“Yes?” he says. “I don’t remember putting that one up. Did you do it yourself? You know I asked you to check with me before nailing anything in.” He’s not taking it down or anything, but my heart drops. He thinks I’ve hung a photograph of some random friend on the wall.
“You put it up, Dad,” I say. My voice is shaking and my eyes are burning and my heart is all kinds of wilted and heavy. But I stand up straight and say it loud, so he doesn’t forget.
“Huh,” he says, and shrugs before heading up the stairs.
Thirty-Nine
We leave my star outside Astrid’s closet door. I don’t want to let it leave my bedroom, but for Marla, to save my sister, I’d do anything, I guess.
I didn’t know that about myself.
We stay up all night watching my star and the unmoving closet door. The three of us can’t all lie down on Eleanor’s twin bed, but we can sit on it and let our heads nod sleepily when we get so tired we need a mini nap. We do not sleep longer than a mini nap. We can’t afford it.
The star does throw a tiny splash of warm, orangey light on the door. But over the hours, as the night gets darker and colder and more filled with sounds of crickets chirping and owls hoo-hoo-ing, the little bit of light grows. The warmth grows too. Doubles, triples its reach. Soon the heat is hitting my forearms, my toes, my neck. The light is strong but soft, like it’s coming from a huge, powerful candle, and even Astrid stops nodding off.
“What’s your star doing?” she says, leaning in to me. I didn’t know I was old enough for Astrid to lean against. I didn’t know I was old enough to take care of my sisters.
“I don’t know. I’ve never left it out,” I say. “Maybe it’s saving Marla?”
“I’m telling you, Marla has to save herself,” Eleanor says. But she’s opening her arms wide so that the star’s magical heat can hit her body more easily, so it can rush right to her heart and fill her up.
The star gives off a bit of a shimmer. I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s a sparkling kind of glow. It reminds me of an eye shadow that Eleanor has been putting on recently when she’s sneaking off to see her secret boyfriend.
The room is swimmy and glowy and glittery and foggy and so pretty I almost forget about Marla completely.
Almost.
Until I think I hear the door creak.
“It’s happening!” I say. Astrid and Eleanor look at me funny. “The door! You hear it, right?”
They shake their heads.
The door isn’t opening.
It was the house creaking, the way the New Hampshire house always creaks.
Around six in the morning the sun starts to rise, and the three of us fall asleep in the warm glow of the star that I thought might solve everything but didn’t.
Forty
Marla has a letter from Mom in the morning. And a package.
“Oh my God,” Astrid says. Dad looks up over his newspaper.
“Oh, yes. I wasn’t sure what to do with that one,” Dad says. He looks utterly confused. He has no idea who Marla is. But he guesses, quite correctly, that he should know who Marla is.
“I’ll open it,” I say.
I wish Marla were here to open it, and short of that I wish Eleanor were here to be in charge of the situation and decide what to do, but she snuck out sometime while Astrid and I were sleeping in. I don’t know how, except that maybe the star gave her extra energy. She left a note. It said she was meeting “him” at the lake for an early morning swim and a bagel but that she’d be back soon. It said she was sorry, she should be a better sister, she should try harder, but that she needed her mind to think about something else for a minute.
I don’t know if I’m mad or jealous that she’s gone. We should all be in it together, sweating it out with no breaks. But it’s easy for me to say that, when I have no one else.
All I have is my sisters and my closet and my star.
“I’m going to head to work,” Dad says, a little dreamily. He blushes and looks away from the package and the letter.
“You don’t want to see what Mom sent?” Astrid says. She’s getting in on my game too, determined to get Dad to pay attention, remember, say Marla’s name, miss Marla.
Dad pretends not to hear, but he’s redder, so I know he’s heard. He leaves.
I open the letter first.
My Marla,
I’m so sorry. That isn’t enough.
I’m staying in Arizona for as long as they tell me to.
It will be a long time.
Someday I’ll tell you everything. Some of it I don’t remember, but I’m trying to. Here’s what I do know: you can’t escape the very sad things. You can lose them for a little while, but they’re fast and they’ll eventually catch up. And you have to make room for the very beautiful and magic things. Whether they are hidden in closets or right out in the open, on the sparkly surface of the lake, or in the taste of pancakes and bacon on Sunday mornings.
Love,
Mom
Sometimes a thing makes you happy and sad at the same exact time. Relieved and scared.
The idea of Mom not coming back for a long time gives me all those feelings. Astrid crumples up the letter. Throws it on the ground. Maybe Astrid is only angry, and I guess maybe that’s okay too.