“No she didn’t,” Kate stated, and she got a memory from Before. Jen, seven years old, saying The dolls all talk the same. You should make the voices different, and she’d started to do the story over, making different voices.
Kate had stopped sharing her doll stories. In fact, she’d stopped acting them out with the dolls, because it had been spoiled. Jen had spoiled it, and for a long time Kate hadn’t done any stories, until one day at school they had to write one, just Before, and Kate couldn’t act it out. She had to put it into words. It was different that way—but she’d kind of liked it when she was done. That story didn’t go away into the air like smoke, the way the old ones had. Written down on paper, she could visit it again.
But that, too, was Before. Now she couldn’t hold a book or read.
“Dolls?” she said. “How did you know Jen liked my stories?” But the silence was the empty one she’d gotten used to. It meant they’d gone to sleep.
So she went to sleep as well.
o0o
“Once upon a time,” she began the next night, “there was a girl. She was half alive. The doctors gave her plastic surgery, and turned her half into a doll. The half that had been alive went into her dolls, and they too became half alive—”
“I don’t like this story,” came a small, squeaky voice. Kate couldn’t tell who it was.
“That’s because it’s true,” Kate said. “In stories, you get what you want. In true life, things get taken away. Your magic might get taken away, too. If you’re alive because you got life from my monster half—”
“It’s not true! It’s not! It’s not!”
That wasn’t a doll voice, Kate realized, and the ice water poured all through her, a waterfall, cold and horrible. The voice cried, a muffled sound as if a real face—not a doll face—had been smooshed into the carpet.
“Jen,” Kate said. The cold water changed to boiling lava. “It wasn’t the dolls. It was you. You, you liar.”
“You wouldn’t talk to me,” Jen whimpered. “You hate me!”
“No, I don’t,” Kate said.
“Yes you do! You hate me, and you blame me for Dad being dead, or why won’t you talk to me?”
“Nothing to say.”
“Yes, there is.” Jen gulped, kind of like a frog. “Yes, there is. You talk to Mom. You talk to Doctor Carlotta. She says it’s because you have to think things through, but that’s just what grownups say when they know you’re right.”
“You talk to Doctor Carlotta, too?” Kate said.
“Yes—and so does Mom. And all we talk about is you!”
The lava boiled and boiled. “So the magic wasn’t real, then. I hate that. You lied.”
“It was real,” Jen cried. “In the stories it was, just like when we were little!”
“No, you just did their voices. You made me think they were real.”
“That’s the magic.”
“And you told me my stories were stupid. I did the dolls wrong.”
Jen’s voice went high and squeaky, just like Curly Cathy’s. “I know I said you had to do the voices better, but don’t you see, that makes the magic better. Just like when Madame tells me I have to make my pirouettes cleaner, or hold my head up and not down, or when the drama coach tells me to change something. They tell me I’m wrong all the time, but when I get it right, the magic is better.”
“That’s not magic,” Kate said.
“Yes, it is.” Jen stood up, a skinny figure in a blue and white nightgown, with messy hair. She walked back and forth, in and out of Kate’s view, cradling Princess Polly in her arms. “It’s magic when you become someone else,” she squeaked. “If you do it really, really well, then the audience, like, will do it with you. Your stories are like that; you get to be the princess in them while the story lasts. And after, too, because you remember it. All your stories are magic, because when you tell them, I be them.”
“That’s not magic,” Kate said.
“Yes, it is! Yes, it is!” Jen ran to the window and back, her nightgown flashing in and out of the light. “It is, too! When I’m Clara, I’m really Clara, just for a little while, and those girls watching in the audience are Clara, too. And when they go home, they can remember Clara. How can that not be magic?”
It did sound like magic. So Jen could do magic, along with everything else. “All I can be now is a monster,” Kate said. The lava boiled, making her throat hot and her head ache.
“Don’t say it!” Jen was shrill, like Midnight neighing.
