The Story Sisters (20 page)

Claire laughed as she prepared two sandwiches.

Elv turned to her “What?”

“You’re mean to her, but you want her to make you breakfast.”

“You’ve just turned against me because you used to be my slave and now you’re hers,” Elv said smartly to Claire.

Claire stuck out her tongue and Elv laughed, amused. “Am I supposed to be insulted?”

“Claire is not a slave.” Meg said quietly. She packed up her books and got her coat.

“I guess you’re not eating that.” Elv grabbed what was left of Meg’s English muffin and stuffed it into her mouth. “Bye, slave,” she said to Claire, who was following Meg out of the room, carrying the two sandwiches in a lunch bag for later. “Bye, Curly Sue,” she chirped to Meg, who cringed, ever conscious of her hair.

“Bye, bitch,” Claire shot back.

Elv laughed out loud. Claire had spunk. “Ouch.” Elv clutched at her heart, grinning all the while. “That hurt.”

“I was kidding!” Claire protested.

“Come on,” Meg said, pulling on Claire’s arm. “I told you. Don’t talk to her.”

Claire thought about Elv all that day. She thought about her while she should have been paying attention in her classes, and again during soccer practice, which was held in the gym where Elv used to work on routines with the gymnastics team and the dance club, and then again at her piano lesson. Ever since the bad thing had happened, Elv had hid her true self away. People thought they knew her, but they didn’t know the first thing about her.

I
T STARTED SNOWING
late in the afternoon, big wet flakes, the first snow of the year. Everything smelled fresh, like clean laundry. Claire walked home because the bus had already left while she was at piano lessons in the music room. She was wearing sneakers and her feet were freezing. In some ways it was liberating not to have any friends. Ninth grade was rife with petty jealousies and cliques. Claire had nothing to do with any of it. The Story sisters were on the outside.

As she headed through town, Claire saw her father’s white Miata parked behind the grocery store, in the far lot that nobody used. He took such good care of that car, Claire was surprised he would drive it in the snow. He had a Jeep that was his everyday car. The Miata, their mother had said, was his midlife crisis car. Claire had seen Alan and Cheryl driving through town in the summer, the top down, looking like the couple in
Two for the Road
, her mother’s favorite movie. Maybe their relationship would fall apart for them the way it had in the film. Maybe they’d get what they deserved.

Claire walked around the market in the falling snow, past the trash barrels. It was already getting dark and the sky was inky. The snowflakes had taken on a blue cast. Claire went up to the car and knocked on the window. The glass was foggy and she couldn’t see inside. “Dad?”

The window rolled down and there was Elv. “I can’t get this fucking thing in gear.”

“Are you crazy?” Claire took a step back. She felt a wave of excitement. “What’d you do? Break into his house?”

“Get in,” Elv said. “I need you to help me.”

Claire stared at her sister. Elv wasn’t wearing a coat. Her hair was pushed back with a black velvet headband that Claire recognized as Meg’s.

“Get in! I just wanted to have some fun, so I borrowed it for a little while. But I can’t shift and drive at the same time. Hurry up.”

Claire went around and got into the car. It smelled like smoke. She and Elv looked at each other and laughed. They had missed each other.

“You are crazy,” Claire said.

“Crazy like a fox.” Elv grinned.

“Crazy like a loon,” Claire added.

“Crazy about you.” Elv got down to business. It would be so much easier getting back and forth to see Lorry if she could drive into the city. She needed to practice. “You see the picture on the gearshift? Follow that. Do what I tell you and we’ll be just fine. Okay?”

“Okay,” Claire agreed. She took her sister’s hand. “I shouldn’t have let them do it,” she said. She’d been wanting to say this ever since that day when they went to New Hampshire. “We thought they would find a place that would help you.”

Elv withdrew her hand and looked away. “I can help myself.”

“I was afraid you would die from using drugs.” Claire blinked back tears.

Elv handed her a Kleenex from a box in the back of the car. “I don’t blame you. I know it wasn’t your idea.”

Claire began to cry in earnest.

