Change Places with Me(46)

The girl beamed before erasing the smile altogether. Kim kept clicking away and then scrolled through what she’d shot. “Don’t like that smile at all . . . or that one . . . here you look like you’re gonna slug someone. . . . Hey, I like this one. Your eyes look sad, though. Take a look.”

It was a good picture. The girl wasn’t smiling but she wasn’t not-smiling, either. Kim was right about the eyes. There was sadness there, deep and raw. In a big box of crayons, the color could be called Sad Blue.

Kim sent the image to the girl’s phone, where she slotted it in as her ID pic. As for the old, old woman, she put that in a new file, undeleted.

“I should get back to the bus stop,” the girl said.

Kim walked her to the elevator and pressed the down button. “Are you really sure about this, going back to that memory place?”

“I have to,” she told Kim. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

“But I could, you know, help you figure out some stuff, just the two of us.”

“Not necessary. Next week everything’s gonna be great.” No more sadness in the eyes, she thought.

“Look. I’m really glad you confided in me. And I wasn’t going to say this—but here goes. The way I see it, there’s something you really should do first.”

The elevator reached the fourteenth floor that wasn’t really the fourteenth floor. Kim held her hand over the side of the door so it couldn’t close.

“Talk to Evelyn,” Kim said.

“No.” The girl was adamant. She’d avoided nearly all contact with Evelyn for days. They’d barely seen each other. Meals were left on the stove so the girl could continue to eat in her room. Evelyn, she had to admit, had respected her privacy admirably.

“Clara couldn’t stand her,” Kim said. “I don’t think Rose got that close to her, either.”

“Evelyn and Rose were perfectly friendly!” Though maybe, now that the girl thought about it, when Evelyn talked to her, Rose hadn’t listened too carefully, changing the subject more often than not.

“Does Evelyn want this for you? How does she feel about it?”

The girl tightened her lips.

“Let me guess. You’re not speaking to her.”

The elevator started beeping. It didn’t like to be held open too long.

“Why are you bringing this up?” the girl said. “You’re supposed to be my cross-my-heart friend. It was very irresponsible of Evelyn, to let me do something irreversible.”

“Oh, that’s not fair. You were the one who wanted it. You still want it.”

The beeping in the elevator got really loud.

“She gave her consent. She paid for it. She’s the adult,” the girl said.

“Right. That’s why you should talk to her.” Kim let go of the door. “Well, good luck finding that girl, whoever she is.”

But I know exactly who she is, the girl thought, as the door closed. It was clear as day. She’s the girl I could’ve been, if life was fair.

It was cool and gray at the bus stop. A few drops spattered her, but it never actually rained. The girl sensed she might not be coming back here anymore, which confused her, so she stayed a little longer.

I’ll give the girl in the jean jacket one last chance.

As if it was the other way around, and the girl in the jean jacket was the one looking for her.





CHAPTER 30


She woke early Friday morning, long before dawn. Her lamp was on and cast a circle of light. It was quiet, middle-of-the-night quiet, with only a few cars on the expressway and hardly any planes.

She’d had another dream, unbearably vivid.

She was on a hydro-bus, heading home, standing room only. It was so crowded she couldn’t even reach out for a pole to hold on to, and she tried to keep her balance as the bus lurched its way up and down the hills of Belle Heights. Next to her stood a man, tall as a tree. She looked at his face, saw those heavy-lidded eyes . . . she couldn’t believe it. Her dad! Her dad was here! But he had died even before hydro-buses came to Belle Heights. So she didn’t want to say anything, since that might break the spell or embarrass him because he was doing something impossible. Probably he would explain the misunderstanding of it to her later, how when everyone had thought he was dead, he’d just stayed out of sight for a while, but now he was here and here to stay. She was so happy—she was bursting with happiness.

Eventually she had to speak up. “Dad,” she said casually, trying not to sound too excited, “it’s our stop.”

“You go on ahead. I have to be somewhere.” His voice, still gentle, didn’t have a smile in it, like it used to.

She didn’t want to let him out of her sight. But she couldn’t make a big deal out of it. It was important just to act normally, so then he could just show up later at home and everything would be the way it was supposed to be. She got off the bus—bad mistake. So stupid! Why hadn’t she made up some excuse, that she had to be somewhere, too? She stared at the bus as it went down a hill. A woman was suddenly next to her, asking, “Did you leave something on the bus? I forgot my bag once. I called the office and they said it was in the Lost and Found.”

Waking, the girl got a wrenching pain unlike anything she’d ever felt. A fist had tightened around her heart. She didn’t blame Clara for climbing into a glass coffin and staying there. Who in her right mind would want to go through this? Strangely, though, she felt close to Clara here in this place, and it felt like a place, where Clara had never been.