“Well, I don’t know if I’d agree, but . . .”
“Sophie!”
“I didn’t realize they could swim,” she says. “I apologize. Please, please don’t be angry with me.”
She grabs my hands and kisses them. “Please? I’ll fix your foot.”
I can’t bring myself to look at it again. I know it’s broken.
“I need to go to a doctor,” I say.
“Pshh,” she says. “I can fix it. And I promise I’ll do something about the ghosts. They’re just excited because you’re new.”
“Excited?”
She sighs. “I should have been honest with you. I thought it would be too much if I told you everything all at once. I didn’t want to scare you away. I wanted you to still want to be my friend and to come over and for us to have a normal experience. As friends. Who can, you know, hang out.”
Her eyes are wide and sweet and pleading. Most of the time, with Sophie, I feel like the clueless, uncool little sister, but every once in a while, I’m the big sister with the allowance money and the jeans she wants to borrow.
I don’t know. I’m an only child.
“You can get rid of them?” I ask. “The ghosts?”
“Oh, yes. It’s much easier since they’re already dead.”
I find this disturbing on multiple levels. First, I don’t appreciate her nonchalant attitude toward literal ghosts. Second, it implies she’s familiar with the difficulties related to disposing of living people.
She gathers up my pants and sweater. “Let’s talk about this upstairs.”
“How am I getting upstairs?” I ask.
She leans down and lifts my arm over her head so it’s draped across her back. She shuts her eyes hard, and a moment later, I’m weightless. She opens the door to the spiral staircase, and I whimper at the sight of it. There’s no way we’re getting up it side by side, and there’s no way I’m getting up alone.
Sophie reaches out and touches the wall. We climb the first step, her anchoring me as I float along beside her, and somehow we fit. It’s like the stairs expand for us to accommodate us.
I hear a rattling sound and peer behind us to see the lemonade tray following us up the stairs. Carrying itself.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll take care of the ghosts, I promise. I didn’t think they would bother you. I understand if you don’t want to come here anymore.”
There’s such sadness in her voice, such defeat.
“Maybe not for a swim,” I say.
Her smile is bright as a firework. “Really?”
“And I don’t want to sleep in that room,” I say. “There’s a ghost in there.”
“Is there really?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry, pet. Truly, I am.”
“It’s okay.” I’m not capable of staying mad at anyone. I don’t have the stamina.
She carries me to the conservatory. It’s basically a fancy greenhouse, a giant glass room brimming with plants. It’s balmy and smells incredible. There’s a gorgeous array of colors from all of the flowers. There are rows and rows of herbs. Vines hang from the ceiling.
I’m reminded.
“Hey,” I ask her, “did you put up a plant in my stairway?”
“Hmm?” She sets me down on a stool in a corner, next to a workbench. She wastes no time busying herself, grinding away with a stone and pestle.
“I noticed there was a plant hanging above the stairs up to my apartment,” I say. I gesture to the room around us. “Wondering if maybe you had something to do with that.”
“Hm . . . oh, yes,” she says. “Mistletoe. It’s often misunderstood and absurdly misused. It brings peace. When we met, I sensed you were in need of peace.”
“Oh. Okay.” I’m not sure how I feel about her sneaking into my stairway to hang a plant, but I know her well enough by now to know that her intentions were good.
“Is that weird?” she asks me after a minute of silence. “Was that a strange thing to do? Be honest with me, please.”
“Kind of, yeah,” I say.
“It’s been so long since I . . .” She sighs. “I don’t know how to be any other way. I suppose I’m out of touch. Terribly uncool.”
“Are you about to heal my foot with magic?” I ask her. “Because that’s pretty fucking cool.”
She giggles. Her cheeks go pink and she hides them with her hands.