“It’s okay.” Elv wrapped her arms around her little sister. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.” That’s when Claire knew they didn’t have to talk about it anymore. She felt lucky and free and utterly grateful to be with her sister, who was more beautiful than anyone else in the entire stupid town.

It took a while to get the car going. The car made a wrenching noise when Claire pulled the shift into first gear, which made them laugh all over again. Finally they figured out a system in
which Claire shifted and Elv steered as she worked the gas and the clutch. They stalled out at the stop sign on Spring Street, got the giggles, then managed to get going again. They drove to the house where their father and Cheryl lived. They had both transferred to another school, out in the Hamptons. There was a For Sale sign out in front. Claire and Meg had never even been invited over for dinner. Not even while Elv had been gone. Thankfully, no one was home when they pulled the Miata into the garage.

“Good work, kiddo,” Elv said appreciatively.

“Leave the windows open.” Claire couldn’t help being practical. It was in her nature. “That will air out the smoke.”

“Very smart.” Elv rolled down the windows of the Miata. “But of course you would be. You’re my sister.”

Claire felt a flush of pride. She wondered what it was like to be so fearless.

Elv returned the car keys to a peg on the garage wall. “He’ll never know. Self-involved people never look any farther than their own asses. And he definitely is an ass.”

“Maybe he’ll think Cheryl took it for a spin,” Claire said. “Maybe they’ll fight and break up and he’ll come back to Mom.”

“I don’t think so,” Elv replied. “I wouldn’t wait around hoping for that.”

They snuck out of the garage and walked through town.

“You’re a pretty great accomplice,” Elv said. “A plus.”

Claire felt a shiver of pleasure. They shouldn’t have taken their father’s car. Still, it was a compliment.

Elv was a fast walker, and Claire had to hurry to keep up with her. She found her sister fascinating. When they got to their block, she thought she saw Mrs. Weinstein looking out of the bay window of her living room. Maybe she was thinking of that time Elv had torn up the roses from her yard for a protection charm to
hang above her bed or the time Elv yelled at her for mistreating Pretzel, keeping him tied up on the lawn.

“You’re a pretty good driver,” Elv told Claire. She missed having Claire as her ally. Meg had done her best to steal her away, but that was over with now. “Let’s celebrate by eating.” They used to do that all the time. Sneak food up to their room and snack all night.

When they arrived home, Claire and Elv went to the fridge and took out everything chocolate: ice cream, fudge sauce, brownies. They were laughing about how many calories they could fit into one bowl when Meg came downstairs. She stood in the doorway, watching.

“Hey,” Claire said when she noticed Meg. “You’ll never believe what we did.” Claire had poured a ton of chocolate sauce into her bowl. Now she was adding chocolate chips. “Oh my God,” she said to Elv. “This is probably a million calories.”

“More like a zillion.” Elv grinned. “Add more chips. Oh, and candy bars!”

“Don’t you have homework to do?” Meg reminded Claire.

“What are you? Her mother?” Elv was at the snack drawer getting out a Kit Kat bar, which she broke into pieces to add to the sundaes. “Let’s utterly pig out,” she said to Claire.

“Yum,” Claire said. “These look amazing.”

“You have a paper for American lit,” Meg said to her. “You told me you did. I said I would help you.”

“You’re such a baby,” Elv told Meg. “Miss Goody Two-shoes. Why don’t I just hand you a knife and you can stab me in the back?”

“Come on,” Meg said to Claire.

Claire left her sundae on the counter. She put her spoon in the sink. She could smell the smoke in her own hair. “I guess I’m not that hungry,” she said.

She grabbed her book bag and followed Meg upstairs.

“Go ahead,” Elv called after them. “You’re both babies!”

The girls went to their room. They set to work on the term paper in bed. The lock on the door was clicked shut. Claire glanced at the space where Elv’s bed used to be. She missed there being three of them. She missed the way things used to be.

“She’s really okay,” Claire told Meg. “She’s not exactly the same, but she’s Elvish.”

“If you say so.”

