Molly didn’t answer me. Instead she pointed to something behind my head. “Look at that,” she said. “Now that’s something to do!”
I turned and saw the sign:
The poster’s writing was in orange and purple. It had a picture of a Ferris wheel and dancing girls. “Hey, neat!” I breathed. “See, things get better if you just wait a minute.”
“That does seem to be true,” said Molly. “We’ll have to do that tomorrow, when we have some money!”
“But …,” I said, frowning, “tomorrow I might not be here. Can’t we go home and get some money now?”
“It’s getting late,” said Molly. “And Nora will be coming with supper. In fact, we should really get home.”
“I guess you’re right,” I grumbled.
Together we hustled along the alleys, making turns here and there, with our eyes on the church spire. We were almost home when Molly stopped and put a finger to her lips. “Hush!”
“What?” I listened but heard nothing.
Molly was standing still, with her hands out beside her like a doll. “Don’t you hear it?” she hissed.
“No. And why are we whispering?” I hissed back.
“Shhh!” said Molly.
I stood there another minute as Molly walked in a circle, listening carefully at garage doors and trash cans, but I still had no clue what she’d heard. It was like she was entranced. Suddenly she gave a sharp cry and whipped the lid off a dented silvery can that had been set out in the alley. She gripped the lip of the can in both hands and tried to tip it over. It was too heavy.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just help me,” she said, panting. “Don’t you hear that? It’s awful. Oh, help!”
“Help what?” I asked. “I don’t hear anything.” Still, I began to tug at the other handle. It didn’t budge. “What am I supposed to hear?”
In answer, Molly plunged her thin arms into the gross slop in the can and began hauling out fistfuls of trash. I gagged at the smell, but Molly didn’t even seem to notice it as she reached for rotting potato peels that oozed through her fingers and old rags, soaked and stained. At last I could hear it too. A faint cry.
Molly leaned deeper into the can until her legs were dangling off the ground, and when she emerged, she was clutching what looked like a dead chipmunk. The chipmunk uncurled itself, squeaked, and turned into the smallest, skinniest, wettest, most pathetic kitten I’d ever seen.
Molly stared at the revolting treasure, and then up at me. Her eyes were huge and bright. She cradled the thing in her arms.
“Oh!” I said. “Oh, Molly.” I reached out to pet the creature, with its pink translucent ears, its wet face like a skull, its shivering rib cage. “How did you hear it? How did you know?”
She stared at me. “How did you not?”
We walked the rest of the way along the alley and tiptoed up the fire escape stairs as cautiously as we could. Molly was in the lead this time, cradling the kitten in one arm and holding the railing with the other. She was climbing hundreds of feet into the air with gobs of trash sticking in her curls, but she didn’t appear to notice. When we got to the top, she gave me the smelly handful of fur, which shivered and flinched at my touch. Molly crawled into the bathroom. I passed back her slimy bundle, then climbed in after her.
Tenderly Molly washed the kitten with a bar of soap lathered onto a washcloth. All the while she sang softly to the pitiful creature in a lullaby voice: “The way your smile just beams, the way you sing off-key, the way you haunt my dreams. No, no, they can’t take that away from me.…” I didn’t know the words, but it sounded familiar.
The kitten showed his appreciation by crying piteously and trembling the entire time, but Molly didn’t look like she minded. At the end she washed the inside of his ears, muttering, “Ouch, I know, shhh,” and wincing with his mews as though she was in pain.
Once he had been rubbed dry with a towel, the kitten shook himself out into a fluff ball and crawled onto Molly’s shoulder. There he began to purr loudly. Dry, he turned out to be a sort of golden color, with big dark leopard spots and incredibly long whiskers. He looked half wild.
“You know, cats are bad for your asthma,” I said.
Molly shook her head. “How could I care about that? Poor thing, in the dark, all alone. Just think what might have happened if the trash collector had come. But we found him, didn’t we?”
Molly held the kitten up to her face and kissed his tiny nose. “You’ll stay with me, and I won’t let anything hurt you, ever. That’s a promise.”
