What a Doll! (7 page)

On her way home Emmy stopped at the drugstore and examined her choices. She was surprised by how many different colors there were on display. She'd never thought much about nail polish, actually, and now realized there were people whose job it was to name the colors. What a cool job! Satin Slipper. Peony. Candy-Apple Red. And finally, Midnight, which was the one she grabbed, brought to the counter, and paid for.

When she got home, Emmy emptied her backpack out onto her desk as usual. Her books, her notebooks, her nail polish, her pens and pencils, and her little doll. She picked up the bottle of nail polish and stared at it. Then, as suddenly as she'd gotten the idea to paint her fingernails black, she realized how crazy it was. She imagined Lizzy's table at lunch with Sophie and Cadence and their snarky laughter. She remembered the model in the magazine and how tall and elegant she was, and the outrageous clothes she was wearing. Emmy was neither tall nor elegant and owned nothing that could even remotely be considered outrageous. She sighed. Who did she think she was fooling?

Okay, it's only nail polish,
she thought, trying to talk herself down. Then she saw the doll out of the corner of her eye. She was not as into it—or the lavender candle—as she had been earlier in the week. In fact, looking at it now, she wondered what made her buy the silly little doll. But then she had an idea for a new use for it.
Maybe I'll just start by testing out the black nail polish on the doll,
she thought.
A practice run.
She reached for the doll and set it in front of her. She gave the small glass bottle a good shake and twisted open the cap. Then she carefully, delicately applied the black lacquer to the tips of the doll's tiny fingers. She had to really focus because the fingertips were so small, but she was able to dab a dot of the enamel on each of the doll's fingertips.

When she had finished, she tilted her chair back and examined her work.
Interesting,
she thought.
It looks kind of cool.
Now that she saw it on the doll, she decided to paint her own nails. Once she'd finished and her nails had dried, she started on her math homework, which was a breeze. Soon her dad called her downstairs for dinner.

Like lunch, dinner was always a bright spot in Emmy's day. Her parents had a rule that the four of them sit down together each night, no matter how busy they all were. Her dad liked to do something called “highs and lows,” which was when everyone went around the table and said the worst and best parts of their day. Emmy didn't even have to think about her low.

“My low kind of lasted all day,” she admitted. Her mom gave her a sympathetic look, and her dad raised his eyebrows. Sam seemed involved with his meat loaf.

“Do tell,” her dad said.

“Lizzy broke her leg,” Emmy told her parents, then realized by the looks on their faces that they already knew. Of course they did; Lizzy's mom would have told them. “And she was the center of attention all day, like no one had ever seen a cast before. Everyone was falling all over themselves trying to help her.”

Her mom put down her fork. “I don't suppose she asked you for any help,” she said gently.

“That's right,” Emmy said. “She basically ignored me all day. Then in English she wrote this really overly dramatic haiku that she read to the class. I think she loves the attention.”

Her parents were silent.

“She's such a drama queen!” Emmy exclaimed as tears sprung to her eyes. She didn't even feel like finishing her meat loaf, which was one of her favorite meals.

“Oh, honey,” her mom said. “That sounds really hard.” Her dad nodded in agreement.

“Did your day have a high point?” her dad asked. Emmy had to think hard to find something good to say.

“My math homework was really easy,” she said reluctantly.

“That's great,” her mom said. “You've been doing really well in math this year. Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you do something nice for yourself tonight? Since you've finished your homework, why don't I set up the TV in your room and you can watch a movie before you go to sleep?”

Emmy had to admit that sounded pretty good.

“Can I watch it too?” Sam asked.

“For a while,” Emmy said.

Sam smiled, pleased. “Hey, cool nails,” he said to his sister.

“Yeah, honey,” their mom added. “That's a bold new look for you.”

“Thanks,” Emmy said, holding out her fingers and admiring them.

Later, as she got under the covers and her mom popped in a DVD, Emmy felt like she could stay in bed forever. In fact, it felt so good to be in bed that she found herself nodding off and falling asleep before the movie even really got going.

She had crazy dreams, bits and pieces of weirdness that she wouldn't even be able to remember—much less describe—when she woke up. But one part she would remember. It was about Lizzy.

Lizzy, sitting at her kitchen table, a bowl of strawberries next to her and a bunch of rainbow-colored permanent markers strewn about. She didn't look like her usual carefree self. She looked horrible—terribly unhappy. She clutched a bottle of black nail polish reluctantly but so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Slowly, Lizzy pried open the bottle and began painting her thumbnail black. The way she was acting, it was as if someone was making her do it, as if she was being forced to proceed but was trying to fight it. Once she had applied a few strokes, Lizzy held out her thumbnail and examined it, frowning. She repeated this procedure for each of her ten nails and when she was finished, she held out her hands and grimaced.

“What, you don't like it?” Emmy asked, looking on. She felt wild and cruel. “I think it looks cool.”

Emmy woke up with a start and tried to fit together the pieces of her dream. Too often, remembering her dreams was like holding a handful of dry sand—when she tried, the sand just slowly slipped through her fingers. All she could remember about her dream was that it was about Lizzy, and that Lizzy was very unhappy about her fingernails. But Emmy remembered very clearly what she had said to Lizzy at the end of the dream:

What, you don't like it? I think it looks cool.

Those were the very words Lizzy had said to her after the horrible haircut. Emmy remembered feeling very happy in the dream . . . happy about Lizzy's unhappiness. She wasn't proud of this feeling, but there it was.
Maybe that's why I had the dream,
she figured.
I'm wishing bad things on Lizzy.
She felt bad about that, too, but couldn't help it.