She came right up to the hospital bed. Kate couldn’t see her eyes, only the shape of her head and her messy long hair. But when she turned, light from the streetlamp shone on her wet cheeks.
“Don’t say it.” Jen leaned over Kate. Her breath smelled like mint toothpaste. “My whole family is getting taken away. Dad is gone, and Mom is a zombie. A mean one. She only sees me when she’s mad at me. And you, you’re taking yourself away.”
“I’m not making myself into half a person,” Kate said. “The car crash did that.”
“You’re letting it happen.” Jen wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Not the car crash! You turn yourself into a, a, a zombie when I come in—and you did it before the car crash, because you hate me!”
A monster, Kate thought. For the first time she wondered if what Doctor Carlotta had really been trying to say was that a person could be a monster inside, even when they fix the outside.
“So I thought, well, you don’t want me, but maybe you’ll want the dolls and do stories with them. I could be the dolls, and then we could get our old magic back, maybe.” Jen snuffled again, and hiccupped.
“When you told me to change the voices,” Kate said. “You meant . . .”
“Practice. Like I have to, in ballet.” Jen put Princess Polly on the shelf, and then Curly Cathy.
I practiced in dance but never got better, Kate thought. It was still a hurtful thought. But my stories got better, that’s also true. She remembered the teacher reading her story out loud, the one she’d written Before. And everyone in the class listened, quiet, just like she listened when Mom read. What had one of the girls said? Your story was so real!
So maybe magic could go from one person to a lot of people. And not just in a bedroom, with dolls on the floor, not even in an auditorium, with people dancing on stage and other people watching. She thought of Anne of Green Gables, written a hundred years ago, words on a page. Thousands of girls—including girls who lived long ago, that were now grandmothers and great-grandmothers—had read the words and had been Anne. And remembered her, a magical kind of memory that everyone shared.
I can do that, she thought. If I practice. I can do it even half-melted.
She looked at Jen, who put Midnight next to the other dolls, and then yawned fiercely and rubbed her eyes. Her eyes were puffy, Kate could see in the blue light of the streetlamp. She looked tired. She’d come in every night, but she didn’t get any chance to nap during the day.
Nothing outward had changed, really. Jen was still there, whole, with her long hair, and Kate was still in this bed, bald and half-melted, and it would be a long, long time before she could get up, and even so, she might still look half-melted. But she no longer felt half-human, turning into a cold plastic doll. Her inside felt different, because of her sister’s magic.
Things got taken away, but a person could make new things.
“Go to bed,” she said. “Mom will be mad if you sleep too late.”
Jen started toward the door, then stopped. “I’m sorry about fooling you,” she said.
Kate looked at the row of quiet doll silhouettes.” I’m sorry you had to,” she said. “When you come home, just be you, okay? Just be you.”
And Now Abideth These Three
Cynthia leaned her forehead against the cool window glass, watching the traffic inch forward in Mother-May-I steps on the street below. It was time to leave, and she was a little excited, but mostly afraid.
Her mother yelled from downstairs,
“Cynthia! Are you ready?”
Cynthia opened her door and her mother charged in, heels clacking. “We’ve got to run, we’ll be late! Now let me see you.”
Cynthia obediently turned around. The outfit was brand new, bought for this birthday party, exactly the same label the other girls were all wearing. It had taken her mother two weeks to find an outlet selling seconds at discount. They couldn’t find the flaw in the blouse or the jeans.
They got into the brand-new Lexus her mother had borrowed. “Your present is on the back seat, Cynthia.”
“It’s not jewelry, is it?” Cynthia asked.
“No.” A quick, suspicious look. “You said they aren’t giving jewelry anymore.”
Cynthia tried to sound careless. “It’s totally tacky. Only boys can give a girl jewelry, now that we’re in middle school. Boys or relatives.”
Her mother never argued with school pronouncements of what was, or wasn’t, tacky. “No jewelry, no hair things, no school things , . .it’s getting harder to find something they’ll like.” She sighed, rattling her bracelets.
