I walked back to the cabinet and paused, listening for footsteps. When I heard nothing, I crouched down and placed both thumbs under the feet of the bronze R and pushed up. It clicked, and the front of the cabinet door popped open, almost knocking me over. Then it slid up like an old-fashioned roll-top desk. And I was faced with three dozen narrow slots, like a mailroom wall. Each slot was numbered.
Blythe came to sit beside me, cradling her thumb. We scanned the numbers, but there was no discernible pattern. “What kind of system is this?” Blythe looked personally offended. There was 133 next to 17 next to 209. I shook my head, but then I saw a six. Number six.
“Addresses. They’re addresses.” I yanked the number-six box into my lap, and there they were. A pile of quarter-sheet ballots with a single typed question: Shall the illustrious city of Thornewood allow the residential home at number six Magnolia to be rezoned for commercial use by the Mission Project–funded charitable subsidiary named “The Sisters”? I could hear my dad’s voice. He used to make fun of us that way. “Hey, the sisters, come in to dinner.” Like we were a garage band. I held the card out to Blythe.
“The sisters,” I said. “You and me.” Blythe looked at me, her eyes glassy. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything. She just looked back down at the papers in the box.
She let out a long breath and pulled the ballots out. “Start counting.” But instead, I sat back on my socked heels, numb. If this one box was our house, what were the rest of these dozens of boxes? I pulled another out at random. More ballots. This voting sheet said, Shall the illustrious city of Thornewood allow Elm Park to be redesigned to include a skateboarding area for youth? A quick skim of the votes showed that they were mostly yes votes, but I think I would know if there was a cool skate park in Thornewood. All the parks were those corner pocket parks, without even a jungle gym. For sure no half-pipes.
I could guess what the rest were. People asking for changes in Thornewood. And Mrs. McMichaels was making sure they never happened, no matter what the neighbors or the city wanted. Just like our project, a skate park or a new apartment building would change Thornewood. And it was clear she thought it was better the way it was.
Beside me, Blythe was making two piles of the votes on our house. So far, the nos were three, the yeses not countable at a glance.
I started taking photographs with my phone. I got the inside of the cabinet and the votes and the files. I took a photo of the whole room so someone could see that the cabinet was really there and not fabricated by a computer program.
Blythe put the last vote down, looked up at me, and smiled, just as the doorknob turned with a sudden creak.
Mrs. McMichaels stood in the doorway, looming over us. “What, may I ask, are you doing rummaging through my personal effects?” Blythe’s mouth was hanging open, but for once nothing smart came out of it. A drop of her blood splattered onto the top vote on her pile. Mrs. McMichaels sucked in a horrified breath. “Put down those papers, get up, and leave this house if you want to avoid an altercation with the Thornewood Police.” When we hesitated, she crossed her arms. “I hear colleges frown on applicants with criminal records.” Blythe paled.
I stood up. Without my boots, I reached approximately to Mrs. McMichaels’s collarbone. “No problem. I already photographed everything here and sent copies to the cloud. So go ahead and call the police. They might be interested to see your personal city hall.”
Mrs. McMichaels smiled, crossing her arms. “You can’t think that the illustrious members of our town would believe that I, council member-at-large, would ever do anything untoward in Thornewood. This is my town more than it is anyone else’s.”
“More like no one else’s,” Blythe said.
“I have served nine concurrent terms,” she said. “And I have kept Thornewood the pure, separate community it was meant to be, as intended by my father and the other founding members of the Thornewood Beautification and Historic District Society.”
“By killing valid votes,” I said.
“By helping people understand what they really want. No one moved here to have a discotheque in the middle of town or a fast-food restaurant drawing all the little peons from neighboring cities to the nice, clean burger house in Thornewood. People come to Thornewood and stay for generations because we are a special city. Thornewood was meant to be beautiful, to honor our history, and to celebrate the vision of our forefathers. Not to become Little San Francisco. People want picnics and parades and pancake breakfasts. They don’t want the great unwashed next door.”