The kitten blinked his yellow eyes. He’d stopped purring.
Molly added, “Unless you don’t want to stay, of course. I wouldn’t keep you here if you didn’t like it. You can come and go as you like. All right?”
As if he understood, the kitten squinched up his face at Molly. “Mew.”
Molly and I cracked up. Our laughter echoed against the tile walls.
“You should call him Lucky,” I said. “Because that’s what he is, lucky.”
Molly shook her head. “No, I’m going to call him Friend. Because he’s that too.”
Later, when we were in the bedroom with Friend and the light outside the window was fading, we heard Nora open the door. Molly set the sleeping kitten down on her pillow and crooked a finger at me. Quietly we left the room, closing the door on our secret. By the time we sat down, dinner was on the table.
“How was your afternoon, miss?” Nora asked politely.
Molly beamed, setting her napkin in her lap. “It was wonderful, Nora, really wonderful,” she said. “How was your day?”
Nora looked startled, but then she smiled back and said easily, “Why, it was good enough, I suppose. Ordinary, but good enough. Kind of you to ask.”
Molly nodded pleasantly.
“Thanks for dinner,” I added.
“You’re most welcome, miss.”
I watched Nora move around the room. She set a tall glass of cloudy liquid on the side table for Molly and cleared the dishes. Then she waved goodbye.
Molly and I ate our dinner: chicken in a cream sauce. After a little while, Friend emerged, nudging the door open with a tiny paw. We fed him small bites of chicken, which he snapped up gently. After that we listened to music on the radio for a while, and though it was much earlier than I ever went to bed at home, the day felt done. Molly walked over to the glass of cloudy water and drank it down, gulping it all at once. She made a face.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Medicine,” she said. “To help me sleep.”
“Oh.”
Molly began to look drowsy right away. When she stumbled into the bedroom, I followed. I didn’t want her to fall down on the floor.
We changed into nightgowns, then climbed into bed. Molly lay with her eyes open, staring at me glassily. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I didn’t know it was you I was wishing for, but you were exactly what I wanted.”
“I’m glad too,” I said. My voice came out soft, whispery, just like Molly’s.
“And I’m glad”—she yawned—“I’m glad we went outside. What a day! We just need to puzzle out the lamps.” She yawned again, more deeply. “The morning. We’ll think about it in the morning.” She paused before adding, “It’s funny, to have something to think about in the morning. I can’t … remember … the last … time.…” Then she was asleep, whistling faintly through her nose.
I lay there awhile, staring at the canopy. I knew I probably wouldn’t be here tomorrow for the fair. I wouldn’t ever know if Molly paid for the lamps, or if she got to keep Friend. But if I was going to wake up in my own time, I wanted to take what memories I could with me, keep them. What a day it had been! I wanted to file each bit of it away. This place. This Molly, not the old woman Molly. How could they possibly be the same person? I turned my head to stare at her mop of curls.
I felt my eyes start to shut. I didn’t want to fall asleep yet. I wasn’t ready to be don
e. But it wasn’t up to me. My eyes were closing, and the world was drifting. I was drifting.
I opened my eyes and felt fuzzy, almost exactly like when I got my tooth pulled and the dentist gave me silly gas. At first I just lay there in that big bed, staring up at the blurry canopy, trying to remember … anything.
Outside, steady rain beat on the window. Fingers drumming in my brain. What was it? What did I need to remember?
Then I felt something sharp in my hair. I turned over in my haze and saw a kitten and a dark mop of hair snoring just beyond it. I stared at the tangle of hair and the girl attached to it, trying to figure out who she was.
And who I was.
Who was I?
Memories began to float in, faintly, like ghosts. Vaguely, I remembered a horse, a glittery crash, running. Then I remembered an important word, my word: Annie. It was like I’d slipped free of my name and now I was putting it back on. I’m Annie, I thought. That felt better. I glanced over at the girl beside me, and I remembered: Molly. Each memory was like a star in a constellation. The picture was becoming clearer. I looked at my hands and they looked familiar.
