I sing along with Annie under my breath.
As expected, Mom doesn’t ask where Eleanor and Astrid are, and Dad doesn’t come out of his study.
Near the end of the movie, Annie sings the song “Maybe” for the second time. It doesn’t do much for me, but I hear a sob coming from the other room. Mom.
If there is a worse sound than Mom crying, I haven’t heard it. Everyone says nails on a chalkboard are the worst, but I’d take that any day over this.
Marla and I look at each other and reach for the remote, but when I get my hands on it, I can’t decide whether to turn the TV off or lower the volume or do nothing at all.
“Should I get Dad?” I whisper, and slide closer to Marla on the couch. At least I’m not alone.
“He won’t know what to do,” Marla says.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say.
“Well, he’ll make it worse.”
Annie stops singing, but Mom doesn’t stop crying.
“My sister loved this song,” Mom says. I think that’s what she says. Her words are mushy and slurred. I’m scared when she sounds like this. I want to shake her until the words come out clearer, crisper. I want to disappear, and I know exactly how to do it. I’m about to suggest to Marla that we sneak back into Eleanor’s closet, that our sisters would understand if they knew how dire the circumstance was, but she gets up from the couch, puts her shoulders back, and clears her throat.
“I’ll check on her,” Marla says. It’s a terrible idea. Night crickets chirp out warnings. The sun goes down the whole way. It’s a sure sign, all of it, that it’s too late to save anyone.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that?” I say. Eleanor would grab her elbow and jerk her back down to the couch. Astrid would distract her with an art project and a few bits of gossip about Eleanor’s secret boyfriend. But I make a sound like a lamb and blink my eyes a lot and give up before the words are even out of my mouth.
“She probably wants company,” Marla says. “She’s probably lonely.” I wonder if we’re whispering low enough for Mom to ignore us. The house seems too drafty and quiet, and the loud Annie finale hasn’t started yet.
I should stop Marla, but I don’t know how. I let her go. I run upstairs before I have to hear what happens to her. I don’t want to know.
I’m a bad sister.
In my room I can’t hear much of what’s happening in the rest of the house. Sometimes I hate that, feeling disconnected from my sisters. Marla can hear the twins through their shared wall, and of course the twins have each other, even though Mom and Dad offered to let them have separate rooms in the New Hampshire house. I think they could tell Mom wasn’t thrilled with the idea of turning her sewing room into a bedroom.
She doesn’t like us going in the sewing room at all.
I try to distract myself by writing a postcard to LilyLee. The challenge of postcard writing is that you want to get across the most important things that have happened in the last few days, but you can’t say anything too personal. It’s an art form, like Astrid’s dioramas, or at least that’s what I tell myself.
I have a huge collection of postcards, and I go through five different pine tree New Hampshire ones, trying to craft the perfect three sentences to explain what happened today.
But I never get it right, because I can’t stop looking at my closet door.
It looks like Eleanor’s. The same white wood. The same blurry brass doorknob that could use a good shining. The same squeak of the hinges when I open it, which I do, slowly, like its magic might pour out if I’m not careful.
I’m going to go inside.
It’s probably not magic, anyway. It’s probably a normal closet like Marla’s and Astrid’s. Probably only Eleanor got the special closet, because Eleanor is exactly the kind of girl who would get a special closet. I am not that kind of girl. I don’t deserve it.
I take all the clothes and shoes and broken umbrellas and suitcases and missing-strapped backpacks out of my closet. I am close to certain that Astrid and Eleanor unloaded their closets’ contents into mine. Eleanor’s closet is now empty of everything but magic. So I have to make a huge pile of other people’s stuff in the middle of the room.
I consider getting one of Astrid’s dioramas, since that’s what makes the magic happen as far as I can tell, but I need to try to do this secretly, without getting in trouble. I don’t want them to find out and keep me out of Eleanor’s closet for good. And they’ll notice a missing diorama. They might even notice a moved diorama.