“Smart,” I told her, then moved to the second mannequin, which was pinned and fitted with a raw-edge bodice in ivory satin.
“Hero will wear this ivory gown with a similar pink bolero for Act One. For her wedding, I’m making a long lace overlay with a little sweep train.”
Hero, played by London Banks. I tried to ignore the image of Asher’s girlfriend in the romantic costumes and focused, instead, on their creator. I studied the full-color sketches Marisol must have shown Mrs. Howard. Hand-drawn pencil figures modeled all four looks, with fabric swatches taped to the sides. “This is brilliant.” I smiled. “You’re brilliant.”
Marisol shrugged. “I’m just me.” But a gleam flashed across her face, like a blingy jeweled button, fit for any one of her dresses.
“Well, you’re going to be better than anyone else at FIDM.”
Attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles had been Marisol’s dream for years. Practically born with a thimble on her thumb, plus an uncanny eye for style, she was destined to work with beautiful things. The same way I knew I had to work with beautiful words.
“It’s always felt so far away, you know?” She returned the fabrics to their labeled shelf. “Until now, anyway. I’ll start building my entrance portfolio after Christmas.” She looked at me pointedly. “Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles. We’d talked about the future countless times, hinged over our mosaic table with iced coffees and carb-loaded snacks. Marisol’s little black Sharpie heart. My tiny star.
We’d never lived two hours apart before. Marisol was always going on about the amazing lit program at UCLA, trying to tempt me into applying. Just for the hell of it.
“You know why I can’t think of bailing. At least not next fall. And I don’t know what’s going to happen with the lease,” I whispered. School in LA was just another version of a new home in Grandma’s bedroom. Both felt like abandoning my mom when she needed me most.
Two sticks of gum appeared in Marisol’s hand. She unwrapped both and shoved them into her mouth. “Well, we’ll still have our halfway pact. Once a week.”
I smiled. Marisol would drive one hour south, and I’d head north. “Dinner or lunch and tons of trouble.”
“That goes without saying.” Marisol finished folding the two silver gum wrappers into one star and dropped it into my palm. I knew then, even in a twilight of unknown tomorrows, some things would still shine.
“Papi wants you guys down for dessert.” Marisol’s thirteen-year-old sister stood in the doorway. Natalia Robles jutted one hip forward in skinny jeans and ballet flats, dark ponytail swinging. “Warning, Tía Lucia just had to bring the caramel disaster.”
Marisol groaned. “You’ll take some anyway.”
“But, Marisol—”
“But, you’ll not only take some, you’ll let her see you put it on your plate.” Her voice dropped. “I won’t tell if you sneak outside and feed it to Pepe and Carmen.”
Natalia left with a dramatic huff.
“Catch me up,” I said. “What did Tía Lucia make that’s only fit for your dogs?”
“You know Mama’s flan?”
Do I. Suddenly, my overstuffed tummy was feeling lighter. Less encumbered. Practically empty, with plenty of room for the rich caramel custard dessert.
“Well,” Marisol continued, “Mama’s recipe is actually the Cuban version from my abuela Robles. But Lucia swears she’s the flan queen. Different recipe or not, hers is always a rubbery, bland joke. And she bakes it in a rectangular pan, which makes Mama rant. They’ve been in a flan feud for years. She only brought her version because she heard Mama was making it tonight.”
“Should I be afraid?” Of course, I’d have to be polite and eat a portion, too.
“Take small bites and chew thoroughly.”
When we reached the dining room, Marisol’s family was already gathered around the rustic wooden table. Eva Robles and her sister perched in front of their respective flan offerings, dueling serving knives ready, but my eyes lingered at the head of the table. Luis Robles was standing with Marco, the only other person here who’d stepped past my front door, who really knew how messy my life was. Both men were smiling, pride humming between them.
I moved closer; Marco saw me and instantly, his smile waned, his whole face captured in a fleeting look of regret I didn’t comprehend. Too quickly, Marco’s father swung his arm around him and signaled the crowd.
