My body won’t stop trembling. This situation wasn’t like what she’s thinking, but I know why Sylvie reacts this way. What happened looked totally suspicious. Add to that the fact that I’m shaking in my sneakers. I was terrified when Thomas locked the door. It’s how I feel every night when Mom shuts my door and I hear the lock click into place. More often than not, that sound is what brings on the nightmares of the funky images that haunt me. Weird, vague blurred pictures float in front of my eyes, wisps of old memories, but I try to force them away.
“He didn’t let me leave because he wanted to talk to me,” I tell Sylvie, slowly, shakily, my words strange to my own ears. It’s the most I’ve said to her yet after all my days in her home.
“Why?” Sylvie is still holding my shoulders, staring into my eyes.
I decide part of the truth is necessary, in case Thomas is talking to émile about what’s going on. “He thinks I broke into the empty apartment.”
Sylvie’s forehead crinkles. “Of course you did not,” she says as she pulls me into one of her warm hugs. It makes me feel worse.
“But why are you so frightened?” Sylvie murmurs into my ear. “What happened?”
I back away and shrug. After staring into my face for what seems like a very long moment, Sylvie steps away. “Okay, chère, let’s go inside,” she whispers.
Gavin is in Sylvie’s apartment, standing in the entryway with his hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders hunched. His eyes meet mine as I walk in and he looks relieved.
Rage rises and spills over. How can he pretend to care after the way he’s been treating me? I pull away from Sylvie and hurtle toward Gavin, slamming my shoulder into him and almost knocking him to the floor.
“Hey, what the—”
“Go away!” I scream. Furious tears flow down my face, and I don’t even care. “Leave me alone, you jerk!”
I don’t care that my words are weak and mangled. I don’t care that Sylvie saw what I did to Gavin. I don’t listen to her voice, calling after me. I don’t even remember making it back to my painted, borrowed bedroom, but I huddle on the bed, hold Fat Cat tight and curse the universe.
Then, after a few seconds, I stop. I just stop. I take a deep breath and let it out in one long shudder. And I think, leaning against the wall, hugging the big cat’s solid body close to me. This can work to my advantage. I’d been trying to figure out how to bring up the subject of Zander. It’s cold. It’s calculating. And it’s what I have to do. The old lady doesn’t know it, but she’s just helped me out. She’ll have to get used to me, because I’m going to be a permanent neighbor.
And if Thomas and his mother wanted to scare me, it didn’t work. Because right now, this very moment, I swear on the graves of all the dead Impressionists that I’m going to find out what they’re up to. Maybe I shouldn’t be going into that empty apartment, but neither should they.
_______
Fat Cat purrs in his sleep. I watch the shadows and try to force my brain to recapture the images I glimpsed this morning; the vague, haunting memories that have teased me since Thomas locked me inside his mother’s apartment, but they slip away before they can really take shape. What were they?
The letter I found comes to mind. The lamp casts a dull glow about the bedroom as I fish the paper out from its hiding place under the mattress. I read it again.
Who was she, this Marguerite? Why did the man say her words were “weak”? Were they like mine? Slippery, strange, never sounding the same? And aren’t there more letters? There have to be.
It’s very simple to sneak back into the apartment. All I have to do is listen to make sure no one else is there. And this time, I’m prepared. I take a flashlight and push through the door in my wall.
The dusty smell surrounds me. I wish I could make it go away. It’s the smell of long years silent and alone, almost like the apartment was a living thing, waiting in sadness for someone who never arrived.
As I shoot beams of light around the room I gasp in shock. Thomas and his ancient Mummy must be looking for something. How else would anyone explain the shelves, emptied of all their books, which were carelessly tossed all over the floor? Or the paintings, ripped from their frames, the canvases piled haphazardly in a corner?
When I take a step, something crunches under my feet, and I yelp and look down. A tiny figurine of a bird is now mostly powder under my Converse sneakers. And as I finger the shards, I feel like something hard and sharp is inside of me as well, something that cuts. It isn’t fair. Marguerite wouldn’t like this. This was her place, and her stuff. Why are they doing this? Do they think they have a right because she had “weak” words? Because she wasn’t like everyone else?
I forget all about looking for more letters.
I have to save Marguerite’s things.
The rolls of canvases are easy to stash up high in Ansel’s closet. The paintings still in their frames fit under my bed. I like them. One is a still life, of blood red strawberries in a dish, next to a turquoise blue vase that’s cracked. Another painting shows a little girl with huge, brown eyes, and in another, a group of people are sitting around a round metal table at a café that looks like the one émile and Sylvie took me to. I like them.