Deadly Pink (7 page)

But I still noticed.

Of course, in this crowd I would have been outclassed even if my dress had been clean and I'd had two shoes.

I was annoyed with myself for being self-conscious.

The young captain—lieutenant? admiral?—had not backed off, even though I'd ignored him. He still wore that shy but hopeful smile as he continued to hold his hand out to me, an offer, I could tell, to dance.

It was difficult not to feel flattered, even if this
was
only a silly game.

Still, I told this gallant young man, “Really. No.”

I stepped into the bewigged, bejeweled wall of dancers—and came close to colliding with a couple who only had eyes for each other.

My guy—okay, okay, I was already thinking of him that way—was right behind me, and he whisked me out of danger. But he didn't do that by pulling me back: he did it by angling me into the swirling mass of elegant dancers.

His left hand held mine; his right was gently but firmly on my back.

“I don't dance,” I told him.

He didn't need that warning: I'd already stepped on his feet twice and my own once.

His smile never wavered. Brave man.

I could blame my lack of dancing skill on my being off balance with one bare foot, or on my fear of getting those bare toes stepped on by someone wearing big boots or high heels, but really, I am just a bad dancer.

Well,
I thought,
this is one way to check out the room.

Craning my neck to scan the faces near and far for Emily's did nothing to improve my technique, but my partner was so fluid that he kept us from running down any innocent bystanders, and he never winced when my feet mistook his feet for the floor.

Despite my best intentions, despite—or maybe because of—my mind-numbing worry for Emily, despite my despising this silly, sappy game that worked under the assumption that little girls were all silly and sappy, it was kind of nice to be dancing with a cute guy, even a virtual cute guy. I was feeling ... well, not graceful, but not clumsy as a shree-legged hippopotamus, either. I realized I had sort of a death grip on my partner's hand, and I said, “Sorry”—I was saying that a lot, I noted—and loosened my fingers. My hands were sweaty, but he had white gloves on, so hopefully he couldn't feel that.

Hello,
I told myself.
He's a computer simulation. Concentrate.

There!
For a second, I thought I'd found Emily, but it was only a trick of the mirrors, my own reflection glimpsed over my escort's shoulder as we turned around and around and around the room.
Whoa!
I thought, because never before had I realized that as I'd gotten older, I'd come to resemble Emily, at least a little bit. There was hope for me yet.

“Sorry,” I said once more as this thought caused me to nearly trip and my ever-vigilant partner held me upright. “I'm looking for Emily. Have you seen her?”

He didn't answer. He only looked at me with eyes that said his devotion to me was unlimited and unfailing. Which, believe me, does have its own charm.

“Emily?” I repeated.

My mind flitted back to the gondolier, who spoke no English. But he had known Emily's name. "
Delfini?
" I said, picking out the one Italian word I remembered.

This guy's smile stayed the same, and he never missed a beat of the dance.

Maybe Emily had populated her world with an international assortment of peoples. "
Hola,
" I said, though I'd just barely squeaked through Spanish in seventh grade.

¿"
Dónde está el baño?
" That was the first phrase Señora Ramierez had taught us, as finding out where the closest bathroom is can be vital to one's survival, in a foreign land or not. What else did I remember? "
Hasta la vista?
" Okay, not Spanish. "
Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Moo goo gai pan? Shalom? Kumbaya?
Waltzing Matilda?" That about exhausted my knowledge of foreign phrases. I switched back to English. “Okay, let go.”

He wouldn't.

At least the gondolier had spoken Italian; this guy didn't seem to speak at all.

Just as that thought nibbled at the edge of my brain, there was a moment of relative quiet.

Harpsichord, violin, cello, and whatever the heck that other guy was playing paused as the musicians finished one piece and turned their sheet music to the next page. I could hear the rustle of the many-petticoated dresses, the clink of wineglasses, the soft murmur of conversation.

Of female conversation.

My back had been all sweaty, but now my dress clung cold and wet to my skin.

