“I didn’t know you knew anything,” I say. “You didn’t tell me. So tell me now. Who is she?”
“Daniela Rojas,” she says. “She’s a former student of mine who dances for the Washington Ballet.” She takes a breath. “Julia was afraid she’d keep hurting you and your brother if she stayed in New York. She told me that she was sure if she just got out of town for a few months, she’d be able to get herself under control. She’d go to her meetings. She’d stay clean.”
Through the trees, I can see the campers heading back toward the cabins with Allie and Jack and Knox. “Did she?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Your sister made me promise to stay out of it from that point forward, and I agreed.” She sighs. “Julia had lied to me, fooled us all. She put the whole company at risk, really, since she was such a high-profile member. I mean, they covered her accident in the Times.”
I remembered. It was only one paragraph in the Saturday Arts section, but it ran next to a small photo of Julia’s face, a close-up from the feature they’d done on her and her friends earlier.
“We could have helped her, if she had asked. Or at least I think we could have.” Miss Diana pauses. “In some ways, it was easier to let her go.”
When she says this, something cracks inside of me, loosens and floats up to the surface. I lean my head back against the tree and look up. Branches and blue sky, and way up there: the Firebird, watching me. It ruffles its feathers, then settles them back. The bird keeps quiet, and somehow, that makes me open my own mouth.
I tell Miss Diana the story I haven’t told anyone, and something breaks open in me when I do.
Part Three
Ever After
The Tale of Her Leaving
THE NIGHT JULIA LEFT SHE came into my room just before midnight, her voice lifting me straight out of a dream. I opened my eyes into the room’s half black and saw my sister on the edge of my bed, her hands clasped in front of her. Her palms were pressed together, thumbs hooked. The way you’d hold on to a person if you didn’t want her to fall.
As soon as I saw her, I knew what was happening. It was there on the breeze coming through my window, lifting my curtains away from the sill. She was going to leave. It was in the streetlamp light seeping through my blinds, making gold stripes over the windows. I pushed myself up on my pillows.
“What,” I said, not quite a question. Julia shook her head (not an answer), her dark hair brushing her shoulders.
“I have to get out of here for a while,” she said, leaning forward. “So I can get better. But I’ll come back.” Her voice was a whisper over the hum of my ceiling fan.
I tried to answer but no words came out. Instead they floated in front of me like butterflies in the air.
don’t go
get clean
this is all your fault
I was so tired of all this. So sick of waiting for Julia to get better or not. To ruin all our lives again. Because it didn’t feel like this would ever be over. We’d always end up in the same spot.
I took a breath and the word-butterflies scattered, leaving only one in the air between us.
go
Then I said it out loud.
“Go,” I said.
Julia flinched a little, then looked at me like she was trying to solve a riddle. Then she stood up and walked straight out the door.
How to Save Yourself
“IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT,” MISS Diana says. “None of this was.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, my voice hard, and for just a second, my heart gives a twinge at my tone. She’s my teacher, one of my idols. I’ve never spoken to her like this before. “I knew what she was doing. At least a little. And I didn’t do anything. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Sylvie, plenty of people knew about it to one extent or another.” Miss Diana’s voice is still calm, still quiet. “And the rest of us probably should have known.”
“Maybe, but once you figured it out, you helped her.”
She breathes in, lets it out. “She helped herself. I just found her a place to go.”
I lie down in the cool grass then, tip my face up toward the clouds. Above me, the Firebird makes a soft shrieking sound, then takes off for the sky. I watch it get smaller and then disappear, a red flash disappearing past the trees.
“Did it break your heart?” I ask.
“What?” She says this absentmindedly, half to herself.
“When Julia had the accident. When you found out about the pills.”
Miss Diana waits. I strain to hear her answer, but I only hear the sounds of the forest: leaves rustling, anonymous birds singing, branches shifting in the wind. Then she answers. “Yes. Of course it did.”
