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  Jade, on the other hand, would be initially thrilled to learn that fairy tales are true and she’d demand to be part of it. She’d get jealous and want to be a part of the magic too—but she’d never deny it was real. And that is high on my list of reasons why I love her.

  My dad. My dad would tell me not to be afraid. That I should treat it as a gift, as something precious that was mine alone. And if I ever felt lonely with it, he’d be there.

  I used to tell my dad about my dreams. Sometimes the real ones, and sometimes I’d lie and tell him about dreams I didn’t have. I somehow expected that he would know the difference. But he never did. Either I’m a good liar or a good actress. Or he did know the difference, and he’s the good liar. I wish I could ask him.

  I turn down Horatio, and the streetlights are illuminating the cherry blossoms like pink snow. This is our first spring on this street. We’ve moved a lot, though we keep to the West Village so Jade doesn’t have to change schools. Nicole has great luck flipping apartments. My friends think it must be unsettling, but the nomadic thing has its virtues. I get to redecorate my room more than anyone else I know, and Jade and I have become partners in creating our personal new neighborhood from the bodegas, boutiques, and restaurants that we choose together. But more important, when you have to keep changing your environment, you are constantly aware of how wide the world is and how many choices really lie out there for you.

  I quietly let myself into our darkened apartment, assuming that both Nicole and Jade are sleeping. Once in my room, I stand for a long moment, staring out the window at the Hudson. Suddenly, I feel someone standing behind me. I know who it is and what I’m going to say. Putting on my game face, I whirl around and stab my finger out as I shout:

  “Who the fuck are you looking at?!”

  Nicole stares back at me. The look on her face is intolerable.

  “Shut up!” I keep going. “You have nothing to say to me!”

  “Um, actually I do. If you don’t lower your voice, you’re going to have a seven-year-old out of bed, watching you act like a raving bitch.”

  I turn from my image in the full-length mirror to see Nicole’s amused smile.

  “So I’m a convincing raving bitch, huh? Wow. I wasn’t sure I had it in me.”

  “Honey, believe me, you do. You’re going to nail that audition.”

  She comes in and flops down on my bed. “Want me to read the other side of the scene?”

  Nicole is always slightly disappointed that I need to rehearse alone. It isn’t that I don’t want her criticism and comments, which I certainly don’t; it’s more that I have to get my head in a space where it’s my own world, completely uncontaminated by any other reality. Changing the subject is always our most comfortable way for me to refuse this.

  “How’s Jade?”

  “Great. Ever notice that kid talks a lot?”

  “Never happens to me. Must be something you’re doing wrong.”

  “Again.”

  A companionable mood now established, she feels free to go on and pretend that she isn’t expressing concern that my look would not be strong enough for the audition.

  “So, how have you been sleeping?”

  That’s a loaded question.

  “Are you implying the circles under my eyes are too dark? Anything else that’s not pretty enough to win the part tomorrow?”

  “Wow. So glad you’re not defensive. Kudos to Emma.”

  Now I have a choice. Nicole is just being Nicole, trying to relate to me the only way I sometimes think she knows how. I could let it go or push it. True to form, I make the wrong choice…

  “Sorry,” I say. “You don’t get to be passive-aggressive about my looks and then blame it on me. If you’re going to do something like that, you’re going to have to own it.”

  Nicole sits up, holds out her arms for me to crawl into a hug. Which of course I do. This is our thing. We fight, then make up. We’re friends, and then she wants to be my mom.

  “Baby girl, it’s not only okay for a rising actress to be insecure about her appearance, but I would think you were from another planet if you weren’t. The only thing is, you’ve chosen a career where you’ll be picked apart daily, and you have to own that.”

  She slides from the bed, pulls me toward the mirror, steps behind me, and puts her arms around my waist. Her elegant face perches on my shoulder, looking at our reflection.

  “Now tell me what you see.”

  I see an ordinary girl, who could, I guess, be pretty in the right light, with the right attitude. Pretty enough that my looks won’t hold me back, but they sure as hell won’t make up for any lack of talent. I study the image. A ballerina’s body, slightly too thin, certainly not appropriate for any voluptuous role. Thick black hair that can look sort of glamorous in a head shot after a good stylist has tamed it. But it is an enormous pain in my ass to manage and makes me feel like I’m walking around with an Eskimo hoodie in the summer heat. I hate to walk around in the sun anyway, hence my pale skin, which may be lacking vitamin D but at least is clear and creamy. My face has good angles for catching light, and my eyes do a nice job of popping on-camera. They are icy blue pools contained by a navy perimeter. My lips are too thin for some casting directors. Two have referred me to plastic surgeons, but there’s no chance I’m going down the collagen trail. My favorite part of me is a part that the make-up department on every set or show I’ve done considers a flaw. There is a gap in the lashes on my right eyelid, from where a tiny chicken pox, the itchiest itch you can imagine, left its scar.

  All of this runs through my mind in a tenth of a second. What I actually answer is…

  “Angelina Jolie with bigger boobs and much nicer lips.”

