Grim, page 5
Eli pauses. “It’s short for Figment.”
She laughs and backs out of the parking space so fast, a book in her bag smashes my legs. “Interesting, considering he actually exists.”
* * *
I sit on Lyra’s kitchen table, propped against the salt and pepper shakers. Eli holds an ice pack to his bruised left eye and another to his lower lip, where he was lucky not to have the ring pulled out. Popcorn is popping in the microwave.
“Okay, kitty, your turn.” Lyra enters the kitchen with a large plastic bin. “Time for some new clothes.”
Yes! I would pump my fist if I could.
Eli can’t hide his interest as she lifts the lid. “You have a separate compartment for each item of clothing? I’m in awe.”
“I was a little OCD when I was a kid, at least with the stuff that was important to me.” Lyra tucks a lock of her long dark hair behind her ear in a self-conscious gesture. “It’s been years since I even looked at my dolls, much less dressed them up.”
Eli puts down one of his ice packs and pulls out an orange boa. “Isn’t this from one of the Bratz girls?”
“Yeah, I owned, like, ten of those. So you must have a sister, huh?”
He holds the boa up in front of me.
Too much.
“I don’t have a sister,” Eli says without meeting her eyes.
She pauses in her search, then smiles. “You played with dolls? That’s so cool.”
He shrugs like it’s nothing, but the skin around his visible eye loosens in relief. “That’s one of the advantages to being dad-free: no one to force me to play with trucks or try out for football.” He places the boa back in the bin. “Mom didn’t care, though I think she was confused when I turned out straight.”
Lyra laughs. “I’m glad you turned out— I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with— I mean, I’m glad for my sake. Ugh, can we just pretend I didn’t say any of that?” She lifts a pair of golden slippers. “Fig must have new boots, if nothing else.”
And you thought you’d be alone if you ditched your fake friends. Ask her to hang out.
Eli picks up the other ice pack, but before pressing it to his mouth, he says, “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
* * *
Over the next six months, Eli plays a series of successful solo gigs, he and Lyra get serious, and he graduates magna cum laude. I play a role in all of these fortunate events, but only a developmental one. Mostly it’s his doing. Mostly.
During the summer between high school and college, Eli ramps up his appearance schedule, and after each performance, a music journalist or blogger sits him down for an interview. They ask the expected questions about his one-hit-wonder of a father, how Eli will avoid the same trap of overconfidence, how he’ll stay down-to-earth despite drowning in contract offers, each bigger than the last.
He always answers, “My friends keep me humble. They remind me that success doesn’t come from my efforts alone. Some of it’s luck, of course, and I feel very lucky right now.”
But each time he says it with less conviction. When they start asking about me, his “good-luck charm,” Eli gets antsy.
These days, we don’t talk much.
One night, after a standing-room-only concert at a local nightclub, a reporter with a different sort of angle wants to talk to Eli.
“Hi.” The lady is about thirty years old and carries a bag that screams organic living. “I’m doing a story about good-luck charms and successful performers—musicians, sports stars, that sort of thing. The article is called ‘Beyond Rabbit’s Feet.’” She sinks into a chair and signals the waitress. “Your little cat is quite the legend.”
“It is?” Eli glances over to the chair next to him, where I’m sitting atop his guitar case.
You just called me “it.” Not cool.
The reporter smiles at me. “So I’ve done some digging...”
“Great,” he mutters, reaching for his Coke.
“It is my job.” She flips a page in her notepad. “Turns out, your father was also known for carrying around a cat-shaped good-luck charm when he was with Boyz on the Korner.” She points her pen at me. “Is this the same one? Did he give it to you?”
Eli just sips his Coke and stares at her impassively, saying nothing.
She reaches into her bag. “I have pictures, if that would help.”
“Don’t bother.” Standing quickly, almost knocking his chair over, he sweeps me up and crams me into his inside jacket pocket. “For the record, yes, the cat was my father’s, but it’s just a gimmick. My girlfriend likes holding it during shows. It gives her something to do with her hands when she gets nervous for me.”