“I need to see her,” I say.
Miss Diana starts to say something, but she stops.
She gives me the address. I write it down.
Return to Sender
WE MAKE IT THROUGH THE ring of traffic hell around DC by two o’clock, and so at two-thirty we’re standing outside Daniela’s apartment, blinking into the golden sunlight. It’s a row house made of gray stone, two doors side by side at the top of a short flight of stairs. Before I head up the stairs, Jack squeezes my hand and then lets it go.
I take the stairs two at a time and ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. I press my ear to the door. I turn back toward Jack.
“I’m just going to ring her neighbor,” I say.
“Okay,” says Jack, but his voice doesn’t sound sure.
The door opens, and it’s a tall man in a blue button-down shirt.
“Girl Scouts?” the man says.
“Um,” I say. “What?”
“Are you selling cookies?”
“What?” I say again. I picture the badges I might earn lately: one in Running Away from Fancy Dance Camp without Getting Caught, one in Holding On to Your Sanity When the World Turns Magic. Another in Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.
“No,” I say, “I’m not a Girl Scout.” I gesture toward Jack as if that explains it. I’m traveling with a boy. Therefore I can’t be a Girl Scout.
“They sell cookies in the winter,” Jack says from down on the sidewalk. I look at him. “Not the summer.” His voice sort of trails off. “What?” he says. “I’m really into the Samoas.”
I look back at the man, and he looks at me.
“Okay,” he says. “Then who are you?”
“I’m Sylvie,” I say. “I’m looking for Daniela. I think she lives upstairs.”
“She used to.” This is a different voice, from behind the man. A shorter man who steps up to lean in the doorway. “She moved out about two months ago.”
Jack steps up on the landing with me. “She was—friends?—with another girl named Julia. She was here about a year ago, we think.”
I pull up a photograph of Julia on my phone and hold it so the men can see.
“She’s my sister,” I say. “She’s the one I’m really looking for.”
“We just moved here six months ago,” the first man says. “I’m sorry.” He really does sound sorry, and I feel my lungs contracting.
“Do you think you could call your landlord or something?” Jack asks. “Get her forwarding address?”
“We just bought this house. It was an estate sale,” the second man says.
I almost expect him to say that all the records of the sale were destroyed in a fire, and that the firemen all moved to Tallahassee immediately afterward, because it’s that clear the universe isn’t giving Julia up easily.
I take a big breath, and my eyes well up with tears. The man looks alarmed.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
“I’m fine.” Fine fine fine.
One of these times I’m going to tell the truth.
Experts on This
WE’RE SITTING ON A BENCH across from a bakery called The Yeast We Could Do. I can see loaves piled in the window, and even though I feel like I should be hungry, I’m not.
Jack tries to take my hand, but I
clasp my hands at almost the same time. I press my palms together, fingers clenched around each other.
“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” Jack says. That’s all anyone can say to me today, apparently.
I shrug and put my right hand in Jack’s. “I just have to figure out the next step.”
Jack waits a second, his eyes on the bakery window. “Do you?”
I look at him and he turns toward me. “What?” I ask.
“Listen,” he says. “You’re looking for signs everywhere. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe it’s time to let this whole thing go.” He’s still holding my hand, and when he says that last part, he squeezes it harder. “For now, I mean.”
My pulse quickens. “How am I supposed to do that?” I ask. “We came all this way. She’s here, in this city.”
“She was here,” Jack says. “A year ago.”
He’s right, of course. There’s no reason to believe she’d stay.
“Okay,” Jack says, his tone neutral. He’s problem solving. “For the sake of argument let’s say Julia is here. If she is, we’ll find her. We’ll figure this out. But in the meantime, maybe we could just step away from this for a moment? Clear our minds? See the sights?” He makes a little gesture in the air with his left hand. “What have you always wondered about our nation’s capital? We can find out.” He’s smiling, trying to be silly, trying to distract me from my failure. It doesn’t work.