  Nicole rolls her eyes at the irony. Angelina out-sizes me considerably in both departments.

  “When did you see Angelina’s boobs?”

  “Mom, you gotta get out more. Us Weekly.”

  Of course, since I look absolutely nothing like Angelina Jolie in any way, Nicole has to tell me how much prettier, more natural, and wholesome (every girl’s favorite word) I am. After enduring fifteen minutes of Nicole praising every inch of me, I shoo her out the door, throw one last menacing glare at my image in the mirror, and get ready for bed.

  Once the lights are out, my brain turns on. I hate when that happens.

  In the dark, at night, before I fall asleep, my mantra is “fine.” I tell myself too many times that Jade of course is fine and that Snickers are the miracle cure for narcolepsy. I tell myself the callback will go fine. It’s an okay role in an intriguing indie film, but working with the director would be a dream come true—and the same goes for the hot young star already cast as the lead. As is often the case, my character is twenty-two (my look adapts easily—in life and work—to seem older, which is probably why I never get carded), and the casting director commented at my initial reading that my being underage could be a “slight problem in one scene, but not to worry.” So I lie in bed for half an hour and worry, telling myself it will be fine. Nicole would say, Don’t be a prude, don’t be afraid of your body, but draw your own boundaries. My dad would say, Don’t ask me a question you don’t want the answer to. Which would indeed be giving me the answer I didn’t want to hear.

  As usual, Sloane flickers through my thoughts as I drift off. I close my eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  sloane

  In the next instant, I open them to see the same tree outside the same window I’ve been waking up to my entire life. She’s an elm, my tree. Her mood frequently reflects the weather, as if she has seasonal affect disorder. But today, despite the spring sunshine filtering through her early leaves, her branches seem weary. As if she feels like me. Even though I slept, I didn’t rest. I dreamed, as I do every night, through Maggie’s entire day in Manhattan. My bones feel tired and heavy.

  My name is Sloane Margaret Jameson. I’ve never punched anybody named Devin Cruikshank in the mouth because I’ve never met anyone named Devin
Cruikshank. Plus I’m not a puncher. I’m more of a head butter.

  I roll over and stare at the dull stars on my ceiling. They are the kind that glow in the dark, so when it’s not dark, they just look like jaundiced stickers. I bought them and a package of astronaut ice cream on a field trip to the Boston Museum of Science. How did they ever think to dehydrate ice cream, those brilliant rocket scientists?! When I got home from the field trip, I carefully studied the constellations and did my best to re-create Orion. I then decided it was more fun to make my own. There’s Stella the Horse, who talks like Mr. Ed. She has a sharp tongue and can’t be trusted. There’s El Delicioso, the grand Nutella crepe in the sky. I ran out of stars halfway through making an elephant, so he kind of looks like a teacup. But I call him Rooibus (which is my favorite African tea) and imagine the stars in his trunk went supernova a zillion years ago and disappeared.

  The noise of my family downstairs annoys me in the way a mosquito can be more distracting than a jackhammer. Lately, I’m always the last one out of bed in the mornings. It’s been a long time since there was something that I was eager to get out of bed for. Actually, it’s been a year.

  I’m not depressed. At least not clinically according to my Internet research. I clearly have a few issues. Having a huge secret like I do makes life a little lonely. Lonelier still being surrounded by people, wonderful people, so close each day and not being able to tell them. I imagine that being a double agent, or a cheating wife, or in the closet must be similarly lonely and tiring.

  I’m not an actress like Maggie is in my dream, but I think I do a pretty good job of convincing everyone I’m okay. And really, I am okay. Really. Not every day feels this heavy and hard.

  The anniversary of my best friend Bill’s death is coming up. And it conveniently coincides with my seventeenth birthday. I hate attention anyway. I’m so uncomfortable being the focus of anyone’s attention. I squirm when I’m in the spotlight. I like to be behind the camera.

  Luckily, the annoying buzz of my family downstairs is preventing me from wallowing in my pity puddle. Soon enough my feet hit the hardwood and I’m in the bathroom waiting for the water to get warm.

  Downstairs smells like coffee and pancakes and eggs and my mother’s freshly washed hair. I guess she got to the hot water before I could. And then I catch the scent of decaying sea animals. My seven-year-old brother, Max, has covered the entire table with his haphazard and negligently constructed “science project.” It is apparently a diorama of our local coastline (giving Max the benefit of the doubt), including real dead mussels, eelgrass, part of a bird’s nest, the indescribably gross shell of a mangled horseshoe crab, all not quite held together with Elmer’s wood glue, which now disfigures our entire kitchen.

  I love Max. He is scrappy and puckish and capricious. He has a brilliant imagination and used to let me play his weird games with him. He would walk into a room, intertwine his little fingers through mine, and pull me into hours of running around. Once worn out, he would snuggle his fuzzy head into my cheek so that I could feel his warm body breathing against mine, and we’d read books.

  Then, about a year ago, he and his cronies reached the decision that girls have cooties. So now I’m no longer his sister, but a girl.

