“It’s okay,” I say. “We started over, remember?”
“Yeah,” he says. I tip my face toward him.
“But still,” he says. “It wasn’t completely fair.”
“Maybe it was,” I say. “I do think my mom wants to help—”
“I know,” Jack says.
“But yeah.” I wait. “She has it easier. We have it easier.” I think about what Rose said, and I echo it. “You have a point.”
“Thanks.” Jack pushes his hair back off his forehead. “I don’t know why I said it right then, though. I think I was feeling a little anxious, totally on your turf, there.”
“Rose’s turf.”
“Right. Rose’s turf is your turf, though. And I could tell she was suspicious of my intentions.” His cheeks redden. “I mean, not that I have intentions.” His words are tripping over each other. “Besides, um, driving you where you need to go.”
“Of course you don’t.” I say this quickly.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.” The silence that follows is filled by the buzz of a parking lot light above us. “Yikes,” I say. “We might have to find a new spot. That thing is loud.”
Jack smiles. “Are you like Sadie?” he asks.
“Like Sadie how?”
“Are you one of those people who likes to talk until she falls asleep?”
I smile. “Not really. I mean, with Sadie I just end up listening, mostly. Anyway, you should know that. We slept in the same room last night too.”
“Yeah,” Jack says, “but I pissed you off right before we went to sleep.”
“True.” I’m watching through the windshield as small black creatures—bats, probably—swoop above the trees.
“Tell me something,” he says. “Tell me a story. Like Sadie would.”
“About what?”
“Tell me about Julia.”
When I hear him say her name I realize I haven’t thought of my sister in hours. All day, maybe, at least not since this morning with Rose, and that feels so long ago. But as soon as Jack asks me to talk about her, she’s here, sailing back into my mind.
“Okay,” I say. I take a breath. “She almost quit dancing when she was five.”
“When did she start?”
“Oh,” I say. “She was three.”
“Geez.”
“It’s pretty normal,” I say. “I mean, for people who end up as professionals. Misty didn’t start until she was a teenager, but that’s really unusual. Misty Copeland, I mean. She’s—”
Jack puts his hand up to stop me. “Even I know who Misty Copeland is.”
“Good job,” I say. “You’re practically a ballet expert.”
He laughs. “So why did Julia almost quit?”
This is a story we tell in my family all the time. My mother loves to tell it most. “She came home from her recital so angry, just, like, stomping all over the room, and my mother asked her why. ‘Everyone thinks we’re funny and cute,’ she said. ‘But I’m trying to be beautiful.’” I never saw this happen, of course. I wasn’t even born. But still, I can practically see it in my mind. “Jules always wanted to be taken seriously. Even when she was five.”
A moth lands on the windshield then, and I watch it slowly move its wings. Jack is watching it too.
“When did you start dancing?” he asks.
“Three,” I say. “I think I can remember my first class, but sometimes I think I’m just remembering the picture my mother took of me.” It’s framed on our living room wall: me in a tiny black leotard, pale pink tights with a dark smudge on my knee. I had fallen on the pavement outside the studio, but my mom said I didn’t cry at all. I just wanted to get in to my dance class. I just wanted to be like Julia, even when I was three years old.
“I always thought of us as stars,” I say, “but she’s so much bigger than I was. Like, she’s a red giant and I’m a white dwarf.” I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud to him, but I am.
Jack shakes his head. “White dwarfs are hotter.”
“Hotter?” I’m smiling without meaning to—hotter?—and Jack blushes.
“Um, warmer, I mean. Brighter.”
As he says it, I realize that I knew that. Deep back in my memory, where I keep all the facts I learned at astronomy day camp when I was nine, is that fact. White dwarfs are the brightest star.
“I forgot about that.”
“So maybe you’re both spectacular in your own way. Julia is supermassive, and you’re small but burning furiously.”
“I am pretty furious,” I say.
Jack smile-sighs. “Tell me about it.”
I can see the moon past Jack through the driver’s side window, a waxing pearl in a black square of sky. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly have been only one day since I sat outside and saw the moon above Rose and the moonflowers. I look back at Jack. He reaches out and touches Pavlova’s head gently. She sighs.
“Good night,” he says.
“Good night,” I echo. My tattoo doesn’t itch anymore. It just feels mildly warm in a pleasant way. It’s almost comforting. I can hear crickets chirping, and that parking lot lamp still buzzing, and somewhere, the faint sound of a siren. I close my eyes. I sleep.
Track 15:
Monday Morning
THE THING ABOUT SLEEPING IN a car is that you can’t help but wake up early. I’m awake with the first hints of a sunrise, just as the sky turns silver past the trees. Jack is still asleep next to me, his face tipped toward me, one arm thrown over his head.
I raise my seat to a normal position as gently as I can, then roll down the window and lean out to lower Pavlova, on her long leash, to the ground. She trots over to the grass and pees on it, then sniffs all the places she hasn’t yet peed. I loop the leash around the mirror and sit back.
Jack’s still sleeping. His fingers flutter against the headrest, and he sighs. I never noticed how long and dark his eyelashes are, but with his eyes closed, I can tell.
