Seven Stories Up (9 page)

I lay there awhile, staring at the canopy. I knew I probably wouldn’t be here tomorrow for the fair. I wouldn’t ever know if Molly paid for the lamps, or if she got to keep Friend. But if I was going to wake up in my own time, I wanted to take what memories I could with me, keep them. What a day it had been! I wanted to file each bit of it away. This place.
This
Molly, not the old woman Molly. How could they possibly be the same person? I turned my head to stare at her mop of curls.

I felt my eyes start to shut. I didn’t
want
to fall asleep yet. I wasn’t ready to be done. But it wasn’t up to me. My eyes were closing, and the world was drifting.
I
was drifting.

I opened my eyes and felt fuzzy, almost exactly like when I got my tooth pulled and the dentist gave me silly gas. At first I just lay there in that big bed, staring up at the blurry canopy, trying to remember … 
anything
.

Outside, steady rain beat on the window. Fingers drumming in my brain. What
was
it? What did I need to remember?

Then I felt something sharp in my hair. I turned over in my haze and saw a kitten and a dark mop of hair
snoring just beyond it. I stared at the tangle of hair and the girl attached to it, trying to figure out who she was.

And who I was.

Who was I?

Memories began to float in, faintly, like ghosts. Vaguely, I remembered a horse, a glittery crash, running. Then I remembered an important word,
my
word:
Annie
. It was like I’d slipped free of my name and now I was putting it back on.
I’m Annie
, I thought. That felt better. I glanced over at the girl beside me, and I remembered:
Molly
. Each memory was like a star in a constellation. The picture was becoming clearer. I looked at my hands and they looked familiar.

Then, as if moving backward in time, I slid further—memories of the dark hotel, the smell of carnations.
Mom!
It all came together, the whole crazy story, and behind it, like a backdrop,
home
. My neighborhood. Susie. School. As though my real life were the farthest thing from me, and I had to reach for it.

The snoring girl beside me—Molly—felt more real. The room. The kitten purring, and the clean white sheets. Those things were here, in my now.

I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again, and my vision felt clearer. Huh. I recalled Molly drinking the cloudy medicine, but I didn’t think I’d drunk any.

Beside me, Molly stirred. “Ouch,” she said. The kitten had climbed onto her chest and was licking her chin. She opened her eyes and then sat up brightly, clutching Friend. “You’re here!” she said. “I thought perhaps I dreamed you.”

“I’m here …,” I said, flustered. “Still here.”

Molly looked so happy, but I felt … lost. Why hadn’t I gone home? In books, magic always ended where it began, didn’t it? You just had to walk back through the wardrobe. I’d climbed back into the huge bed that had brought me here, hadn’t I?

I turned over. Was there something I was missing? A talisman, a magic thing? Or a trick I needed to know, something I was supposed to have done before bed? Words to repeat?
Open sesame! Alakazam!
I didn’t think so.…

Then Molly was climbing out of bed, and it wasn’t foggy-headed morning anymore. It was tomorrow. There were fresh clothes to put on (my new dress was brown, with tiny pink flowers), hair to braid, and teeth to wash. Everything moved quickly, more quickly than I did, in my sluggish state. Before I was ready, Nora arrived with breakfast.

Then I was eating. I was talking. I was taking my
hand of cards from Molly and sitting down at the table. Like everything would be fine.

Probably it would. Probably I just needed to stop worrying, have a good day, one more chance to see things. Hadn’t I been happy for this adventure? I might as well enjoy it.

As Friend lapped at a pat of butter, Molly took a bite of oatmeal and said, “I don’t suppose the fair will be open in this storm.…”

“No,” I said. “No, I guess not.”

Molly’s forehead wrinkled. “Should we still take the money back today anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said, remembering the crash of lamps. “It’s raining pretty hard. But whatever you want to do is fine. I don’t care. Either way.”

Molly set down her spoon thoughtfully. “Is everything all right, Annie? You seem … different this morning.”