Then, as if moving backward in time, I slid further—memories of the dark hotel, the smell of carnations. Mom! It all came together, the whole crazy story, and behind it, like a backdrop, home. My neighborhood. Susie. School. As though my real life were the farthest thing from me, and I had to reach for it.
The snoring girl beside me—Molly—felt more real. The room. The kitten purring, and the clean white sheets. Those things were here, in my now.
I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again, and my vision felt clearer. Huh. I recalled Molly drinking the cloudy medicine, but I didn’t think I’d drunk any.
Beside me, Molly stirred. “Ouch,” she said. The kitten had climbed onto her chest and was licking her chin. She opened her eyes and then sat up brightly, clutching Friend. “You’re here!” she said. “I thought perhaps I dreamed you.”
“I’m here …,” I said, flustered. “Still here.”
Molly looked so happy, but I felt … lost. Why hadn’t I gone home? In books, magic always ended where it began, didn’t it? You just had to walk back through the wardrobe. I’d climbed back into the huge bed that had brought me here, hadn’t I?
I turned over. Was there something I was missing? A talisman, a magic thing? Or a trick I needed to know, something I was supposed to have done before bed? Words to repeat? Open sesame! Alakazam! I didn’t think so.…
Then Molly was climbing out of bed, and it wasn’t foggy-headed morning anymore. It was tomorrow. There were fresh clothes to put on (my new dress was brown, with tiny pink flowers), hair to braid, and teeth to wash. Everything moved quickly, more quickly than I did, in my sluggish state. Before I was ready, Nora arrived with breakfast.
Then I was eating. I was talking. I was taking my hand of cards from Molly and sitting down at the table. Like everything would be fine.
Probably it would. Probably I just needed to stop worrying, have a good day, one more chance to see things. Hadn’t I been happy for this adventure? I might as well enjoy it.
As Friend lapped at a pat of butter, Molly took a bite of oatmeal and said, “I don’t suppose the fair will be open in this storm.…”
“No,” I said. “No, I guess not.”
Molly’s forehead wrinkled. “Should we still take the money back today anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I said, remembering the crash of lamps. “It’s raining pretty hard. But whatever you want to do is fine. I don’t care. Either way.”
Molly set down her spoon thoughtfully. “Is everything all right, Annie? You seem … different this morning.”
“Yeah … I’m fine,” I said.
“Are you, truly?”
“I guess I am.”
“What’s wrong? You can tell me.”
“It’s just … I thought I’d go home during the night,” I confessed, shaking my head. “I’m not sure what it means that I didn’t.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her mouth turned down slightly. “You mean, you don’t want to stay?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I do want to be here. Only … I don’t like not knowing how to get back. And Mom—”
“I see,” said Molly quietly. “Do you think perhaps I have to unwish you?”
“Oh!” I said. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Do you want me to do that? I can try right now.”
I nodded. “Would you? Try?”
Molly looked sad, but she closed her eyes, screwed up her face, and waved her hands above her head. “I wish,” she said, “that Annie would go home right now!” She looked silly, like a little kid playing a game.
“Are you gone now?” she asked, opening one eye.
“Nope. Still here,” I said.
Her face relaxed. “In that case,” she said, “perhaps it wasn’t my wish?”
“I guess not,” I said. I forced a smile. “That must mean we have another day.”
“We should make the most of it,” said Molly.
“How do you want to do that?” I asked. “In this rain?”
“Well, you still haven’t seen the hotel at all.” Molly grinned.
When she said that, I remembered a shimmer. I recalled a dusty lobby, a chandelier. Diamonds in the darkness. Maybe, I thought, this is a good thing, this extra day. “I’d like that,” I said. “In fact, I’d like that a lot.”
“The only problem,” said Molly, “is that if we want to explore, we’ll have to try going out to come in again.” Her forehead wrinkled briefly. “Which means we do have to brave the storm. For a little while, at least.”
“Maybe we should wait and see if the rain lets up,” I suggested. “Give it a few hours?”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Molly said as she fed a sliver of bacon to the kitten. “That will give us some time with Friend before we go. We don’t want him to think we’ve run away and deserted him.”
