Glitter Gets Everywhere

by Yvette Clark

  “It doesn’t sound perfectly normal,” said Dad, eyeing me as I clutched my backpack on Tower Bridge.

  Mum gently removed it from my hands.

  “Well, it is. Edgar Allan Poe even wrote a short story about it called “The Imp of the Perverse.” It’s the same compulsion that makes people want to shout out in the quiet parts of a church service.”

  “Edgar Allan Poe was a complete freak who died of rabies,” said Imogen. “We studied him in English last term and voted him the poet most likely to have been a serial killer.”

  Mum ignored these fascinating facts and gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder.

  “As the only one here with any medical qualifications, I can assure you, Kitty, that it is perfectly normal. I even have it myself sometimes.” She smiled at me and passed the bag to Dad.

  “Either that or it’s a good excuse not to have to carry anything when we cross a bridge,” Dad said. “Remind me never to book a family trip to Venice.”

  The living room, dining room, and kitchen are all one open space. To the left of the front door is Dad’s bedroom, which has a tiny en suite bathroom, and to the right are two identical small bedrooms joined by what, according to Dad, is called a Jack and Jill bathroom.

  “Or in this case, Jill and Jill,” he says, clearly pleased with this comedy comment.

  All the walls are painted a flat white, and the furniture is white, cream, and light wood. Even the floorboards are pale, and I think with a pang of the rich mahogany antique boards at home, the floor made even brighter by vibrantly colored Turkish rugs in inky blues and ruby reds. This place urgently needs an injection of color. I flick through my mental paint chart and think about the colors I would use to make this feel like a home. Parma Gray, color 27, would add dimension and softness to the living room. I would use Pavilion Blue, color 252, in Dad’s room, the same greeny-blue of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, where Dad proposed to Mum. For Imogen’s room, Sulking Room Pink, 295, how appropriate. It’s called Sulking Room Pink because the French used that shade in boudoirs, and the word bouder means to sulk. Oh, the things you can learn from imaginatively named paint. For my room, I’ll use Setting Plaster, color number 231, a dusty pink so pale it looks as if the walls are delicately blushing.

  Standing in this white box, with all of Manhattan spread out in front of me, I’m surprised to feel a little color trickle back into my life, and I give a shiver of excitement, this one not caused by the arctic air-conditioning. Perhaps coming to New York wasn’t the worst idea Dad ever had. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lost in Translation

  We spend our first week in New York doing all the usual touristy things. We visit Central Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the High Line, and Wall Street. We take a tour bus and ride past the famous sights of the city. The Chrysler Building is my favorite, Imogen adores the Flatiron Building, and we both love the Plaza Hotel, where our childhood heroine Eloise used to run wild. After reading that book, Imogen was desperate to go and live at the Ritz. I’ve seen all of these things before in films or books, but nobody had told me about the steam that rises unexpectedly from the street, making everything smell like laundry for a split second. It’s enchanting, although the smell of pee that sometimes lingers outside subway stations is less so. The hundreds of yellow cabs and the endless honking of horns just add to the New Yorkiness of it all. The sun shines brightly every day, displayed to perfection in a brilliant blue sky, St Giles Blue, color number 280, to be precise. London’s summer sky is a gentle Blue Ground, color number 210, but in New York, the sky demands your attention. It yells, “Hey you, look up, look at me, now!” so you lift your head obediently, the skyscrapers make your head spin and your tummy lurch, and then there it is, the bluest of blue skies.

  We take a boat to see the Statue of Liberty up close and climb the 377 steps to stand in her crown. While everyone else is gazing out at the stunning views of the harbor and city blanketed below us, I look up and see the wavy lines of Lady Liberty’s hair. Back on board, there’s a welcome breeze from the relentlessly sunny weather. Imogen’s ponytail whips my face as we lean over the railing of the boat to cool off. After a few days exploring the city, we look as if we’ve spent a week on the beach in Greece. Imogen is a lovely honey color and some of my freckles have joined together. Dad has lost the ghostly pallor I’d become accustomed to over the last six months. We get off the boat again at Ellis Island, which is where all immigrants arriving in New York used to land. The guide informs us that twelve million settlers were processed here from 1892 to 1954 and that despite sometimes being referred to as the Island of Tears, the majority of immigrants were well treated.

