Around the corner from the photo lab, Lucy slipped the silver packet out of her pocket and was about to unwrap it when Gil appeared right in front of her, a giant smile on her sweet face.
“Don’t worry,” Gil said. She glanced down at the packet, then back up at Lucy. “I’m not going to ask you anything about what happened yesterday, I know that’s private. I just wanted to say that I’m excited, that’s all.” She reached out and pulled Lucy in for a hug. “I’m so sorry we had to trick you. I promise we’ll never do it again.”
Lucy swallowed hard.
This was the kind of hug you can feel all the way into your heart. There was so much love in it that for a moment Lucy wanted to cry. Not because Gil had tricked her but because she was tricking Gil. And for what?
The answer came walking right toward her.
Over Gil’s shoulder there was Alex.
For what?
For his sweet ears, for the tiny adorable space between his teeth that she wished she could climb into, for his freckles, for the way he looked at her when he was taking her picture, for the way he walked, for that calm that was radiating off of him. For the flash of recognition her heart gave still, even at that moment as their eyes met over Gil’s shoulder.
He was who she was doing this for. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel bad about it.
Lucy pulled away from Gil. She shook her head. She had to keep focused; all she wanted was so close now.
“See you later,” Gil whispered.
Lucy nodded. When Gil was gone she peeled open the packet, rubbed the swirl of cream between her fingers, and smoothed it out on her palm. It felt cool on her skin.
She took a deep breath. She followed Alex inside.
The photo lab was buzzing. A guy was at the paper cutter slicing the border off a photo of himself posing in a fancy car. A girl Lucy had never even seen before was holding up a contact sheet covered in photo after photo of her own leotard-clad ass. But Lucy did not stop to think about any of these things, to appreciate the oddness the way she normally might have.
She could feel him behind her before she saw him. She turned. Alex was holding a sheet of negatives in a negative sleeve, and a contact sheet that he’d made for her. He handed them to her and walked into the darkroom. He hadn’t even said hello.
Wait! Wait!
She hurried to one of the enlargers. Grabbed a random negative from her sheet of negatives and stuck it in. Her hands were shaking a little as she put her photo paper underneath it and flipped on the light.
She brought the photo paper over to the chemical baths. Alex was swirling a photo around in the stop bath with a pair of rubber-tipped tongs.
She reached out and touched the back of his hand. “Can I borrow those tongs when you’re done?” she said. She held her hand against his. She waited. Her mouth tried to open in a gasp of love, but she would not let it. Her eyes began to water, but she sucked her tears back in.
“You have to get a new pair,” Alex said slowly. “Otherwise you’ll get the chemicals mixed together. There’s supposed to be a set of tongs in each container.” There was something in his voice, his tone, scolding almost, as though he felt like maybe she was up to something, but had no idea what it might be.
She held her hand against his a second longer. But all she felt was a surge of desperate love, and this time, the squeezing desperation of a longing unmet. Her own feelings.
The Empathy Cream wasn’t working.
“Right,” Lucy said. “The tongs.” And what else could she do then? She got her own set of tongs, and fished the photo out of the first chemical bath into the second and the third.
When she was done she went back out to the light side and saw what she’d printed: a picture of Jack that she’d taken right before she went onstage, his face dotted with sweat, eyes closed, mouth frozen open. Behind him were the fuzzy, unfocused figures of the cabaret twins; the bright stage lights shone down from above.
Mr. Wexler tapped her photo with a thick, nicotine-stained finger. She felt her stomach tighten. He did not look at her, just stuck his pinky and thumb of his other hand in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
“Look over here for a second, people,” he said. He snatched her photo and held it up in the air. “This is what I was talking about when I was explaining about capturing energy, capturing a feeling and a moment.”
He turned to Lucy. “Nicely done, Miss Wrenn.” He paused and stared at it again for another minute before clipping it to the drying line and walking off.
Lucy felt a blush trying to rise in her cheeks but she pushed it back. Her whole body was suddenly tingling. She felt something pressed against her shoulder. It was Alex, his warm shoulder pressing against hers, only the thin fabric of his T-shirt separating their skin.
She turned toward him. He was looking at her. Not smiling. Just looking, really looking.
“I didn’t believe you,” Alex said. “When you told me about the concert and gave me the pictures, I honestly thought the photos were going to be all black or something and you’d say it was a mistake. Or, I don’t know what . . .” He stared down at her contact sheet. She looked down too: there was Jack singing, the line of partygoers waiting outside in the moonlight, Tristan staring back at her, his mouth bulging with her pancake, syrup caught somewhere between his chin and the table.
“I didn’t know you knew how to take pictures like that,” he said. His voice was quiet, different than she’d ever heard it.
There was a thud inside her chest but Lucy did not show it on her face. She shrugged one shoulder. She wondered if maybe it was time now. She reached out and put her hand on his arm again. But still nothing except her own feelings. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t working. She’d gotten one of the defective packets.
She felt her heart sink down, down. But she kept her face calm.
