Three Quarters Dead (13 page)

She had me cut off from escape. No, she didn’t. I was standing in the door to the rest of the apartment. I’d cut her off.

And she was holding my backpack.

Could it be Rhonda Randolph’s maid? But I’d just seen her shut her front door. She couldn’t be here now. Could she? And this woman didn’t have red hair. At least not at the moment. Her hair was white and sparse. Flyaway hair. She stood there in a long plain robe with a fringed sash tied around her waist. And she wore glasses with tortoiseshell frames on a chain. She was like any scary old woman, except for the designer glasses. Tall and thin and wrinkled and colorless. Witchy. No makeup.

And she was holding my backpack.

“Who are you?” she said.

I was doomed. Doomed. Doomed. I kept turning up in the wrong house where I wasn’t supposed to be. Then I got caught by women in bathrobes. I would have thought how unfair this is if I hadn’t been more scared than I’d ever—

“I said, who are you?” Her glasses flashed. Otherwise I might have seen something in her eyes. I felt it anyway. Fear. I wasn’t the only one. She took a step back. Her skirts stirred.

“Kerry Williamson,” I said as history kept repeating, word for word. I came close to telling her I was Miss Garland’s niece. I came
this close.

“This is yours, then.” She meant the backpack in her old, papery hands. I was still too scared to think straight. I could hardly hear her for the pounding of my heart under the underwire. But maybe I had as much right to be here as she did. She’d been through my backpack. I’d almost caught her at it. She’d seen the copy of
Lord of the Flies
and my name on the CVS card—all my stuff, my comb and—

“You weren’t in the car,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question, and I knew the car she meant, the BMW. Tanya’s SUV.

No, I wasn’t one of them. And never had been. But I was blocking the door, and she looked like she wanted to make a run for it.

“How do you come to be here?” she said in an old, tired voice.

“Tanya texted me,” I murmured. I’d been eighteen all evening. Now I was fifteen again.

“How could that be?” the old woman said. “How could she do that?”

“The contract on her phone hadn’t been canceled yet,” I said, in a smaller voice still.

There was a sound now above us, something like rolling thunder. A sound of thunder coming in waves, far off.

“Listen,” the old woman said. She dropped my backpack and pointed to the ceiling with an immensely long finger. I remembered all the fingers pointing to the ceiling and the stars at Fabian’s, all the young fingers.

“What is it?” I asked in a whisper.

“Them,” she said. “The three of them. Roller-skating. We used to skate up there years and years ago when I was a girl. My girlfriends and I. Jackie. Lee.”

Did she meant that Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie were upstairs in the penthouse . . . roller-skating? I remembered that day when I came to school all upset after they’d left me behind in Alyssa’s house, and they were wearing pajamas. Pajamas. I remembered that for some reason.

“Go now.” The old woman’s hands jittered. “Here, take your backpack and go. We’ll be all right as long as we can hear them skating. Use the time before it runs out. Call your family and go.”

“I don’t know where my phone is,” I said. I could feel her panic, cold on my face. There was enough for both of us. She looked over at the old ivory rotary dial phone by the bed, which was dead.

“Just go then. Straight home.”

“Not like this,” I said. “I need my own clothes.” She blinked at my sequins. She probably hadn’t even noticed what I was wearing. “There’s no time to change. You don’t have that kind of time. Grab your things and stick them in your backpack.”

“They’re in there.” Meaning the dressing room. I still wanted to keep my distance. I was still scared of her. I didn’t know what was real.

She moved aside. “Hurry.” Her voice was like leaves blowing along a gutter. Dry, dry leaves. “Hurry.”

I had to pick through everything we’d left on the floor. All the things we’d rejected, the not-quite-rights and the wrong sizes. You could hear the far-off thunder in here too. I found my flip-flops, and then my school skirt and top. I decided to forget my old underwear. Some crazy voice babbling inside me, some crazy person wanted to keep the underwire bra.

It was brighter in here, dazzling, and there were all the mirrors. Next to my sweatshirt Makenzie’s skirt was in a wad on the floor, a little kilt-style skirt with a buckle.

I’d just noticed it when the old woman pointed down past me. She was standing over me, between me and the thunder. She’d been in such a panic to rush me out of here. Now she said, “Pick it up.”

I obeyed her. I picked up Makenzie’s kilt.

“Smell it,” she whispered.

I held it up to my face, the handful of tartan wool. It smelled like it had been in a fire. It smelled of burning, but not leaves in a gutter. Worse than that. Way worse. It cut my eyes. It was awful, and I dropped it.

“Go right now,” the old woman said in my ear. And I went.

I couldn’t run. In these heels? But I made tracks, and she followed me, all the way up the poster hallway. We were in the glaring front entrance now, lots of us. She reached past me and got the front door open.

Then we were out in the shadowy hallway with the Chinese wallpaper and the shaded lights. Again, she reached past me to hit the elevator bell with a long finger. We were this close.

“Do you know who I am?” I felt her breath on my face.

“No,” I said. “Are you the old movie star’s maid?”

And at this exact second, the door to the back apartment opened, more than a crack. Standing there was the old movie star’s maid, in the faded apron and the flame-colored wig. She gestured to the old woman to come into the back apartment. Quick.

But the woman’s hand had closed over my wrist. I’d been afraid all along she’d do something like this—hold me back or something. Grab me. Where was the elevator? But she had something else to say, one last thing.

“I have lived a long time,” she said. “And I am very near the end. But I have never known anything like this before, never seen anything like this.”