Meg had begun to see the school counselor. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Claire. She stopped by Mrs. Morrison’s office every Tuesday and Thursday at ten o’clock. Sometimes she talked and sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she sat there and cried. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted to see Mrs. Morrison. Maybe it was because she felt alone even when she was in a room full of people, even when she was in her very own bed talking to Claire. The one thing she knew for certain was that it would never be the three of them again.

“She’s still Elv,” Claire ventured.

“Take my advice,” Meg said. “Don’t trust her.”

I
T WAS THE
middle of the night when it happened, a blue-black rainy night. The rain began at midnight, tapping on the windows before coming down in sheets. Claire suddenly woke with a fever. There had been midterms at school, and she’d been coughing and had a painful sore throat; now her illness suddenly took a turn, her fever spiking to 103. She got out of bed in her nightgown, drenched. Everything looked funny: her room, the light through the window. Meg was sound asleep. Claire wished Elv was in the next bed and she could get under the blanket with her and Elv
could tell her she would feel better soon the way she did when Claire was little.

Claire went downstairs for a glass of water. Her head was throbbing. She should have gone to her mother, but it was Elv she wanted. As she went down the hall she heard people talking, a murmur, as if a radio had been left on. A muffled laugh pealed, then dissolved. Things looked different in the dark. The hallway seemed longer. A pale glow was cast by the moonlight coming in through the windows in the living room. It pooled on the hallway carpet like puddles of milk. Elv always locked her door, but she’d shown Claire how to get in. Only for emergencies, Elv had said.
Reuna malin
, she whispered.
Reuna malin
, Claire echoed.

She should have rescued Elv from Westfield. Elv had officially forgiven her, but Claire often couldn’t sleep, kept awake by her shame. She rewound that day in New Hampshire inside her head. The way those men had grabbed Elv, the red leaves fluttering down like birds. She kept thinking about how Elv had opened the car door and run and kept running without looking back. Claire would never get back to sleep tonight. She was burning up, the way she had been when there’d been the heat wave and her arms were in casts and she had to sleep all alone in the attic while her sisters went to France. She still wanted that black painting of the river. She wondered if Elv had it, or if she’d thrown it away.

Elv kept a key under the hallway carpet. Claire bent to retrieve it. She thought she might faint. It was definitely an emergency.

Long before the rain began, Lorry had climbed through the window. He’d been to their house a dozen times or more with no one the wiser. That’s what he did, after all. He was a thief, and he was good at it. All fall, Elv had been going to meet him in Astoria, at a basement apartment Michael had rented before he’d been picked up again for auto theft. He’d been sent to Rikers this time.
Now that he was eighteen he had been tried as an adult. The apartment had been empty for several months, but now Lorry had to relocate. In the meantime, North Point Harbor would have to do. He’d gotten to know the town. It was easy to pull off a robbery. People rarely locked their doors; they left cash and jewelry scattered around. Even the dogs, mostly cheerful golden retrievers and Labradors, seemed happy to greet him.

On this evening he’d arrived at dusk, hastening through the garden, where Elv’s mother used to tell her stories, hands in his pockets. It was drizzling and the green trees loomed. He always wore the same black boots, though they now had holes in the soles, and his black coat. Her family had no idea what went on. Sometimes he was there waiting in her room all through their dinner, his car parked around the curve, past the Weinsteins’ house. It felt illicit and crazy when they had sex in her bed. They wanted to laugh, but were afraid to make noise. He covered her mouth with his when she did laugh.
Shh
, he told her.
Don’t say a word
, and she didn’t. Only a few more months, and she’d be his. Then she could shout out loud. They wouldn’t have to slink around or play by anyone else’s rules. He knew he hadn’t lived a perfect, blameless life, but this was different. He was careful not to let her get high too often. There were limits, and he’d been around long enough to know what they were. One of them with a fatal flaw was enough. Not that he didn’t have other flaws as well. Elv being one of them. He couldn’t stay away even though he knew he was risking too much, being with her in her mother’s house when she was underage. He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.