Paperquake (19 page)

"The wedding announcement might have been in the paper, too," said Rose. "We can look at all the announcements for June of 1906 and see if anything turns up. Hey, Sam, let's ask your dad today."

"He's in Mendocino visiting my uncle. But I'll ask him as soon as he comes home, and then I'll call you." Sam gave her a rakish grin. "We'll crack this case if it's the last thing we do!"

His proclamation was followed by what sounded at first like bells ringing in the street. Then there came a loud clanging, jangling, and the scrape of metal against wood. They all looked at each other, then out the café windows. Other customers were craning their necks to see. Violet gasped and held her hands to her cheeks. She jumped up from their booth and ran to the door. She stepped out into the street, staring incredulously at the scene before her.

"No way," said Sam, right behind her. "No way." He put his hand on Violet's shoulder.

An organ-grinder, complete with old-fashioned wooden cart and a live monkey on his shoulder, was indeed a strange sight on Chance Street. People stepped out onto the sidewalks up and down the street to watch and wave. Down the street, Mrs. Lauer stood on her front porch with little Annabel and baby Anthony, but Violet barely noticed them. All she could see was the organ-grinder, a grizzled old man with a thick gray beard and a big smile. His head was bare, but the little monkey wore a red felt cap, and this he tipped to the bystanders as the man stopped and removed an accordion from his cart. The organ-grinder started to play rollicking music that made the monkey leap down from his shoulder and dance on the top of the cart. The people of Chance Street laughed and clapped. Violet watched as if in a trance, remembering Laela's description of the organ-grinder she and Verity had seen.

When the music ended, the monkey held his little cap out and people crossed the street to drop coins into it. Then the organ-grinder, grinning his thanks, continued down the street and disappeared around the corner, bells jangling.

"Wow," breathed Sam. "I mean,
wow.
"

"You call that a coincidence?" whispered Jasmine to Rose as they turned back to their table.

Beth was frowning.

Wedding bells?
Violet wondered.
Or a death toll?

Violet lay on her bed in her alcove after dinner that evening, staring up at the ceiling. She put her hand on her heart and felt the beat. She thought there was a funny little flutter from time to time. She took deep regular breaths, willing her heart to keep on pumping.

How had Verity died?

It had been a long, hard day. Staying alive was difficult work, once you were concentrating on it. While her sisters and Beth and Sam had finished pulling down the old wallpaper, she had bundled the last of it into trash bags and hauled the bags to the back of the house. All the trash cans were fall, so she dragged them one by one to the street. When she was heaving the last can into place at the curb, a motorcycle skidded around the corner onto Chance Street and roared past, narrowly missing her at the side of the road.

When the girls said good-bye to Sam and started walking down the street, Violet kept a keen eye out for people who might be muggers or thieves. The cable car was crowded and the four girls could not find seats together. Violet sat next to a woman who kept her hands in her pockets the entire time. When the cable car went around corners, the woman pressed against Violet, and Violet felt something hard poking her through the fabric of the woman's coat.
A gun? A knife?
She glanced at the woman, but the woman's eyes looked straight ahead. Violet edged away and was relieved when the cable car stopped. On the BART she worried that there would be an earthquake and the train would derail, or the tunnel under the bay would collapse, or there would be a terrible crash. Back at home she still didn't feel safe. Even if she could push aside the fear of earthquakes—which she could not—there were fires to worry about, and freak accidents. What if a plane crashed into their house? At dinner she thought the meat tasted off. There might be the danger of food poisoning, though when she'd mentioned this worry to her family, her father just roared at her to clean her plate. Jasmine was sympathetic, and for this Violet was grateful. But Rose maintained that Violet was letting her imagination run away with her and was becoming paranoid. After the meal both sisters had gone off to their bedroom to do their homework and now were downstairs watching TV as if they didn't have a care in the world.

Here in her alcove, Violet had only her heartbeat for company. And it seemed to her that heartbeat was growing more and more erratic every minute.