“If it’s just a gimmick, then why is it insured for over a hundred thousand—”
“I have to go. Good night.”
Her protestation fades behind us as Eli stalks out of the club.
Once we’re outside where it’s quiet, I ask him, Am I really a gimmick to you now?
He pulls out his phone to pretend he’s talking to someone else instead of the bulge in his coat. “Fig, I think next time you should stay home.”
* * *
I do stay home for the following gig, perched on his windowsill, angled so that I can also see the aquarium. As frustrated as Eli is with my influence over his life, he still takes the time for small kindnesses.
Just after 2:00 a.m., he pulls into the driveway. I can feel the slam of car doors from up here. Soon the stairs, then the floorboards shake with his footsteps.
The bedroom door jerks open. Eli dumps his guitar case on the bed, then paces, hands on his hips, shoulders lowered in defeat.
How’d it go? I ask, though I can guess.
“It sucked.” He sinks onto the edge of the bed. “I suck.”
You do not suck. That’s one thing I know for sure about you.
“Maybe you know, but I’ll never know. Not as long as...” He raises his head from his hands to stare at me. A look I recognize all too well comes into his eyes.
No...
He gets up and crosses the room toward me, slowly, as if I’ll bite. I wish I could bite.
“I have to do this.” Eli picks me up with the gentlest of touches, but I can feel the fury in his bones.
Don’t put me away. You’ll regret it.
“No, Fig, I won’t. Not in the long run.” He slides me into the envelope his dad sent me in. “I have to make things happen for myself. I don’t even know whether people like me because they want to, or because you’re making them.”
Fine. Let me stay here in your room. Just don’t put me away. Please. Don’t be like your father.
“I’m not like him. You were the one who told me I could succeed on my own. He needed luck, but I don’t.” Eli staples my envelope shut, as if I could escape.
I’ll miss you if you put me away. I’ll be miserable and lonely.
“No,” he whispers, on the verge of tears. “Figments feel nothing, remember?”
I’ve become more than a figment with you. I thought we were friends!
“I’ve given up friends before, when they’ve hurt me.”
But I’m still your Fig. I lower my thought-voice to a whisper. I’ll always be your Fig.
Eli’s hands begin to shake, but I still hear him clearly. “No matter what?”
The toes of my boots bend against the interior of the envelope, and my paws reach out, forever. No matter what.
* * *
In a box in the attic, I lie upon something soft—clothes, I imagine—and wait for Eli to return. Because he still believes in me, I can still feel him. Sometimes I hear him downstairs in his room, playing the song I woke him to write, the song that could make him huge.
It’s cold up here. My cat ears pick up the scrabble of insects and mice, creeping about in what must be an ideal home. My plush body conforms to the shape of whatever I lie upon, the way my soul (if I have one) conforms to the shape of whomever I—well, serve is the wrong word, but it’s better than love.
When Eli moves away—to college or stardom—I begin to fade. It takes months, maybe years. Time loses meaning. My senses dull. I forget who I am.
It ends, as always, in darkness.
Epilogue
A veiled light meets my eyes.
“There you are,” a woman whispers. “Just where he said you’d be.”
A slight rip of paper, then I’m tugged out to see her. Familiar, I think, but...was her hair always that gray?
She stands, crosses the attic, then carries me down creaky stairs, clutching me to her side.
We enter a living room, where the television is on, playing the Grammy Awards. “My friends were going to come over to celebrate,” the woman says, “but I told them I was sick. Eli wanted to make sure you saw, so I figured it should just be you and me.”
Eli...I know the name. Was I once his? Were we each other’s?
I don’t think she can hear me. She sets me on a coffee table, propped against a stack of magazines.
Wait! Was that his face on the cover?
She definitely can’t hear me, and I can’t turn to face the magazines. I strain to see out of the corner of my eye, but these eyes don’t seem to have corners.