Pavlova barks then and it startles me. This is when it occurs to me: I’m literally watching Jack sleep.
What. Is. Even. Happening.
The obvious answers are:
I’m under a magical spell.
That’s the best I can come up with.
I manage to sit up and lean back out the window before he wakes up. Pav is barking at a flock of small brown birds, sparrows, probably, who’ve landed in the trees past the lot.
“Shhhh,” I tell her, and I pull her back toward me. When I turn toward Jack, he’s awake.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” Pavlova barks again. “Um, hang on.” I open my door and Pav jumps in. She starts sniffing wildly for her kibble, which I find and put in her dish. She eats it on the car floor.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s make our escape while she’s busy.”
I hop out of the car and Jack follows. He stops to stretch. The sky is streaked with pink and gold, and I can hear the birds Pavlova was barking at chattering in the distance.
“The accommodations here are really fantastic,” Jack says, grinning.
“Five-star,” I say.
In the bathroom, I change my clothes and brush my teeth. It’s empty in there, no almost–fairy godmother this time, but when I leave the bathroom Jack is waiting in the hallway.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he says.
We wander the aisles for a little while, then leave with coffee and a bag of pastries. Outside, the sun is higher in the sky, hotter already than it was yesterday. There’s a cat on the concrete, just at the edge of the lot. It’s black and white and making a beeline for me.
When it gets there, it starts threading figure eights around my ankles, meowing.
“What is up with this cat?” Jack says.
“Um.” I look down at the cat. “I don’t know.” I take a step farther and the cat moves too. I trip over it and nearly fall on my face.
Jack’s brow is furrowed, but he’s smiling. He steps toward me and slips on
e arm around my back. Then he picks me straight up. I can’t help but think of being in his arms on the High Line. This is slightly less awkward, but still not quite comfortable. Not like being lifted by Tommy, who can make me feel half-weightless and free.
The cat stops moving and looks at us. She lets out a mournful howl.
“Sorry, kitty,” Jack says. “We have someplace to be.”
The cat doesn’t follow. She sits on the asphalt, staring at me, as we pass.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I say. She opens her mouth and I expect to hear her meow again, to make that terrible sound, but instead she just yawns.
I can hear Pavlova barking as Jack carries me to the car. When we get there, he opens the door, still holding me, and sets me down gently in the front seat.
“That wasn’t weird at all,” he says.
“Nope,” I say. “Not at all.”
Track 16:
Go Your Own Way
THATCHER’S OFFICE IS IN AN old stone building on a wide street. We find a parking garage a few blocks away and show up dogless. I didn’t know how seriously Thatcher (or anyone) could take me with a tiny white fluffy dog in my arms, so on the way here I found a doggy day care for Pavlova. I guess it makes sense in a city like this, full of people who feel guilty leaving their dogs alone for long hours during the day and have the money to blow. I was worried that she’d freak when we left, but in seconds she was halfway across the room sniffing around with her tiny doggy friends, so she barely noticed. And anyway, it’s just for a few hours.
We walk through the revolving door, first me, then Jack, and then stand on the slick marble floor together. I can hear some woodwindy music that I’m pretty sure is supposed to be calming, but it’s not helping me. My heart is beating hard. It’s been more than a year since I’ve seen Thatcher. Actually, I think my brother was the last member of the Blake family besides Julia to see him, and that didn’t go well.
“You okay?” Jack asks. He puts his hand on the small of my back. I can feel the warmth of his fingers through my shirt and my heartbeat kicks up, though I don’t know if it’s because he’s touching me (why is he touching me?) or because I’m about to see Thatcher. I take a deep, shaky breath. There’s a glossy wood desk in the center of the room, a bank of windows to my left, and at the desk a receptionist with blond hair so perfect I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t move if a tornado blew through here. Which is a real possibility, the way my life is going lately.
“I’ll sit down,” Jack says.
“Okay,” I say. I just sort of stand there in the doorway. He stands there too.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll go back there with you if you want me to.”
“I do,” I say.
He smiles. “Okay.”
I feel a little better, at least enough to walk up to the receptionist’s desk.“Hi,” I say to her. “I’m looking for Thatcher Price.”
She smiles without showing her teeth. “Do you have an appointment?” She glances at her computer screen.
“I don’t,” I say. “But I’m sure he’ll want to see me. My name is Sylvie Blake.”
“Let me call up,” she says. “You can sit down over there.”
I sink into the chair next to Jack’s. I try to hear what the receptionist is saying (to Thatcher? his secretary?), but the ethereal waiting room music is too loud. She hangs up the phone and motions me over with an efficient flick of her fingers.
“He’s out of the office,” she says, “at a meeting. But he’ll be back at three o’clock, and he’ll see you then.”
She says this in such a businesslike way I’m taken aback. As if I’m just some client, waiting to talk about a contract or something. As if anything with Thatcher could be just business.
How could he not be here?
When I turn around, Jack stands up. He smiles, and somehow the smile settles me.
“I hear they have a good zoo,” he says.