  “It looks better than JFK,” I whisper to Dad, obviously not quietly enough since the tour guide chuckles and tells me I should try landing at LaGuardia Airport if I think JFK’s bad.

  There are hundreds of pictures of immigrants. Imogen finds a photo of a twelve-year-old Polish girl with sad eyes who she says looks like me. I try to find a picture of someone who resembles Imogen, but she informs me that she would have been traveling first class, so she wouldn’t have had to go through Ellis Island. The girl in the sepia photo is wearing a scratchy-looking wool shawl around her shoulders, and a scarf covers most of her hair. I wonder what her name was, where her parents were, and what became of her. Dad eventually nudges me along to look at the rest of the exhibition, but I can’t stop thinking about my sad-eyed Polish look-alike. I hope she had a happy life in New York.

  In the evenings before school starts, we travel the world through New York’s restaurants. We go to Little Italy for pizza, eat at Greek restaurants in Astoria, and gobble Puerto Rican food in Harlem. Dad lets us order breakfast for dinner at a diner in SoHo, which has turquoise plastic seats and ridiculously tall stacks of pancakes. Dad excitedly requests his eggs sunny-side up, and I have mine over easy. Cooking styles for eggs in America sound so much more fun than in England. The waistband on my shorts is starting to dig into my skin, leaving an angry red button-and-zipper-shaped indent on my stomach. Some evenings we have food delivered to the apartment; the doorman always calls us to let us know that a delivery is on its way up to us. We order Chinese food and are thrilled by the little white rice containers, chopsticks, and fortune cookies that are delivered.

  “It’s just like in Friends,” says Imogen as she unpacks the cartons of food. She’s been binge-watching the series on Netflix ever since Dad mentioned moving to New York. She snaps open her cookie, smiles, and reads, “‘Your success will astonish those around you.’ Well, I don’t think anyone will be surprised by my success. What does yours say, Kitty?”

  “‘The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.’ What does that even mean? How is that a fortune? ‘Lucky numbers: 13, 16, 47, 28, 54, 9.’ Dad, what does yours say?”

  “Your daughters will load the dishwasher.”

  He’s quite the comedian these days. I’m so pleased to hear him make jokes again that I laugh as if it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, while Imogen groans and rolls her eyes.

  We shop in small bodegas and a giant Whole Foods bursting with gorgeous-looking organic fruit and vegetables, artisanal bread, kombucha, cold-brewed coffee, and thirty-two varieties of granola—I know because I counted them.

  “It’s so much more glamorous than Waitrose,” Imogen says, loading the cart with green smoothies, pineapples, and kale. She’s doing a cleanse called the Glow-Up Challenge, which she will immortalize on Instagram to share with her 1,862 followers. Dad and I ate hot dogs earlier in the week that we’d bought from a vendor in Central Park. It seemed a very New Yorky thing to do, but my stomach felt a bit funny afterward, so Imogen was probably right not to join us.

  As the last days of August fade away and the start of school looms, I begin to feel nervous and lose my appetite. Even the delicious pancakes at the diner aren’t tempting anymore. Dad tries to reassure me that it will be great, but what does
he know about American schools? By the time Labor Day comes around, I am a nervous wreck. Labor Day is the Monday before school starts and the official end of the summer. According to the local news, nobody should be wearing white after today.

  “That’s ridiculous,” says Imogen. “It’s like a hundred degrees outside. How can it be the end of summer?”

  Apparently, the no-white rule is in place until Memorial Day. I have absolutely no idea when Memorial Day is.

  Imogen and I have been discussing whether we’ll get marked down for using English spellings in our schoolwork.

  “That would be so unfair,” I say. “The subject is English, not American. Labour has a letter u in it, maths is plural since it’s short for mathematics, and zed is the last letter of the alphabet, not zee.”

  “Chill out, Kitty. You’re fulfilling every stereotype of a stuck-up Brit! When in Rome and all that.”