“Coming up next,” says the voice on TV, “Grammy nominee for Best New Artist—Eli Wylde!”
Eli...
When they return from commercial break, he’s there onstage, just him and his guitar. His age shocks me—I expected to see a twenty-year-old Best New Artist, but this man’s closer to thirty. It took him thirteen years to reach this height without me, but he reached it, with the song I made him write.
When he wins, his acceptance speech is full of names I don’t recognize. The only name I know is Lyra, whom he refers to as his “oldest friend.” I feel so displaced by this; at our last time together, she was his newest friend.
Finally Eli looks straight at the camera. “Last of all, I’d like to thank my father, Gordon Wylde. We never met in person, but he gave me the most important, most real gift I’ve ever received.” He leans in close to the mic and speaks in a near whisper, holding up his award. “Fig, I’m bringing home a new pair of boots.”
* * * * *
THE TWELFTH GIRL
by Malinda Lo
Harley was the kind of girl who could get away with anything. That was the first thing Liv learned when she arrived at the Virginia Sloane School for Girls in mid-October. It wasn’t only that Harley flouted the dress code and skipped class and ignored the curfew without ever being reprimanded. There was something disquieting yet seductive about her, like walking on the edge of a cliff while gazing down at the violent beauty of the ocean breaking below. Somehow it seemed as if Harley could jump—would jump—but instead of falling, she’d spread her arms and fly like a blackbird.
Liv had known girls who acted like Harley before, but never someone quite so successful at pulling it off. Harley was definitely the most interesting thing about the Sloane School, and from the first time Liv saw her—walking into class twenty minutes late, dressed in tight jeans and boots instead of the uniform, her black hair wind-tossed and wild—Liv didn’t know if she wanted to be Harley or if she wanted to kiss her.
Harley’s friends, too, seemed to benefit from her apparent invincibility. They lived together in Eleanor Castle Hall, a small, turreted fantasy of a dorm on the edge of campus. Castle had twelve rooms, all singles, each taken by Harley and her group. Everybody knew they went out dancing every night until three in the morning, and they never got caught, even though the campus gates were locked at 10:00 p.m., and every dorm had a resident advisor who knocked on your door if you even played your music too loud. The rumor was that Harley had a rich father who had given so much money to Sloane that Harley—and everybody she liked—was immune from the rules.
Liv wanted to be immune, too. Her parents had transferred her to Sloane after she got in trouble at her old school in New York City for missing curfew too many times. Liv was pretty sure her parents had chosen Sloane because there was nothing to miss curfew for in Middlebury, Massachusetts, the quiet town where Sloane was located. If Harley somehow got off campus to party every night, Liv wanted in, but neither Harley nor any of her friends seemed the least bit interested in getting to know the new girl. Their collective cold shoulder annoyed Liv, who was used to being noticed for all the right reasons, and it only made her more determined to figure out how they got away with what they did.
One afternoon about a week after she first arrived at Sloane, Liv walked into Middlebury to buy shampoo at the drugstore. As she approached the shop, she saw a pink neon hand in the window upstairs. The sign next to the hand read Madam Sofia’s Fortunes & Favors. Liv was gazing curiously at the sign—it seemed, almost, to beckon to her—when the door next to the drugstore that led upstairs opened. A girl dressed all in black barreled out onto the sidewalk, nearly smacking into Liv.
“Hey, watch it!” Liv cried.
The girl didn’t stop, tossing her only a brief glare before she continued down the street in the direction Liv had come from. She recognized the girl; it was Paige, one of Harley’s friends. Liv watched Paige disappear around the corner, then glanced at the door she had come out of. There was a small placard in the glass window. Sale: Five Minutes for Ten Dollars. Find Your Future Here. Impulsively, Liv opened the door and went up to the palm reader’s shop.