Only the women were talking. None of the men.
Not. A. One.
They just held their partners, looked good, and smiled.

I yanked my hand out of my dance partner's gloved grip and twisted away from the arm that encircled me. “Stop,” I commanded him.

He bowed. He backed away. Still smiling.

Creepy.

The music resumed. Alone, I stood in a sea of dancing couples who gracefully twirled their way around me. I was aware of my vulnerable bare foot, but they all knew what they were doing: no one stepped on me.

Another young man approached, offering his hand for this new dance, and I swatted his arm. Yes, I had to be heard over the music, but my voice was louder than it needed to be as I told him, “Leave.”

He did.

These guys might have been disturbing in their oddness, but the good thing was that they weren't threatening.

At least, not yet.

I made my way to a wall, where yet another young man—this one a servant, I was guessing—offered me a cup of punch.

Enough was enough. I upended the cup over his head.

He bowed, as though that were his whole purpose: Chief Servant in Charge of Having Drinks Dumped on Him.

With my back to the mirrored wall, and warning off any would-be dance partners or snack offerers with a snarl, I finally caught sight of Emily.

I elbowed my way to where she was dancing with a young man who looked pretty much like all the others: handsome and hollow. None of the dancers seemed to mind my crashing through them, doing my personal interpretation of a rampaging moose.

At this point in this particular dance, each man was holding his partner's hand in the air while the woman walked around him as though he were a Maypole.

“There
you are,” Emily said to me as she continued to circumnavigate her partner. “Did you lose yourself in the maze?”

It was disconcerting to try to keep up a conversation with someone on the move—especially as I must have been the only one who didn't understand the rules of this stupid dance. Partners linked arms with new partners and twirled away in unexpected directions. But follow I did. I bit back my answer—that
she
was the one who'd lost
me.
Could I be mistaken? Had I simply taken a wrong turn?

But I shook off my doubt. She hadn't called for me when I hadn't returned. She hadn't answered when I'd called for her. The maze couldn't be so big that she'd been unable to hear me—definitely not in the few moments we'd been separated before I'd started looking for her.

“You ditched me,” I said.

I wasn't sure she heard me over the music. Emily completed a complicated turn with her dance partner before saying, not very forcefully, “Nonsense.”

Nonsense?
She couldn't even summon up enough emotion or energy for more than a bored
Nonsense?

This wasn't the Emily I knew. That Emily had refrained from snitching to our parents when she'd been walking down the hall of our elementary school and had seen Mrs. Cooper chewing me out for talking in line. That Emily had taught me how to bake chocolate chip cookies so that I would never go hungry. That Emily had sat up with me the night Grandma died, when Mom was overcome with her own sorrow and Dad was busy contacting all the cousins. That Emily would have told me “No way!” Or “Damn right, and I'll do it again!”

But not “Nonsense.”

At this point she and her partner were in a ring with four other couples, each pair of dancers twirling around, while the ring also went around and around. I felt like a little kid watching a carousel and trying to keep track of her favorite horse. “Emily, we need to talk.”

“Later,” she told me. “After the cotillion.”

“Yeah,” I said, “lemonade on the porch.”

Smiling dreamily into the face of her young man, she said, “You never showed up.”

Oops, another partner exchange. I had to scramble to keep up, and was talking to her back. She couldn't make me doubt myself again. “Neither did you. Otherwise when those homicidal sprites moved me halfway to you, I would have ended up in the garden that's between the maze and the porch.” In the mood I was in, I wouldn't have put it past her to have intentionally positioned herself somewhere that had the chasm as its halfway point.

Sounding more amused than concerned, she asked, “Homicidal? Did those darling little sprites give you a hard time?”

That was it. My patience snapped. I wanted to shake some sense into her, some sibling loyalty. I settled for grabbing her arm to get her to stop dancing.

The guy she was with took hold of my wrist and squeezed until it hurt, until I let go of my sister—all the while still smiling his bland smile.