  Annoyingly, Imogen has started calling things by their American names and keeps saying sidewalk, sneakers, elevator, and most irritatingly of all, pants instead of trousers. She loves shouting, “Check out my pants!” which isn’t nearly as funny as she thinks it is. If Imogen lived in Rome, she would say she lived in Roma. My sister’s right, though—people are going to think I’m stuck up. The more nervous I get, the more stilted my accent becomes. As Imogen begins to elongate her vowels, I clip mine back to compensate. Dad points out that I’m starting to sound like the queen or someone from one of those black-and-white films about the Second World War.

  “Brits and Americans, separated by a common language,” says Dad. “A guy at work sent a hilarious email the other day to welcome me to the office, with a list of commonly misunderstood expressions. When an English person says ‘That’s very interesting,’ they mean ‘What utter drivel’; ‘quite good’ translates to ‘bloody awful’; and ‘I’ll bear that in mind’ means ‘I’ve already forgotten whatever nonsense you just spouted.’”

  Half of New York seems to be going back-to-school shopping. The streets of SoHo are packed, and Staples, where we go to get folders, pencils, and paper, looks like it’s been raided by marauding Vikings—not that Alfhild’s family would ever have done anything like that. We buy jeans from Levi’s, T-shirts, shorts, and leggings from H&M and Brandy Melville, backpacks from a place called Fjällräven, and shoes from Adidas. It’s weird to be buying running shoes to wear to school instead of the regulation black, brown, or navy flats I’m used to wearing.

  As we traipse into yet another store, Dad sighs, clearly finding a marathon shopping trip with his daughters in one-hundred-degree heat draining. He must have lost the ability to think clearly as Imogen manages to convince him to buy her expensive running shorts for gym class from Lululemon, and he nearly faints as he hands over his credit card.

  “Seventy-two dollars for a pair of shorts,” he splutters. “They’re fourteen pounds in Marks & Spencer for a pack of two.”

  Imogen totes the chic red-and-black Lululemon bag containing the single pair of shorts while I lug the Brandy Melville, H&M, and Levi’s bags. Dad struggles with the rest of the shopping through crowds of people—they all seem to be walking in the opposite direction to us. He stops apologizing for hitting people with the enormous Staples bag when he realizes that most of them are, in fact, walking directly into him. Imogen’s bag has cutesy sayings written on it like “Dance, sing, floss, and travel” and “Friends are more important than money.”

  “Not if you want to shop at Lululemon they’re not,” Dad mutters and makes Imogen carry the Staples bag as well.

  When we get home, Imogen and I spend an unusually companionable couple of hours trying on potential first-day of school outfits while Dad has a lie-down with a cold washcloth on his face. It wasn’t that bad! We parade through the Jack and Jill bathroom modeling our new looks.

  “It’s so hot, I really want to wear the shorts tomorrow,” says Imogen, who is looking gorgeous in denim shorts with a navy-and-white striped T-shirt. We both seem to have purchased quite a lot of navy blue, perhaps an unconscious homage to our school in London. “But what if nobody else is wearing shorts? It would be so embarrassing if I were the only one. I don’t even know if we’re allowed to wear them. There has to be some type of dress code. I’m going to check the website. I wish I knew someone who goes there so I could ask.”

  My sister sounds almost nervous. Maybe she doesn’t take everything in her gazelle-like stride after all. It could be that beneath her glossy exterior is an anxious girl who’s as worried as I am about fitting in at her new school. I imagine Imogen as Ponytail Girl, finally revealing a chink in her armor to her trusty sidekick, aka me. I really need to think up a good superhero name for myself. Anyway, Ponytail Girl showing a bit of vulnerability will make her more relatable—even if she can grow a waist-length ponytail in seconds and shoot scrunchies from her wrists. I decide to go and write this scene in my book, The Swishes of Ponytail Girl. The story is coming along well, although without the pictures, it’s not nearly as good as it should be. I wish for the thousandth time that I could draw or paint something apart from walls—then I’d have somewhere for all the colors in my head to land instead of them swirling around inside me.

