I
sat on the couch with my suitcase between my feet and my cell phone in my hands. It was eight-twenty-seven. My mother had left two hours before.
I could have just taken a taxi to the train station and gone to Bruce's house, the way I'd threatened, except Bruce wasn't answering his phone and I wasn't about to show up in New Jersey in the middle of the night with nowhere to sleep. I groaned and flipped my phone open. There was no one I could call. My life was ruined. My mother was a liar, my parents were secretly plotting to have another baby, and Amber Gross's bat mitzvah was the very next morning and I didn't even have a dress to wear.
I stared at the telephone's blank screen. Aunt Elle? Samantha? My grandmother? None of them seemed right. "I want to run away," I said out loud to the empty room. "I want to run away and join the circus." My telephone buzzed in my palm. I looked down and saw
MOM
on the screen and stuck the phone in my pocket without answering. My father had taken me to the circus once. I could remember the smell of popcorn and sawdust, the beautiful aerialist in her spangled pink-and-silver leotard hanging over us, glittering like an angel as she twisted and spun.
A plan--hazy, confused, maybe completely impossible, but a plan anyhow--was starting to form in my mind. I walked to the foot of the stairs, then back to the couch. I'd need money...plane ticket...but oh, if it worked, I could make my mother so scared. I could make her sorry. Maybe I could even get some answers on my own, right from the source, the story that nobody wanted to tell me.
You will be your own responsibility,
the blended-family bar mitzvah lady had said, and if I could pull it off, this would be the ultimate example of being an adult, going out in the world and getting what I needed for myself. Plus, it would be in the family tradition. My mother, or "Allie," had run away to Los Angeles. Bruce had run to Amsterdam. I could run, too.
I ran into my mother's office, rummaging through her desk until I found what I needed. I grabbed my suitcase, locked the door behind me, and walked fast down the sidewalk toward South Street, where I could get a cab.
Ten minutes later I held my breath and pressed my finger against the Marmers' doorbell. If it was Mrs. Marmer, that would be bad. If it was Tamsin, that would be even worse. But luck was with me, because Todd was the one who opened the door and looked at me.
"Avon lady?" he inquired.
"Can I come in?" I whispered.
He raised his finely arched eyebrows. "Are you on the lam?"
"I don't know what that means," I said. "Is Tamsin home?"
Todd opened the door, lifted my suitcase, and gestured toward the staircase, which felt about a mile long as I made my way to the top. Tamsin's room was at the end of the hall. The door was closed. I held my breath and knocked. "It's Joy," I said before she could answer. "Can I come in?"
For a minute there was silence, and I was sure she was going to say no, or nothing. But after a minute I heard the squeak of bedsprings, then the door opened up and Tamsin stood there staring at me.
"Hi," I said. She was wearing an old white shirt and pajama bottoms. I looked down and saw pink polish glittering on her toenails. When had she done that? I wondered. Was she trying to look like Amber, secretly, in a way nobody would notice? Those pink toes shining above her long white feet made my heart feel like it was breaking.
"What do you want?" Tamsin asked.
I looked at her, trying to think of how to answer, when she sighed, opened the door wide, and plodded back to her bed.
Tamsin's room is small, and it feels even smaller because every inch of the wall is plastered with pictures: blow-ups from her graphic novels, drawings of regular girls mixed with superheroes. Some of them I recognized from the books she read:
Summer Blonde
and
Plain J.A.N.E., Fun Home,
and
Ghost World.
Some of them she'd drawn herself. There was a drawing of her and me and Todd, sitting in a row on a bench with our lunch bags in our laps, and one of me and Amber Gross, looking like twins, walking down the Philadelphia Academy hallway with our flat-ironed hair flying out behind us, twice as big as we were in real life.
Tamsin saw where I was staring and tried to stand in front of the picture. I pointed at it. "I look like Lyla Dare or something." I wasn't quite sure how to say what I was thinking, which was that Amber and I looked almost menacing, tall and strong and pitiless, like we'd stomp on anyone who stood in our way.
Tamsin tilted her head sideways in a gesture that wasn't quite a shrug. "What's with the suitcase?"
"I'm running away," I said. I hadn't known it was true until the words were out of my mouth, and once I'd said them out loud, there was no going back.
"You're going to miss Amber's bat mitzvah."
"I don't care," I said.
Tamsin turned toward the wall, toward her drawings. "What's wrong?" she finally asked. "Why are you here?" Her voice did not sound very best-friendly. "Did Amber break up with you?"
"No," I snapped. "You know what? Never mind." I reached for my suitcase handle. "I shouldn't have come here," I muttered, and I was almost out the door when Tamsin said, "What do you need?"
She sat down on her bed. Last summer we'd sewn different-colored patches to the pink-and-red-patterned quilt, trimmings from jeans we'd outgrown, pieces of our old show-choir robes.
"A favor. A big one." I sat down on the bed across from her.
"What?" She yanked up her sweatshirt zipper and flipped her hair back over her shoulders, all business.
"If I wanted to get to Los Angeles by myself, without my parents knowing, do you think I could?"
"Did you get invited to another bar mitzvah?" she asked.
"No, it's...It's something else. It's my grandfather. My mother's father. I e-mailed him, and I want to go and meet him."
Her laptop was folded on her bedside table, next to the lamp that she'd decorated with red and gold bottle caps, glued in rows to its base. She reached for it and opened it up. "Where will you stay? With Maxi Ryder?"
"No! No, she can't know. Nobody can know. I'll stay in a hotel." I rolled my suitcase back and forth with the tip of my foot. Excitement was building inside my chest, making my fingertips tingle.
"Do you have enough money for that?" Tamsin asked.
