Seven Stories Up (6 page)

“Shall we play once more?” she asked, shuffling.

“I guess if you really want to beat me again,” I said, stretching. “If that’s fun for you.”

Molly pointed to a stack of games under the coffee table. “We can play something else if you’d rather,” she said. “Checkers?”

I peered at the boxes. Some games I recognized, like backgammon and Monopoly. Some I’d never seen before. “Whoa,” I said, reaching for a box. “What’s
British Empire: Trading with the Colonies? This looks hilarious.”

“I haven’t played that in a long time. It’s not good to play alone.” Molly opened the box. “Anyway, there are pieces missing. See?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe, instead of playing games, we could do something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like … maybe we could go out?”

Molly put the lid back on the British Empire game. “You know I can’t,” she said quickly. “I mean,
we
can’t. The door is locked.”

“Right, but who needs a door, when we’ve got our own private fire escape?”

Molly shook her head. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.

“It looks pretty sturdy to me.”

“It’s not safe,” Molly said sharply. “Even if we make it all the way down, I could have an attack. I could die out there.”

“But you won’t …”

“You can’t know that,” said Molly.

“Yes, I can!” The words slipped out before I knew what I was doing.

Molly stared at me. “How can you possibly be sure of that?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say.

Then it dawned on her. I could see it, like in cartoons when a lightbulb goes off over someone’s head. “Wait,” she said, getting excited. “Wait, wait,
wait
! If you’re from the future … you know what
happens
.…”

What had I done? I blinked. I shrugged in what I hoped was a vague and mysterious way. I reached for the deck of cards again. “Forget it. Let’s play rummy,” I said.

Molly shouted. “You
do
know what happens to me!”

“N-no, I don’t,” I stammered. “I mean, hardly anything. Really.”

She rose up on her knees. “Whatever you do know, you have to tell me!”

I pushed away a fleeting thought of a woman in a bed, a shrill angry voice, six whiskers. “Really, Molly! I don’t know anything more. I swear.”

Molly frowned. “Truly?”

“Truly,” I lied softly. “But …”

“But?”

“I can promise you this much,” I said. “You have a lot of boring years ahead of you, if you just sit around, playing rummy. Come on!” I said. I stood up and grabbed at her hand. I pulled her to her feet, and she let herself be pulled. I tugged her arm and led her into the bathroom, over to the window.

“Look,” I said, pointing. “Look at all that sunshine. Wouldn’t you like to be out in it?”

She nodded slowly, cautiously.

“And hey, I’ll go first. If I’m wrong and I fall to my death, you can scrape me off the street and make that scrapple stuff out of me. How’s
that
for a silver lining?”

Molly wrinkled her nose. “I don’t suppose you’d taste very good.”

“Ha,” I said. “Very funny.”

Molly walked over to the tub, climbed in, and stared out the open window. When she glanced back over her shoulder at me, her eyes were misty, and her mouth was twitching. It was like her feelings were fighting with each other.

“Oh, Molly, please?” I begged. “Pretty, pretty please? I don’t know how long I
have
. I could be back here in an hour. I don’t want to waste the magic. I want to do things, see things!”

“All right!” she said at last. “All right. Let’s do things. Let’s see things!”

“Really?” I said.

“Really.”

“Awesome!”

“Yes,” she said. Then she repeated after me, “Awe-
some
!”

Unfortunately, at that moment we heard a key turn in the lock. Nora was back. As we dashed back into the sitting room and took our spots at the low table, Nora silently brought in bowls of chicken noodle soup and glasses of cold milk. She set everything on the table before us and collected the breakfast dishes carefully.

Molly didn’t say a word. Neither did Nora. I arranged my napkin in my lap.

“Thanks,” I called out as cheerfully as I could. “This looks great.”

Nora dropped a stiff curtsy. “You’re quite welcome, I’m sure.”