Violet sat up and looked around with dissatisfaction. You'd think that a girl marked for death at such a young age would at least get the chance to have a proper bedroom of her own. But she knew there was no use asking to room with Rosy and Jazzy. Their mother said two girls in a room was enough. And neither of her sisters would want to trade places and sleep in the alcove. They'd say there wasn't enough privacy.

Which there wasn't.
But I need privacy, too,
thought Violet. Once you feared for your life, you started thinking what you wanted to accomplish before the last breath was drawn. It was what those societies that grant dying kids their one last wish did, mused Violet. They knew that kids want something special—especially at a time when everything might be snatched away from them forever.

She thought about what she wanted. Kids in the newspapers always asked to go to Disneyland or to have dinner with their favorite sports hero. She had already been to Disneyland—and didn't think it was such a big deal, really, though that might have been because her parents were afraid to let her go on any of the really fast rides. And she didn't have any particular sports hero. She liked to watch the ice-skating during the Winter Olympics, but that was it.

What had Verity's last wish been?

"What I really want is my own room," she said aloud. "Is that so much to ask?"

But their house wasn't very big. Downstairs were the living room, dining room, kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. She'd read in a book about a family with a lot of kids who had turned their dining room into a bedroom—but she doubted her mom would go for the idea. Upstairs there were the two large bedrooms, one with the little alcove, and a second bathroom. There was one basement room they used for storage and for doing laundry. And there was the attic—

Violet hadn't been up there for ages.

She sat up and swung her legs off the bed. The attic was reached through the hallway linen closet. She went to the closet now and opened the door. Above her head a rope dangled. When she pulled on it, wooden steps mounted on a folding sort of ladder lowered down and clicked into place. Violet flicked the switch inside the linen closet that turned on the light in the attic, then climbed up.

The attic was a large narrow room that ran the length of the house. The sharp pitch of the roof made the walls slope to the floor, but two gable windows looked out on the street and would let in a lot of light, Violet suspected, in the daytime. Violet blessed her mother for being such an impeccable housekeeper that she included even the attic in her yearly spring cleaning. Although the attic was dusty, it could not be called dirty. In fact, the last time Violet had been up here was last April to help her dad, mom, and sisters wash the floor and windows. Greg had grumbled that there wasn't any point to cleaning a space they didn't even use, but Lily had replied firmly that the attic was part of the house and must not be overlooked. "We don't want mildew and mold, not to mention mice and spiders, getting into our boxes, now do we?" she'd asked. And, of course, everyone had to agree they wouldn't want any of that to happen.

Now Violet looked around at those same pest-free boxes. There were eight of them—large brown cardboard packing boxes filled with her parents' old yearbooks, the camping equipment, the cutest of the triplets' baby clothes Lily just hadn't been able to bring herself to give away, and assorted other household castoffs. There were also two lamps without shades, a ladder-back chair with a broken rung, and the scratched pine coffee table that hadn't sold at their garage sale last year, not even when Greg lowered the price to ten dollars. The attic looked wonderful to Violet. It was the answer to her last wish.

She heard a creak from the stairway and looked over to see a honey-colored head poking through the hole.

Jasmine frowned at her. "Didn't you hear Mom calling you?"

"Nope."

"She says to get ready for bed. What are you up here for?"

"Just checking it out. I'm going to move in."

"Hey, no kidding?" Jasmine looked around with interest. "It would make a cool bedroom if you painted the walls and hung up posters. But Mom and Dad will never let you. It's too far away from them at night, and too drafty in winter—and the stairs! You'd break your neck trying to get up and down them every day. Or what about in the middle of the night when you had to pee? You couldn't even turn on the light since the switch is down there in the closet."

"I don't care. I don't want to sleep in the alcove anymore. How would you like it? If I'm going to die young, I at least want my own bedroom."

"Oh, Vi." Jasmine's face was troubled. "How about if Rosy and I move up here and you take our room? It would be safer. Or if Rosy doesn't want to move, I will, and you can have my space."

Violet considered the offer. She'd always wanted to share the big bedroom with her sisters. But now that she'd decided on the attic, she was determined to have it for herself. "No. I want the attic."