Never raising her voice—as though I was only somewhat annoying, like a mosquito's whine—Emily told him, “She's not welcome here.”

Not welcome? It was one thing to see it, another to hear it.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to wrench myself free. “Emily?” I said as he pulled on my arm, dragging me away from her and toward the door.

“Emily!” I called, but she just kept on twirling in that circle of dancers.

I caught hold of the door frame to slow down my unceremonious removal from the room.

“Stop!” I said emphatically, remembering how
my
dance partner had responded to a direct command. “Let go!”

Apparently, Emily's commands superseded mine.

Emily's former partner pried my fingers loose from the door frame, then he hoisted me onto his shoulder, fireman-style—rump-side up, as though this wasn't undignified enough.

“Emily!” I yelled, twisting around only to see my sister dancing with a new partner.

She'd betrayed me. She'd betrayed me and didn't even have a guilty conscience about it.

I was carried down the hall, across the festively lit porch, and down the stairs to the lawn—where I was dumped on the grass. And then Emily's strong-and-silent-type guy turned and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

Emily couldn't just reject me like that.

I was really mad now, so I picked myself up, climbed the porch stairs, and went to open the door.

One more thing new since the last time I'd been here: the door was locked.

Chapter 8

Locked Out

I
YELLED
, “Emily, you're a jerk!” I pounded the door. When that got no reaction, I kicked it. Of course, that would have been a mistake even if I'd done it with my ballet-slippered foot. But with my bare toes, it was a
big
mistake. “Emily, I hate you!” I shouted.

I regretted the words even as they were coming out of my mouth. I didn't hate her. I
greatly disliked
her at this point in our lives, but “hate” was what I felt for this pink, fluffy, infuriatingly mindless game, not my sister.

Still, what was the matter with her? What could be so wrong with her life that she would choose to lose herself in a beautiful but shallow world surrounded by beautiful but shallow guys? Didn't she realize what her rejecting me—rejecting me in favor of this sugary garbage—was putting me through?

It wasn't that there was any chance she could hear me—not with that quartet playing so loudly—but I couldn't leave my “I hate you” hanging in the air.

But I wouldn't apologize for it, either.

Instead, I amended my earlier comment. “Emily,” I grumbled, “you're a selfish jerk!”

That made my heart feel better, if not my toes.

The wraparound porch put the windows—at least the ones on the ground floor—within easy reach, so I stomped my way to where I could see into the ... well, whatever it had been before, it was a ballroom now. The window wouldn't slide up or swing open, at least not from outside, so I rapped my knuckles against the glass.

That must not have been loud enough to counteract Mozart or Strauss or Sousa or whatever that music was.

I fished the butterfly coin out of my pocket and used that to tap-tap-tap on the window, figuring maybe the sharp sound would cut through the festive hubbub of Emily's party. And yes, inside, a few of the guests on the fringe of the crowd turned to look at me. I put my face up to the glass and yelled, “Emily!
Emily!
"

Maybe they couldn't make out my words, but surely someone would understand and fetch her.

Instead, they fetched a servant, who came over and—without so much as making eye contact—pulled the velvet drapes closed, shutting me and the other nighttime nuisances out.

Maybe it was even Emily who'd given the order. I was beginning to wonder if
anything
in this game happened without her say-so.

I mentally told her,
You can’t get rid of me THAT easily
.

The evening had gotten dim, but not yet dark, so I left the porch and scrounged around the edges of the lawn until I found a slightly-bigger-than-my-fist rock.
That
would make more noise than my knuckles or a coin.

I picked the rock up and returned to the window.

Whap-whap-whap.

I had expected someone to yank open the curtain to investigate, but there was no reaction.

I adjusted my hold on the rock to make sure my fingers were clear of the largest side so I could bang harder and louder.

Thunk-thunk-thunk.

Nothing. The lively music continued to play. Nobody even came to tell me I'd be in serious trouble if I broke the glass.

Well, then...
All right, Emily. You asked for it.