Whispered Magics (13 page)

“Yes, there is.” Jen gulped, kind of like a frog. “Yes, there
is. You talk to Mom. You talk to Doctor Carlotta. She says it’s because you
have to think things through, but that’s just what grownups say when they know
you’re right.”

“You talk to Doctor Carlotta, too?” Kate said.

“Yes—and so does Mom. And all we talk about is you!”

The lava boiled and boiled. “So the magic wasn’t real, then. I
hate that. You lied.”

“It was real,” Jen cried. “In the stories it was, just like
when we were little!”

“No, you just did their voices. You made me think they were
real.”

“That’s the magic.”

“And you told me my stories were stupid. I did the dolls
wrong.”

Jen’s voice went high and squeaky, just like Curly Cathy’s. “I
know I said you had to do the voices better, but don’t you see, that makes the
magic better. Just like when Madame tells me I have to make my pirouettes
cleaner, or hold my head up and not down, or when the drama coach tells me to
change something. They tell me I’m wrong all the time, but when I get it right,
the magic is better.”

“That’s not magic,” Kate said.

“Yes, it is.” Jen stood up, a skinny figure in a blue and
white nightgown, with messy hair. She walked back and forth, in and out of
Kate’s view, cradling Princess Polly in her arms. “It’s magic when you become
someone else,” she squeaked. “If you do it really, really well, then the
audience, like, will do it with you. Your stories are like that; you get to be
the princess in them while the story lasts. And after, too, because you
remember it. All your stories are magic, because when you tell them, I be
them.”

“That’s not magic,” Kate said.

“Yes, it is! Yes, it is!” Jen ran to the window and back, her
nightgown flashing in and out of the light. “It is, too! When I’m Clara, I’m really
Clara, just for a little while, and those girls watching in the audience are
Clara, too. And when they go home, they can remember Clara. How can that not be
magic?”

It did sound like magic. So Jen could do magic, along with
everything else. “All I can be now is a monster,” Kate said. The lava boiled,
making her throat hot and her head ache.

“Don’t say it!” Jen was shrill, like Midnight neighing.

She came right up to the hospital bed. Kate couldn’t see her
eyes, only the shape of her head and her messy long hair. But when she turned,
light from the streetlamp shone on her wet cheeks.

“Don’t say it.” Jen leaned over Kate. Her breath smelled like
mint toothpaste. “My whole family is getting taken away. Dad is gone, and Mom
is a zombie. A mean one. She only sees me when she’s mad at me. And you, you’re
taking yourself away.”

“I’m not making myself into half a person,” Kate said. “The
car crash did that.”

“You’re letting it happen.” Jen wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“Not the car crash! You turn yourself into a, a, a zombie when I come in—and
you did it before the car crash, because you hate me!”

A monster, Kate thought. For the first time she wondered if
what Doctor Carlotta had really been trying to say was that a person could be a
monster inside, even when they fix the outside.

“So I thought, well, you don’t want me, but maybe you’ll want
the dolls and do stories with them. I could be the dolls, and then we could get
our old magic back, maybe.” Jen snuffled again, and hiccupped.

“When you told me to change the voices,” Kate said. “You
meant . . .”

“Practice. Like I have to, in ballet.” Jen put Princess Polly
on the shelf, and then Curly Cathy.

I practiced in dance but never got better, Kate thought. It
was still a hurtful thought. But my stories got better, that’s also true. She
remembered the teacher reading her story out loud, the one she’d written
Before. And everyone in the class listened, quiet, just like she listened when
Mom read. What had one of the girls said?
Your
story was so real!

So maybe magic could go from one person to a lot of people.
And not just in a bedroom, with dolls on the floor, not even in an auditorium,
with people dancing on stage and other people watching. She thought of
Anne of Green Gables
, written a hundred
years ago, words on a page. Thousands of girls—including girls who lived long
ago, that were now grandmothers and great-grandmothers—had read the words and
had been Anne. And remembered her, a magical kind of memory that everyone
shared.

I can do that, she thought. If I practice. I can do it even
half-melted.

