by Bre Hall
The wind whipped up then and Ren tucked her elbows and part of her arms inside the floppy sleeves of her t-shirt. She bounced on her toes to try and keep warm. Kansas weather was never predictable. Sometimes, the middle of October felt like the middle of June, but other times, like that night, it felt like Christmas was knocking on the door. So cold it bit out any warmth from the flesh.
“Are you going to come in? Or are we both going to freeze to death?” Ren asked.
“I was waiting for an invitation,” Peter said.
“When have I ever given off an air of formality?” she asked, stepping aside so Peter could wriggle through the open window. As soon as he was inside, she jumped on the glass and practically slammed it shut. “I hate the cold.”
She turned back to Peter, who was standing near her bed in the center of her bedroom, staring up at the different stages of her life bolted, sticky tacked, and taped to the soft pink color of her walls. Posters of early punk bands. The cracked-wood shelf occupied by her antique gravy boat collection, gleaming in the light of the television. A porcelain doll that had sat on top of her dresser for as long as she could remember. The doll, like the wall color, was the work of her long-forgotten mother.
Ren folded her arms over her chest and watched Peter as his head continued to swivel like a kid watching a firework show. No one besides her family or Alfie had ever been in her bedroom before. Peter was the first outsider. Watching him study her bedroom like that felt like someone was dragging a knife down her stomach, peeling her skin back to see what writhed beneath.
“Seriously, the New York Dolls?” Peter pointed to a wrinkled poster of the band tacked to her closet door. “Didn’t they kind of suck?”
“They were revolutionary for the punk movement,” she said. “They were so loud, so weird, so, so terrible that they carved a path for everyone else. People looked at those guys in their drag on stage and thought, ‘if they can do it, so can we.’”
Peter turned slowly on his heel. “I’m more of a classical guy myself.”
“Classic Rock?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Classical. Like Bach and Beethoven.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”
“I’m ancient, remember?” He rummaged around in his pocket.
“I keep forgetting,” she said. “I feel like you’re sixteen, like me.”
“Do you wish I was sixteen?” He pulled out his cigarette case and popped a smoke in his mouth. He produced his zippo lighter next.
“You can’t smoke in here,” she said, ripping the cigarette from his lips.
Peter smirked and held out his hand. “Give it back.”
“I don’t think so.” She took a step away from him and he advanced toward her. With every step backward, came a step forward. A game of checkers. Ren continued toward her desk in the corner, where her jean jacket was draped over the simple, wooden chair. Peter reached for the cigarette, but she tucked both of her hands behind her back. With a final step, she was pressed against the desk chair, the denim collar of her jacket rough against her hands.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, pulling at the fabric of the jacket so the pocket rose up to her hand. “If you can guess which fist has the cigarette, you can have it back.”
Peter shook his head, but a hint of a smile crept over his cheeks. “Silly girl.”
“Trust me. You can’t lose,” she said as she silently dug around the jacket pocket and curled the pocket watch she’d bought at Richard’s that afternoon into her left fist. “Go on.”
In the dim light, Peter stood with the toes of his boots pressed lightly against her bare feet. She watched his dark eyes as they studied her own. She hoped he wasn’t staring at the blind one. Most people can hide their imperfections under makeup or clothing, but a misshapen pupil from her failed eye surgery wasn’t something she could easily cover up. Just as she was about to be overwhelmed by a flashback of the car accident, Peter kept her grounded in the present.
“This one,” Peter said as his forefinger brushed her right arm. The sensation sent shivers up her back.
“Let’s see,” she said.
“No, wait,” he said and brushed along her left arm. She held her breath at his touch. Her heart beat like a boxer’s gloved fist in her chest. Peter smiled, his eyes shrinking with the rise of his cheeks. “I changed my mind. This one.”
“You think so?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?” she asked. “You’re not going to change it again?”
“Come on, now, Ren.”
She shrugged, then pulled her left arm out from behind her back. The television light gleamed against the gold of the pocket watch she held between their chests. She pressed down on the top of the watch and it opened, revealing its intricate face.
“Unless I’m mistaken,” Peter said, his voice nothing but a cavernous whisper, “That is not a cigarette.”
“No,” she whispered back. “It’s not. I found it today in the antique store. I know how obsessed you are with clocks. I thought you might like one to keep close.”
“You got this for me?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” she said. The knife she imagined before was back, splitting her open even more. “You know. As a thank you for helping me.”
Peter chuckled.
“What?” she asked. “Is it stupid? It’s stupid.”
“No, no, no,” he said. He took it from her hand, his fingers lingering on her palm for a second longer than she’d expected. He closed the watch and rubbed the engraving on the outside. “It’s just that no one’s ever gotten me a gift like this before. No one’s given me a gift, period.”
“Not even for your birthday?” she asked.
“To have a birthday, you have to first be born, but I was never born,” he said. “One day, I just came to be.”
“Happy existence day to you,” she began to sing. “Happy existence day to Peter.”
“Stop,” he said, resting his thumb on her lips. “You’re a god-awful singer.”