“Unwashed?” Blythe raised an eyebrow, perhaps thinking of Charlie’s fastidious hair. “Hardly.”
“The housing was meant for people like us,” I said. “People who need help because their families are complicated.” Even after seeing the pictures at the Mission Project, I’d never really thought about why someone would need temporary housing in a safe LGBTQIA+ space . . . but now I did. Maybe because they had unaccepting, slightly insane grandmothers, like Mrs. McMichaels, who didn’t like who they were.
“People like you?” Mrs. McMichaels sneered. “People like you are exactly who we don’t need here.”
Blythe stood slowly, wrinkling her nose. “You’re a twinist?”
“I’m a conservationist.” Then Mrs. McMichaels stepped into the hallway, her hands on either side of the door, and began yelling for Emma in a steady stream of “Emma! Emma! Emma!” until Emma sauntered in.
“Oh, there you two are,” she said, glancing at the cabinet in surprise. “Got that thing open, huh? Good work.”
Mrs. McMichaels whirled on Emma. “Your friends were just leaving.” I met Emma’s eyes, and she winked. She stepped across the mess Blythe and I had made on the floor and stood between us and Mrs. McMichaels, whose hand-drawn eyebrows spiked.
“We’ll leave,” I said, “when you agree to drop all the fines against our house. And rezone it commercially.”
Mrs. McMichaels snorted. “That will never happen.”
Blythe picked up one of the boxes. “Then I guess we take all these fancy files of yours to the Thornewood Post.”
Mrs. McMichaels hissed, her hands on her narrow hips. “Do you think there’s a single corner of this town where I don’t have friends who owe me?”
“Fear you is more like it.” Emma met her grandmother’s eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment before Mrs. McMichaels wet her thin lips and turned her gaze on Blythe.
“No one will believe you over me,” Mrs. McMichaels said.
“They don’t have to believe,” I said. “We have photographs.”
“By the time you leave this house, I’ll have everything gone. Burned. And you’ll just be two teenagers who tried to play a joke on an esteemed Thornewoodian.” I narrowed my eyes. She could probably do that. But I didn’t think she would. These papers were like trophies, the way serial killers kept people’s jewelry or ears or whatever. She kept their useless little ballots. And I wondered for a minute how crazy she really was.
“No,” I said.
She turned her pale eyes on me. “Excuse me?”
“No way. You won’t take the chance. Just a whiff of scandal could be too much for you. You need everything perfect in Thornewood. And everyone has to see you as perfect, too. But they won’t if there’s a scandal. They’ll look at you with doubt. They may even—”
“Unelect you,” Blythe said. Mrs. McMichaels paled.
“So here’s the deal. You’ll give us our house back, drop the fines, and rezone it. Because otherwise, we’ll spread these photos all over the Thornewood Post, all over the Berry Market, all over Rolly. And even if we can’t prove that you ‘miscounted’ all these ballot measures, people will start talking. And maybe there’ll be enough talk that they’ll vote someone else in to avoid a scandal. But all it will cost to keep your secrets is a house. Just one house.”
Emma raised her hand, like we were i
n class. “And tuition to FIDM.” But Mrs. McMichaels didn’t even look at Emma. She was still staring at me. And I have to say I was barely standing under the pressure of that gaze. I didn’t know how I’d gotten all those words out; it was like my dad had been feeding them to me. Then I heard him, like a whisper in my ear. In arbitration, everyone needs to feel like they’ve won something.
“We’ll keep the historic details,” I said, thinking of what I loved about number six. “The butler’s pantry signs, the telephone booth. And we’ll follow historic code for the exterior.”
She dropped her arms from her hips. “No Silver Cloud?”
I shook my head. “No Silver Cloud.” The silence in the room thickened until I was sure I couldn’t take another breath. Then she walked over to a bookshelf and pulled out a file. It was the file for number six we’d seen at city hall. I reached for it, and we each held one side of the manila folder. Then she let go. I crushed the file to my chest, sagging under its heft. Blythe snatched the number-six box from the floor. She cradled it and her bleeding thumb as she sidestepped to the door. Mrs. McMichaels watched the box leave as though Blythe held a baby in her arms. Then she slammed down the false front of her filing cabinet. She didn’t say anything as we hurried into the narrow hallway. I stopped, feeling like I should say thank you. But when you’ve just blackmailed someone, thank you doesn’t seem appropriate. So I said something else.