“We have wonderful news,” Dr. Robles said over the hum of dessert eagerness and melodic Spanglish. The smoky-haired cardiologist was slight in frame, but unmistakably commanding. He eyed Marco, but his son motioned for him to continue. “Marco’s going to be moving. He made such an impact during his internship, the engineering firm wants to start his training early at their main headquarters, near San Francisco.”
Relatives cheered, but as the true impact of the words registered, all I wanted to do was flee and become invisible for real. But that would bring questions I didn’t want to answer.
“I’m transferring to UC Berkeley next term.” Marco’s voice chimed bright. “I’ve been promised a job, too. Basically, my dream position will be waiting for me when I graduate.”
The extended family made a wall of hugs and swooping gestures around Marco, and I elbowed Marisol. “Did you know about this?” How could she have hidden this news while I was inhaling tacos? Even while we’d swooned over wedding gowns and floral fabric, vowing nothing, especially distance, would change things between us?
“Come.” Marisol dragged me into the empty kitchen. “I swear, Mama and Papi have known for a couple weeks, but they only told me and Natalia this morning.”
I had to believe her. Marisol never lied.
“I just wanted you to have a nice dinner. Some fun. Marco was gonna talk to you after dessert. I didn’t know Papi was going to announce—”
“I get it. You know what this means, though.” My safety net, my secret elf who fixed leaks and faulty lights, was leaving right after Christmas. Six months. The lease.
“Stop, Darcy. You’re already writing the story, right, amiga? You already have the bad ending planned.”
“Sometimes those are the only endings I see.”
“Well, you need better plots. Maybe Marco has a friend from UCSD who can help. You’ll be making eBay money soon, too. You might be able to hire a handyman once in a while.”
I nodded over a flat smile, but those options required letting at least one more person through a front door that had no welcome mat, into a life with no room left for hospitality.
I’d waited years for the psychologist’s predictions to manifest in my mom, my home, the way Rapunzel waited in a locked tower. There were a few variations of hoarding, and my mother’s behavior was typical of a category that was often provoked by a tragic incident. Hers turned a lifelong collector into a hoarder. According to the doctor, the need to compulsively shop and keep would improve once she acknowledged the issue behind it. Denial fed her illness, and she’d begin to heal once she declared her pain and faced it.
But the thing was... She already had.
Four years ago, Grandma and I sat in the counselor’s office, listening to the whole of Mom’s confession for the first time. Hurts even my grandma didn’t know, sharp details of her devastating abandonment. It had emptied her, so much that she refused to attend any more sessions. We’d hoped the strides she’d made to finally voice her pain would be enough to push her forward.
But the motion was too slow and slight. Soon, Grandma Wells couldn’t bear it anymore.
And I couldn’t explain it anymore. Mom was regressing. Just this afternoon, three new shipping boxes were stacked at our door. The hoard was growing, and we were losing days.
Footsteps sounded; I turned to find Señora Robles holding two dessert plates. “Lucia watched me put her no-good comida on here with my flan.” Mama handed a plate to Marisol and placed the second one into my hands. “But she was too busy with Marco to see me sc
rape it into the trash.” She winked conspiratorially, and I found a short laugh.
As Mama leaned in, I caught whiffs of the Elisa B. Lilac Wish perfume my own mother had gifted her. For now, I had no new Mom ideas, but I had this family. And I had the best flan in the world. I tasted it. Vanilla and caramel slid down my throat, velvety sweet and cold.
“Always amazing,” I told her.
She smiled and pointed to the granite island. “There. I made a package for you and tu mamá. The meat and beans and rice and some empanadas.”
I’d known Marisol for eight years, but tonight, I realized something for the first time. Her house blossomed with cafecito and caramelized sugar, octave-spanning laughter sweetening each room. It embraced hip-hop dancing cousins and whining dogs at the screen door. Garlic and wedding lace. Floral brocade and sauce-splattered cooktops. It all rose and swelled like bread dough—pan dulce—pushing against windowpanes and straining walls. Love, and all the shapes it came in.