She laughed, the vibrations rattling against Peter’s thumb and buzzing against her lips. As if he wasn’t close enough, Peter leaned in. His fine features blurred in her vision. She could smell peppermint and cigarettes. She could feel the warmth radiating off his shoulders and chest. He moved his thumb slowly from her mouth, and replaced it with his lips. They were soft, gentle, like tiny, little pillows pressed delicately against hers. It was her first kiss, if you don’t count the peck on the corner of her lips Alfie gave her in fourth grade, which she didn’t, because she had broken his nose with her fist just after. Peter’s kiss wasn’t childish, though. It was real. Warm and fulfilling. Then, it was over.
“Thank you for the watch,” he said. “Really, thank you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t show up this afternoon,” she whispered, returning to his first question. “I really couldn’t get away.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, pulling something from his pocket. The rusted tea tin. He shook it and Lizzie’s tooth rattled inside. “That’s why I’m here now.”
Still so near to her, Peter peeled the cap off the tin and held it between them. The tooth radiated with the incredible rainbow light it had the day before. She wondered if that’s what her soul looked like. A dismantled sphere of pulsating, living color.
She looked up at Peter, then back down at the tooth. With her toes draped over the tops of his shoes and his face so close all she had to do was flinch and her lips would be on his, she didn’t want to leave him, but Lizzie was waiting for her on the other side. Her soul was begging to be pieced back together. With a deep breath, she reached into the canister and barely brushed the tooth with the tip of her finger.
Everything began to spin.
chapter
16
SHE FELT HER HEARTBEAT FIRST, thrumming hard and fast, like a marching band’s drumline passing close by. Her vision slowly adjusted to Lizzie’s world. A distant chatter. Mary’s breathing o
n the back of her neck. A bobbin rattling in the keyhole of a door at the back of a Georgian house on Sackville Street. It belonged to a high-society family, one who hadn’t floated among the others and flooded to the suburbs.
“Where are we?” Mary whispered.
Lizzie turned the bobbin gingerly to the left, then the right. She wriggled it up and down. “Mr. and Mrs. William Doherty’s city dwelling.”
“How do you know that?”
“I used to come here a few times a week when I was a messenger,” she said. Before they started cutting back on the number of messengers around the city that is. “I remember they had a daughter a year or two older than us.”
“We’re going to rob her wardrobe?”
“Borrow,” she said. The lock finally clicked and she turned the knob. “Without returning the dresses, of course.”
“You’re mental,” Mary said.
“Are you afraid?” Lizzie asked, swinging open the door to the basement. All was dark and cool from the constant damp.
“No,” said Mary, dropping her voice to a whisper. “But won’t they catch us?”
“They’re gone,” Lizzie said.
“Then nothing will be left.”
“Not gone, gone,” she said. “They’re at their summer home in County Mayo. They go every year.”
“And the scullery maids?” Mary asked.
“They go along,” she said. “The Dohertys cannot be expected to cook and clean for themselves.”
“Of course not,” Mary said, trying her hand at the more refined accent of the aristocrats. “That would be preposterous.”
Lizzie laughed and stepped into the basement. “Still, let’s be swift.”
They tip-toed through the basement and up the stairwell to the ground floor of the house. Lavish settees trimmed in stained, pinewood were sprinkled around the sitting room. Across the corridor, in the dining room, was a hutch filled with crystal bowls and plates, all decorative, of course.
“Wouldn’t they have covered the furniture?” Mary asked. “Wealthy folks always cover their furniture when they go away.”
“How would you know?”
Mary shrugged. “It’s what I’ve heard.”
They started up the main staircase that led to the upper floors. The banister was shiny, all of the spindles intact, unlike the one falling apart in their building on Henrietta.
On the first floor a square of open space was surrounded by two closed doors and a room between, with the door cracked open, revealing a library. As Mary poked her head into the rooms shut out of view, Lizzie peered through the gap and into the library. She had never seen so many colorful book spines in her life. Mary tugged silently at her shoulder—no luck—and the girls kept moving to the second floor, where every single door was shut.
“Do you think her bedroom is on the third?” Mary asked.
“In the nurseries?”
“Just a thought,” Mary said.
“We’ll just have to look inside.” Lizzie cautiously turned the doorknob on the room closest to the staircase. The curtains were drawn, making the room nearly pitch dark, but she could make out a writing desk in the corner, a wooden pipe propped near it. Unless Miss Doherty was a tobacco pipe smoker, she doubted that was her bedroom.
“Over here,” Mary said.
Lizzie dashed across the corridor and peeked through the door Mary held open. She gazed on a soft pink colored canopy bed with a china-face doll lying among the decorative pillows. A vanity was nearby with a few drawers laying open, a string of pearls draped over the edge of one. It had to belong to the daughter. No wife would leave her space in any kind of disarray, or keep a doll on the bed.
“Let’s take a peek in her wardrobe, shall we?” Lizzie pushed open the door and pulled the curtains open wide. A stream of sunlight washed over the room. She looked down at bustling Sackville Street: Women in their high-necked dresses and men in their tweed coats, weaving in and out of one another like her mother’s knitting yarn.
“Look at this loot,” Mary exclaimed. Lizzie whipped around. The Doherty girl had to own three dozen dresses, at least. “She won’t even miss one.”