“Yeah … I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you, truly?”

“I
guess
I am.”

“What’s wrong? You can tell me.”

“It’s just … I thought I’d go home during the night,” I confessed, shaking my head. “I’m not sure what it means that I didn’t.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her mouth turned down slightly. “You mean, you don’t
want
to stay?”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I
do
want to be here. Only … I don’t like not knowing how to get back. And Mom—”

“I see,” said Molly quietly. “Do you think perhaps I have to unwish you?”

“Oh!” I said. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Do you want me to do that? I can try right now.”

I nodded. “Would you? Try?”

Molly looked sad, but she closed her eyes, screwed up her face, and waved her hands above her head. “I wish,” she said, “that Annie would go home right now!” She looked silly, like a little kid playing a game.

“Are you gone now?” she asked, opening one eye.

“Nope. Still here,” I said.

Her face relaxed. “In that case,” she said, “perhaps it
wasn’t
my wish?”

“I guess not,” I said. I forced a smile. “That must mean we have another day.”

“We should make the most of it,” said Molly.

“How do you want to do that?” I asked. “In this rain?”

“Well, you still haven’t seen the hotel at all.” Molly grinned.

When she said that, I remembered a shimmer. I
recalled a dusty lobby, a chandelier. Diamonds in the darkness.
Maybe
, I thought,
this is a good thing, this extra day
. “I’d like that,” I said. “In fact, I’d like that a lot.”

“The only problem,” said Molly, “is that if we want to explore, we’ll have to try going out to come in again.” Her forehead wrinkled briefly. “Which means we
do
have to brave the storm. For a little while, at least.”

“Maybe we should wait and see if the rain lets up,” I suggested. “Give it a few hours?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Molly said as she fed a sliver of bacon to the kitten. “That will give us some time with Friend before we go. We don’t want him to think we’ve run away and deserted him.”

Friend nuzzled her hand as though in agreement.

We finished our breakfast and our inevitable game of cards, then spent the morning playing with Friend in the bedroom, where we discovered that the kitten liked to chase everything. He pounced on Molly’s slipper, and dragged the sleeping mask from under the bed, then chewed it until I rescued it and set it on the bedside table. Molly found this endlessly entertaining, but I got bored enough to read a
Look
magazine article about “How to See Europe on a Dollar a Day.” A dollar a day!

When Nora arrived with lunch, we hurried back out to the sitting room, careful to close the bedroom door
behind us. As we sat down at the table, I saw Friend’s little claws scraping under the door. I didn’t think Nora spotted him.

“Goodness, it’s frightful out there today,” said the maid, setting down her tray. “Cars are like to wash away. Count yourselves lucky you don’t have to go out in that mess, girls.” Molly kicked my leg under the table. I kicked her back.

After Nora was gone, we finished our sandwiches, which were made of something that looked like bologna but tasted better. Then Molly stood up. “Let’s go see how awful it really is. Maybe Nora’s exaggerating.”

We tucked Friend safely away in the bedroom with a pile of pillows, some crumpled bits of paper to play with, and a dish of water. We raised the window in the bathroom and found that Nora was right. It was like a monsoon outside! The rain was coming down in a wall of water.

“What do you think?” Molly said. “It’s very wet.”

“That’s how rain tends to be,” I said. “But yeah, it’s bad.”

“I’ll try if you will,” said Molly. A gust of wind splattered rain right in our faces, but she put a hand on the sill and hoisted herself out. “It’s not so bad,” she called back in to me, sputtering water. “Once you get used to it.”

“If you say so,” I said as I pulled myself up beside her. “Here goes nothing.” I crawled outside and a chilly wind took my breath away.

Molly was lying. There was no getting used to the storm. Rain pelted me like tiny needles, and the wind blew nonstop. I was soaked in seconds, and the railing and the stairs were terribly slick. I didn’t even try to see what was happening with Molly. I focused on my own feet, gripped the railing tight, and held my breath. Step by step. Hand over hand.