She looked at Jen, who put Midnight next to the other dolls,
and then yawned fiercely and rubbed her eyes. Her eyes were puffy, Kate could
see in the blue light of the streetlamp. She looked tired. She’d come in every
night, but she didn’t get any chance to nap during the day.

Nothing outward had changed, really. Jen was still there,
whole, with her long hair, and Kate was still in this bed, bald and
half-melted, and it would be a long, long time before she could get up, and even
so, she might still look half-melted. But she no longer felt half-human,
turning into a cold plastic doll. Her inside felt different, because of her
sister’s magic.

Things got taken away, but a person could make new things.

“Go to bed,” she said. “Mom will be mad if you sleep too
late.”

Jen started toward the door, then stopped. “I’m sorry about
fooling you,” she said.

Kate looked at the row of quiet doll silhouettes.” I’m sorry
you had to,” she said. “When you come home, just be you, okay? Just be you.”

Cynthia leaned her forehead against the cool window
glass, watching the traffic inch forward in Mother-May-I steps on the street
below. It was time to leave, and she was a little excited, but mostly afraid.

Her mother yelled from downstairs, “Cynthia! Are you ready?”

Cynthia opened her door and her mother charged in, heels
clacking. “We’ve got to run, we’ll be late! Now let me see you.”

Cynthia obediently turned around. The outfit was brand new,
bought for this birthday party, exactly the same label the other girls were all
wearing. It had taken her mother two weeks to find an outlet selling seconds at
discount. They couldn’t find the flaw in the blouse or the jeans.

They got into the brand-new Lexus her mother had borrowed. “Your
present is on the back seat, Cynthia.”

“It’s not jewelry, is it?” Cynthia asked.

“No.” A quick, suspicious look. “You said they aren’t giving
jewelry anymore.”

Cynthia tried to sound careless. “It’s totally tacky. Only
boys can give a girl jewelry, now that we’re in middle school. Boys or
relatives.”

Her mother never argued with school pronouncements of what
was, or wasn’t, tacky. “No jewelry, no hair things, no school
things , . .it’s getting harder to find something they’ll like.”
She sighed, rattling her bracelets.

They don’t like anything I give them, Cynthia thought, but of
course she didn’t say it out loud. Her mother went to some expensive store to
ask the snippy ladies what well-to-do preteens were buying in this or that
item, and then shopped tirelessly for hours to find the same thing, or nearly
the same, for a decent price. Then she used boxes from the best stores,
carefully hoarded, and expensive wrapping paper, only gotten out for the school
birthday parties.

And no matter what Cynthia gave any of them, she never saw it
again.

As they neared Beverly Hills she felt her stomach tighten.
She’d managed to skip three parties so far this year with sickness excuses, but
there was a reason she didn’t want to skip Wallace von Diefenburg’s party. The
reason was in the garden. She could ignore the girls if the garden and the pond
were still there.

Cynthia shut her eyes against the sun glaring through the
windshield, thinking about the pond behind Wallace’s mansion, and how important
it was to see it again. If it wasn’t there . . . Well, she
thought, if it isn’t there, at least the Christmas lights will be on, and I can
take off my glasses and the lights will be pretty snowflake shapes. Pretend
magic is better than nothing.

Her mother said, “You know, it’s not too soon to talk about
your birthday. March is right around the corner.”

Fear burned in Cynthia’s middle. “Dad wants me again this
year.”

“Again?”

Her mother slammed her hand flat on the steering wheel, being
careful not to ruin one of her long painted nails. She always dressed up before
the parties, just in case a mother might come out to ask her if she wanted some
coffee. They did, sometimes, with each other, but never with her.

“Talk him out of it, okay?” she said. “Tell him how important
it is to your future. You have to socialize with these girls, and that means
entertain them. Take your turn. We’ll rent a good place at a decent address.
Get it all catered.”

“I’ll try,” Cynthia said, but it made her angry to lie even
that much. Instead, she’d make sure her dad would take her the whole weekend of
her birthday, even if it meant spending it babysitting her little half-brothers
as part of the deal.

