could make the magic stay. Make it stronger. Use it in all the closets and be in control all the time. I hate that youâre able to do things I canât do. Do you focus your mind? Did you know it was you that made things grow and move and become even more magical?â
âIâm not sure Iâm anything special,â I say. If I was so powerful, I wouldnât have let Marla be alone with Mom yesterday and I wouldnât have ruined Eleanorâs night and I wouldnât feel the way I do right nowâsmall and breakable.
âEleanor and Astrid donât have what you have. Or what we have,â Marla says. âThey have their twin thing and Eleanorâs closet, but they need those dioramas. Youâre so used to thinking theyâre the best, you havenât even considered that maybe theyâre not.â She rubs her hands together like a villain in a movie, so I take one of her hands to make it stop.
âThat buzzing thing in there looked sharp. Like it could hurt you.â
Marla nods. âIt hurts a little, I guess, if it flies into you. But itâs so pretty. And funny. It, like, teases, you know?â
I think of the lightbulb that shrank and turned pink and playful with me. âSure,â I say. âI mean, I guess. It looked sort of mean. But it sounds like itâs, um, nice?â
Marlaâs other cold, cold hand grabs mine. I donât want to tell her how scared I am, but I can barely feel my fingers. I donât like any of it. I feel the opposite of the delicious UnWorry in my closet.
âPlease donât tell,â she says. Her eyes are too dark for her face, too dark for the sister Iâve known for all of my eleven years. And her hands are too cold to belong to a girl, especially in the summertime, but I try to ignore both of thosethings, because her voice is so soft and nice and she has that look of calm that I know Iâve felt before. âI need something thatâs mine too,â she says.
I canât argue. Especially not after last night.
We eat breakfast, and I try to talk to Marla about the bad closet and about what happened with Mom last night and about how to stay safe and have magic and how we should tell Astrid and Eleanor about what we saw.
âBeach!â Marla says in nonresponse, a cheerleader all of a sudden. Usually when we go to the lake during the summer, Marla sits on the dock and rips splinters of wood from its surface and complains about sand being in her sandwich. Today she is too eager and in this old bathing suit that must have been Eleanorâs or Astridâs before hers. It seems especially cruel to get bathing suits as hand-me-downs.
âWe should ask Mom if itâs okay,â I say. She has strange and specific rules about the lake, and new rules pop up all the time. We canât go before noon or after three. We canât go with boys. We have to be no more than five feet away from one another at all times. We have to bring a cell phone.
Asking Mom if somethingâs okay is Marlaâs favorite thing to do, but she doesnât seem that interested right now. She shrugs and leaves a note on the counter, but the note says weâre going to the store for sodas, not to the lake for aswim. Itâs a side of Marla Iâve never seen before.
âWhat do you think Eleanorâs secret boyfriend looks like?â I say on the walk to the beach, wondering if maybe I can start a conversation in one place and make it go somewhere else. Marla shrugs. She seems already irritated by the sun and the sand the moment we get to the lake.
Whatever calm she got from the closet is fading fast. I try again.
âI havenât heard from LilyLee in kind of a while. Do you think she has some new best friend?â I say. Marla shrugs.
âDo you miss anything from home?â I say. Marla shrugs.
âDid you ever hear of âThe Twelve Dancing Princessesâ? Itâs one of Dadâs
Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus