Rules for Stealing Stars (9 page)

Fifteen

M
om collects fabric. She once made a pink sundress for my teddy bear and a wedding gown for my favorite doll and a wool coat for my stuffed cat because I was worried he was getting cold in the winter months. Those are things that happened, even though they don't fit in with the Way Things Are Now.

We're not allowed in the sewing room, but the door's open and when we walk by it we see Mom's in there. I wish I could say she's fallen asleep in the chair or on the little couch she does the hand-stitching on. But that is not the case. She's on the floor. Her legs are splayed. It is a terrible, sudden kind of sleep. She's right in front of the sewing room
closet, like she'd been pulling at the door and fell asleep from the effort.

I see her first. “Mom!” I exclaim, which brings Marla immediately to my side with Eleanor and Astrid not far behind.

“Oh,” Astrid says. “Oh. Oh.”

Eleanor puts two fingers on Mom's neck and the fingers of her other hand on Mom's wrist like she's some kind of doctor, and I don't think I'll ever be as old and together and sure as Eleanor.

“Do we need to call 911?” I say. It seems like the right thing to say. Like maybe I can be good in this situation too, but Eleanor shakes her head, and I guess she already knows what's going on.

“She's napping. We'll let her nap.”

“We should tell Dad,” Astrid says, but she's stepping aside, away from the situation. She picks at a piece of floral wallpaper that's starting to become unglued.

“No!” Marla says.

“Astrid, take the girls into my closet,” Eleanor says.

“Now?” Astrid says.

“Now.”

Eleanor is a boulder. She won't even look our way. She's wholly focused on Mom and her pulse and propping her up and checking the mug on the table to see what's in
it. We are useless, compared to her.

“We can go to the mountains,” Astrid says. She takes a diorama that's in the sewing room, one she gave Mom, who loves mountains, allegedly.

I don't know what Mom loves anymore. Not us, I don't think.

I erase that thought as quickly as possible. Thank myself for not saying it out loud.

The mountains are nice. They shimmer into existence a few moments after we enter the closet, diorama in hand. For a moment, they're transparent and not real, but they quickly become solid and real and enormous.

They are purple and covered in glitter. Exactly the kind of magical place I've been hoping to visit since I first went in the closet with the park diorama.

They sparkle
hard
.

They sparkle enough to make us laugh and wonder at the prettiness and want to stay in the closet all night.

We lie beneath them, in their shadows. If we were in my closet, I'd want to climb them, I'd want to go on an adventure on their glittering slopes. But Eleanor's closet is for feeling at home. Ladybugs swarm our knees and give us tiny ladybug kisses. An owl with huge eyes settles on a rock nearby. He doesn't squawk or flap or anything. He watches.

It is weird to think of an owl being sort of like a parent, so I don't say it out loud, but that's probably what I need, so it's what the closet is providing.

“Let's stay here,” I say

“Maybe we really should,” Astrid says. I had expected her to say no.

“Eleanor would hate it.” I feel like I should stand up for Eleanor, after what I did to her today.

“Eleanor doesn't want to be one of us,” Astrid says. She doesn't take her eyes from the top of the mountain, a place that glints in the sun.

My stomach turns and wails. “We should check on Mom,” I say. “We should check on Eleanor. She shouldn't be doing that alone. We shouldn't be in here while she's out there. She's fourteen. She's not a doctor.” I'm scared for her. We are making so many mistakes.

Astrid looks farther up, past the mountaintop. Far, far away.

“Don't you think Mom would want to see this?” Marla whispers. Astrid is so distracted watching strange yellow clouds bounce in the sky that she doesn't react.

“Sure,” I say, but I don't know what Mom likes or wants.

“I'm going to bring a little bit of the dirt out,” Marla says. “Show her how it sparkles. I won't tell her where it's from. Yet. But she probably needs to see something really
beautiful right now. I think it will help.”

“Maybe?” I can't imagine a handful of dirt causing any real trouble, so I keep my mouth closed and let her do it.

“We could stay,” Astrid says. “I meant it, earlier. Maybe it would actually be better for us.”

“Better to never go back to the real world?” Marla says. Her voice wobbles.

“They'd forget us after a while,” Astrid goes on. “We've noticed that if we stay for a long time, we sort of . . . fade. Like, once Eleanor went in by herself in the morning, and by dinnertime Mom and Dad seemed foggy about her. Like they couldn't quite think of her name, and they didn't ask where she was.”

“That sounds terrifying,” I say.

She shrugs, like a slow fade away from everyone's memory is no big deal. “Yeah, I mean, sort of. Yeah,” Astrid says, like I'm not understanding something. Marla doesn't say anything at all, and that's even worse. “It's nice, though, to think you could disappear for a while. And when Eleanor came back out, it was fine.” Astrid is so pale and spacey anyway, she's always been half faded. She's never fully there.