  We decide to FaceTime Gran before it gets too late to call England. It’s strange to sit here in New York with the sun blazing in through the windows and the air-conditioning blasting out while Gran is dressed for bed in her flannel robe. She tells us that she had to put the heat on, since there’s been a cold snap in London. We gave Gran a new computer so that she could email and FaceTime us while we’re away. We made her promise to hold Cleo up to the camera and to let Mrs. Allison use the computer sometimes, because she doesn’t have one. Mrs. Allison said she doesn’t trust computers.

  “I read somewhere that criminals can watch you through that little camera at the top of the screen. Russian and Chinese spies!” she told Dad in a stage whisper as he tried to explain FaceTime.

  “Let me guess, Elizabeth,” said Gran. “You read that in the Daily Mail.”

  “I put a sliding cover over the lens,” said Dad, trying to keep the peace, “Even Mark Zuckerberg has one. Just remember to slide it back before you call us so that we can see you.”

  “I’ve no idea who Mark Zuckwhatever is, but perhaps he read the same article as I did, which was indeed in the Daily Mail, thank you, Eleanor.”

  “Well, you have to move with the times,” said Gran smugly. “The rate of progress these days is extraordinary.”

  “It’s not what I’d call extraordinary,” Mrs. Allison replied. “They said we’d have flying cars by now, and do we have any? Not that I’ve noticed.”

  Gran lifts Cleo up to the camera. The cat immediately blocks the lens with her black furry face and proceeds to step on the keyboard, which disconnects us. When Gran calls back, Cleo is on the floor in disgrace. We give Gran a virtual tour of our new apartment. She’s most impressed by the views of the river and the Jack and Jill bathroom, but sensibly points out that Imogen and I should probably have a pre-agreed morning schedule to avoid arguments.

  “So that would be Imogen from 6:45 to 7:15 and Kitty from 7:15 to 7:18,” Imogen laughs.

  “Actually, I need at least five minutes, dummy,” I say.

  “Are you excited about school, Kitty?” Gran asks.

  “Nervous. I can’t stop thinking about Jess and everyone else going back to school in London. I even miss the uniform. Having to decide what you’re going to wear each day is exhausting. What have you been doing, Gran?”

  “Well, I went to a Zumba class with Mrs. Allison this morning. It was extraordinary, and not in a good way. I won’t be doing that again, but they do offer Pilates classes at the same studio, so we’re going to give that a try on Wednesday. That seems more my type of thing. Kate came for a visit yesterday and took me out for a lovely lunch, so I’ve been keeping busy. I am tired, though, because I’ve had a few interrupted nights’ sleep.”

  I must look worried—maybe Gran can’t sleep because s
he’s missing us too much. But she quickly explains that Cleo has learned how to open the door to her bedroom, so she’s decided it’s easier to let her stay in there. It looks like Cleo has claimed her rightful place within a couple of weeks, just as I predicted. Gran and I talk until Imogen kicks me off the laptop to have one of her marathon FaceTime calls with Josh. I told Dad I don’t think she should be allowed to FaceTime her boyfriend from her bedroom. I said I thought it was inappropriate.

  “Mind your own business, Kitty,” Imogen said. “You’re just jealous because you’ll never have a boyfriend.”

  “Imogen, don’t be mean,” said Dad, ruffling my hair. “Kitty, you really should mind your own business.”

  I lie awake for ages worrying about school, and whether anyone will talk to me tomorrow. For the longest time, I’ve felt as though I’ve been underwater, but now I feel like I’m on the highest diving board at the pool. The one I would never jump off, but there’s a long line of kids jostling impatiently behind me, and I’m going to have to jump because they won’t let me go back down the ladder. I do some of the deep breathing exercises that Mum used to do with me when I couldn’t sleep. She called it belly breathing, one hand on my chest, one on my stomach, breathe in for four and out for four. The hand on the chest should stay still, and the one on the belly should rise and fall. I belly breathe for about a hundred breaths, but even though I’m doing it right and my hand is rising and falling just as it should be, it’s not helping, so I turn my lamp back on and read until I can feel my eyes closing. I summon up an image of Cleo, and eventually, the thought of a sweet little black cat on the other side of the Atlantic, with her tail curled neatly around her body, sleeping at the bottom of Gran’s bed, lulls me to sleep.