“Good,” Lizzie said. “Because we need two.”
“Here,” Mary said, pulling out a salmon colored satin number. “Try this on.”
“I want to try on the black one,” Lizzie said, reaching out to stroke the fabric of the black sleeves. She twirled her fingers around its sleek, satin buttons.
“You’re not going to a funeral,” Mary said.
“Fine, then.” Her hand shivered down the length of the next one that appealed to her. “The indigo one.”
They tried on several dresses each, giggling as they laced each other up in them and strutted around the room. Mary, in a shining emerald green dress with delicate frills curling out from the high neck line, leaned dramatically against the wall, holding up a pen found on the nightstand as if it were a long, cigarette holder.
“I just think it’s ghastly,” Mary said, drawing out each word.
“Is it, so?” Lizzie asked, mimicking Mary’s accent. She came up beside her in the indigo dress she kept returning to again and again. The fabric was so silky and made her feel so sophisticated.
“Yes, of course,” Mary said. “This little thing called living. C’est tragique.”
“At least we have good booze and nice company to ease the sorrow.”
“Right you are, darling,” Mary said. “Right you are.”
The front door slammed suddenly, shaking the entire house. Lizzie’s heart jumped and she and Mary exchanged a wide-eyed look.
“Shit,” Mary whispered. “I thought you said no one would be home.”
“I was sure they’d be gone.”
A man’s melodic whistle filled the house and, soon, heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs below. Mary squirmed next to Lizzie as she fumbled for the buttons on the back of the dress.
“What are you doing?” Lizzie asked.
“Taking this off before whoever is whistling comes up and finds out what we’re doing.”
“Don’t,” Lizzie said. She kicked their ratty dresses underneath Miss Doherty’s bed and closed up the wardrobe. She glanced at the vanity and pulled the string of pearls from the drawer. She looped them around Mary’s neck. “Act naturally. I have a plan. Just follow along.”
“If I get arrested,” Mary grumbled.
“I can’t believe she wouldn’t tell us,” Lizzie said loudly, trying to keep up her posh accent. “Gone on holiday? Without even inviting us?”
“Wh-who’s there?” asked the whistling man.
Lizzie dragged Mary with her into the hallway and threw her head into the stairwell. “It’s Rebekah and Genevieve, of course. Who in heavens might you be?”
“We’ve never seen you before,” Mary added.
“I’m James,” said the man, tugging on the lapel of his jacket. “I’m a medical student at Trinity College. The Doherty’s are letting me rent a room while they’re on their holiday. Are you friends of Eva?”
“Come on,” Lizzie whispered to Mary, then started down the steps. To James she said, “Clearly we’re not the best of friends. She didn’t bother to tell us they were leaving for the countryside early.”
“They left last week,” James said.
“A shame we missed her,” Lizzie said. She elbowed Mary.
“A real shame, so it is,” Mary said, her accent wavering.
“Well,” Lizzie said, breezing past James. She knew if he looked too hard at her the only part of her that would indicate aristocracy was the stolen dress. “We won’t bother you any longer. Give our regards to Emma.”
“Eva,” James said. The girls yelped and broke into a sprint, flying through the front door and up the street. They ducked into the first alleyway they came across and caught their breath leaned against the broadside of a brick building.
Mary let out a cackle. “You were brilliant.”
“Up until the point I forgot the name of
the girl,” Lizzie said, still breathless.
“Well,” Mary said, twirling in her new gown, “We got what we came for at least.”
Lizzie slung an arm around Mary’s shoulders as they started up the alley. They turned the corner onto a cobbled street. Lizzie glanced up at the chimney stacks atop the buildings rising up on either side of them. No smoke twirled out of them, but they soon grew foggy as Dublin faded away and Ren began to fall between lives, her skin numbing for a moment before she slammed back into her body.
Her eye caught sight of her room, beginning to tilt as she stumbled forward from where she was still standing in front her desk. Peter sprang out from the shadows and steadied her against his broad chest. She regained her balance, her foothold in the present. She tried to catch her breath.
“Does passing between lives get easier?” she asked.
Her body still felt like it was falling. It reminded her of the feeling she’d have after spending all day in the wave pool at the waterpark in Ponca City. Like she was still bobbing in the man-made waves even though she was sitting on solid ground somewhere far away.
“I don’t know. I’ve never done it,” Peter said. He still had a hold of her shoulders even though she was standing just fine on her own.
“How long was I in the regression?” she asked.
“Forty minutes,” he said.
“You stood here this whole time with me?”
“No,” he said. “I watched some of your movie. Found a couple of photo albums on the bottom shelf of your bedside table to thumb through. Did your homework.”
“Really?” she asked.
“I was kidding about the homework part,” Peter said.
“Forty minutes is a long time to wait,” she said. She wondered how movies and pictures staved off boredom.
“You have no idea,” Peter said.
The room dropped into silence, apart from Ren and Peter’s collective breathing. She thought about stepping away from Peter, but there was nowhere to go. Not unless he moved first. She looked at him, then quickly looked away, because was staring at her too. His dark onyx eyes fixed on her face. A fist clenched around her heart.
