost—for you, I mean. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Rae opened the front door. “I have my bike,” she called as she rushed out. She pedaled home to the sound of Penelope crying out for her and a painful lump rising on her scalp.
At home, Jackson’s letter with the sixth and final clue lay lifeless on the foyer floor. She stepped over it, unopened, and trudged upstairs. She lay on her bed like dead wood through dinner and waited for dusk to disappear into an early night.
Ever since Penelope was taken away, her once reliable Glitter had diminished to the slenderest of pickings. Each night, she waited patiently for the few lackluster flecks to dawdle onto the scene, only to quickly fizzle out and disappear. Still she canvassed the area, hanging on, never losing hope. But that night, after hearing Angelica’s dreadful secret, her precious Glitter had been snuffed out completely. This was the moment when it all changed. For the first time in her life, there was nothing but darkness. She stared into the void.
And then she fell.
Strangely, from somewhere among the murky depths, small whispers arose:
Penny, can you hear me down here?
Why, yes, I believe so! Is tha
t you, Raelyn?
Yes, it’s me. You sound so small.
Yes, we are very small, indeed. I can barely smell you.
You and I, we’re flip sides of the same coin.
Sorry?
That we’re connecting right now by our thoughts; it’s proof we’re part of each other.
I suppose you’re right!
Maybe we even share some DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, we learned about it in science.
I’m afraid you’re breaking up, my dear. Can you repeat?
Hello? . . . My Lady, are you there? . . . Hello?
PENELOPE’S BELLY GROWLED, and no one was there to fill it. From one morning to the next, the twisting and contracting of her abdomen never ceased—even after the feeding frenzy, the moment each day that she and all the others bit and scratched their way over each other for the scrap of a meal. Imagine that, and she such a proper lady. As primitive and vulgar as it was, this was the moment each day that she lived for. And the moment each day that, in turn, kept her alive.
At night, they crammed together for whatever warmth they could share. Some whimpered, some wailed. Some, like herself, kept silent. But they were all waiting for that euphoric, fleeting moment to arrive the next day, when they would fight among themselves for the remaining morsels. Waiting for their coats to grow to warm their exposed flesh. Waiting for their families to come and take them home.
Penelope waited for Raelyn. Rae had made a promise. She would never leave her in a place like this. Any day now, she would appear with her sunshine face, her herb-scented hair and joyful greeting, “Helloooo, My Lady!” Penny’s life was becoming a series of things forgotten. She forgot about her special necklace, their Friday night sleepovers, leaping for T-R-E-A-T-S. But she never completely forgot that, in fact, there were things she was forgetting, things receding into fuzziness, buried amidst pangs of unquenchable thirst. If she vowed to remember anything at all, it was to hold onto memories of her beloved sister and the promise she had made.
The Thing at the Edge of Blundertown Page 9