Tangerine(28)

“I’m not,” he said, pulling me closer with a laugh. “I promise.” He grew quiet then, and as I leaned up against him I could feel the rise and fall of him, could smell the scent that was uniquely his—something like sun and sand and bit like laundry that had been left out for an afternoon. I moved closer. “It’s just,” he began, “it’s just the way she looks at you.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” When he did not respond, I turned to look up at him. “How does she look at me?” I demanded.

He looked away, as if embarrassed, as if he were hesitant to say the words aloud. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try,” I said, desperate to have the answer.

But he only remained silent.

I turned, feeling a shudder run through me. I was quiet then, pressed up against his warmth, feeling as though I would never be warm. Together, we watched the sun set in front of us.

ONE MONTH AFTER I MET TOM, things began to disappear.

IT WAS LITTLE ITEMS AT FIRST. A tube of lipstick that I couldn’t locate. A necklace that went missing for a few days, only to turn up in a spot I knew I had already checked. A scarf that I could not remember wearing and that appeared in the laundry bin, ready to be washed. I thought nothing of it at first, and later, when I realized it must be Lucy, I only assumed that it was how sisters lived—borrowing things from one another without asking, the mutability of their wardrobe and accessories an unwritten law between them.

But then one day in early May, I walked into our room and found her standing in front of the mirror, wearing my clothes. I blinked. It wasn’t simply one item—a scarf or a sweater—it was everything, from head to toe. I recognized my ivory dress with the eyelet fabric and Peter Pan collar, a smart beaded cloche that my aunt had purchased for me the previous winter. Lucy was standing, her head tilted to the side, watching herself in the mirror as she pulled at the waistline in an attempt to adjust the fit, but the dress hit strangely on her body, as if she were trying on clothes that had once been worn by her younger self.

It took a few moments before her eyes met mine—before she realized that she was no longer in the room alone. “I’m sorry,” she said, quickly removing the hat. Her face had turned a deep crimson.

“No, don’t apologize.” I smiled, trying, and failing I suspected, to dispel the strangeness of the moment. We had not spent much time together lately—I was either in the darkroom or with Tom—and the moment seemed rendered somehow more strange, more unsettling, by our distance. “You’re free to borrow it whenever you like,” I finished quickly.

Despite my words, she hurried to remove the clothing. She placed the hat on my bed, looking more angry than embarrassed, I thought. The dress she lifted from her body, quickly and with such force that I worried she might tear the seams. It was all over in a matter of seconds, and once more Lucy stood before me in one of her own outfits, her face blazing with an emotion I could not quite interpret.

In the end, I thought it best to ignore the incident, turning from her and taking a seat behind my desk, arranging and rearranging my books until the tension in the room settled and then passed, as if nothing had happened at all.

BUT THEN, TWO WEEKS LATER, as Lucy readied herself for the morning, I found myself startled by the item she had clasped around her wrist: my mother’s charm bracelet, that thin piece of once-gleaming silver that had now worked itself to a tarnished gray. It was nothing valuable, of course, and yet, I still counted it among my most prized possessions—a fact that Lucy well knew. I had spent hours, after my mother’s death, studying the charms. A small couple, the girl in red, the boy in blue, preparing to ski. A bubble gum machine, with tiny little colored beads serving as the candy. A violin. I knew each and every one by heart, had memorized all their intricate details, particularly in those moments when the weight of the truth, the reality of never seeing my mother wear it again, sat heavily on my chest.

As I watched it dangle from Lucy’s wrist, my heart began to pound, and I saw spots in my vision—like little twinkling stars, bright lights that crowded and fought for space in front of my eyes. I blinked. I told myself that she did not mean anything by it, that surely she had just forgotten about what I had told her, about just how special the bracelet was to me. But then I paused, trying to recall—a conversation, a brief mention, anything I had said or done throughout the years we had lived together, only to find that it was all becoming too blurred, too confused in my mind.

“I’d be grateful if next time you could ask.” The words left my mouth and I tasted something bitter and hurried to swallow.

Lucy stopped. She held a notebook in one hand, the other—the one with the bracelet—hung limply at her side. She was silent for a moment. “Ask about what, Alice?”

I turned to face her, chiding myself for feeling nervous. After all, the bracelet was mine, had once belonged to my mother, and was one of the few things that I had left of her. There was nothing wrong with asking Lucy to get permission before taking it from my jewelry box, I told myself. “It’s nothing, really,” I said, feeling the heat as it burned my cheeks. “It’s just, the bracelet. I don’t mind, honest, it’s just, if you could ask next time.”

Lucy continued to peer at me with that same queer expression. Her hand had moved to the doorknob but it froze then, as if she couldn’t decide whether to respond to my request or leave the room without deigning to answer at all. Finally she dropped her hand and said, “I don’t understand.”