“Just, like, randomly mentioned liking that name?” I breathe and hold the doorknob and try to open it with my mind, without pulling or pushing or turning anything. There’s wind in the closet, and the rain is rushing down harder and faster. My wet hair keeps blowing into my eyes. The wind is picking up the now-wet leaves and throwing them around us.
“Put it together, Silly,” Marla says. “I bet Laurel is her sister. I really, really bet it is.” She gets up and bounces on her toes again, parts of her all dark from the closet and other parts of her lit up with excitement. “We have to get Laurel, that’s what it’s telling us. We have to go save her. Bring her to Mom. Then Mom will be fine.”
The pen writes LAUREL even more ecstatically, so Marla might be right, but if Laurel is Mom’s lost sister, it could also be a warning that we will end up like her: stuck, like Mom obviously thinks Laurel is.
I don’t know that the closets have things they want us to do. They’re only supposed to give us what we need. And the bad closet is giving Marla what she needs—hope that she can save Mom.
The wind almost knocks me over.
“I don’t care about Mom, we need to get out!” I say. The light dims even more; we are entirely in shade and shadows.
Marla gives me a long look. I can’t quite decipher it.
“You’re not scared,” I say. Any normal person should be scared. I beg the door to open. Marla sighs and shrugs. I twist the knob and it pops open, like it was never stuck at all. I hadn’t realized my heart was captured in my throat until the door opening released it and dropped it down to my toes. The feeling of a roller coaster as it rises and then drops too quickly, all of a sudden. Fear.
“Let’s go,” I say, reaching to grab Marla’s hand but changing my mind. I don’t want to touch her. She doesn’t look like my whiny, sometimes mean, always disgruntled, smallest big sister. She looks like someone else. Someone I don’t want to be near.
Twenty-Four
Eleanor’s night-light is on, and I can see that Marla’s face is wet.
Her face is wet and her Mets T-shirt is ripped and her lips are so dry they are cracking. They are rocky deserts.
I am trying to keep us quiet, so we can sneak back out of Astrid and Eleanor’s bedroom, but Marla is moaning. Quiet moans, but loud enough to interrupt the flow of sleeping breaths.
“Mmmm?” Eleanor hums out into the dark.
“Mmmm,” Astrid responds.
“Ughhhh,” Marla groans back.
“Shhhh,” I say. I cover Marla’s mouth with my hand, but she’s already lying down, finally out of the closet, and curling over her own stomach, circling her ribs with her arms like she may puke.
“Let me back in,” Marla groans again, more loudly. “I have to go back in. I came out too soon.”
I don’t feel that way. When I leave my closet or Eleanor’s, I have the UnWorry. I feel new. But exiting Astrid’s closet, I mostly feel tired. And nervous. And then even more tired from how nervous I am. And above all else, relieved to be out.
“Mmmmm,” Eleanor calls out, and this time I hear her body shift around on the bed, the squeaking springs, and I swear even the flutter of her eyelashes as she shifts from asleep to a little bit awake.
“Come on, get up,” I whisper in Marla’s ear, but she’s not going anywhere, and I guess neither am I.
“Marla?” Astrid says. It seems impossible, how dark their room is in the afternoon with the shades pulled down. It makes me even more lonely for our old house, where the curtains always let at least a little light in. Marla doesn’t answer, but I note that Astrid called her name and not mine, which makes me think that Astrid knows Marla has been sneaking in here from time to time. That maybe I haven’t been carrying this secret all on my own after all.
“I’m here too,” I say, keeping my voice low in the tiny hope that Eleanor will fall back asleep.
“Silly? Who’s in here? Is Mom okay? Where’s Dad?” Eleanor says, popping up in bed and scrambling for the lamp.
“Mom’s fine, I assume. Dad’s in his room,” I say.
“Marla?” Astrid says, and Marla moans in response. “LIGHT, Eleanor! My God, it’s not like it’s hard to find!” Astrid rarely gets mad, but when she does, it is sudden and certain.
“I’m not even totally awake!” Eleanor says. A few things drop on the floor, miniature crashes. She is obviously swatting her arm around, searching unsuccessfully for the switch, and when she finds it we are all shocked into the light and can all see just how terrible Marla really does look, hugging herself on the floor.
“You aren’t okay,” Eleanor says. She’s sleepy from her nap, so her voice sounds like some combination of cat and frog and horse.
“I think it’s food poisoning or something. I mean, otherwise I’m great,” Marla says. Her eyes are dark again: navy blue instead of pale blue. She looks more like Mom than ever, with her ringed eyes and chapped lips and messy clothes.