"Nope. But I have this." I reached into my pocket and pulled out the thing I'd taken from my mother's desk, a credit card she'd never used, never even activated, still in its heavy cream envelope, attached to a square of paper with
WELCOME TO WHITE CARD
written on it in gold script. I handed it to Tamsin, who stared at it, then at me.
"You've got a White Card?"
"It's my mom's, but it's never even been activated. It probably won't work. I just--"
"Hang on." Tamsin grabbed her laptop. Her slender fingers danced over the keyboard. "Checking Wikipedia...Okay, it says here that White Cards are never supposed to expire. They have unlimited periods of usage and no credit limits, they entitle you to automatic upgrades on seventeen international airlines, sixty-three hotel groups worldwide..."
"How do I activate it?"
"You'll probably need your mother's social security number and her date of birth."
"I've got those."
Tamsin stared at me. "You know your mother's social security number?"
I smiled smugly. "Check it out." Finally my mom's paranoid overprotectiveness was going to pay off. In the front pocket of my backpack, where my mother had insisted I carry it for years, was my Medical ID card, with my name, date of birth, address, health conditions, insurance information, and all of that for both my parents, including their dates of birth and social security numbers. Tamsin stared at it for a minute, then shook her head. "Wow. It's a good thing you never lost this. It's, like, an engraved invitation to identity theft."
I waved away her concerns.
"You might need something else," Tamsin said. "Something nobody else would be able to know, like her pet's name or her mother's maiden name."
"I could guess." My heart was rising in my chest.
Nifkin,
I thought. The magic word was "Nifkin."
"Then you just dial the number on the back, get the card activated, and according to this..." I heard her fingers clattering over her keyboard. "You'll be connected to your personal concierge."
"Good," I blurted. "Great. Thank you, Tamsin, seriously, thank you so much!"
Todd brought us the telephone, ceremoniously carrying it to the room and laying it on the bed between us like a totem, before returning to his regularly scheduled
Project Runway
marathon. Tamsin and I sat facing each other, cross-legged, me with the White Card in my lap, Tamsin with her back against the wall and, in her lap, a list of things I might need to know: previous addresses, social security numbers, Grandma Ann's last name, the word "Nifkin."
I called the toll-free number and plugged in my card number. I'd expected a computer, but a live woman with a smooth voice answered my call. "Good evening, Ms. Shapiro. My name is Riley. How may I be of service this evening?"
"Hi! I, um, I never activated the card," I said.
"The card was activated when you signed for it with our messenger," Riley said. "However, for security purposes, can you please verify your home telephone number and social security number?"
I rattled them off, glad for once that I had a deep voice, because it would make me sound older than I really was. Tamsin, who was reading the numbers over my shoulder, gave me a thumbs-up.
"Your date of birth?"
My heart hitched in my chest as, for one panicked moment, I couldn't find the right dates on my medical card. Tamsin pointed them out and I read them off, exhaling after Riley accepted the number without comment.
"How can I assist you this evening?"
"I need to make arrangements for my daughter, Joy Krushelevansky, to travel to Los Angeles tomorrow morning."
"Unaccompanied?" Riley asked.
"That's correct."
"She's thirteen?"
"Yes."
How'd she know that?
I mouthed to Tamsin, who shrugged.
"We can ticket her as an unaccompanied minor if you like. Most airlines give it as an option for travelers thirteen or under."
Could it really be this easy?
I wondered as she rattled off the possible times that I could fly in the morning. I booked a one-way ticket, leaving the next morning at ten
A.M.
I'd figure out how I'd get back to Philadelphia once I was there.
"Of course, the ticket will qualify for an automatic upgrade," said Riley. "Will you be needing any tickets?"
It took me a minute to sort out that the "you" she thought she was talking to was my mother, not me. "I...um...no, I'll be flying to Los Angeles later in the afternoon. I have a script out there that I'm..." There was a word for this. What was the word for this?
"Doctoring!" Tamsin whispered.
"Doctoring!" I said. "So the ticket's just for Joy. Also, she needs to be able to check in to the hotel by herself, because I'm not sure what my day will look like. I'll give her the card, of course--"
"Will she be meeting you there?" Riley interrupted me smoothly. "The reason I ask is that, unfortunately, most hotels won't let minors check in by themselves."
"Um...well, I'll be there eventually."
"I'll make a note in the file and call the hotel to follow up. Is there a number where you can be reached?"
I gave Tamsin's number.
"And does Joy have ID?"
"I have...I mean, I have for her a passport. I have a passport for her." Tamsin was making frantic throat-cutting motions. Oh, boy. Maybe Riley would just think that English wasn't my first language, or that I'd had some kind of head injury since I'd gotten the card.
"I'll call the hotel to let them know." Riley paused. "I'm sure, of course, that Joy is a responsible young lady?"
"Very," I assured her.
"Will you be needing anything else? A car and driver to meet Joy at the airport?"
"Sure," I said giddily. "Sure, why not?" And find my grandfather, too! Maybe the White Card people could do that. Maybe they could do anything.
"My pleasure."
I hung up the phone and grinned at Tamsin, who dropped her head without meeting my gaze.
"What?" I asked.
"I have to tell you something."
I stared at her and waited. Finally she said, "You know that Internet story about your mom writing the Lyla Dare books?"
I nodded, with a dawning idea about where this was going. Tamsin paused. "Well, I was the one who told them."
I stared at her. "You did? But why?"
"I was really mad at you," Tamsin said miserably. "You kept blowing me off for Amber. So I found a website where you could send an anonymous tip..." Her voice was almost a whisper. "I thought you'd think it was Amber and then you'd be my friend again."