"What?" came their mother's voice, and then the ladder stairs creaked as she climbed up. "Did I hear you say you want the attic, Baby? What does that mean?"

Lily's head appeared through the trapdoor. "It's bedtime. What are you two girls looking for up here?"

"Vi wants this to be her bedroom," Jasmine announced.

"What on earth!" cried Lily.

"Wait, Mom, wait," began Violet. "Don't say no yet. Please. Listen. I need a space of my own. Not the alcove, but all my own. I'll paint the walls myself, I'll dust and wash the windows and make curtains. I can do it all—and we can move my bed up here, and my rug and desk and dresser. I think the furniture will just fit through the hole—though we'll probably have to take the bed apart first. Please, Mom!"

Lily was shaking her head, but she stopped when Violet's eyes welled with tears. "Baby, I don't think it's a good idea. But come down and discuss it with Dad. Let's see what he thinks."

Violet took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. She didn't want to break down and cry. That would only reinforce their sense that she was the weak little runt of the family. She must be strong and speak clearly and explain why she needed the attic.

Lily climbed back down the steps, Jasmine and Violet following. "Don't mention that you're afraid you're going to—you know," Jasmine whispered back at Violet. "That will only freak them out."

Violet went to her alcove and changed into her nightgown. Then she washed her face and brushed her teeth, studying her pale face in the mirror. Her hair wasn't quite so purple anymore, she decided. But it would need another dozen washings before it looked truly back to normal. She resolved to take a lot of showers in the next week. It would be horrible if she died and then looked stupid at her funeral.

But she was going to try very hard not to die. She held tightly to the handrail as she went downstairs to confront her dad with the news that she planned to move into the attic.

He and Rose were sitting in the living room working a jigsaw puzzle. Lily bustled in from the kitchen carrying a large vase of fresh flowers. She set the vase on top of the bookcase by the windows, then came to sit down. "All right," she said. "Explain to your dad and me again why you don't like the alcove."

At least they were going to pretend to listen to her. Violet took a deep breath and began telling them how she was as old as Jazzy and Rosy, and how she didn't like feeling like a baby. She told them that sleeping in the little alcove where her baby crib used to be made her feel they thought she still needed to be hooked up to a heart monitor at night. She told them how nice the attic would be once the walls were painted and her furniture had been moved up.

Greg listened, nodding. "You have some good points," he said.

Lily shot him an incredulous look. "But the problems outweigh the good points, don't you think, Greg? I mean, think about the stairs, for one thing. I don't want Vi having to climb up and down that rickety ladder all the time. And the light switch is downstairs. That's very awkward. And you know what it's like up there in winter. She'd freeze."

Jasmine had come into the room while Violet was talking and now spoke up hurriedly. "I offered to sleep in the attic, Dad. I wouldn't mind. It's neat up there."

"I don't really want you going up that ladder, either, Jazzy," said Lily with a frown. "And in winter—"

"If Vi really doesn't want the alcove anymore," began Rose in a noble tone, "I guess we could probably squeeze her in with us. Maybe if Jazzy and I had bunk beds..."

"No! You guys don't get it!" wailed Violet, though inwardly she was impressed that Rose had actually offered to make room for her. "I want to be able to have a room of my own—just once, okay? Just once before I die!"

Jasmine and Rose glared at her. Lily gasped. Greg looked stunned. After a moment, Greg said mildly, "No one is expecting you to die, sweetheart."

"Oh yeah? That's not how it seems to me," stormed Violet. "The way you all worry and fuss at me all the time. You act like I can't do anything for myself! Like maybe my heart really isn't fixed right and I'll have heart failure on the way to school! And you never know, I could catch a new deadly virus, or I could be in a car crash. It doesn't have to be my heart at all—it could be a murderer!" She heard herself and knew she sounded hysterical. So she forced herself to stop. It would be awful to die angry at your family. They'd always remember you that way. She took a deep breath. "Anyway," she continued in as calm a voice as she could muster, "I would really like to try the attic. I'll be very careful on the ladder. I'll take extra quilts up there. I'll be fine. And if I'm not—then I'll move downstairs again. Okay? Just let me try it."