The Ten Thousand Doors of January(23)

Jane poured herself coffee and delved immediately into the seventh book in the Tom Swift series (Jane had transitioned from skeptic to addict on the subject of low-grade serial fiction; thus had Samuel’s boyhood vice claimed another victim). I didn’t read anything. I just lay on the quilt and stared at the soft eggshell of the sky and let the sunshine pool and sizzle on my skin. I could almost hear Mr. Locke’s huffing in my ear: Not doing your complexion any favors, girl. My father never seemed to care.

I didn’t want to think about my father. I wanted to think about something, almost anything else. “Do you ever want to leave?” The question leapt out of my mouth before I had time to wonder where it came from.

Jane laid her book spread-eagle on the quilt and considered me. “Leave where?”

“I don’t know, Locke House. Vermont. Everything.”

There was a short silence, during which I realized two things simultaneously. First, that I was so selfish I’d never once asked Jane if she wanted to go home, and second, that there was nothing in the world holding her here now that my father and his weekly allowance were gone. Panic made my breath shallow and quick. Would I lose Jane, too? Would I be entirely alone? How soon?

Jane exhaled carefully. “I miss my home… more than I can say. I think of it every waking moment. But I will not leave you, January.” An unspoken yet seemed to hang specter-like between us, or perhaps it was until. I felt like crying and clinging to her skirts, begging her to stay forever. Or begging to go away with her.

But Jane saved us both from embarrassment by asking lightly, “Do you want to leave?”

I swallowed, tucking my fear away for some future time when I would be strong enough to look directly at it. “Yes,” I answered, and in answering realized it was true. I wanted wide-open horizons and worn shoes and strange constellations spinning above me like midnight riddles. I wanted danger and mystery and adventure. Like my father before me? “Oh, yes.”

It seemed to me I’d always wanted those things, since I was a little girl scribbling stories in her pocket diary, but I’d abandoned such fanciful dreams with my childhood. Except it turned out I hadn’t really abandoned them but merely forgotten them, let them settle to the bottom of me like fallen leaves. And then The Ten Thousand Doors had come along and swirled them into the air again, a riot of impossible dreams.

Jane didn’t say anything.

Well, she hardly needed to: we both knew how unlikely it was that I would ever leave Locke House. Odd-colored young orphan girls didn’t fare well out in the wide world, with no money or prospects, even if they were “perfectly unique specimens.” Mr. Locke was my only shelter and anchor now that my father was gone. Perhaps he would take pity and hire me as a secretary or typist for W. C. Locke & Co., and I would turn dull and mousy and wear thick-lensed spectacles on my nose and have permanent ink stains up both wrists. Perhaps he would let me stay in my little gray room until I grew so old and faded I became a half ghost haunting Locke House, alarming guests.

After a time I heard the regular shush of Jane turning the pages of Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers. I stared at the sky and tried not to think about the adventures I’d never have or the father I’d never see again or the cold, black thing still wrapped around me, turning the summer sun watery and pale. I tried to think of nothing at all.


I wonder if there has ever been a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted to attend a fancy party less than I did that night.

I stood at the edge of the parlor door for several minutes or possibly a century, nerving myself to step around the corner into the chemical fog of pomade and perfume. Serving staff swept past with glittering trays of champagne flutes and fleshy-looking canapés. They did not pause to offer me anything but merely maneuvered around me as if I were a misplaced vase or an awkward lamp.

I drew a breath, brushed my sweaty palm against Bad’s fur, and slipped into the parlor.

It would be overdramatic of me to claim that the entire room stood still, or that silence reigned the way it did when a princess entered her ballroom in my books, but there was a kind of silent whooshing around me, as if I were escorted by an invisible wind. A few conversations faltered as their participants turned toward me, eyebrows half-raised and lips curling.

Maybe they were staring at Bad, standing stiff and surly beside me. He was technically banned from all social events until the end of time, but I was betting Locke wouldn’t make a fuss in public and that Bad wouldn’t injure anyone seriously enough to require stitches. And anyway, I wasn’t sure I could’ve physically made myself leave my room without him beside me.

Or maybe they were staring at me. They’d all seen me before, trailing in Locke’s shadow at every Society party and Christmas banquet, alternately ignored or fussed over. What a pretty dress you have, Miss January! they trilled at me, laughing in the birdlike manner unique to the wealthy wives of bankers. Oh, isn’t she darling. Where did you say you found her again, Cornelius? Zanzibar? But I’d been a little girl then—a harmless, in-between thing stuffed into dolls’ clothes and trained to speak politely when spoken to.

I was not a little girl now, and they were no longer so charmed. Over the winter I’d suffered through all those mysterious, alchemical changes that transform children into sudden, awkward adults: I was taller, less soft, less trusting. My own face reflected in the gold-gilt mirrors was foreign to me, hollowed out.