  My mother is cooking for too many people, which is fewer than usual. She really overdoes all the homemaking stuff. There is ridiculously meticulous attention to cleanliness, for example. Not that cleanliness is a bad thing, unless you turn it into one by hiding behind it. For example, she’ll spend half the morning cleaning up Max’s crap, none of which would have been necessary if she actually disciplined him for once and told him not to make a mess in the first place. I bet if the consequences had to do with video games or snacks, he’d listen. I wonder from time to time if she lets him make a mess to give herself one more thing to do. She’s got the fullest schedule of anyone in southeastern Connecticut or probably the Free World. I think she does it to make herself feel better for “temporarily” abandoning a promising career in marine science to give birth to my older brother, Tyler. On staff at Woods Hole, she used to study the dynamics governing the transport of fine-grained sediments in coastal and estuarine waters. I’ve listened to my dad tell me how much she loved that work. But she never went back to it. After Tyler, she was pregnant with me before she knew it. Once you’re out of the game, there aren’t a ton of employment opportunities in the area. I suppose our family just grew roots. Deep roots stuck in the Mystic soil.

  My mom and I used to be a lot closer. She didn’t suddenly get cooties, but this last year things have been really bad between us. I know it really hurts her. I just don’t know what to do about it.

  Without turning from the stove, she says in her sunniest, most innocent voice, “Morning, sweetie. You know I was thinking?”

  Uh-oh. “Thinking” is a euphemism for “I’m about to throw something out there that I know is probably going to piss you off.” The fact that she isn’t even using a normal tone of voice makes me resent that she clearly feels like she has to walk on eggshells around me.

  “This Saturday might just be the perfect time for us to zip up to Providence to start looking for your prom dress. What do you think?”

  I think you’re deliberately trying to provoke me.

  “Since I have no intention of ever going to something called a prom,” I snap before I have time to think this through, “I wonder whatever would we do with a dress?”

  “Sounds like someone’s brushing up on her irony.”

  My dad has entered the kitchen and butted in, in his customary good-natured and completely fair way. I’ll have none of that this morning.

  “Dad, Mom knows how I feel about going to this prom. And instead of engaging me in a direct conversation about it, she throws in a passive-aggressive attempt to manipulate the situation, with complete deniability. This is what we call the ‘I’m just saying’ syndrome, where we don’t take responsibility for saying things we shouldn’t.”

  “Fascinating.” My dad takes a maddeningly calm sip of his coffee. “A straight-A English student with no understanding of the term passive-aggressive. Which actually applies to your statement rather than your mother’s.”

  Other than the fact that he is completely right, he is way out of line.

  “Sloane,” my mother says through pursed lips. “Will you step outside with me for a minute?” She doesn’t sound exactly angry. Or hurt. She sounds determined and purposeful. At least we might have a real conversation for a change.

  “Sloane,” she says. “You’re absolutely right, I was afraid to bring the prom up with you because I thought you might react this way. But let’s cut straight to the chase. You and I both know there’s a lot more involved in this than the junior prom.”

  I’m kind of speechless. This is a combination of firmness and genuine concern that I thought I’d been longing for. But now that we’re actually talking, I realize the things I want us to talk about are of course impossible.

  “When you were fifteen, you hounded me to let you begin dating. And I insisted that you wait until your sixteenth birthday. You were so patient, but now an entire year has gone by and I don’t think you’ve had one proper date in all this time. What happened?”

  I look down at my feet. Hating myself for feeling awkward and inadequate to come up with a smoothly convincing lie.

  “Nothing happened. There still isn’t a particular guy I want to date. I guess I just didn’t understand your stupid rule and wanted to see if I could get you to change your mind.” My eyes burn as I say the words so I focus on the grass. I feel her watching me and just want to be out of her spotlight. I look up and surprisingly have the grace to say, “And I’m really sorry for being such a snide little brat.”

  “Again,” she says, bending down to pull out a weed from the bed of daffodils.

  Who knew she had a sense of humor.

  I’m about to head for the bus stop when Gordy texts me, offering to pick me up. This is an unusual treat since m
y house is not on the way to school for him. I then get a second text with a request for some of my mom’s breakfast leftovers and figure he must just be hungry and broke. Gordy is my best friend since birth. Our parents are good friends and used to force us to play together as kids, but our forced friendship turned into a real bond.

  With a tinfoil-wrapped Jameson McMuffin in hand, I wait on the corner for my ride. We live in an old house on Gravel Street, dating back to 1834. Some guy named Daniel R. Williams built it and sold seine fishing nets from the basement. The basement is ten feet deep and was a station on the Underground Railroad, which I love. And Matilda Appleman Williams, old Danny’s wife, used to hold weekly séances in the front parlor. I’ve dabbled with a Ouija board in her honor.

  The house sits sideways to the street, and I’m sure when it was built, there weren’t any other houses around blocking the view of the Mystic River. Now we have a partial view from the front of the house. We can see the Dyer Dhows and their colored sails spinning around in front of the seaport. Sunsets swirl pastel along the moving water. The egrets, night herons, laughing gulls, and sweet little plovers all go about their business and we get to watch.