“It won’t let me,” Astrid says. “I’m only really good for the dioramas, I guess.” If it were Marla in here she’d throw a fit, but with Astrid there’s a shrug in her voice. She doesn’t need the same things the rest of us need. She has a whole wild world in her head, a perfect escape always at the ready. “I like watching you, though,” she says, and I’m surging with sisterly love, which is the best kind of love.
I take another petal, wrap my legs around a new stem, and grunt as I shift into a slightly higher atmosphere. “What if I want to stay in here forever, climbing into, like, infinity?” I say. “What if climbing this flower is the greatest thing ever, and I have tons of energy and could keep going all day?”
“Then I’m pretty sure it will never end,” Astrid says. “From what I’ve seen, the closets give you what you need. What you ask for.”
“And your closet?” I say. I can’t tell her about Marla, but maybe I can make her figure it out on her own. Maybe I can hint about what happened in there.
“It’s different,” Astrid says. And then in a much tinier voice, “I don’t know.”
I get a spike of fear in my chest, but it disappears pretty fast in here. Outside the closet, the fear can last all day. The dread. In here it comes up and fades away in almost the same breath.
I keep climbing, and Mom’s KINDNESS bracelet falls off my wrist and onto one of the petals.
“I can’t wait to show LilyLee all this,” I call down. I think of the postcard I will try to write LilyLee tonight and how I’ll lead her in here when she visits at the end of the summer. The adventures we’ll have.
“I think it’s only for us sisters,” Astrid says. “Maybe don’t worry so much about LilyLee.”
“I guess.” I’m getting a little tired. The fear didn’t last, but it took some of my energy with it, so I look above me to see how much farther there is to go. What had looked infinite before is now closing in. A ceiling of white petals is the exact right distance away from me. I’ve reached the top, because I want to reach the top.
Astrid is right. It is giving me what I want.
I look for a way down. Climbing up the petals was relatively easy; figuring out a way down is much harder. I kick my feet around until they find a sturdy bit of stem. I wrap my legs around it and work my way down, gripping petal after petal.
When I reach the place where the bracelet fell off, I blink about eight hundred times to make sure I’m seeing things right. The tiny blue circle of plastic beads has turned into a rope of sapphires. Massive, tennis-ball-size gems, in long strands braided together and hanging all the way from the flower to the ground, which seems like it must be miles below, but it’s hard to keep perspective from up here. It hurts my fingers, the sharpness of the stones, but they’re so beautiful and sparkly it doesn’t matter. I’m climbing down a jeweled rope. In a tiny universe of giant white flowers. Life couldn’t get much better.
Eleanor’s closet made me feel safe. My closet makes me feel like I’m on an adventure.
Astrid beams at me as I swing to the bottom. “Where did that come from?” she says. She gets up and comes over to touch the jewels. “You’re getting good at this, huh?”
“Some bracelet Mom gave Marla. From Florida. Or Minnesota? I don’t remember. From one of her places,” I say. I don’t think Astrid will like it, and I’m right.
“Oh.”
“I had it on.”
“Yeah . . .” Astrid stops fingering the sapphires and puts her hands in her pockets. Astrid never wants to talk about Mom.
I guess only Marla really likes talking about Mom, and I don’t understand the way she talks about her, so it doesn’t count.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I let go of the sapphire rope.
It’s beautiful, but that doesn’t matter.
“Let’s go,” Astrid says. She goes to the door, and I want to weep, losing all the prettiness. “That’s enough for today.”
If I hadn’t brought Mom’s bracelet in, we could have stayed all afternoon.
Fourteen
I’m sad about leaving the closet, so Astrid suggests ice cream.
Everyone’s back home and obviously Eleanor is on board, since her secret boyfriend works there. Marla doesn’t want the three of us going alone, so she comes too, even though she doesn’t like ice cream.
It is so like Marla, to be into crackers and sips of Mom’s coffee and the stinkiest cheeses, but to hate ice cream.
“Don’t say anything strange,” Eleanor says. “Don’t tell him anything about home, okay? Actually, don’t say you’re my sisters at all. He doesn’t know I have a family.”
“Everyone has a family,” I say. Eleanor’s all nervous energy. She’s not as sweaty as she gets around Mom, but she’s biting her fingernails and walking too fast.
“I mean, he knows I theoretically have one. But I don’t need him to be thinking about it all the time.”
“Don’t be a weirdo,” Astrid says. She gives Eleanor the heaviest kind of look, and I know that even though she has met the secret boyfriend, Eleanor didn’t introduce her as her twin. We can get away with that sort of thing in my family. We don’t look so sister-y, even the twins.
“I don’t mind you guys coming, but it’s my world, you know? I want my own space that isn’t all . . . sullied.”