“We’re taking her, too.” Emma grinned at me and reached down for an overstuffed duffel bag just behind her. Mrs. McMichaels’s mouth fell open. Even after Emma’s little stab about people being afraid of her, she hadn’t realized that Emma had only ever been playing at good granddaughter. In fact, she was the worst kind of granddaughter and the best kind of friend—the kind with her own ideas. Mrs. McMichaels sputtered for a minute before she came after us.
“But they’re not even from Thornewood!” she shouted after us, hands in the air.
Blythe had her feet half stuffed in her Converse and the door half-open. But I had to sit to pull my boots on, and that’s when Mrs. McMichaels caught up to us.
“Emma. Think about this,” she said. “There are consequences. If you leave this house, I will call the police to bring you back. And then I will make absolutely sure that you never see your father again, that he will never get his driver’s li—”
I clomped into my boots. Then, using every centimeter of the three inches of height they gave me, I held the file up in front of Mrs. McMichaels’s face. “While you’re making fines disappear, how about you disappear that restraining order, too?”
“How dare you step into my family business?” She held her hands in front of her, like she was thinking of wringing my neck. “Emma’s father is a danger to himself and to her, and he should not be allowed to parent, let alone operate a motor vehicle—”
Emma put her hand on her grandmother’s arm. “He needs help, Grandmamma. Not punishment.”
“No. Absolutely not.” She was shouting now. “I concede the permit. But your father is dangerous! He was driving drunk! What if you had been in the van? What then?”
I looked from Mrs. McMichaels to Emma. They both had their arms crossed and their mouths set in similar lines. For the first time, I could see a family resemblance.
“I won’t drive with him,” Emma said. “I promise. Not ever. But you have to pull the restraining order. You have to let me see him. You have to let us be in each other’s lives. He’s my only parent.”
Mrs. McMichaels opened her mouth to speak, but it was Emma’s Noni we heard.
“Family first, Bernadette.” His voice was deep and strong. “You’ll give him a second chance.” Mrs. McMichaels’s mouth clamped shut. She glanced over her shoulder as if to argue, but Emma’s Noni had closed his eyes again, his hands clamped tightly in his lap. She seemed about to say something, but she closed her mouth and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Emma said, her voice just above a whisper. And then we were out the door.
We rushed into the night, Blythe and Emma taking the stairs two at a time.
Outside, Nate’s clanking, shaking Volvo idled in the silent Thornewood night. We clamored in, all three of us sitting in the back together—boots and bags and files.
In the car, Emma leaned against my shoulder. “Thanks for rescuing me, handsome prince.” I smiled. But I was still thinking about the confrontation we’d had with Mrs. McMichaels, and her weird document-kill room.
“Emma?” I said. “Why would your grandmother have an R on her file cabinet?”
She looked up, then lowered her head back to my shoulder. “Maybe for my mom. Her name was Rebecca.”
I thought about that as we drove through the silent, perfectly ordered, never-changing streets of Thornewood. Here, everything looked the same, stayed the same. It was how Mrs. McMichaels coped with loss, wasn’t it? She controlled what she could in order to keep her long-gone daughter safe. And when her rules weren’t followed, she cut off ties—maybe hoping to keep her heart from breaking again?
I wondered whether I’d been doing something similar, trying to keep our family from change. I wanted my dad’s memory to be safe. But there was no safety in loving anyone. There was always risk, always the chance of loss—sooner or later. How had my mom kept her love for my dad, and made room for Charlie, too?
My heart squeezed as I thought of Kai, riding off down the street, leaving me behind, protecting my heart. But maybe love wasn’t keeping everything neat and tidy and perfect. Maybe it was leaving room for mess. Maybe it was leaving room for people who needed a place to fit in. I tilted my head against Emma. I could think about Kai later. Tonight, I was making room in my heart for another sister.