Beside me, Molly cleared her throat. “Yes, umm, thank you, Nora,” she said, “for your hard work. I don’t say thank you enough.”

Nora blinked at me, and then looked back to Molly. “You’re certainly welcome as well, miss,” she said. “Happy to be of service.”

As Nora reached for the doorknob, Molly spoke again. “Nora, one more thing?”

The maid turned. “Yes, miss?”

“It’s just—”

Nora paused by the door.

Molly examined her soup, blushing. “I’m—I’m sorry
for the way I spoke to you earlier. I wouldn’t actually do … that thing I said.”

Nora stared at Molly. Her face was soft. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. “It’s all right, miss. Don’t you fret. You’ve got enough to worry about without thinking of me, dear.”

Molly jerked her head up in surprise at the word
dear
, but she didn’t say anything, and Nora was already through the door with the breakfast dishes.

“Good job,” I said.

She replied by turning away from me and slurping her soup.

When we were done, she pointed at my bowl. “You aren’t fond of mushrooms either?” she asked.

I looked down at the two bowls, side by side, full of mushroom slivers. I shook my head. “Squishy and awful. No.” I stuck my tongue out.

“It’s uncanny,” said Molly, “how much we have in common. It really is.”

At first it was enough just to be sitting in the sky. Side by side, we gazed at the blue overhead, at the tall trees waving from the yard below. I could feel the metal grid of the sunbaked fire escape through my cotton dress.

“You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this,” said Molly. “I
used
to come out here.”

“Why’d you stop? It’s so nice.”

“That was when my sisters were home. We’d all climb out together, to watch the birds. Sometimes we’d picnic. It’s different alone.”

“Molly,” I said, “how long
have
you been alone?”

“Twenty-seven days. But it feels longer.”

“I bet! But your dad is still here, right?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “There’s Papa, sometimes.”

“And how long will your sisters and your mom be away?”

She shrugged. “Not much longer, I hope.”

“What about before that? You said your sisters came out here with you. Does that mean you were locked up
before
they went away? How long have you been here altogether?”

She tilted her head, thinking hard. “I’m not exactly certain. I had influenza at Christmas, but not
last
Christmas.”

“Oh,” I said. “Wow.” A year and a half, locked up. It sounded crazy-making.

Without warning, the church bells next door rang out and we clapped our hands to our ears. As they faded, I noticed other noises, so different from the sounds of home. Clips and clops, putters and shouts.

“It’s pretty,” I said.

“It’s dirty.” Molly wrinkled her nose.

“That too. Pretty
and
dirty.” I stared out at the stained slate rooftops, the gray brick streets. Dingy smoke drifted in the air. But I also detected a faint whiff of cinnamon again.

“Do you smell that?” I asked.

Molly took a deep breath. “I do,” she said. “That happens some days. But I don’t know what it is.”

“At home, it never smells like that,” I said.

“Where
is
home?” asked Molly. “You haven’t said.”

“Atlanta,” I told her. “Georgia.”

“Atlanta,” she repeated wistfully. “In the south. Magnolias. Peaches. I’d like to go there. Tell me something about it, your Atlanta, in the future.”

Part of me wanted to tell her that in the future, parents got arrested for locking their kids in rooms for days on end. Instead I said, “Well, hmm … there’s TV. It’s like … movies, but on little screens, in your house. All day long.”

“Movies? In your house?” Molly looked amazed. “How do people ever stop watching?”

I laughed, thinking of my soap opera–addicted neighbor, Mrs. Bobby. “Some don’t.”

Suddenly Molly stood up and pointed. “I know! If we’re really going to climb down, maybe we can go
there
.”

“Where?” I stood up beside her, trying to see what she was pointing at.

“See, out there, that gray line in the distance? That’s the harbor. It leads to the bay. And
that
leads to the ocean.”

“Man, I love the beach,” I said. “Don’t you?”

Molly didn’t respond. When I turned to look at her, I saw that her lashes sparkled with tears.

