The Mistaken Masterpiece (23 page)

“And just think,” says Jill Ambrose, “of all those fresh new noses, just waiting for you to break them.”

There’s an awkward silence as everyone, including me, turns to see what Livvy’s going to say. After my return to the team following the Nose Affair, nobody ever mentioned it again (in front of me, at least), and they
certainly
haven’t ever talked about it in front of Livvy and me.

The corners of Livvy’s mouth turn up ever so slightly and I swear I detect a good-natured twinkle in her eye as she looks up at all the faces staring expectantly at her.

“That’s very funny, Jill,” she says. “But I’m just getting started on
this
team.” Her face lights up further as an idea strikes her. “Hey, Michelle, can you put me in the lane next to Jill at practice next week? I want to, um,
help
her work on her kick.”

Michelle, who has heard everything, looks up in the rearview mirror. “Sure, Liv.”

“Nooo!” cries Jill.

“What are you worried about?” Rachel asks. “I thought you
wanted
a nose job. This way, you’ll be damaged goods. Your parents will have to give in. Someday you’ll be thanking Livvy.”

“What do you think, Sophie?” Carey asks. “Will she be thanking Livvy?”

And suddenly the spotlight’s on me.

• • •

While we’re stuck in traffic at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, I get a text from Nate telling me that he’s
definitely
returning to New York on Friday to take Tillie off my hands. They have to shoot a few more scenes in the city before the whole production moves up to an old inn in northern New Hampshire, where there’s already snow on the ground.

Instead of being relieved, however, I’m saddened by the thought of losing Tillie. I’ve gotten used to her sleeping on my feet, to having her face be the first thing I see in the morning, to our walks, to … well, everything about her. I’ve even forgiven her for making an afternoon snack of my favorite sneakers. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way; I caught my dad sharing a croque-monsieur with her, and when Mom stretches out on the couch to read in the evenings, she invites Tillie to lie next to her. The silly mutt is part of the family.

Half an hour later, Michelle pulls the van into a parking space across the street from St. Veronica’s. We all scramble out with soggy duffel bags slung over our shoulders, desperate to use the school bathroom after drinking way too much soda at a rest stop on the turnpike.

“Okay, girls, you have five minutes,” she warns. “I have to get the van back to the garage.”

What happens in the next few minutes is kind of a blur. After I leave the bathroom, I remember that I
meant to take my math textbook home for the weekend, so I hop on the elevator for a ride up to my locker on the fifth floor. It’s after five o’clock, and the red glow of the exit signs, the only light on the floor, is not enough for me to read the numbers on my lock. While I struggle with it, straining my eyes, the elevator opens and Livvy gets out. She takes two steps into the shadowy void before she realizes she’s not alone.

“Oh! God, you scared me,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s kind of dark up here. I’m having trouble seeing my lock. You don’t have a flashlight, do you?”

“Um, yeah, I guess. A little one.” She sounds annoyed—the old Livvy. “It’s on my key chain.” She digs around in her coat pockets, uses it to open her own locker, and then shines it in my direction. “Here.”

“Thanks. I forgot my—”

But there’s no point in continuing; she’s engrossed in a message on her phone. Once again, I have ceased to exist.

I toss my math book into the duffel with my wet towel and swimsuit and head for the elevator at the end of the hall. Normally, I would just take the stairs, but a peek through the doors tells me that the stairs are even darker than the fifth floor, and climbing down several flights in the dim, nearly empty school sounds really scary to me. When the elevator arrives, Livvy runs down the hall toward me, shouting a good-bye to whomever she’s talking to on the phone.

I push the button for the first floor as the elevator
door closes with its characteristic
cha-clunk
. We start our slow descent in silence—fourth floor, third floor … All of a sudden, the elevator jerks to a stop with an earsplitting
ssscccrrreeeeeeeeeccchhh
.

And then the lights go out.

“What did you do?” Livvy asks accusingly.

“I didn’t do anything. I just pushed the button.” I can’t see Livvy at all—the darkness is absolute. “Do you have that flashlight? There must be an alarm button on this thing.”

Once again, Livvy finds her key chain light and shines it on the control panel. The alarm button rings a surprisingly loud bell, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Michelle
has
to be able to hear that,” I say. “She’ll figure out how to get us out of here.” I ring the bell a few more times for good measure, then press my ear against the crack in the door.

“What are you
doing
?” Livvy asks.

“Listening.” I push the alarm button some more, and then try another tactic: when in doubt, scream. “
Hello! Michelle!
Can you hear me?”

Livvy and I stay perfectly still, not even breathing, listening for a sign that someone’s trying to get us out. But there’s nothing.

“Hmmm,” I say. Then I remember the last time I was trapped in a small space: Rebecca and I were locked in a closet that we’d crawled into when we were convinced there was a secret passage between Mr. Chernofsky’s violin shop and the apartment upstairs.
And to get out we … my phone! Of course! Jeez, how did I not think of that sooner?

Although I’m sure she arrived at it in a very different way, Livvy has reached the same obvious solution at exactly the same time. The glow of her cell phone lights up the elevator.

“No service,” she says. “Super.” Which
really
sounds like the Livvy of old.

I look at mine. “Hey, I have one bar—oops, nope. Spoke too soon. Nothing. No service.” I don’t tell her that my battery is down to its last gasp, and that even if I had service, my stupid phone would probably die before I got through to anyone.

“Ring that bell thing again,” Livvy demands. “Michelle has to be there. She wouldn’t just leave us.”

She wouldn’t, right?

An hour goes by.

We’re sitting on the cold linoleum floor.

In the dark.