“The only thing I’m wondering about,” I say, “is the whereabouts of my sister.”
Jack nods. “I know. But here’s the thing: you might find her. You might find her and it might not change anything. She might still hurt you again. In fact, she probably will hurt you again.” His voice turns hard on these last words, brittle like cold glass.
I try to catch his eye but he won’t look at me. “You don’t know that,” I say.
“No, but I’ve been with you for three days. I’ve watched you talk to these people who loved Julia.” He turns toward me. “I’ve seen this before. When people leave, sometimes they just want to be gone.”
Something in his voice tells me where this is coming from.
“You’re not talking about Julia,” I say.
He looks away from me and reaches down to pet Pavlova. “I think it applies in both cases. And that’s why I need to tell you this.” He sits up, leans back against the bench. “I’ve decided that I’m not going to my dad’s. Sadie will be mad, but I just can’t do it.”
“You have to!” I say. “You promised her.”
Jack looks straight at me. “I can’t. I’m not going to pretend things are okay when they’re not.”
“I know you think you’re an expert on this,” I say, “but what if Sadie’s right? Your dad seems to want a fresh start. What if he’s different now?”
“I don’t want to know!” Jack says.
I fold my arms over my chest. “Exactly. It’s easier to put people in boxes and leave them there. Isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not right.” He leans back on the bench. “That’s not what I’m doing. And anyway, this isn’t about me and my dad.”
I can feel my face getting hot, my heartbeat swell in my chest. I move my body so I’m facing Jack, and he turns toward me too. His brow is furrowed.
“Listen,” I say. “You’ve known me for, like, three days. I mean, yeah, you’ve been around half my life, but you never paid any attention to me before now.” The words are unspooling so quickly I can’t stop them, and I don’t think I want to, anyway. “All I’m saying is that you don’t know me, and you don’t know Julia either. So don’t put your shit on us. Okay?”
Jack opens his mouth. He closes it. Then he shakes his head.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m going to give Pavlova a walk around the block. Just think about what you want to do next.”
Before I can say anything, he walks away, following Pavlova on the sidewalk. She doesn’t even turn to look at me.
So I sit on a bench in Georgetown, trying not to cry. I still feel the heat of anger in my blood, and my fingers are wrapped around the edge of the bench so firmly they’re turning white. But I already know that anger is going to fade to sadness. That’s what always happens, the way even a meteor, red-hot from its trip through the Earth’s atmosphere, eventually ends up just a plain old rock.
A girl passes me, or rather she cuts across the sidewalk in front of me and begins to cross the street. She has black hair in a hundred tiny braids and brown skin, and she’s wearing a dark purple dress. I mean, she’s just some girl. But something makes me look at her, watch her, and when she turns toward the bakery, I see that she has a goose.
As in she’s carrying a goose, an actual pearl-white goose, under her left arm. She walks straight into The Yeast We Could Do, opening the door so quickly I can hear the bell on it ring from across the street. I watch her disappear behind that glass, behind all that bread. I’m up on my feet crossing the street before I even know what I’m doing.
Gone Goose Girl
THE BAKERY IS COOL AND dim, with walls painted china blue. It’s empty inside. There’s no one behind the counter, just loaves of bread lining the shelves on the wall. Next to the counter is a glass-fronted case full of pastries dusted with sparkling sugar. I crane my neck to see into the back room, but the girl is already gone, as far as I can tell. I follow.
In the back, the air is warm from the ovens and hazy with flour. To my right there’s a guy in a white T-shirt kneading a pile of dough.
“Hey,” he says, seemingly unfazed by the presence of a strange girl—me—in the bakery’s kitchen.
“Did a girl come through here?” I say. “She was carrying a goose.”
He smiles, slowly. Maybe he’s on major Valium, or perhaps the warm-bread smell just has a tranquilizing effect. I could believe that.
“If she did,” he says, “I didn’t see her.”