Anything was better than a repeat of her own party in third
grade, her second year at that school. Cynthia hated to remember it, but it
always came back to her mind, like a bruise that would never go away. Of course
they didn’t have the party at her apartment on crowded, noisy La Brea, because
the other girls all had nice homes in Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, or
Malibu. Her mother had rented a fancy ice cream parlor near Rodeo Drive.
Cynthia had to sit there at the head of the long table set for twelve, wearing
a Sleeping Beauty crown with fake jewels, and watch the two girls who came poke
at their cake and exchange looks and giggles of embarrassment.

“They don’t like me,” Cynthia had cried when she got home.

Her mother said firmly, “What have you done to make them
dislike you?”

“Nothing! Nothing! But I’m different.”

“No, you aren’t. You all wear the same uniforms, and if you
don’t tell them where you live, no one will know you’re not from Beverly or
Malibu or the Palisades.”

“But they do know,” she’d cried.

“Here’s the street,” her mother said, breaking into the bad
memories. ”Help me find the number.”

Cynthia obediently scanned the curbs. Many of the mansions had
no other sign of residence. You just seemed to have to know where they were.

Long green lawns and beautiful landscaping flowed uphill from
the quiet street. “It’ll be worth all the sacrifice, when you live in places
like this,” her mother said, slowing down as she peered at the mansions barely
visible behind trees and wrought iron fences.

Cynthia’s hand rose to her mouth, unnoticed until her mother
slapped it down without looking. “No biting! Pretty nails are a sign of a girl
with poise and breeding.”

Cynthia twisted her hands in her lap as the car rolled slowly
up the last hill. The really big mansions were up high. You couldn’t see any of
them from the street.

Cynthia looked out the car window, thinking of the things she
didn’t tell her mother. How Ashleigh Sullivan bit her nails right down to the
nubs. How Emma Herrera threw up in bathrooms after she ate, just so she’d stay
skinny, and her breath always smelled like vomit.

How the girls had secret nicknames for each other, and mean
names for everyone else—how Cynthia was called Synthetica, never to her face,
but she knew anyway. Wallace had made certain of that.

Cynthia saw the number, hesitated, but her mother had already
recognized the huge gate.

“Here’s the von Diefenburg girl’s place.” And her mother began
the ritual: “Remember your manners, child.”

“Yes, Mom. Please and thank you, no seconds, smile, don’t
laugh with my mouth open, sit with my legs together, leave the bathroom as
clean as I found it.”

“And if anyone invites you somewhere after, you call.” She
handed Cynthia her expensive cell phone to put in the tiny purse she only
carried to these parties. “I’ll say yes, but I have to know, so I can borrow
the car longer.”

Cynthia took the present, thinking of Wallace’s friends up
there already, with their sleeping bags for the sleep-over. She hadn’t told her
mother—and wouldn’t—that it was a school rule that the girls in every class had
to invite the whole class to birthday parties, but only friends got invited to
sleep-overs before or afterward.

“Have a good time. And smile.” Her mother scanned the
driveway—hoping someone would appear and wave her in, Cynthia thought as she
carefully closed the door to the borrowed car. Her mother’s voice came faintly:
“Remember! To make a friend, be a friend!”

Cynthia started slowly up the driveway. She didn’t even have
to buzz. Someone was on duty watching, for the gate swung open to let her in.
For a second she had this wild idea of throwing the stupid present into a
trashcan and sneaking to the fence and climbing over. She could stay in the
garden all afternoon, and watch the pond—if it was still there.

But she had to call her mother to pick her up, and then she’d
have to make up a million lies about the party. Her mother loved to talk about
the parties all the long drive back to their apartment, hearing about every
detail.

Cynthia walked up the long driveway to the house.

A maid in a uniform waited in the big vestibule. She looked
Cynthia over from her hair to her shoes, then said with a pronounced French
accent as she pointed, “Ze party’s back dair.”

“Thank you,” Cynthia said, though the woman had already turned
away.

Cynthia was used to the maids. If they didn’t already know
your name, they didn’t bother learning it. They knew right away you weren’t one
of the girl’s real friends, just a classmate for the birthday party.

Cynthia walked slowly through three huge rooms, looking at the
antique furniture, the grand piano, the giant wall mirrors, the indoor plants.
The tile under her feet was different from last time: they had redecorated
again. Had they redone the garden as well? Fear made her stomach cramp.