There was something else she couldn't help doing. Something she had never done before. She got out of bed and peered out her window and into Lizzy's room, breaking their rule against spying on each other. Lizzy seemed to be getting ready for school, just like Emmy. She was taking books off her desk and putting them in her backpack. She definitely didn't see Emmy, which was how Emmy wanted it.
Forget about the no-spying rule,
she thought.
She's been so horrible to me she deserves it.

Later that day Emmy sat with Hannah at lunch like usual, and like usual she felt lonely. She didn't eat much. Her mouth was starting to feel sore from her braces being tightened yesterday. She looked over at Lizzy's table. Sophie and Cadence were looking at Lizzy's hands and laughing. Lizzy seemed embarrassed and looked like she was trying to hide her hands. What was going on? Emmy had to know. She got up to bus her tray and walked slowly past their table, glad for once to be ignored by them.

“It's just really not your color,” Sophie was saying to Lizzy with a note of disdain in her voice. “What were you even thinking?”

“I honestly don't know,” Lizzy answered. “I got in a really weird mood.”

“So you went out and bought black nail polish?” Cadence asked, incredulous.

“Um, no,” Lizzy muttered. “I used a black Sharpie.”

Then Emmy got a glimpse of the focus of the conversation: Lizzy's fingernails. They were black. It was a very dramatic look against her pale skin.

And Lizzy also looked sort of horrible, actually, like she hadn't been sleeping. For a minute Emmy felt bad for her. She knew how it felt to be spoken to that way. And she really missed Lizzy. So when she saw Lizzy in the hall a few minutes later as they both headed to English class, she gave Lizzy a gentle nudge and slowed down to her pace. Lizzy walked pretty slowly with the crutches, and today Sophie and Cadence weren't carrying her bags or helping her. Would they really be ignoring her just because she had black fingernails?

“How are you?” Emmy asked, trying to sound casual. But Lizzy didn't hear her. She seemed distracted.

Emmy repeated herself. “How are you?” she asked Lizzy a little louder this time. Lizzy slowly looked her way, a totally blank expression on her face.

“Hell-
oooo
?” Emmy waved her hand in front of Lizzy's face. “Earth to Lizzy, oops, I mean Liz,” she said. She wanted Lizzy to notice her fingernails.

“How crazy is it that we both decided to try black nail polish on the same day?” Emmy asked Lizzy, laughing nervously.

But Lizzy still ignored her as she walked into the classroom.

So Lizzy didn't see the look on Emmy's face as her expression of hurt and anger at being ignored suddenly melted into shock as she began to make the connection between yesterday and today.

The buying of the black nail polish, the applying of the black nail polish to the little doll, the dream in which Lizzy was putting on the black nail polish as if being forced.

It's like whatever happens to the doll, happens to Lizzy,
Emmy thought.

The next thing she thought was that she was crazy for thinking such a ridiculous thing. As she sat down in her usual seat behind Lizzy, she took her notebook and English textbook out of her backpack and listened to the chatter around her.

“I broke my leg in third grade,” a boy named Max was saying to Lizzy.

“How'd you do it?” Lizzy asked Max.

“Skiing in Vermont,” Max said. “How did you break yours?”

“I fell down the stairs,” Lizzy answered, rolling her eyes. “I'm such a klutz,” she added.

Whatever happens to the doll
does
happen to Lizzy,
Emmy thought again. And this time the thought was like a bomb exploding inside her head. She couldn't take a full breath.

Spinning the doll around on my desk made Lizzy throw up. Sam threw the doll down the stairs, and she broke her leg. I painted the doll's fingernails with black nail polish and Lizzy did the same to
her
fingernails.

She'd forgotten until this moment that the woman in the shop had told her to give the doll a name, and Emmy had said the first name that popped into her mind: Lizzy.

What a doll,
she thought, remembering the phrase her grandmother sometimes used when someone went out of their way to be nice. But in Emmy's mind, at this moment, the phrase sounded nothing like her grandmother's expression. It sounded sinister. It was indeed a special kind of doll that could do special kinds of things.

And then one thought reverberated in Emmy's head as she directed it like an invisible laser beam right at Lizzy's sassy and stupid short blond haircut:

You'll be sorry for what you've done to me, Lizzy Draper. You'll be sorry for what you've done.

CHAPTER 8

On the walk home Emmy thought about Sophie and Cadence. Besides being angry with Lizzy, she realized just how angry she was with Lizzy's new best friends, too. It seemed like they had influenced Lizzy to not be friends with Emmy—that they had swooped down and plucked Lizzy away from the little nest of friendship she and Emmy had once shared, like she had seen birds of prey do on the nature channel. Everything had been going fine until Lizzy had become friends with them, at which point she had totally blown Emmy off.

I just want things to be the way they were,
Emmy thought.
I just want it to be me and Lizzy, best friends, no one else. Lizzy's the only friend I need, and I want to be the only friend
she
needs.

And now, astonishingly, there seemed to be a way to make anything happen, as far as Lizzy was concerned. How could this little doll have such magical powers? Emmy
knew
there had been something very strange about that woman in the back room at Zim Zam.

She also knew this: Sophie and Cadence were mean, and so it would be easy to turn them against Lizzy. It was just a matter of how. Then Emmy could come to Lizzy's rescue and be her friend again. The only friend she needed.

And tonight was the perfect night to begin. It was Thursday night and the beginning of a long weekend. She'd overheard Lizzy in the hall telling someone she was having a sleepover party at her house that night, with Sophie and Cadence. The sting of what had happened at one of Lizzy's sleepovers last weekend, and not being invited to this one that would be going on just a few yards from her own room, gave way to a different feeling, and a plan took shape in Emmy's head.