They don’t like anything I give them, Cynthia thought, but of course she didn’t say it out loud. Her mother went to some expensive store to ask the snippy ladies what well-to-do preteens were buying in this or that item, and then shopped tirelessly for hours to find the same thing, or nearly the same, for a decent price. Then she used boxes from the best stores, carefully hoarded, and expensive wrapping paper, only gotten out for the school birthday parties.
And no matter what Cynthia gave any of them, she never saw it again.
As they neared Beverly Hills she felt her stomach tighten. She’d managed to skip three parties so far this year with sickness excuses, but there was a reason she didn’t want to skip Wallace von Diefenburg’s party. The reason was in the garden. She could ignore the girls if the garden and the pond were still there.
Cynthia shut her eyes against the sun glaring through the windshield, thinking about the pond behind Wallace’s mansion, and how important it was to see it again. If it wasn’t there . . . Well, she thought, if it isn’t there, at least the Christmas lights will be on, and I can take off my glasses and the lights will be pretty snowflake shapes. Pretend magic is better than nothing.
Her mother said, “You know, it’s not too soon to talk about your birthday. March is right around the corner.”
Fear burned in Cynthia’s middle. “Dad wants me again this year.”
“Again?”
Her mother slammed her hand flat on the steering wheel, being careful not to ruin one of her long painted nails. She always dressed up before the parties, just in case a mother might come out to ask her if she wanted some coffee. They did, sometimes, with each other, but never with her.
“Talk him out of it, okay?” she said. “Tell him how important it is to your future. You have to socialize with these girls, and that means entertain them. Take your turn. We’ll rent a good place at a decent address. Get it all catered.”
“I’ll try,” Cynthia said, but it made her angry to lie even that much. Instead, she’d make sure her dad would take her the whole weekend of her birthday, even if it meant spending it babysitting her little half-brothers as part of the deal.
Anything was better than a repeat of her own party in third grade, her second year at that school. Cynthia hated to remember it, but it always came back to her mind, like a bruise that would never go away. Of course they didn’t have the party at her apartment on crowded, noisy La Brea, because the other girls all had nice homes in Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, or Malibu. Her mother had rented a fancy ice cream parlor near Rodeo Drive. Cynthia had to sit there at the head of the long table set for twelve, wearing a Sleeping Beauty crown with fake jewels, and watch the two girls who came poke at their cake and exchange looks and giggles of embarrassment.
“They don’t like me,” Cynthia had cried when she got home.
Her mother said firmly, “What have you done to make them dislike you?”
“Nothing! Nothing! But I’m different.”
“No, you aren’t. You all wear the same uniforms, and if you don’t tell them where you live, no one will know you’re not from Beverly or Malibu or the Palisades.”
“But they do know,” she’d cried.
“Here’s the street,” her mother said, breaking into the bad memories. ”Help me find the number.”
Cynthia obediently scanned the curbs. Many of the mansions had no other sign of residence. You just seemed to have to know where they were.
Long green lawns and beautiful landscaping flowed uphill from the quiet street. “It’ll be worth all the sacrifice, when you live in places like this,” her mother said, slowing down as she peered at the mansions barely visible behind trees and wrought iron fences.
Cynthia’s hand rose to her mouth, unnoticed until her mother slapped it down without looking. “No biting! Pretty nails are a sign of a girl with poise and breeding.”
Cynthia twisted her hands in her lap as the car rolled slowly up the last hill. The really big mansions were up high. You couldn’t see any of them from the street.
Cynthia looked out the car window, thinking of the things she didn’t tell her mother. How Ashleigh Sullivan bit her nails right down to the nubs. How Emma Herrera threw up in bathrooms after she ate, just so she’d stay skinny, and her breath always smelled like vomit.
How the girls had secret nicknames for each other, and mean names for everyone else—how Cynthia was called Synthetica, never to her face, but she knew anyway. Wallace had made certain of that.