Without the Empathy Cream, she’d have to guess when the moment was right. If there was indeed a right moment at all. But if she’d understood Alex well enough to guess what he was feeling, maybe he’d never have left her in the first place. Maybe she’d have been who he wanted all along.
She looked up at him, standing there. But he had a funny look on his face then, and she knew it was not time.
She turned and forced herself to walk back into the darkroom.
She slipped another random negative into the enlarger, put the photo paper down below it. She flipped the light on. Her heart was pounding so hard. She barely registered the image that appeared on the paper. She barely registered being in that room.
As she swished the photo paper around in the chemicals a photo appeared. But it wasn’t until the photo was rinsing in the water, back out in the light half of the room that she saw what was in the picture.
Or rather who:
It was Lucy, only a Lucy she’d never seen before. A Lucy no one had seen except for a thousand of her new friends.
There was little Lucy, onstage. Eyes closed, mouth opened, head tilted ever-so-slightly back, fist clenched around the microphone. The edges of the photo bled off into the white. She was glowing.
“It looks like something out of a dream.” That was Alex. He was standing next to Lucy again. “My God,” he whispered.
He exhaled and looked at her. Really looked at her the way he had the very first time he took her picture. Except this time there was no camera between them. There was nothing but a few inches of air.
“How is this you?” he said. “How is this the same person that I . . .” He trailed off.
“I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Lucy said. She let one corner of her mouth inch up into the perfect sexy smirk.
“Apparently so,” Alex said. But he was not smirking back.
“Guess I should get back to my own photos,” he said. “Looks like I have some competition now.” He smiled, only he suddenly looked very sad. Lucy had no idea why.
But she did know one thing: if there had been a right time to use the Sparks, she had missed
it.
She just hoped there’d be another one. . . .
Chapter Twenty-Six
What did Lucy do then? Well, what could she do then, really? When homeroom ended, she headed to bio. When she walked into the lab, the sickening scent of formaldehyde filled her nostrils. Dozens of fetal pigs lay in trays up at the front of the room, pale and soft and small, like loaves of unbaked bread.
Lab partners were assigned: Lucy was paired up with Lee Green, a stocky junior with dry-looking lips.
Lucy walked over to their lab station, where he was waiting with their pig. As she walked, she could hear some of the other students naming theirs, laughing—Bacon, Sleepy, McRib, Charlotte. Lucy did not like it one bit.
“Hi, Lucy,” Lee said. He waved even though she was now standing right next to him. “This is super cool, isn’t it?”
Lucy stared down into the tray, at bleached pink flesh, at those little bulging eyelids trapping tiny eyeballs that had never gotten a chance to see anything and never would. Lucy felt a wave of sadness and revulsion.
Lucy tried to convince herself that it was rubber, not real, but it was near impossible because of that smell and those tiny colorless whiskers sprouting out from its tiny chin. And all she could think was that there was a tiny heart trapped inside that body that had long since stopped beating.
She felt her throat closing, and dizziness setting in. She stumbled sideways, reached out for something to hold on to. Lee was studying the list of dissection instructions. She grabbed his forearm to steady herself.
And suddenly the dizziness, sadness, and revulsion were replaced by something else totally—a whoosh of excitement, a rush of adrenaline. And a thrill at knowing that in a few moments she’d be looking at something that no one on earth had ever seen before. It was like a treasure chest; this animal would be cracked open for the first time, filled with tiny lungs, liver, heart, where the gold and diamonds would be.
What the hell was going on?
She turned toward Lee. He was staring down at the tiny pig. “Isn’t this the awesomest thing you’ve ever seen?” He looked excited and happy, like a kid playing his favorite video game.
Lucy looked down. Her hand was still touching his skin. Her hand. His skin.
The Empathy Cream was working.
That meant it had been working earlier when she touched Alex. Which meant the feelings she’d felt earlier when she’d touched his hand, the surge of love, of longing, of everything—those were not her feelings.
They were his. Which meant: Alex felt just like she did.
Lucy stared at Lee as he raised his scalpel and made the first cut.
Lucy turned away and closed her eyes. She could feel the joy bubbles rising up in her.
She tried to keep calm, not to jump to conclusions, to be reasonable. Be reasonable, Lucy!
But she wasn’t even sure what that word meant anymore.
She was so close now. So close to getting everything she wanted.
She reached in her pocket for the Sparks. The tiny packet that was going to fix everything, that was going to change the rest of her life. . . .
Lucy opened her mouth into a little O. And then a bigger O. And put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Her pocket was empty.
She checked again. But all she felt was fabric, smooth cotton, and empty space where things had been before. And now nothing was.
Lucy’s heart hammered. She checked her pockets again and again. She turned around, looked at the floor, on her desk, on her workstation, in her bag, she even looked inside the pig.
“Lee, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “But I have to go. I feel . . . sick. If anyone wonders where I am, can you tell them I’ve gone to the nurse? I think I’m going to barf. . . .” And then Lucy put her hand over her mouth and ran out of the room.
She ran back to the photo lab. There was another class in there, but she didn’t care. She checked every foot of that space, every inch, every centimeter, looking for that tiny gold packet.
