Vassa in the Night (3 page)

“
Very
not okay.” Chelsea is nobody's fool. She has huge dark eyes that could make anyone feel ashamed. “Very, extremely not. When you decide you're ready to try some honesty, V., you let me know.”

Since there's nothing else to say I go to my bed and curl up with my book. They both keep watching me to see if I'm embarrassed yet, which I am, so I turn my back. In a way it's my fault that this keeps happening. If Erg can't control herself, then it's my job to keep her in line. I start thinking about those metal key chains that snap shut. Maybe Erg is going to get one installed around her neck, though I'm not sure if there's a way I can attach the other end inside my pocket that she won't be able to undo. Her hands are shaped like mittens with nothing but thin lines to show the separations between her fingers, but she does have opposable thumbs and she can work them like a fiend. You've never seen a human being with hands that quick and sly.

Maybe Stephanie dozes off at some point, because a while later I feel my bed sinking behind me. I roll onto my back and Chelsea is there, looking down at me with concern. “Hey,” she whispers, “I can understand if you don't want to talk about it in front of Stephanie, V.” I just look at her. She's trying to be sweet but there's nothing much I can say. “Look, okay, I have a theory, Vassa? That you're compensating for your parents being gone by stealing things that represent the love you deserve? Symbolically? And you're right, you do deserve that love, but I'm just trying to tell you that this isn't the way to get it. Nothing you take can make up for your mom dying or your dad being … away.”

None of us ever say directly what happened to him. The facts of the case just howl for euphemism.

“I know that,” I tell her. “Chelsea, look, I really do appreciate what you're trying to do, or what you think you're doing, but I'm not going to confess when I didn't take the damn locket!”

“A present from our mother? When you lost your mom? Really?” She does a fantastic job of loading every syllable with significance. “Anyway he's Steph's dad, too. It's not like you've got some special relationship with tragedy. Do you ever think about how all of this affects her?”

Maybe not. I maybe tend to repress the reality that Steph and I share a father.

“Not when I'm trying to read,” I tell her.

Chelsea sighs. “I'm here whenever you want to talk. Just think about what I'm telling you. Please?”

She gets up again, but she's only going back to her own bed a few feet away.

I'll try to break it down for you. Chelsea and Stephanie have the same mother but different fathers; Steph and I have the same father but different mothers; Chelsea is oldest, Steph is second, and I'm the youngest, but only by a week; and yes, that means my dad got both our moms pregnant at almost the same time, maybe on the same night for all I know. He spent the next ten years going back and forth between them, depending on who made him feel guiltiest, I guess, and then my mom considerately died and simplified his decision-making process. So he married Iliana, making her actually my stepmother for all of five months, and then bailed on all of us in dramatic style.

In consequence of our scrambled parentage we're all different colors: Chelsea is chestnut brown, Stephanie is kind of beige, and I'm almost disturbingly pale. If I didn't dye my hair I'd look a lot like a human version of Erg, all blue eyes and raven tresses. Chelsea is the smartest, due to get the hell out of here in September on a full scholarship, assuming September ever comes that is, Stephanie doesn't have two brain cells to bang together, and I get by. So Chelsea and I aren't actually blood but she more or less considers me a sister, and we might even love each other most of the time, but Steph, who is related by blood, definitely thinks of me as an interloper, and we maybe hate each other just a microscopic bit, though sometimes we have fun anyway.

If all of that sounds messy, well, it surely is, but to put it in perspective there are plenty of things that are messier. My own emotions, for example, which could make a city dump look like a library. And the big blue world outside of our apartment is messier and grubbier and more chaotic than anything we've ever personally come up with.

I say that with complete confidence.

 

CHAPTER 2

Something incredible happens. I fall asleep, and when I wake up—with the lamp still on and my face plopped in my open book—I see actual sunshine beaming through the window. It appears to be made of genuine, organic photons. I see the leaves on the tree outside shaking, throwing little scraps of light around, and a plane of sunlight crumpling as it hits the heaped clothes on the floor. I jump up squealing and throw a pillow at Stephanie before I remember that she hates me. “It's morning! You've got to see this! It's real live morning!”

The look she gives me is triple-distilled venom. Then she turns her head away without saying anything. Chelsea's bed is already empty and I can hear her knocking around in the kitchen. She usually makes breakfast for everyone if there's been some kind of fight, hoping to restore harmony to our home. My alleged psychological disorders might even rate pancakes today.

The purely awesome fact of bright morning sun is too exciting for me to let Steph ruin it and I'm singing as I get dressed: the BY's jingle, which is stuck in my head for some reason. “Face me, face me!”

It is a great melody. A classic, even. Iliana says that her parents knew that jingle from way back in the 1950s, when the very first BY's opened out on Coney Island. It caused a sensation then, since nobody'd ever seen a dancing store before. People lined up around the block to shop there. Iliana says it wasn't as dangerous in those days. She even went there with her mom when she was little, and loved it. You could get amazing candy at BY's, things she'd never seen anywhere else.

But going in got riskier over time, and now most people have the sense to stay away.
If you don't bother it, it won't bother you.

Steph doesn't tell me to shut up, but she manages to project an impressive amount of loathing through her turned back. I put the same hoodie I slept in back on over my shirt; Erg's already in the right-hand pocket so I won't have to palm her and sneak her into a new hiding place.

Except that she isn't. The pocket is empty. And Erg's field trips are never good.

