“Will I like it?” I say. We are both whispering, our voices going quieter and breathier with every sentence, so that by the time I say this, it is barely audible.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Marla says. “And it’s going to fix everything.”
I shiver. I am icy cold on the inside and boiling hot on the outside, and I know I’m going to go into Marla’s closet, but I might need to throw up first.
Marla and I stand outside her closet door like it will open for us, without our touching it, which of course isn’t true. I can hear Marla’s breathing, loud and fast, until I realize it is my own breathing I’m hearing.
I open the door myself. I’m scared because Marla scares me lately, but the closet doesn’t, because I know Marla’s lying. I believe Astrid, and Astrid says this closet’s normal. We step inside, and Marla shuts the door behind us. And we wait for a long, long time.
“Your closet is only a closet,” I say. I try not to sound mean or judgmental, but the truth is that we are sitting among hanging dresses that are tickling the top of my head and dust bunnies that are surely sticking to my pajama pants, and I don’t feel like pretending things are different.
Marla pulls more of Mom’s bracelets out of her pockets and puts them on the ground. They sit there, a shimmering pile of promises and words that have lost all their meaning.
“Wait,” Marla says. And before she puts the final T sound on the word, the closet shifts. It feels like a ride at Disney World, where Dad took us once when Mom was Away and we were so sad we didn’t want to celebrate Christmas or eat pancakes or anything. The closet spins and shakes, and if I had to stand up, I would fall right back down from the dizziness. Instead I stay still and close my eyes.
When the spinning stops, the rocking begins.
I don’t open my eyes. I want to, but I can’t. Marla notices and grabs my hand, pulls me to my feet, and moves my body into a new position. Standing up, bent at the waist, one hand reaching down, down, down. Then I feel it. Water. So warm it could be from a bathtub, but fizzy too. Tiny bubbles shudder and pop against my fingers, spit into the palm of my hand.
Little bubbles pop and fizz in my heart, too.
We are gliding forward, water rushing through my fingers. Marla lets go of my hand, but I keep it trailing along the surface of the water. It’s one of those wonderful feelings that fingers get to experience, like reaching into a box of beads at the bead shop in town and letting the tiny plastic circles first swallow and then fall through your fingers.
“Champagne river,” Marla says. And I open my eyes at last.
“What is this?”
“It’s a memory closet,” Marla says. She has happy tears in her eyes, but all I can feel is scared.
There are trees with golden trunks and the river is golden and fizzing. The boat we are somehow in is golden. Marla’s eyes are golden.
This isn’t a memory, I want to say. This is a story. But Marla doesn’t seem open for comments right now. Plus, it’s hard to have a conversation when you’re in a champagne river surrounded by golden trees.
The leaves on the trees are silver and look light enough to drop into our boat at any moment, light enough to be blown away by the breeze.
“It’s—,” I start. But I want to see the rest of it first. The ballroom. The princes. The worn-through shoes. The floor-sweeping dresses. “It’s sort of like the beginning of the fairy tale. It’s ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses,’” I say, but Marla already knows.
“You were right,” Marla says, and she smiles with her chin out and her eyes sparkling.
“I was right? About us being the princesses?” I touch the top of my head like a crown might have appeared there. There’s only frizz.
“Even better. Wait. The castle’s coming,” she says. Marla picks a flower from a vine hanging overhead. It is the most delicate thing I’ve ever seen. Gold and crinkled and so fragile she has to hold it only by the very tip of her thumb and forefinger. “It’s all like this. Breakable. Crumbling. So be careful.” She rubs those two fingers together only the tiniest amount, a small, gentle gesture, but the petals turn instantly to dust, gold fragments floating down to the water.
I fidget uncomfortably in the boat. Try to put as little weight as possible on it. I don’t want it to crumble beneath us like that flower.
“What do we do?” I whisper, panic mounting. First Marla brings me into Astrid’s terrible closet, and now we are in a vanishing world. A world that will turn to gold flakes if we move at all. I try not to breathe.
Marla laughs. “The boat is fine.” She has a little too much delight in her eyes; they are shiny and gold and strange. “And the castle is fine. But everything else, everything beautiful, is crumbling.”