She starts trying on shoes. I had no idea she had dozens of sandals. Silver ones and ones with heels and ones with so many straps they look like torture devices.
“Where?” Marla says. I know when to give up, but Marla doesn’t. She has a gloomy look on her face. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to shove her back in the closet, I think. Have her stay in that peaceful state forever.
“Ice cream. Then a friend’s house,” Eleanor says. That means they’re seeing her secret boyfriend. I say as much, and Eleanor huffs and won’t reply, but she decides on these red flip-flops that Marla and I both covet.
“What about us?” Marla says. “You want us to take care of everything? Entertain Dad? Help Mom hobble around?” She’s saying it like Eleanor and Astrid are leaving us forever, like we didn’t just spend the afternoon together in their closet having basically the greatest experience ever. I wonder if Marla even knows how to be happy.
“We can go back in the closet together, Marla!” I say. “Astrid, can we borrow your planetary diorama? Will it work? Will we float around in space? Oh my God, I’m so excited.”
“No!” Eleanor says. She turns red, redder than the sunburn from the park in the closet, redder than her red flip-flops, almost. “No closets without us. Absolutely not. Are you listening?” She’s staring right at me, so she knows I am.
“Chill,” Astrid says. She isn’t trying on tops or shoes or hairstyles. I wouldn’t be either. Eleanor is the only one of us who knows how to do those things. LilyLee’s mother takes her clothes shopping and taught her how to French braid and how to match shoes with belts, and LilyLee says she taught her how to apply blush and eye shadow the other week too.
These are things we’ve never learned.
I’m pretty sure Eleanor’s wearing too much blush, but I wouldn’t know the right amount of blush, so I don’t say anything.
“You went in without us,” I say, hoping Marla will back me up. She doesn’t, but she doesn’t dispute me either. And with Marla, sometimes her not arguing with me is the same as her standing up for me.
“It wasn’t some huge thing,” Eleanor says. “We didn’t do it that often until recently. Don’t make a big deal out of it, Silly.” Her cell phone is buzzing with texts from the secret boyfriend, and she’s flitting her hands around nervously, but it doesn’t stop her from being Big Sister Eleanor. “We’re trying to keep you safe. No experimenting. New rule.”
“There weren’t any rules before you forced your way in,” Marla says, like somehow this is all my fault now. Like without me holding her back, she’d have been able to go on closet adventures any time she wanted without any of Eleanor’s wrath or Astrid’s quiet worry.
“You look pretty,” I say to Eleanor instead of agreeing with her or arguing with Marla.
“I do?” Eleanor looks genuinely confused. She stares at the mirror and combs her hair with her fingers. “There’s this girl who works at the ice cream place, and she always looks perfect. Like her nails and the length of her dresses and a different necklace with every outfit. What’s that like, do you think?”
“Boring,” Astrid says. She throws a necklace around her neck. The kind with big plastic beads from the craft cabinet threaded with no pattern or sense onto a thick black string and tied with one of Mom’s shaky-handed knots.
Sometimes I think I want to be more like Eleanor, who tries so hard and is so pulled together. But right now I want to be Astrid, who doesn’t care.
Eleanor and Astrid leave out the front door. The ice cream store is a short walk away, and Mom and Dad won’t notice that they’re gone.
“That’d be so cool,” LilyLee said when I told her Mom and Dad don’t notice, so we never have to ask permission to go anywhere or do anything.
LilyLee isn’t always right.
Seven
Marla and I try to have a nice evening alone together.
Or, I try. Marla mopes.
We sit on the couch in the living room and watch TV, but after a while we’re not watching TV at all. We’re waiting for Mom to go back to bed. She is eating dinner by herself in the dining room and keeps dropping her utensils and swearing at them. She’s drinking from a mug instead of a glass, which is a bad sign. It means she doesn’t want us to see what’s inside.
We’re watching an old movie version of Annie that Mom turned on before she started dinner. I think we’d both like to change the channel—movie musicals aren’t our thing—but sometimes when Mom is in a mood, anything can set her off. So we sit tight and tense on the couch and wince whenever a knife or fork clangs to the floor.
“I have something to tell you,” I whisper. I think maybe Marla and I can figure out what’s going on with Mom together, if I tell her about Mom’s mystery-sister. Since Eleanor and Astrid want to leave us alone, Marla and I can have our own secrets. “It’s about Mom.”
“Mom’s fine,” Marla says, before I can tell her what Mom said.
Fine. I’ll figure it out myself.