The Robles family hoarded, too.
Ten
Shadow
“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” And the feeling of sneaking in your bedroom window after one kiss turned to ten, when you swore you were flying. And your feet didn’t hit the ground until morning.
—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, and Peter Pan Mystery Scribbler
After two weeks, I’d figured out enough about eBay to post my first listings and found enough courage to sneak out a few products. My mother had so much Elisa B. piled into the four plastic tubs, even she couldn’t catalog it as carefully as some of her other items. Still, I had to act carefully, so Marisol and I established some guidelines:
(1) Choose items where Mom owned many duplicates.
(2) Only three or four items for every listing round.
(3) Take makeup when Mom was at work and store it in my bedroom, which she never entered.
During that same span of time, I’d become absolutely sure of three other things:
(1) My beloved Peter Pan mystery writer was female.
(2) The scribbled text was her version of a diary.
(3) Mr. Winston was clearly over Asher.
“Is Fleet’s nephew going to drip tea all over my trunk table every damn day?” he whispered on day thirteen of Asher spending his breaks in our seating area.
I looked up from my book to the boy in question, who was currently racing through a used James Patterson thriller. Black sneakers rested primly on the floor. “Asher bought three picture books the other day for his cousins,” I pointed out. “And last week, he got a poetry anthology for his grandma.”
“I see,” my boss said, then noticed a brunette, curly-wigged Tess waiting outside, one hand on her hip. “Cripes, what now?” he muttered, then blazed out the door.
Asher watched Tess and Mr. Winston’s discussion with enough curiosity to pull him from the burgundy chair and over to my cashier counter.
“What’s up with those two?” he asked, jerking his head backward. “I know they’re divorced, but I’ve seen them out there a few times since I’ve been working at Mid-City. I mean, the hand motions alone. Lively.” One dense but groomed brow jumped, and I stared a millisecond too long at the jagged scar just above it.
I cleared my throat. “They share the building, but that’s all. If Tess needs to speak with Mr. Winston, she hovers out front until he notices, or until I alert him. He does the same in front of Tops.”
“They won’t text?”
“The esteemed Frederick Winston doesn’t even know how to text. And you’ll see farm animals flying outside before Tess ever sets her right toe in here. Same with him and Tops,” I said, and watched his features dim right as I voiced the word flying. Sometimes I forgot he held an actual pilot’s license.
“Do customers really use this?” He twirled one finger inside the Yellow Feather penny tray. The coins clinked as he read the little embellished sign. “‘Need a penny, take a penny. Have a penny, leave a penny.’”
Now we were on to pennies? I wondered if short attention span was common to PCS sufferers, or if this was just Asher’s attempt at small talk. At least his mood had seemed more even lately. “Sure,” I said. “I top off people if they’re short.”
“Wouldn’t the Mr. Winston I’ve come to know want you to hoard every coin you get?”
A billion words filled Yellow Feather, but this one pealed like a low-toned bell in the center of my chest. Hoard. “The tray was my idea. I doubt he’s even noticed it.”
Asher reached one finger out to tap my new-old copy of Peter Pan. “You’re always reading this between customers.”
Another subject change. I pulled the book toward me before he could open the cover. “One of my favorites. I keep going back to the story.” Which technically wasn’t a lie.
“But it’s a kid’s book, even though it’s more than cool that he doesn’t need a plane to fly. Still, I’ve been in here when you’ve discussed legit literature with customers. And eerily well. I guess I’m just surprised.”
“Don’t knock middle grade lit. Some of the most profound themes exist in short, simple packages.” I picked up the copy, brandishing it. “I dare you to see for yourself. I mean, it’s less than two hundred pages. You and your speed-reading could probably knock it out in thirty minutes.”
“It’s worth that much of my precious time?” Asher leaned forward so closely I detected a hint of mint leaf tea on his breath.