And neither of us has said anything for a long, long time. Occasionally, Livvy lets loose with a big, dramatic sigh and mutters something under her breath. She doesn’t want me to respond; she’s just making sure I know how miserable she is, and that she blames me for our predicament.

“I have some food in my bag,” I say. “My dad always packs me extra, just in case.”

“In case you get stuck in an elevator?”

“I guess,” I answer, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “It’s just some veggies. You want some?”

“No.”

A few more seconds of silence, then, “Um, okay. A few.” She shines the light just long enough to see where I’m holding the plastic bag full of lukewarm carrots, celery, and red peppers.

We munch quietly—well, as quietly as you can munch raw vegetables—in the darkness and …

Another hour passes. It’s now almost ten after seven; I’m supposed to meet Raf at Lincoln Center in twenty minutes and I can’t even call to tell him I’ll be late. He’s going to
hate
me.

“This stinks,” I say.

“Uh,
yeah.
”

“I can’t believe they just left us here. We could be stuck in here till Monday.”

“Somehow I think
your
parents will start to wonder what happened to you long before then.”

“Well, I’m sure yours will be worried, too,” I say.

It feels like the right thing to say in this situation, even though I have no idea if it’s true.

Livvy scoffs, and in the dark I swear I can
hear
her eyes roll. “Ha. That’s a good one.
My
parents giving a crap about me.”

“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says curtly.

After thirty seconds of silence, I suddenly blurt out, “I know it was an accident.”

“What was?”

“When you broke my nose.”

“Oh. That.”

Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen, or the ridiculousness of the situation—stuck in a school elevator on a Saturday night—but Livvy starts to giggle. Probably because I’ve never actually heard her make a happy sound before, my first thought is that she’s sobbing because she thinks her parents don’t care about her, and I freak out a little, because I have absolutely no idea how to deal with
that
. Should I ignore it? Offer a shoulder to cry on? Luckily, the second wave is undoubtedly laughter. Of course, her laughter makes me nervous, too; this is Livvy Klack, after all. In my experience, if she’s laughing, it must be
at
someone—and right now, I’m the only someone in the vicinity.

“What’s so funny?” I ask tentatively.

“I’m sorry, I have a little confession to make. It
was
an accident, I swear. I never meant to hit you. But after it happened … I didn’t feel guilty. At all. I felt
good
.” She giggles again, and this time, it’s contagious.

“Livvy! That is so mean.”

“I
know
. I’m terrible.” Giggle, giggle.

Wait a minute. What is happening here? Is it possible that Livvy Klack and I are … having a moment?

Mr. Eliot is always yammering on about how “life imitates art,” and I’m afraid this whole wacky situation with Livvy and me and the elevator is a perfect example. Maybe I’d better explain.

Remember that short story that Livvy and I worked on together in Mr. Eliot’s class? The one where we made the really clever graph that he liked so much? The story is called “The Interlopers” by Saki, and it’s the story of two men who have hated one another their whole lives because of an old legal dispute over which of them owned a certain piece of land. One day—a cold, snowy day, in fact—they run into one another out in the woods, and just as they’re about to fight it out like men, a tree falls, pinning them both to the ground.

Sound familiar? Except for that part about the tree, that is. Weird, huh?

At first, they continue their bickering, each one threatening the other, bragging about all the bad things he’s going to do when
his
men show up. But they’re both
lying. Nobody knows they’re out there, and nobody’s coming to rescue either one of them. And it’s getting darker and colder by the minute.

Finally, one of the men comes to his senses. He remembers that he has a little wine in his coat, and after a bitter struggle between his conscience and the half of him that still hates the man he’s trapped with (that would be, ahem, the internal conflict of which we spoke so eloquently in class), he offers to share it. At first, the other guy refuses, but I guess the cold finally gets to him, because the next thing you know, they’re chattin’ it up like a couple of, well, twelve-year-old girls stuck in an elevator.

I explain my life-and-literature-connection theory to Livvy as she listens in silence. Sitting there in complete darkness is maddening; now that we have had this little breakthrough, I’m dying to see her face. I confess that a small(ish) part of me is convinced that she’s making faces and obscene gestures at me in the dark.

“It
is
kind of ironic, I guess,” she admits. “Especially since we worked on that story together. But I think you’re forgetting something really important. The
ending.
”

“What, about the … Oh,
yeah.
”

Livvy is right. The ending of “The Interlopers” isn’t exactly like a hug from a warm puppy; it’s more like a bucket of ice water in the face.

And suddenly that elevator is a very dark and very cold place.

• • •

A few minutes after eight. By now, Raf has called and texted me several times (or at least I hope he has) and, as a last resort, probably called the landline in my apartment. I’m hoping—praying, even—that Mom is home, not freaking out too badly, and starting to put two and two together. A call to Michelle, and then another to Margaret, who will call the other girls on the team to find out where I went after we got back to the school. My best friend is an honest-to-God genius, and if
anyone
can figure out where I am, it’s Margaret.

“How’re you doing over there, Liv?” I ask. It’s a strange feeling, me asking—sincerely—how she is.

“My butt hurts.”

“Yeah, mine too. I’d sit on my coat but then the rest of me would freeze. I had no idea it got so cold in here on the weekends.”

“Uh, Sophie?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question? About yesterday, at the diner.”

Uh-oh. “Um, yeah. What?”

“I was just wondering—was that really just a coincidence that you guys were there at the same time as me? The reason I’m asking is because we—er, I—go there almost every Friday and I’ve never seen you there. But one other time, two girls with a dog were following me, and I swear it was you and that Leigh Ann girl. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”