When I slipped off the last step, the ground felt good under my feet, if squishy. “Whew!” I said, turning to Molly.

She was already dashing for cover, arms over her head. I raced behind her to a set of four steps that led down to a small door. Molly pulled it open and ducked inside. I followed her. The door closed behind me with a bang.

Inside the basement the air was warm and humid. A few bare bulbs hung from the ceiling of the dim, cavernous room. I followed Molly, dripping, through another door, into a laundry room where sheets were draped like ghosts from clotheslines. Molly put a finger to her lips. “Hush!”

There was an overpowering smell of bleach, dust, and damp, a rich scent that tickled my throat. Rainwater was
dripping from my hair into my eyes. The warm basement felt good on my cold skin.

“I wish we had dry clothes,” I whispered, trying to wring out my skirt.

Molly whirled around and grinned. “Oh! What a good thought.” She made her way to one of the clotheslines. “Perfect,” I heard her mutter. Then she was back with a pile of dark clothes and a rough towel. “Put these on.”

I stripped off my wet clothes and dried off with the towel until I felt tingly. Soon I was dressed in a maid’s uniform like Nora’s. “The hat too?” I asked.

“The hat especially,” said Molly, pulling hers on. “What a disguise! I bet we could walk right up to Papa and he wouldn’t recognize us.”

“I’m
sure
your dad would recognize you, Molly.”

Molly only shrugged. “I’m just sorry there aren’t any socks. These are squooshy.”

“It
is
too bad,” I agreed. “Mine are like dead fish.”

“Ew.” Molly wrinkled her nose. I wrinkled mine back at her, and we both grinned. It was much nicer in the warm, dry clothes, with the rubbed-clean feeling of a rain shower.

Then Molly picked up her wet things and jammed them deep down into a garbage can in a corner.

It felt weird to throw away perfectly good clothes. “Are you sure?” I said, looking back at her over my shoulder as I prepared to bury the wet clothes in the bin. “It’s such a waste.”

“I’ve plenty more,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to find them down here, do we?”

“I guess not.” I crammed the wet things down with a broom handle.

By the time I turned around, Molly had walked over to the other end of the room. I watched as she climbed onto a pile of crumpled sheets and reached for a square hole in the brick wall. “Now, here we go,” she said proudly.

“What is it?” I asked, peering up into the hole.

“It’s a laundry chute,” Molly said over her shoulder. “Haven’t you been inside one before?”

“I’ve never even
seen
one.”

“Really?” Molly looked surprised. “They’re very good for getting around. Maggie and Ginny showed me how, a long time ago. I’ll go first, and you can follow. All right?” Before I could answer, she climbed headfirst into the yawning mouth of the laundry chute and disappeared. I could just make out the soles of her shoes.

I stepped closer and looked up the chute. It was pitch-black in there. I reached out a hand and felt a
slanted piece of metal. It was like Molly was climbing up a slide.

“Hey,” I called up after her. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Shhh,” warned Molly from inside the chute. Then I heard only the faint squeak of her shoes and hands rubbing against metal. At last Molly’s whisper echoed down tinnily, “I’m here! I made it! Now you!”

I climbed up into the dark square hole and made my way slowly. It was a little tight and I couldn’t turn around. Briefly I thought about what would happen if I got stuck. But I kept climbing, even though the chute smelled like sweaty gym clothes and dirty pennies.

When I got to the top and peeked out, Molly wasn’t there. I only saw more linens piled on the floor. Napkins, stained tablecloths, dishrags. In the next room I could hear a clatter.

“Molly?” I called softly.

“Who’s there?” shouted back a man’s voice.

“Oh!” I said without meaning to.

“Hello?” called the man again.

From above me in the chute I heard Molly’s voice. “Hurry!” she urged.

“I’m trying,” I whispered.

The second story took even longer because my arms and legs were tired and shaky from the strain of climbing. But this time when I stuck my head out, I found Molly smiling at me.