“I don't want to fade away,” I say. I touch Astrid's shoulder and she clicks back into herself, the moment over. She shakes her head, undoing some kind of dizziness that was in her brain, and I dig my fingers into her arm to keep her
here, unfaded. Marla clings to the scoop of dirt that she thinks will cure Mom.

“Yeah, of course,” Astrid says. “Me neither. Let's go help Eleanor. You're right. Of course you're right.”

When we step out of the closet, Marla opens her hand to make sure the rocky dirt kept its magic.

It didn't.

Her hand is empty. The diorama's intact and simply a diorama again. The world is magic-less and Marla's face is hopeless, like she really thought Mom was going to be cured by a pile of glittering dirt.

I'm starting to think Mom's not going to be cured by anything at all.

“I'll think of something else,” Marla says. “She'll be okay.”

“
We'll
be okay,” Astrid says.

I swallow nothing, hard.

Sixteen

E
leanor is under her covers. All the way under. It's a signal that we shouldn't ask her what happened.

The sewing room door is closed. So is our parents' bedroom door. It must have gone badly, while we were at the mountain, letting Eleanor deal with it all by herself. No wonder she wants to pretend we don't exist.

I fall asleep quickly, once I'm in bed. I'm light-headed after the closet, the memory of Mom asleep on the floor and Marla's disappointment fading into nothingness.

Mom's still sleeping in the morning when I get up.

Dad's hunched over some huge book in the never-used dining room. “I'm reading about demons,” he says.

“Demons?” I sit on one of the straight-backed chairs and look around the bottom floor of the house, as far as I can see from here, for signs that my sisters are awake and about. I think they're awake, but right now they're nowhere to be found.

“And deals with the devil. And tortured souls. And witches,” Dad says. “Anything that makes good things go bad.”

“Why?” I think it's because he's trying to figure out what's wrong with Mom too, but Dad mumbles something about his upcoming semester at the university and some unit he's going to do, and we don't end up having a real conversation.

“Stories are the most important, useful things we have to understand the world around us,” Dad says finally. This he makes eye contact on, and I wonder if he could be right.

“Will you tell me more about ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses'?” I say.

“Hm?”

“The story? With the shoes? And the closets?”

Dad puts down his demon book for a minute. He flips through his legal pad like he's looking for something. He adjusts his glasses because he's serious about the situation.

“I made a list of stories and fables and myths about sisters for you,” Dad says. “That's not the only one about
siblings.” This is typical Dad. Not quite understanding me but really, truly believing that he does. The smile on his face is all kinds of proud of himself, and I know he thinks he gets me, and I don't want to take that away from him.

“Wow. Thanks,” I say.

“We're two peas in a pod.” Dad emits a happy sigh, and I wonder if this is the only time all day either of us will be really happy. Who knows what else might happen to make the house sad later today? “We both really get how to look for answers. We're both curious. We both know the stories in these books are more than pretend. They're real, they have real things to teach us. Maybe you'll be a professor like me someday. What do you think, Silly?”

“Professor Silly,” I say, hating it.

“I know things don't always make sense,” Dad says. He's taken off his glasses, which means he's settling in for an important talk. “I know you're looking for answers to hard questions. But things are getting better now, and I think with how strong our family is and how smart and curious you are, it will all start to make sense for you. The world.”

“You think the world will start to make sense.” I want him to hear how he sounds. His big proclamations. The way he's gripping the sides of his books like they are anchors, life rafts, in a stormy sea. Doesn't he hear how hollow it all is?

“Now that we've moved here and Mom's getting better.”
He smiles to himself and puts his glasses back on, conversation over.

There are so many things to say that I go mute. It's annoying, how that happens. The more things I want to say, the less I actually can. Eleanor's not like this. She gets an uppity, fast-talking voice when she needs to speak her mind. And Marla yells out her temper tantrums. Astrid writes long letters when she's upset.

I'm Silly. I say nothing, but I blush and look at the clock, which tells me it is way, way too late for Mom to still be asleep.

It's terrifying that Dad thinks Mom is doing better. If he doesn't see how bad things are, what are we supposed to do? I think about the mountains and the idea to escape there, and I think Dad would be the first to forget us.

Or Mom, if she'd been drinking all day.

I guess they'd both forget us.

I feel like I have the flu. A very sudden, very painful flu.

“Speaking of sisters, where are mine?” I say. I can't sit here with him pretending Mom's getting better when every day she's getting a little bit worse.