The elevator opened, and it was brighter inside. She let go of me. “Run for your life,” she said, and I lunged into the elevator.

As the doors closed, I saw her move toward the back apartment and the maid standing there. Flossie. I saw Flossie reach for her and pull her inside. Two panicked old women. You could smell their fear. The door banged shut, and the locks turned.

The elevator doors closed. And my hand came out to touch a button. It pushed PENTHOUSE.

“COME STRAIGHT UP, one floor,” Tanya’s note had said, and so I did. It was either that or go wandering out there in the dark, finding my own way home. Alone again—the black, blank streets, the mole hole subway. Another Saturday without them. Anyway, I could feel Tanya from here, the tug of Tanya.

The old woman had said, “Run for your life.” And, really, wasn’t I? What kind of life did I have without them?

THE ELEVATOR DOOR opened, and I was already in the penthouse. It seemed to be one gigantic apartment—the whole top of the building. You could have a party just here in the entrance hall. You could invite half the Fabian’s people home and have a huge party.

But only one light was on, a naked bulb on a wall. No mirrors. Only faded squares where pictures had hung, or mirrors. The penthouse was vacant. I could feel the weight of room after room of emptiness where any little thing would echo and nobody lived.

I followed the thunder through a doorway with columns into another monster-sized room. The city lights flickered across the dust-curled floor through long windows. The penthouse seemed to be hanging in space—somewhere between the moon and New York City. I’d walked the whole length of the room, and I was standing in front of double doors now, with all that thunder just on the other side.

I waited with my hand touching the place where the doors met. I gave myself one last chance.

Then I pushed both doors open. It was a ballroom that looked onto a terrace and the night.

You couldn’t believe a room this big in a New York apartment. Like an airplane hangar with an acre of parquet floor. And nothing in it but a few rickety little chairs along the walls where there must have been hundreds once. Once upon a time.

No lights on at all. Three giant chandeliers hung down, but they’d been tied up in big cloth bags. The only light came through the long French doors. It was beginning to be daylight, finally. But I didn’t have time to think about that. I didn’t have that kind of time.

Because here they came, the three of them roaring around the room on roller skates. They saw me and screamed, and the screams bounced and bounced off the walls and echoed across the ripply floor. They were speed-skating right at me, gripping each other, touching the floor for balance, practically falling but never quite. When had any of us been roller-skating?

But they were. Here they came in their Fabian’s prom outfits. Tanya’s billowing skirts. Natalie’s peekaboo black bra and red satin dress. Makenzie in lace and leg warmers. But now, of course, they’d lost their stilty, strappy, stiletto heels and were wearing skates. Old-fashioned, lace-up skates. Dirty white leather.

It was great—fabulous. Tanya looked the most like a skater in her leotard under the skirts. But they were gray in this light. Even Natalie’s dress was grayish. I dropped my backpack, and they were practically running me down, dragging toes to stop, throwing sparks. They had their ways of stopping. Makenzie tripped on my backpack. They were all totally out of breath. Their hands came out for me to steady them. I felt their hands all over my bare arms, and their warmth.

“Where have you
been?
” Tanya said, squeezing my hand. They all wondered. “You’ve been, like, ages. Eons. Lifetimes.”

“I looked for you there,” I said, trying to explain. “I looked all over and along the whole bar before I—”

“Whatever. You’re here now.” They were catching their breath. Tanya had already caught hers. “And honestly, what are you doing in those ridiculous shoes? Get out of them. Makenzie, go find Kerry’s skates.

“They used to have skating parties,” Tanya said, “when Aunt Lily was a girl. There are skates all over her apartment, all sizes. Makenzie brought up a pair for you.”

Skidding and rolling back and forth, they aimed me at a little gold chair. Now I was supposed to get out of the torture shoes and put on these skates. My job was to get these skates on, not to think. Natalie stood back, still breathing hard, waiting for me, hooking her hair behind her ears. She stood there like a picture of a ballet dancer, resting. A painting.

“Do you have room in the toes?” Makenzie wondered. I did. She’d found the right size, but then, Makenzie had always been the best at finding things.

Tanya was on her knees, lacing up my skates for me, tight over my black stockings. Tanya . . . waiting on me? Tanya on her knees before me? I didn’t even believe it, but I felt her hands, like birds with rushing wings.

The skittery little chair went over backward when they pulled me to my feet. The skates went in all directions. My legs were trying to do the splits. But they wouldn’t let me fall. We moved together now, out onto the ballroom floor like a many-legged thing. All our sequins and satins in a flounce of skirts and peekaboo bra and lace. The glass jewels in our ears and hair flashed the room. And we were on wheels—rattle-trap old unoiled wheels with minds of their own.

“You know what we’re like, don’t you?” Tanya was saying. “We’re like Shannon’s cheerleaders.” And we were, all trying to make the same coordinated moves and never quite managing it.

Then we started with our scissor-strides, getting up speed. Our skirts strained over our knees. Now we were like elementary school kids at a skating party, playing dress-up. It was that last kids’ party of elementary school with all the games that will never work again.

We were the thunder, all around the room, and I felt their hands holding me, overlapping against my back. I didn’t have to be clingy, and I was keeping up. They held me. It was the four of us, and who could tell where one of us stopped and the others began? We skated in our clump, getting better at it, swooping with screams around the room, around and around as way out there through the long windows New York began to stir and wake. It was like skating to music, except we were the music.