I realized the airy, wobbling sound in the room was coming from me, and it was my laugh. “Here’s a preview. One of my favorite parts is when Peter finds his lost shadow and tries to reattach it,” I said, hoping the familiar text about one boy would distract me from another. “Straight from Chapter Three. ‘If he thought at all, but I don’t believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water, and when they did not he was appalled. He tried to stick it on with soap from the bathroom, but that also failed. A shudder passed through Peter and he sat on the floor and cried.’”
Asher smiled, shaking his head. “That little Pan dude is emo.”
I had to laugh. “There’s a new take, but I can’t fault your analysis.”
“I see why you like him,” Asher said.
“I have a soft spot for Peter.” I laid one hand over my heart. “Even though he spends a lot of the story acting kind of selfish and flighty—no pun intended.”
I anticipated one of the broad, lopsided grins I’d come to expect after two weeks of him in my shop. Not even a hint of tease touched his face. “Speaking of selfish,” he said under his breath. Then he straightened his posture. “Look, Darcy, something’s been bugging me. I’m really sorry about what happened at the beach party. That was messed up, and I could tell you were pissed. London should’ve just ignored Bryn.”
My next breath tripped. Bryn. The beach. London. Eremite.
Like Peter, I seemed to unhook from my body, the shadow-me on a beach blanket, tangled in mermaid hair and memory. Wine, so cold it hurt my teeth. The fire and smoke and shame.
“I should’ve said something earlier,” Asher continued. His eyes pinched together in frustration. “Sometimes London forgets to leave the drama to her script. It’s even worse when she’s with Bryn. All that cheap wine wasn’t helping, either. I should’ve tossed her phone into the drink cooler or something. You...you didn’t deserve being singled out.”
Oh.
The clean-edged focus of Asher’s stare, plus the candor underneath the rest of him, grabbed me by the feet. Upending. Shaking. Parts of me—the shadow parts—were spilling out onto the floor and I couldn’t stop them. I needed a story of another teen girl and how she handled another teen boy ripping into the middle of her.
Think.
After one, then two breaths, I got my story. Not one with a savvy book heroine, but something my Peter Pan mystery writer had scribbled in the margin, then underlined and decorated with exclamation points.
I realized i
t was all mine to keep, and to give away when I chose. Trust and sensitivity, and my vulnerable pieces, too. He couldn’t take them! But see, here’s what happened. When I got his heart and all his promises and gave him mine, he got all that other stuff along with it. I couldn’t separate them!!!
Of course. This guy at my counter hadn’t given me anything. No heart, no promises. And he certainly wasn’t in the position to do so anytime soon. Any secret bits wanting to helplessly flee my body were mine to give and show—or mine to keep. Asher was simply speaking, and I was listening. No big deal.
I hid trembling hands under the counter and tucked my vulnerable pieces back inside, buttoning them up where they belonged. I lifted my neck and inched my shoulders back. “Right. There was more than a lot of that cheap wine,” I told him. Then I smiled plainly. “And no worries. Thank you for mentioning it, though.”
A fleeting smile touched his face. “Yeah.”
From the counter, I saw the scowling, furiously approaching form of Frederick Winston before Asher heard the door ding. By the time he turned to witness the door nearly snap off its hinges, I was already on the move.
“One day,” Mr. Winston said, strained and red faced. He feverishly plumped brocade pillows and set another coaster beneath the one already under Asher’s tea.
At the thriller section, I grabbed the three closest Lee Child hardback books and smacked them onto the counter. “Asher, since you like the Patterson novel so much, I think you should try these next,” I said with enough punch to carry over Ella Fitzgerald crooning through the speakers. Then a stealth wink.
“Oh, um, yes. Great idea,” Asher said gravely. “You’ve always given such helpful recommendations to other customers.” He lifted one, read the jacket blurb. “Ahh, Jack Reacher. Looks like an interesting character.”
Mr. Winston slunk behind the counter. “Is one day too much to ask for? Just one without her...” He trailed off, surveying what looked like a hefty transaction.
The Library of Lost Things Page 9