This is when I see the glimmer of a white feather on the tiled floor just in front of the door. I lean down and pick it up. It’s real, here between my fingers. I push the door open and walk out into the sunlight.
There are more feathers out here, lots of them, tiny downy ones and big curling ones, drifting around on the concrete like fake snow. The Nutcracker flashes through my mind again, just like it did a week ago while I stood on the stool in front of Miriam. Sugarplum. I sweep my right foot, toes pointed, in a sort of rond de jambe on the concrete, and feathers stick to my sneaker, the same way fake Nutcracker snow always sticks to my slippers.
The feathers are in the street too, and when cars drive by the feathers swirl into the air. When the light turns red, I cross to the other side. There are more of them over there. I don’t really understand where that girl could have gone, or what could have happened to the goose between there and here to make it shed so many feathers. I stand on the curb for a moment, and a bus pulls up in front of me, groaning to a halt. I step back, and then I see the poster spread across the bus’s side.
It’s for the Washington Ballet.
I stand there, staring, on the corner. The bus driver opens the door.
“Are you getting on?” he says. He sounds part-friendly, part-bored.
“The ballet?” I say this as if it’s an answer, and I point toward the side of the bus.
“Yeah, that’s on the route. Farther down Wisconsin. Maybe twenty minutes away.”
My molecules start to spin. Sorry, Jack, I think.
I get on the bus.
Where I Am
I FEEL CALMER ON THE bus, on my way somewhere. I put my bag on the seat next to me and watch the buildings go by.
My phone chimes a text. From Jack, of course.
Where are you? it says.
Don’t worry, I type. I’ll call you in a couple of hours. It’s not an answer, but I’m not sure how to tell the truth right now. And I don’t need anyone who doubts me along for this ride. After all, our patron saint, rock-and-roll princess Stevie Nicks, spent years hoping some guy might save her, and then she figured out that sh
e was absolutely capable of saving herself.
My phone chimes again. Sylvie, it says. Are you all right?
Out the window is a clear blue sky. We’re twenty minutes from the ballet (and Daniela? and maybe, my sister?). From the possibility that I’m going to figure all this out.
I’ll be fine, I type.
Then I press Send, hoping that makes it true.
A Stone, a Tree
THE WASHINGTON BALLET IS HOUSED in a boxy, cream-colored building you’d never guess held a ballet company inside it. It seems about right, though. You might think of the feathers and beads and tulle when you imagine ballet, but what matters most are the practical things: the firm, even stage floor; a dancer’s bones and muscles. This building seems like it could hold it all.
I walk straight through the door and toward the reception desk across the room.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Sylvie Blake, and I’m looking for Daniela Rojas.” I take a breath. “Is she here right now?”
The receptionist looks at me. She blinks. I realize what I must look like, wild-haired and exhausted, holding a small book of fairy tales in my hand. I smile, try to look normal and calm. I fail at it, probably.
“If she’s in class,” I say, “I’m happy to wait until she’s done.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman says, and she really does look sorry. She’s seen a lot of ballets, I imagine, so she feels sorry for poor waifs or street urchins like me. “You can leave your name, but I can’t let you into the building.”
“The thing is,” I say, “you don’t have to let me in. I’m already in. I came right through that door.” I point my thumb backward toward it.
The woman looks at me.
I look at her.
We seem to have reached an impasse. Or maybe she’s telepathically summoning a security guard. That’s possible too. But I’m not even close to giving up. In fact I’m mentally preparing my next line of argument.
“Please.” I take a step closer to her desk, and repeat myself. “I’m Sylvie Blake,” I say, like that means something. “I’m a student at the NBT Academy in New York.” I pull my phone out and scroll through the pictures, showing her. “My sister was a dancer in the company. I’m just trying to find her. She’s a friend of Daniela’s.” I know I’m getting loud, and I don’t care.
The Looking Glass Page 19