“Let's see. The beach maybe? Eleanor went to get ice cream. Which is funny—it's a little early for ice cream,” Dad says like it's only occurred to him this moment.

“And Mom?” I say, hoping he'll admit how worrisome it is that she's sleeping.

“I'm sure she's reading or something,” he says. “Anyway, I should get to work, chickadee. You'll hold down the fort for me? I'm going to the office.”

He doesn't have to go to the office. It's summer. He could do his research right here. But he wants to leave too. We all need to leave sometimes.

He abandons most of his papers on the table, so when he's out the door I look through them. There are notes about everything from evil witches in Eastern European fairy tales to Bible verses about the devil to something called
The Metamorphosis.

Dad likes reading and pondering and note-taking and concluding things from those books but never actually looking at what's happening in real life. It's sort of sad if I think too much about it.

I have an idea.

I rip a bunch of pages out of a copy of
Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Dad has a million copies; he won't miss this one.

I head to the basement. I know exactly what I'm looking for.

In the pile of discarded toys that we moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire for no reason at all, I discover our old Barbies. Twelve of them. Mom would be livid if she knew we had twelve Barbies, but Dad always used to buy them for us when she was Away.

I come across Halloween costume tiaras and never-used ballet slippers and a pair of pink heels I'm sure Mom never wore but that maybe princesses could have worn. I bring a bowl of water that I hope will turn into a lake, because as I read the pages I ripped out of the book—the story of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”—I learn that they took a boat across a lake to make it to the dance. I find one toy boat. It's small and plastic, and we probably used to play with it in the tub.

The fairy tale also says the sisters floated by trees of gold and silver, and I think of the gold in Eleanor's hair that one morning, and wonder if maybe we really
are
those princesses.

Of course I know we're not, but I wonder what it would feel like, for an afternoon, to live that story instead of our own.

I bring the tiaras and shoes and Barbies and book pages and everything else I can gather up from the fairy tale into the closet. I hang silver and gold chains from the hooks that used to be used for coats. I use some of Astrid's supplies and hang tinsel and sheer fabrics from the closet bar and place the bowl of water on the ground and float the little blue ship in it. It rocks back and forth.

I almost close the door and enter the world alone, but I don't. I miss my sisters. Even Marla, who is impossible and scaring me, but is one of us.

If I am going to travel inside a fairy tale, I want my sisters with me.

I close the closet door and wait on the stairs for Marla and Eleanor and Astrid to come home.

Mom wanders out of her bedroom after a few minutes, and I go cold and tense. I try not to smell her. I try not to look directly at her.

“Where are your sisters? You should all be together!” Mom says instead of hello, because somehow by sitting on the stairs alone I've done something terribly wrong. She's screeching, and I don't know why. It's frightening in the way that being lost in the woods is frightening. I don't know what's coming next. There might be bats or owls or a ditch or it might be fine, there might be a lit-up cottage with something baking inside right around the corner.

“I don't know, I got up late and—”

“What's wrong with you? We came here to be a family, and you're doing a terrible job! You're not all taking care of each other!” she screams. My heart's pounding. If anyone's doing a terrible job, it's her. My mouth is aching to say it. My tongue and lips are moving and drying out with how badly those words want to emerge. “You don't deserve sisters. Any of you,” she says. She sounds like a snake. Hissing.

“What do you know about sisters? You don't even talk about yours! Astrid and Eleanor have no idea you ever had
one! You forget all about her!” I say because I can't hold it in anymore. I throw my hand to lips, sticking the whole fist inside to shut myself up. I bite on the fingers, I can't believe what came out of my mouth. We don't talk about secrets. If Mom doesn't talk about her sister, it's because we're not allowed to bring her up. I know better.

Mom's hand raises into the air. It's going to come down on me. I curl into a ball on the stairs. I make a squealing pig sound I didn't even know was inside of me. But at the last minute Mom shifts her arm so that her hand crashes against the wall instead of me.

She falls to pieces.

Mom sits on the stairs and crumbles. She holds her own hand and cries. The house has never felt bigger or lonelier. I should do something, but I don't know what. I guess I sort of deserve this, from looking away when it happened to my sisters. We're all in it alone. I have to stay strong.

No part of me wants to touch her, but I stay next to her and look to make sure her hand's not bleeding or anything. For a minute, a really long one, I try to be Eleanor.

“We have to get her out of the closet,” Mom weeps. It's muffled and I could be hearing her wrong, and I certainly don't want to ask any follow-up questions. “We have to get her unstuck.”

My heart thumps.
The closet
, she said. Mom thinks
someone is stuck in the closet.

I'm caught between asking more questions and leaving her alone.

I'm weak and scared and not good enough to actually do anything useful, so I leave her on the stairs like that.