Friend nuzzled her hand as though in agreement.
We finished our breakfast and our inevitable game of cards, then spent the morning playing with Friend in the bedroom, where we discovered that the kitten liked to chase everything. He pounced on Molly’s slipper, and dragged the sleeping mask from under the bed, then chewed it until I rescued it and set it on the bedside table. Molly found this endlessly entertaining, but I got bored enough to read a Look magazine article about “How to See Europe on a Dollar a Day.” A dollar a day!
When Nora arrived with lunch, we hurried back out to the sitting room, careful to close the bedroom door behind us. As we sat down at the table, I saw Friend’s little claws scraping under the door. I didn’t think Nora spotted him.
“Goodness, it’s frightful out there today,” said the maid, setting down her tray. “Cars are like to wash away. Count yourselves lucky you don’t have to go out in that mess, girls.” Molly kicked my leg under the table. I kicked her back.
After Nora was gone, we finished our sandwiches, which were made of something that looked like bologna but tasted better. Then Molly stood up. “Let’s go see how awful it really is. Maybe Nora’s exaggerating.”
We tucked Friend safely away in the bedroom with a pile of pillows, some crumpled bits of paper to play with, and a dish of water. We raised the window in the bathroom and found that Nora was right. It was like a monsoon outside! The rain was coming down in a wall of water.
“What do you think?” Molly said. “It’s very wet.”
“That’s how rain tends to be,” I said. “But yeah, it’s bad.”
“I’ll try if you will,” said Molly. A gust of wind splattered rain right in our faces, but she put a hand on the sill and hoisted herself out. “It’s not so bad,” she called back in to me, sputtering water. “Once you get used to it.”
“If you say so,” I said as I pulled myself up beside her. “Here goes nothing.” I crawled outside and a chilly wind took my breath away.
Molly was lying.
There was no getting used to the storm. Rain pelted me like tiny needles, and the wind blew nonstop. I was soaked in seconds, and the railing and the stairs were terribly slick. I didn’t even try to see what was happening with Molly. I focused on my own feet, gripped the railing tight, and held my breath. Step by step. Hand over hand.
When I slipped off the last step, the ground felt good under my feet, if squishy. “Whew!” I said, turning to Molly.
She was already dashing for cover, arms over her head. I raced behind her to a set of four steps that led down to a small door. Molly pulled it open and ducked inside. I followed her. The door closed behind me with a bang.
Inside the basement the air was warm and humid. A few bare bulbs hung from the ceiling of the dim, cavernous room. I followed Molly, dripping, through another door, into a laundry room where sheets were draped like ghosts from clotheslines. Molly put a finger to her lips. “Hush!”
There was an overpowering smell of bleach, dust, and damp, a rich scent that tickled my throat. Rainwater was dripping from my hair into my eyes. The warm basement felt good on my cold skin.
“I wish we had dry clothes,” I whispered, trying to wring out my skirt.
Molly whirled around and grinned. “Oh! What a good thought.” She made her way to one of the clotheslines. “Perfect,” I heard her mutter. Then she was back with a pile of dark clothes and a rough towel. “Put these on.”
I stripped off my wet clothes and dried off with the towel until I felt tingly. Soon I was dressed in a maid’s uniform like Nora’s. “The hat too?” I asked.
“The hat especially,” said Molly, pulling hers on. “What a disguise! I bet we could walk right up to Papa and he wouldn’t recognize us.”
“I’m sure your dad would recognize you, Molly.”
Molly only shrugged. “I’m just sorry there aren’t any socks. These are squooshy.”
“It is too bad,” I agreed. “Mine are like dead fish.”
“Ew.” Molly wrinkled her nose. I wrinkled mine back at her, and we both grinned. It was much nicer in the warm, dry clothes, with the rubbed-clean feeling of a rain shower.
Then Molly picked up her wet things and jammed them deep down into a garbage can in a corner.
Seven Stories Up Page 6