Track 17:
Hold Me
I HAVEN’T BEEN TO A zoo since I was a kid. Officially they make me a little sad: the neurotic leopards pacing in front of their cage’s glass wall, the elephants that are meant to walk across half a country in enclosures half the size of a football field. But this zoo is pretty nice, actually, even if it makes me nervous in my present circumstances to be in a place with so many animals.
After we pay our entrance fee, we stand still just past the gate.
“What do you want to see?” Jack says. “We have two hours.”
I think about it, but I don’t have to think hard. “Bears,” I say.
We find a bear—an Asiatic black bear—on the foldout map, and walk a while to find it. And then we stand by the enclosure’s border and look at it: a black bear with a spiky ruff of fur around its neck and round Mickey Mouse ears.
I think about Ursa Major, those bear stars I saw over Sadie’s roof last week. Callisto didn’t do anything wrong, but she ended up twice changed, first into a bear and then into stars. So what’s the lesson, here? That you can get transformed into an animal if you’re not careful? That you won’t be safe until you’re made into a constellation?
I can honestly say I’ve never wanted to be stars. I’ve always wanted to be real, even when it hurts.
The bear stands on its haunches and sniffs the air. It turns in my direction.
“Um, let’s go,” I tell Jack. Better safe than sorry.
When we leave the bears we walk for a while, and then Jack sits down on a bench by the giraffe enclosure.
I sit down next to him, but I misjudge the distance between us and end up with my shoulder pressed against his. He doesn’t move away and I don’t either, though my cheeks warm.
“I like giraffes,” Jack says. “They sleep about four hours a day, five minutes at a time.”
“Really?” The only one I can see from this spot is walking slowly, elegant and otherworldly. “And they don’t even have to sleep in a Volvo.”
He laughs. “True,” he says. “They’re so unusual and they don’t even know it.” He looks at me. “I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.”
“I don’t either.”
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
I startle. My molecules do their same old spin. About what? I think. But then I realize he’s talking about seeing Thatcher, which is just minutes away.
“No,” I say. “Yes. Maybe.” I watch a giraffe walk slowly, ethereally over the grass. “You know, the last time Everett saw Thatcher, he punched him.”
“Really?” Jack sounds surprised. “Your brother doesn’t seem like the punching type.”
“He’s not,” I say. “But things got so weird.”
Everett had a run-in with Thatcher at a show downtown, a show he got thrown out of later, when Thatcher’s friends told the bouncer that Everett had been the one who started the fight. My brother, who before this had never punched anyone in his life, as far as I know.
I tried to picture it then: the two of them in the dark club, lit by the dim glow of the stage’s spotlights. The way the crowd would back away from them or maybe turn toward them, watching and pressing forward. The way it would hurt Everett’s hand to hit him, maybe as much as it hurt Thatcher.
None of it made any sense. Except for the way pain seemed to ricochet around my family back then, catching on all our sharp edges.
Jack elbows me gently. “You’re not going to punch him, are you?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Now that you’ve reminded me.”
Jack smiles. “Oh, shit,” he says. “Sorry, Thatcher.” He glances at me past his shoulder.
This is when the weird thing happens. Jack grabs my hand and holds it. Just my fingers, really. I’m surprised at first, so I don’t do anything, but then I close my fingers around his.
He looks down at the ground and smiles the tiniest bit. Then he lets my hand go.
“We better head back,” he says.
Track 18:
Second Hand News
> IT’S TWO MINUTES TO THREE when we get back to Thatcher’s building. The lobby is still all gleaming marble, but the music is gone. This time, I notice a photograph of Thatcher’s father on the wall by the firm’s sign. He used to be a friend of my own father’s, but I know they don’t speak anymore. That happened for good after Everett’s fight, when Thatcher’s father called mine. I listened to my father’s half of the conversation, my back pressed to the hallway wall outside his home office. I could hear Mr. Price’s voice as an angry hum through long stretches of my father’s silence.
“Listen,” my father finally said. His voice was cold enough to flash-freeze hot soup. “It would take a lot more than that to make us even. As I’m sure you understand. I would advise that you let it go.” He hung up his phone then, and must have just dropped it on his desk because I heard it hit the wood. I went back to my room and shut the door before my father came out.
Now I look up to see the receptionist staring at me. “Sylvie?” she says. “Mr. Price is ready for you.”
Part of me wants to run in the other direction, to keep not knowing whatever Thatcher knows. But I stand there for a moment, drawing all my energy straight up in a silver line down my spine the way Miss Inez taught me when I was ten years old. Jack is next to me, waiting for me to go. So I do. Before I can stop myself, I walk straight toward the open door.
The office is small and bare, with expensive-looking cabinets built into one side. There’s no art on the walls. Thatcher is sitting behind a big desk, both hands on the polished wood surface. He’s frowning, and there’s a deep furrow between his eyebrows, but he’s as good-looking as ever. He looks like he’s posing for the Uncomfortable Male Catalog, Office Edition.
“Syl,” he says, standing. He starts walking around the desk and I fight the urge to back up, to turn around and run straight out the door.
“Sylvie,” I say. The tone of my voice stops him midstep.
He breathes in slowly, half a sigh. “Sylvie,” he repeats. My name is his exhale. “Are you going to hit me?”
The Looking Glass Page 15