Cynthia saw the number, hesitated, but her mother had already recognized the huge gate.
“Here’s the von Diefenburg girl’s place.” And her mother began the ritual: “Remember your manners, child.”
“Yes, Mom. Please and thank you, no seconds, smile, don’t laugh with my mouth open, sit with my legs together, leave the bathroom as clean as I found it.”
“And if anyone invites you somewhere after, you call.” She handed Cynthia her expensive cell phone to put in the tiny purse she only carried to these parties. “I’ll say yes, but I have to know, so I can borrow the car longer.”
Cynthia took the present, thinking of Wallace’s friends up there already, with their sleeping bags for the sleep-over. She hadn’t told her mother—and wouldn’t—that it was a school rule that the girls in every class had to invite the whole class to birthday parties, but only friends got invited to sleep-overs before or afterward.
“Have a good time. And smile.” Her mother scanned the driveway—hoping someone would appear and wave her in, Cynthia thought as she carefully closed the door to the borrowed car. Her mother’s voice came faintly: “Remember! To make a friend, be a friend!”
Cynthia started slowly up the driveway. She didn’t even have to buzz. Someone was on duty watching, for the gate swung open to let her in. For a second she had this wild idea of throwing the stupid present into a trashcan and sneaking to the fence and climbing over. She could stay in the garden all afternoon, and watch the pond—if it was still there.
But she had to call her mother to pick her up, and then she’d have to make up a million lies about the party. Her mother loved to talk about the parties all the long drive back to their apartment, hearing about every detail.
Cynthia walked up the long driveway to the house.
A maid in a uniform waited in the big vestibule. She looked Cynthia over from her hair to her shoes, then said with a pronounced French accent as she pointed, “Ze party’s back dair.”
“Thank you,” Cynthia said, though the woman had already turned away.
Cynthia was used to the maids. If they didn’t already know your name, they didn’t bother learning it. They knew right away you weren’t one of the girl’s real friends, just a classmate for the birthday party.
Cynthia walked slowly through three huge rooms, looking at the antique furniture, the grand piano, the giant wall mirrors, the indoor plants. The tile under her feet w
as different from last time: they had redecorated again. Had they redone the garden as well? Fear made her stomach cramp.
She stepped down into the conservatory and put her present on the side table with other gifts.
A plump girl in a very expensive party dress stood at the window. When she heard Cynthia’s steps she looked up, her expression changing from hope to disappointment. Then, just as quick, she smiled a fake smile.
“Cynthia!”
“Hi.”
Courtney Nabor acted glad to see her, but that was only because she was alone. That meant the maid had also said to her, “Ze party’s dair,” instead of greeting her by name and sending her up to Wallace’s room.
Courtney fingered her hair, then carefully tossed it back. Cynthia realized it had been cut and styled since she’d seen Courtney last at school, and she wondered if she was supposed to say something about it. Except she’d learned never to say anything about people’s appearances—if you weren’t popular, no matter what you said was wrong.
“Cody’s still upstairs getting ready,” Courtney said with another hair toss, and then giggled.
Cynthia nodded and smiled, though she was sure that Courtney could hear as well as she could the shrieks of laughter echoing down the marble stairs from above. Wishing that Courtney would move away from the window, she wandered over to the table to inspect the decorations for later description to her mother.
Courtney said, still fiddling with her hair, “Everybody stayed up late last night, working on that stupid statistics thing for Social Studies.”
Cynthia nodded again, guessing that some of the girls upstairs had already spent one night, and Courtney had found out by calling on some pretext or other.
“Cody says that Maddy will probably be here, if she doesn’t have jetlag too bad,” Courtney added, giggling again.
Cynthia was surprised. Madeleine Devereux, the richest girl in the school, almost never came to the birthday parties. In fact, half the time she wasn’t even at school—she flew around the world a lot and had a private tutor to keep her up with their class.