And then I realized, looking around, that they hadn’t gotten to Lisette’s costume yet. Maybe Meg wouldn’t know the ring was missing. Maybe I could slip it back into the box.
But when I saw Meg there, bent over a costume she was repairing, her shoulders hunched, she looked old, because I couldn’t see her eyes. And I thought about how Lisette and Ben and my dad would never be old. About how I might be old someday. About how Meg had lived a long time without her friend.
I came up close and put the ring on the table in front of her. “I took this,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Meg looked at the ring and then up at me. “From the box for the Costume Hall display?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Why?” she asked.
Because I thought the ghost of your friend might come to my window.
Because what I really hoped was that my brother would appear. I thought he might like it. The weight, the stones.
“Leo and I noticed that she wore it in her final performance,” I said. “We knew it was her ring, not the festival’s, because we knew it was the one from Roger Marin. And Leo looked at the police report from the night she died and the police didn’t list the ring among her personal possessions. It was a mystery.”
“A mystery,” Meg said. “And you wanted to be part of it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “And I’m sorry about the tour. I know I shouldn’t have done that either. I know you’re probably mad at me because Lisette was your friend.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not mad about the tour. ”
Meg pushed back from her table, where she’d been leaning over something that looked like chain mail, shiny and gilded and silver. “I need to get out,” she said. “I’m going to ruin my eyes trying to repair that armor. Come with me.” She picked up the ring and put it in her pocket.
I followed her out into the hall. Past WIGS and MAKEUP. Up the stairs and out into the front of the building by the fountain. We stopped there, and Meg gestured for me to sit down on a bench with her. I did. The bench had a small plaque on it that said THIS BENCH WAS GIFTED TO THE FESTIVAL BY AN ANONYMOUS DONOR.
DONOR. The words made me think of Ben, and the letter from the family of the other boy.
It felt like everything was named after someone, or was made possible by someone else. Fountains. Benches. Eyes.
“Is there something you want to talk to me about?” Meg said. “Something you want to ask me?”
What was Lisette like? How do you keep going when you miss someone so much? How do you stand getting old? Why are we all going to die?
I said something else instead. “My friend Leo and I really want to see the tunnels before they tear down the theater. Could you let us go in them?”
“Lisette’s ghost doesn’t walk those tunnels,” Meg said. “Not in the way you think, anyway. You won’t see her there unless you knew her. Unless you saw her there when she was alive. Laughing. Serious. Getting ready to go onstage or coming off it or talking to everyone in the tunnel. Then she’d be all too easy to picture.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
We both watched the fountain for a moment. Meg wasn’t crying but her voice had that sound voices get when you’re sad and achy, too dry for tears.
I didn’t know if I should keep pushing. But I had to. Because Leo wasn’t going to see Barnaby Chesterfield in London, so he should at least get to see the secret tunnels of his hometown theater before they were lost for good.
“I don’t really want to see the tunnels because of Lisette,” I said at last. “I want to see them because of Leo.”
“Leo,” Meg said. “Your friend.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re asking me to do this favor for you even though you stole a ring and gave a tour about my friend.”
“I brought the ring back,” I said. It was all I could think of besides I’m sorry, which I had said so many times.
Meg kept studying me.
“Also, I sorted a lot of buttons.”
Meg stood up and brushed off the seat of her pants. “Come back to the shop tonight,” she said. “Late. After the play ends and they’ve had time to put things away. Let’s say midnight. I’ll see what I can do.”
5.
Meg let me use her phone before my mom came to pick me up from volunteering. Meg didn’t ask me who I was going to call and I didn’t tell her.
I’d never called Leo’s number before, but I knew it from the flyers we’d put in the programs. I prayed he’d pick up.
“Hello?” said a guy. An older guy. Zach.
“Zach, it’s Cedar,” I said. “Can I talk to Leo?”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Zach said. “Don’t take it personally. Leo’s not allowed to use the phone for anything right now due to his poor decisions. I’m the enforcer while our parents aren’t home.”
“Oh,” I said.
Silence for a minute. I could hear noise in the background.