“Whoa!” I said. “You okay?”

A few drops fell as Molly smiled. They left dark spots on her red dress. “Yes,” she said. “I’m happy.”

“Then why are you crying?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s just so much. The wind. The sun. You. Please don’t think I’m a ninny. I’ve just been sitting so long, imagining the fun things Maggie and Ginny were doing, trying not to hate them. I’ve been so alone. But now
you’re
here, and I don’t need to be jealous anymore. It feels … better.”

“Hey, want to know something funny?” I said “When my mom is upset, she doesn’t cry. She eats ice cream instead.”

“Really? Does that help her?”

“Mom says you only get so many minutes alive. Why waste them crying?”

“Well, I
like
to cry. Sometimes.” Molly turned to face the stairs. “But I think I’m done now. Are you ready?”

“Yep.”

As I walked carefully down that first set of stairs, the metal shuddered under my feet. The wind that rustled the ivy beside me puffed out my skirt and threatened to
blow it over my head. I ignored everything else and concentrated on the narrow walkway under my slippy shoes. I’d climbed plenty of jungle gyms in my life, but they weren’t a hundred feet tall, and I had always had sneakers on. I gripped the railing. One staircase. Two staircases. All the way down.

At last I hit sturdy ground. My knees felt wobbly. I glanced around, then ducked behind a hedge.

When Molly joined me in the prickly hedge, her eyes were wide. “I did it!” she whisper-shouted in my ear. “I can’t imagine what Papa will say if he catches me, but just now I don’t care!” She laughed. “I’m still breathing, aren’t I?”

“It would be pretty hard to ask that if you weren’t.”

Molly giggled. “
Now
what?”

“You tell me,” I said. “This is your town.”

“No,” she said. “You decide. This was
your
idea.”

“Well, you said you wanted to go to the harbor. How do we get there?”

Molly shrugged her thin shoulders. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Well then, what are some other cool 1937 things? What have you missed, being stuck in your tower for the last year and a half? Where did you like to go before you got the flu?”

Molly blushed. “Oh. You still don’t understand.”

“Understand
what
?”

“Annie, I’ve
always
been sick. I’ve
always
had asthma. They’ve kept me inside so that I wouldn’t catch anything. My lungs are weak and …”

“Wait, you mean before you got the flu?
Before
the Lonely Room?”

She nodded.

“So all your life, you’ve never gone
anywhere
?”

“I go to church sometimes, there.” She motioned up at the spire.

“What about school?” I asked.

“I have a tutor,” she murmured. “During the school year. Miss Tompkins.”

“Wow,” I said. “Wow.”

“It’s never been like
this
before,” Molly explained. “Until the Lonely Room, I lived with the others, on the second floor. I could walk in the garden. Read in the lobby. Other children came to stay in the hotel, and I talked to them. It wasn’t so bad. Truly.”

“It sounds
crazy
,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean—you look
fine
. I have asthma too, and nobody ever locked me up! You just ran down this entire building, seven floors. Don’t you think maybe your parents are wrong? That the doctor made a mistake? That you’re better?”

“I’d
like
to believe that,” said Molly. “But I’d like to believe a lot of things.”

“Well, if
you
don’t know where to go, and
I
don’t know where to go, then we might as well go”—I held out a finger and pointed randomly from my spot behind the hedge—“
that
way!”

Molly peered out cautiously. After a second she nodded. I stood up, ducked out from behind the hedge, and began to run as fast as I could. Behind me I heard Molly’s shoes thudding in the grass too.

Our dash took us into the alley that curved away from the hotel and ran behind a row of houses. At last I bent over, a stitch in my side. Molly arrived a second later, wheezing slightly.

“You okay?” I asked, trying to straighten up.

With a hand on her chest, Molly flashed a huge grin. “I
am
!” she panted. “I did it … I
ran
! I can’t remember … the last time I did. I’m not sure … I
ever
did.”