Change Places with Me(34)

Was she? She could practically hear the echo of her words in the air. There’s nothing to be done.

“What are you looking at?” Evil Lynn came closer, bringing with her the cloying scent of lavender, so sticky sweet.

Clara handed over her phone.

“Who is that poor woman? Where did you see her?”

“Don’t you recognize her?”

“I hope you called the police.”

“Look closer,” Clara urged her.

Evil Lynn stared at the picture, and at Clara, then back at the picture and back once more at Clara. “I don’t understand.”

Clara grabbed her phone back.

At three a.m. Clara woke from a nightmare.

Clara hardly ever dreamed, or at least hardly ever remembered dreaming, maybe because she slept so fitfully. But this one had followed her into waking and still surrounded and clung to her.

In the dream she was dressed as she was now, in a granny nightgown. There was an explosion. Clara wasn’t sure how she knew this, because there’d been no bright light or booming sound. She was standing at her bedroom window, looking out at Belle Heights Tower. It was on fire. Clara saw a flickering light in the window. And someone there. Was it Kim? In the dream, Clara grew desperate.

Get out of there! Clara wanted to yell at the top of her voice. Now! But whoever it was only stared back.

Clara looked more closely. It wasn’t Kim—but an old, old woman. What Clara was seeing was a reflection. Belle Heights Tower wasn’t on fire. Clara was in the burning building. The flames were at her back and coming closer.

Clara had sat up then, fully awake, in the circle of light from the lamp near her bed.

It was a dream, just a dream, she told herself. Again and again. But it could easily have happened. Even her nightgown felt hot, as if she’d stood too close to the fire.

She went to the living room, back to the blue armchair. The gigantic dogs upstairs were chasing each other through the night, toenails scraping overhead. She opened her phone. Instantly, an ad came on. A gorgeous woman was getting her wrinkles removed with sound waves. “My husband says I look ten years younger,” she said. “Now he acts ten years younger, too!” She winked at Clara.

Another video followed immediately, and another, and another. Spray-on jeans— “Never again fight with that zipper!” House-in-a-Can inflatable furniture, so you never had to worry about friends and loved ones showing up without warning. Fingernail pens you attached to your nails—“Right at your fingertips, or should we say write at your fingertips.” Write was spelled out in loopy cursive. Puffed Lips. Knives that never needed sharpening or your money back. An aid for insomnia—well, that was appropriate. “It works on the principle of opposites,” explained a bright-eyed woman who looked well rested. “You trick your brain into thinking you want to stay up, and then you fall asleep! You trick your brain,” she kept saying.

Clara knew something about the principle of opposites. What appeared to be an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl could really be someone who was all beaten up and scarred and old, old.

Then an ad came on that she’d never seen before. She tapped her phone to watch the whole thing. It was long. Pale light filled the sky.





PART 3


You Are Here

?





CHAPTER 21


Rose walked up steps steep as a ladder. The hall smelled of paint though the walls were dirty and peeling. It was Sunday, October 28, late afternoon. She’d gone to brunch and been to the zoo with Cooper, and now she was at Forget-Me-Not, with questions she didn’t even know how to ask.

At the top of the stairs was a woman in a neon-green blouse and sharply creased black pants. She had long, rippling gray hair and eyes that matched her blouse, startlingly green.

“I don’t know you,” Rose said as she climbed. “But your voice . . .”

The lady sighed yet again. “Yes, the voice. That’s what people remember, in the cases when they do remember. Or so I’m told.”

Rose reached the lady and stood opposite her. Rose was quite a bit taller.

“You’re disoriented. That’s to be expected too, I suppose. Well, now that you’re here, you . . . might as well come on in.” Though this sounded like it was the last thing she wanted Rose to do.

Rose followed her through a narrow hall with a wooden bench. An enormous spider plant hung from a hook in the ceiling over the bench; if you were sitting there, it would be practically on top of you. The lady led Rose into an exact cube of a room and closed the door behind them. More spider plants were hanging from ceiling hooks. They looked like little alien invaders, just waiting for you to turn your back so they could land and finally take over. The smell of paint was everywhere, but these walls were peeling, too. An overhead light cast a dim yellow glow, but a tall standing lamp was turned off. The plain black letters on the window, Forget-Me-Not, were now backward, and curtains at either side billowed even though the windows were shut tight.

Somehow it seemed important to know more about this room. Rose pointed to the curtains. “Why are they blowing?”

“The radiator. This is a premillennial building with steam heating.”

“Where’s that paint smell coming from?”

“Upstairs. They’re converting office space into a dance studio.”