Like being best friends, I said. I said it like a question. Stacey didn’t answer. Closed her eyes like she was tired and it was time for me to go home.
I look at Tom smiling at me with his red lips. Tom who just told me his name is Seth.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, yes, just take me with you, Seth, please. Away from here,” I say. I’m shaking my head. I’m in tears.
He brushes them away tenderly with his cold, cold hand. “I’ll take you, Belle,” he whispers. “I will. Definitely.”
When he says this, I shiver. Fresh goose bumps on my skin. He feels them under his fingers and laughs. Cups my cheeks in his hands. I look at his face shining like glass. I can see a shimmer of myself in his red eyes. Not at all like the girl I am. Beautiful. My true face in his eyes like universes, like mirrors.
“When?” I whisper back. “When will you?”
“When the time is right. You’ll know. I’ll give you a sign, how’s that?”
“What’s the sign?”
But he’s already slipping away from me. Smoke all around us now.
“Belle?” calls a voice. I hear footsteps in the distance.
“What’s the sign?” I shout to Tom/Seth, slipping away into the smoke.
The door bursts open. I lose my balance in the shoes and fall to Mother’s floor. I smell violets and smoke. And there’s Mother in the closet doorway.
“Belle!” she hisses. Lips a tight line. Eyes flashing with anger. She’s looking at me sitting in a heap on the floor. Her red sex shoes slipping off my feet.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Nothing.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What did I say about coming in here?”
I’m silent.
“What. Did I just fucking say about coming in here?”
I stare at the floor. My whole body ringing with the anger in Mother’s voice.
“Tell me what I SAID!”
“Not to,” I whisper to the floor. I see the gold bracelet lying there. Father’s lidless eye staring up.
“And did you listen?”
I shake my head. Tears fall. Drip, drip onto her blue carpet. The bracelet is a glowing, blurry circle by my feet.
“Who were you talking to in here?”
“No one.”
“I heard you talking to someone.”
“I was playing.”
“Why is this mirror turned around?”
“I just wanted to see myself.”
She looks at the mirror, then at me. She reaches down and picks up the gold bracelet. Your father’s bracelet. On the floor.
“It fell off,” I whisper.
Mother’s shaking her head. “You’re not to come in here again, do you understand me? Ever.” I hear a rustle and look up. Chip now behind her in the doorway, grinning at me over her pale shoulder. He loves this. That I’m finally getting what’s coming to me. Feeling Chip behind her, Mother’s face softens, remembers itself. Puddles back into its usual Beauty. She pats her S hair, disarrayed by her shouting, into place. “Well?”
Her Beauty is a lie. A trick. I nod.
“Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”
She turns away from me and grabs her white hat from the bed. That’s why she’s back. Can’t forget the hat that keeps out the sun. That will keep her from ever being tan like me. That will keep her Beauty a lie. From the doorway she looks at me, her hat in her hand.
“Go wash your face and then go to your room and stay there. Until I come back.”
She looks at Chip, shaking her head—what is she going to do with me?—and slams the door. I hear the sound of laughter in the hall. The click of their footsteps fading. And I’m alone in Mother’s blue bedroom. Staring at the floor-length mirror in the closet. No more crack. No more dust. The crack’s sealed up and the glass gleams. Empty now. Tom’s not in it anymore, though the ocean animal smell is still all around. Just my reflection. Same old face slashed with Mother’s lesser red. Except I look a little flushed, like I’ve been running or something. My heart’s pounding in my chest. My heart is full. With what?
A new secret. Our secret, Tom said.
Seth.
I close my eyes, the better to savor it.
Part III
14
Bright afternoon seeping in through a crack in the red velvet curtains. Slept long. Slept deep. Now the sound of birds and waves outside. What a sky that is, I think as I lie here. I’m in a bedroom. Whose bedroom? Oh yes, that’s right: Mother’s. Mother’s dead and I’m here in California, wrapping things up. That’s why there are palm trees outside the window. Look at them waving in the blue breeze, almost like hands waving. I wave back a little. Hi. That’s why there are wave sounds too. Mother lives by the ocean, remember?