30
BECAUSE I COULD NOT GO TO BED
On the day of the Mash-Up, I was backstage in the dressing room tying Blythe into the costume Emma and I had designed. The night we’d found the ballots, Emma came home with us and fell asleep on an inflatable mattress as we waited for sirens and police boots. But none came. On the third night, as we waited for an eviction that didn’t come, Emma called her grandmother, and they decided she could stay—just until her dad got a place. So we converted the sewing room into her room, and spent hours there on the dress that was now before us: a burgundy gown with a tight ruffled V-shaped bodice and a big satin bow. We’d designed it together, me and Emma, and now, as Emma saved us seats, I was backstage trimming the last little threads from the hem and sleeves and wrangling the massive ribbon into a perfect bow.
Blythe lifted the thick fabric of the gown, plucking at nonexistent lint and flattening already-flat seams. “Tell me again why I agreed to do this.”
I tied the bow at her back and put my hands on her shoulders. “Because you want an A in your English class?” She was just nervous. I’d drilled her lines so many times she could recite them while mixing chemical solutions. With Kai ignoring me this past week as if he were Giorgio Armani and I were Donatella Versace, I’d had time for school, sewing, and rehearsals with Blythe and Nate. I’d distracted myself from the fact that when I tried to meet Kai’s eyes in French, he looked right through me, by becoming so busy I didn’t have time to hear the faint clunk and thud of my broken heart. “Remember,” I told Blythe. “This is school. You’re good at school.”
“But what if—”
“Nope. Nothing will go wrong.” I patted her upswept hair. “Let’s go. You’re on next.” With one last wave, I hurried through the now-familiar backstage props and into a downstage wing. When the second-to-last act finished to warm applause (Shel Silverstein mashed with William Carlos Williams), I ran to set the stage. I placed each cardboard gravestone then dragged the smoke machine out. I hit the on button, but just a trickle of fog came out. I tinkered with the knobs, but the stage manager whispered, “Places!” so I hustled back into the wings and out through the audience door. In the auditorium, Emma patted the aisle seat she’d saved, a
nd I slipped in beside her.
“How’s the dress?” Emma asked. I gave her a thumbs-up as the MC tapped the mic and the audience quieted.
“Our last contestants are Nate Fong and Blythe Braxton with ‘Because I could not—go to bed.’” The lights flickered and went to a spotlight, and Nate walked onstage, raising hollers with his kohled eyes and bright gash of red lipstick. He winked and flapped his black jacket over his black pants and combat boots. Then he shook out his wild, stringy, Robert Smith–esque hair. It looked like the worst bedhead ever. Then he tented his hands and everyone quieted.
“Virtual writing collaboration. I’m giving it a go. Her name is Emily.” His British accent could have used a few more days of practice, but it wasn’t awful. “Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. An American poet born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830 . . . influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Blake. But I just don’t know if we’ll be compatible. I mean, she’s only published ten poems and one letter.”
Blythe walked onstage. I could see her hands shaking. I hoped no one else could.
But her voice rang out strong and loud. “You must be the . . . person I’m looking for? Robert Smith. Born April 21, 1959. An English musician. You influenced the bands Ivy and The Smashing Pumpkins. I don’t know about this. You’re not even a writer, are you? I should never have trusted WordLovers.com to find a writing partner. I can’t believe I left the house for this.” I was pleased when that got a chuckle.
“I am indeed a writer. With many successful recordings. But you? Ten poems? And your profile boasted knowledge of death. Just look at what you’re wearing.”
Blythe lifted her burgundy skirt. “Black is not the only color of death, sir. Have you read none of my profound poetry? I speak of nothing but death. That and birds. But how could you understand? You only write lyrics, not real poetry—”
“Don’t you listen to the radio? NY Rock describes me as ‘pop culture’s unkempt poster child of doom and gloom,’ and my songs a ‘somber introspection over lush, brooding guitars.’ Let’s see your somber introspection.”
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