“I’m more than a whole year older,” Marla says. It’s not the first time she’s used that as an argument for something. She’s a stickler for a certain kind of fairness: if she wasn’t allowed to swim to the deeper part of the lake until she turned eight, I shouldn’t be allowed to do it until I turn eight a whole year later. Since she got a new bike when she turned ten, I shouldn’t have one when I’m only nine. She wants her extra year on me to matter in some measurable way, whereas I’d rather pretend she and I are twins too, able to do everything together like Eleanor and Astrid.
“You can’t leave me out there with Mom when you’re all in here,” I say, not realizing how true that is until I’ve said it. If there’s a tornado, you all hold hands and anchor one another so that no one gets swept up alone. We are in the middle of a tornado, and it’s not okay for them to hold on to one another and sacrifice me to the spinning, violent force. “It’s not about how old I am. I can’t do it all by myself. Didn’t you hear how she talked to me? I can’t be included in that but not included in this.” I get a pang of fear that they won’t listen. That I’ll have Mom calling me a disappointment on the other side of their bedroom door while they all escape into secrets without me.
“I shouldn’t be lonely when I have three sisters,” I say, like feelings and families are simple scientific facts. Cause and effect.
There’s a certain kind of shock on Eleanor’s face, and I think she’s never heard me say so many words at once, and so clearly.
“We’re in charge, okay?” she says.
I nod. It’s not anything new. They’re always in charge.
Marla makes a series of noises that must be the beginnings of words that she doesn’t know quite how to finish.
Eleanor pulls the door to her closet open, and there’s nothing inside but one of Astrid’s dioramas. Not even a very good one. It’s a basic park scene: aluminum-foil pond, green construction-paper grass, toothpicks with green pom-poms on top for trees. Orange Play-Doh dots that are meant to look like goldfish swimming in the reflective pond. Tissue-paper roses. It’s pretty vanilla for Astrid, who usually likes her diorama trees pink and her diorama ponds covered in glitter.
“Do you like it?” Astrid says. I don’t know if she means the diorama or the way they’ve positioned it in the middle of the closet. I shrug. “Like, is it a place you’d want to visit?”
“It’s a park,” I say, which isn’t an answer. “It’s a nice park,” I amend, not wanting to say the wrong thing.
Astrid steps into the closet. Eleanor steps in beside her. Marla’s next, and it’s a pretty tight squeeze. I’m not sure there’s room for one more.
I step inside and Eleanor closes the door. It goes dark and I close my eyes, a funny reflex I have when a room goes black.
Marla starts to giggle. Hearing Marla giggle is so new and strange I wonder if she’s choking before realizing what the sound is. My eyes open because of the smell of roses. It’s strong. Overwhelming. I wonder if Eleanor’s secret boyfriend has bought her some new perfume that she’s spraying like crazy.
That’s not it, though.
The ground is covered in green and yellow spikes of grass. At my feet there’s a glassy pool of water. A small pond. I think I even see little orange fish swimming around right beneath the surface. I rub my eyes. There are roses everywhere, growing right out of the ground and not in bushes. We are in a very pretty park, the size of a baseball field.
I don’t understand the things I’m seeing.
“We’re in a park,” I say. My feet won’t move, and my sisters don’t look confused enough, given what’s happening.
“This is the best it’s ever been, isn’t it?” Astrid says to Marla and Eleanor. Eleanor nods and her eyes widen, but Marla shrugs, unconvinced.
“It’s probably a good diorama,” Marla says, her voice tight and fast, not leaving any room for other theories.
“Maybe all four of us together make the closet stronger,” Astrid says. “We should have brought Priscilla in earlier.” The sun’s bouncing off the pond and her white-blond hair and the tips of our noses.
“Cautious is good,” Eleanor says, but she’s glowing in the sun too, and her jaw and elbows and shoulders look looser.
“What happened?” My voice screeches. They’re all too calm. “How are we in a park? Is it . . . a time machine? Is this what you do? You go to parks? How do they— What do they—” I was so gung ho about having an adventure that I hadn’t considered the way an adventure actually feels—prickly and terrifying. I want desperately to hold on to something steady, but nothing feels real or anchored here. “Help me understand.”
“We bring in the dioramas,” Marla says. I can tell she’s trying to make it sound like she’s done it a million times before, even though last night was the first time. “And they become real.”
I start laughing, because it is a completely insane conversation that we’re having.
“So Astrid’s magical?” I say, thinking of the way her hands move so gracefully when she’s making the dioramas. There’s some magic there.
“The closets are,” Marla says.