But she did not find it.
She had had her chance and she’d blown it.
She had had her access to the magic, but now there was no more.
No more.
Tick tick tick.
Her time was almost up.
She leaned her back against the wall, closed her eyes.
And then she opened them—stared at the wall where some student photos had been hung up: faces, and feet, a close-up of an eye, someone’s dog, someone’s cat, and right in the center, was a photo of a door with a sign on it—EXIT.
A closed door.
A way out . . .
Then something spectacular happened. Lucy had been paying so much attention to her heart, she’d forgotten that she had a brain too.
Three separate thoughts that had been lodged in three different spots in there, thoughts so tiny she’d barely even been aware of having them, flung themselves together with an imperceptible click. But all Lucy understood was the feeling of remembering something, and understanding something, and suddenly knowing exactly what she needed to do.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At lunchtime, Olivia was sitting by herself, eating green olives, and reading a black leather book.
Lucy stood in front of her with a sesame bagel and a plastic cup of grapes balanced on a blue tray. She was squeezing the tray tight to keep her hands from shaking. Before she could say anything, Olivia looked up. She smiled, but she was not the Olivia of the night before. This Olivia was not her friend. And that made it both harder and easier to do what she had to do.
“We started doing dissections in bio,” Lucy said. “It’s gross.”
Olivia smirked, raised her eyebrows. “Sure, Lucy,” she said. She looked back down at her book.
Lucy was still standing there, hovering.
“You’re still here . . .” Olivia looked mildly amused. “Do you want to sit?” She motioned toward the seat in front of her.
Lucy sat. She took a deep breath.
“This afternoon,” Lucy said. “Can I come over?”
“Training time is done. I thought I was clear.”
“I wanted to invite Colin over, I mean.”
At the mention of his name, Olivia’s face changed.
“And maybe some other people could come too?” Lucy said. “A little group maybe?” She paused. “I have a plan.”
Olivia smiled halfway. “Sure,” she said slowly. “Okay. Tell Gil. She’ll invite the boys.”
Lucy nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She nodded again. And Olivia went back to her book.
Lucy sighed the tiniest little sigh. But only the easy part was over.
Lucy picked at her bagel. She watched Olivia suck the pimentos from the olives.
When the moment was just right, Lucy knocked over her cup of grapes. “Oops,” she said quietly. They rolled everywhere.
Lucy got down on the floor. And there was Olivia’s burgundy leather bag right there under the table. That dark heavy sack filled with secret things, like a womb from which who knows what might be born.
Lucy reached into the small front pocket. It was in there. Her fingertips tapped cool metal. That key, the one that had been on a chain around Olivia’s neck, that Lucy had picked up at the party and Liza had snatched from her, it was still there. Lucy wrapped her fist around it. She pressed her lips together so she would not gasp.
“Lucy?” Olivia’s face appeared, down under the table.
“What are you doing down there?” She glanced at her bag and back at Lucy.
“I dropped my grapes,” Lucy said.
Olivia narrowed her eyes, just ever so slightly, the ice-blue growing colder and bluer.
Lucy sat back up. The cup was pinched between two of her fingers. She waved it around like a flag.
Olivia stared at Lucy’s hands, empty save for the cup.
Olivia blinked. Looked back at Lucy’s face again.
Poor Lucy’s heart was pounding, pounding, pounding.
But Oli
via never saw the small stolen key.
Why? Tristan’s trick of course. That corny magician’s party trick that Lucy had seen him do a thousand times had finally come in handy. She didn’t have to hide the key. She’d simply made it disappear.
Olivia shrugged and went back to reading her book.
When Lucy was sure Olivia wasn’t looking, she lowered her other hand, slipped that key into her pocket.
Then she sat there, stomach churning, tearing off bits of dry bagel, forcing herself to swallow them, one by one by one, until the whole thing was gone. She could not believe what she’d just done and whom she’d done it to.
“Well,” Lucy said. “I guess I’m going to go now.”
“Right,” said Olivia.
Lucy stood. “So I’ll see you after school then,” she said.
Olivia nodded. She didn’t even look up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Surrounded by scents of green ivy and the muted crispness of early autumn leaves, they sat out there in Olivia’s backyard: Olivia, Liza, Gil, Pete, B, Jack, Lucy. And Colin.
Oh, Colin, dear precious earnest boy, they all glowed under that slanting yellow sun, but that day he glowed the brightest. When Lucy called him to ask him over to Olivia’s house that afternoon, he sounded so nakedly excited with his, “Oh!” and “Oh yes!” and “I would really love to!” that it made Lucy’s heart hurt.
And now, watching him awkwardly sip from that green glass bottle of Jack’s homemade honey-wine, hands shaking ever so slightly, long legs pulled up, elbows on his knees, trying so hard to look comfortable, she could not shake the guilt that had latched onto the back of her neck and sunk its claws in deep. Behind the yellow-green wall of his anxiousness was something else. And that was what was hurting her so much—that glow of pure shivering joy, and fragile teetering hope that she herself knew all too well.