A gray-haired woman in a green velvet dress turned from the window overlooking the street when Liv entered. The woman’s eyes narrowed on her. “Can I help you?” she said.
“Are you Madam Sofia?” Liv asked, glancing around the shop. It was stuffed with knickknacks and baskets of trinkets.
“Yes.”
“I saw your sign in the window,” Liv said. “‘Five minutes for ten dollars.’”
An odd expression passed over Madam Sofia’s face; it reminded Liv of a key turning in a lock. “Follow me,” the woman said. She led Liv through the cluttered shop to a back room hung with curtains and furnished with a round table and two chairs. Madam Sofia sat down and took out a kitchen timer from beneath her chair. She set it for five minutes and placed it on the table. “Give me your hand,” she said.
Liv sat across from the fortune-teller and placed her hand in the woman’s palm. The instant they touched, Liv felt a strange sensation run through her, as if she were a marionette and the puppeteer had tugged on her strings. She watched as the woman bent over her palm, studying the lines in her skin. The rapid ticking of the timer in the background began to make Liv nervous, as if it were counting down the seconds to—well, Liv didn’t know what, but it was unsettling, and she had the sudden urge to leave.
As if she could sense Liv’s change of heart, Madam Sofia’s hand tightened over hers. “You want to know about the girl who was just here,” she said.
“How—how did you know that?”
“It’s my job to know what brings you into my shop.”
The ticking of the timer seemed to grow louder, and Liv had the disconcerting sensation that she was shrinking while the room around her was expanding.
“You should stay away from those girls,” Madam Sofia said, her voice sounding like liquid smoke.
“What girls?” Liv’s palm was sweating.
“The girls who live in the castle.”
Castle Hall. “Harley and her friends?” Liv asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They’re dangerous. You should stay away from them.”
Liv hated it when anyone told her what to do. “I’ll hang out with whoever I want,” she said.
Madam Sofia gazed at her with small, dark eyes. Liv twitched under the scrutiny and tried to pull back, but the woman wouldn’t let go of her hand. “They are playing with forces beyond their control,” Madam Sofia said. “If you value your life, you’ll stay away from them.”
The cautionary words only stoked Liv’s curiosity. As that venturesome emotion snaked through her, she said, “I thought you were supposed to tell my fortune, not give me a warning.”
“I’m doing both,” Madam Sofia said, and she dropped Liv’s hand as if it had burned her.
Liv cradled her hand to her chest—it trembled now, free from the woman’s grasp—and stood. “You’re crazy,” she said, and turned to leave.
“Ten dollars,” Madam Sofia said, her voice ringing in the small room. “You don’t want to owe me a debt.”
Liv stopped, feeling as if the woman had grabbed her with an invisible hook. Liv reached into her pocket with her other hand—the one Madam Sofia hadn’t touched—and pulled out her wallet. She fished out a ten-dollar bill and tossed it at the fortune-teller. It caught in the air and fluttered to the floor.
Madam Sofia gave her a shrewd smile and said, “You’re welcome.”
* * *
Everything Liv learned about Harley was like finding another piece to a puzzle. The problem was, she had no idea what the puzzle was supposed to depict.
All the girls at Sloane had definite opinions about Harley and her friends. They were stuck-up; they were slackers; they were daddy’s girls. Beneath the criticism, though, was a palpable yearning to be one of them. To be part of that tight-knit pack of girls who prowled the campus like panthers, beautiful and cunning. To dance every night—no one knew where, but it had to be good—and come to breakfast with last night’s makeup on, leaning on each other and laughing about what they had seen and done until dawn.
Liv soon discovered that the only way to join them was to wait for one of the twelve girls who lived in Castle Hall to leave Sloane, and then hope that Harley chose you to take the vacant room. Two girls had left so far: Melissa Wong, last spring, and Andrea Richmond, at the start of the school year in September. It didn’t look like there would be any vacancies in the near future, which was why the sudden departure of Harley’s younger sister, Casey, was such big news.
