“I did it,” I say. I can’t put words to the specifics, so I take her hand and try to pull her into the closet.
“Stop! What are you doing? Don’t grab at me!” Marla has a hitch in her voice, confirming the crying she’s been doing since I left her with Mom. Between Marla and Mom, we could fill all of Blue Lake with tears.
Of course the lake down the street is called Blue Lake. As Astrid’s always saying, most people in the world have a serious lack of imagination, and I guess New Hampshire is no exception.
Meanwhile, I haven’t cried at all. I couldn’t fill a thimble, let alone a whole lake. I considered doing it when we moved, but decided I didn’t really need to.
“Are you okay?” Marla says. I’m not sure Marla’s ever asked me that. She’s usually very worried about her own big huge feelings, and not so much concerned about anyone else’s. A little bit of me warms up inside, seeing her eyebrows all scrunched together.
“Something happened in my closet,” I say.
“No,” Marla says with some force, as if she could change what’s already happened by saying No with enough feeling behind it. “You’re not anything special. Your closet’s not anything special. I don’t know what you think you saw, but it probably wasn’t real, and you should probably forget all about it.” Even Marla knows how flat her argument sounds. In the pause after her words, I reach out a hand and put it on her shoulder, the way Eleanor might. Marla leaps away from me.
She doesn’t leave my room, though, doesn’t cover her ears with her hands and scream at me to shut up, which she has definitely done before, so I think I’m allowed to keep going, even if it stings a little.
I’m trying to work out the feelings, inside and out, and I need to say them to one of my sisters. “It was warm and strange. It was better than what’s out here.”
Marla doesn’t reply, but her eyes go wide and glassy, and I wonder if maybe she’s about to have another sobbing situation right here and now. Her fists are tight at her sides and I should stop talking, even if she isn’t telling me to.
Maybe I’m a very selfish person or am so stunned that my mouth won’t listen to my brain, but I keep going. It’s like I shook up a can of soda and opened it, and now that the words and feelings and complications are fizzing out, it’s not like I can twist the top back on to make it stop. It’s too late.
“It was weird,” I say. “Like a dream or a nightmare. But not scary, except sort of scary, because it was in my closet and I didn’t know what was happening, and it would have been pretty if I was, like, outside watching the sky? Or if I had made it come to life from a diorama, but I don’t know what might happen in there. It has a mind of its own. Eleanor’s seems all comfortable and safe. Mine’s different. It’s impulsive or something. It’s in control.”
“It’s so unfair,” Marla says before throwing her hands in the air and stalking out of my room. I don’t call after her; I wouldn’t know what to say.
I’m on my own again, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid. But the shakes in my leg have stopped, and a tiny bit of that warm-sun-lightbulb seems to be inside me now. In my veins, sort of. Or my heart. I guess I’m not sure. It’s the beginning of a feeling and not a whole, complete, expressible thing yet.
It’s almost nice enough to make me want to venture back into the closet, close the door again, stare at that lightbulb that maybe-possibly isn’t a lightbulb, and see what else I can get. It feels like I swallowed a bit of the warm light. Apparently I needed that. I’ve been cold inside since Mom got sick again. This ugly moment in time comes with its own weather pattern. It comes with a chilly temperature down to my bones and a tightness in my chest and a funny dry taste in my mouth, like I’m craving a gulp of water.
So the warmth in the closet, the orange light, the hypnotic dance it did above my head, felt especially good. I want more.
But not alone.
Eight
It used to be that we would all sleep through the night. It used to be that once my lights were off and my door was closed, I would be all alone until the next morning.
I guess it’s not that way anymore.
Sometime after midnight I wake up and Astrid is sitting at the foot of my bed, and Eleanor is hovering above me.
“What did I tell you?” Eleanor says. I am waking up from a dream about frogs and princesses, so it takes me a while to figure out what she means.
“Mmmmm,” I say.
“I said not to go in any closets while we were gone,” Eleanor says. Astrid doesn’t say anything. She does, however, keep a warm hand on my foot, which has snuck out from under the covers. I decide it’s her way of telling me she’s not as mad at me as Eleanor is, or maybe even that Eleanor isn’t as mad at me as she seems to be.