In the kitchen Chelsea smiles at me even though she thinks I'm a lying, scheming thief and gives me a kiss on the cheek as she hands me my pancakes. They're full of blueberries. Her sweetness this morning might be a ploy based on that theory she told me last night: she's probably demonstrating that I'm loved unconditionally so I'll stop swiping stuff, already. But it's still really nice of her. Nice enough to make me feel kind of shy. “Thanks, Chels.”

“Sure thing, li'l sis.” I can guarantee she's never called me that before. Ploy for real, then. She's trying to instill a sense of belonging in me. The sick part is that Erg might be rooting through Chelsea's stuff as we speak.

“The crazy thing about these nights,” I say, hearing how tense and guilty my voice sounds, “is that they make me so incredibly happy to get up and go to school. Even the most boring class imaginable seems like this huge relief.”

She's gone back to the stove, but she shoots me a funny look over her shoulder. “No school today, dumpling. Saturday. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“There is absolutely no need for weekends anymore,” I tell her. “It's ridiculous. You could stuff like two weekends into a single night now.”

“Two very, very dark weekends, though. Get out and enjoy the sunshine. We're probably all getting mad vitamin D deficiencies.”

“I'll do that,” I say, loudly. Erg has absolutely zero tolerance for my leaving the apartment without her, so the threat of it is a sure way to bring her scampering back. “As soon as I finish eating, I'm taking off for parts unknown.
Williamsburg,
or
SoHo
…”

“You'll get some model scout on your ass if you go into SoHo, I bet,” Chelsea says. In my explanation of our various attributes I neglected to mention that I'm generally regarded as beautiful. People can think that if they want to, but if they'd ever seen my mother they'd know how I pale by comparison. “At first you'll be seduced by the glamour of it all. Then they'll tell you the purple hair has got to go, and you'll start shouting obscenities and storm out in tears, and maybe come back with a tray of cupcakes and fling them savagely into everyone's faces. And then…”

“Not one thing you said will ever happen,” I tell her. I keep my tone completely deadpan. “You know my sole ambition is to become a stockbroker.”

Chelsea does a double take. Very few people can tell when I'm kidding, but she usually can. “Ah,” she says. “I see. That would be a joke. A funny joke.”

My sole ambition is to be anyone but me, and anywhere but here. But it would just upset Chelsea if I said that, especially in the middle of this attempt at a stealth therapy session. I finish wolfing my pancakes. “You are the best big
sister
ever,” I tell Chelsea, in that pathetic way I have of saying ironically things I'm too much of a wuss to say like I actually mean them, even though I do.
Coward,
I tell myself, and I hug her.

As I'm heading for the door I feel something small and wooden crawling up the leg of my cargo pants. Erg keeps on climbing as I walk down the street, bypassing my pocket completely. She winds up sprawling on my shoulder under my clothes, clutching on to my bra strap. “I can't
believe
you didn't save me a pancake,” she says. Her voice is uncomfortably shrill this close to my ear.

“I'm never saving you food again,” I tell her. “If you want to eat, you'll stay where you're supposed to stay.”

“And where is that?” Erg snips. Impudent little thing. “I had
important work
to do, and I don't think it's too much to expect that you'll think of me when you're pigging out. Pancakes are my
favorite.
”

“Important work? Erg, you've done enough
work
already that I can barely face being at home anymore! If I can figure out some way to keep you chained up…” A man comes walking down the sidewalk, so I take out my cell phone and hold it to my head. It's my usual stratagem for talking to Erg in public.

“Gosh,” she says. “So many negative assumptions. What if I was doing something nice? For someone you like? Maybe I was doing somebody a big favor, but no, you just jump to your nasty little conclusions.”

“I dread to think,” I tell her. “So what was it this time? Did you poison someone?”

Erg squeaks indignantly and feigns an offended silence for maybe two heartbeats, but then she can't hold out anymore. “You know that guy Miguel? The poetry geek who's on Chelsea's chess team?”

“Not really,” I tell her. “Barely. I've seen him making a big deal about how he's going to get back at her after she kicked his ass at their last practice.”

“I called him,” Erg says. “From her phone.”

“You did
what
?”

“And then I hung up. On the third ring.”

“At least you didn't try to pretend you were her. But Erg, he's still going to see her number! He'll think…”

“He'll think she wanted to call him and then panicked.” She sounds gleeful. “He'll think, oh my God, she
likes
me!”

“Great.”

“She does like him, though. And he's in
love
with her. But neither of them was ever going to say anything! Until now! And now he'll ask her out! I win!”

It could be worse, I guess. “
She'll
see the call, too, though. On her phone's history. And she'll think…”

“At first she'll think it was you and get mad,” Erg says. “But then she'll realize the call went out right when you were eating pancakes with her. See? You have an alibi. Airtight!”

“But then … what
will
she think? I guess there's still Steph, but that really doesn't seem like something she'd do.”

“Well, I'd think that Chelsea will be very confused,” Erg says. “Wouldn't you be?”

“And you should not be messing with people's personal lives this way, Erg. It's none of your business who Chelsea likes.”

“Ooh, but it is. I think it's all my business!”

Sometimes I have a hard time knowing what to say to her—not that anything I can say ever makes any difference.

“Leaving him is going to break her heart, though, when she goes off to Stanford,” Erg observes after a moment. “Oh, well! Too bad!
C'est la,
and better to have loved and lost, and such.”

I should have known there was a catch. “Do you ever do anything that isn't partway mean?”