Paperquake (7 page)

"I never hid the letter! I never even saw it until I was cleaning out the cupboard. And how would I write it? I couldn't make those weird curlicues even if I tried. And what about the old paper? And the old ink?"
And what do you mean I'm jealous of you?
she wanted to cry.
How dare you think I want your attention?
But she pressed her lips together.

"I bet you found the letter somewhere else and brought it along today and just pretended to find it," Rose insisted. "Nothing else makes any sense."

"Look, let's pay for this stuff and get out of here," said Jasmine. She stood up and went to the counter. The spike-haired waitress took the money, glancing from one girl's face to the other.

"You twins look even more alike when you're mad," she said with interest. "Cool!"

"They're not twins," Violet said through clenched teeth. "They're
triplets.
" She stamped out of the restaurant, leaving the waitress staring after her in amazement. Jasmine and Rose followed.

Back inside the shop, the girls worked in tense silence. Rose and Jasmine finished scrubbing the floor. Violet dusted the window ledges and washed out the cupboards. From time to time she reached back and fingered the folded letter in her back pocket. After a while, she put down her dust cloth and wandered upstairs.

As before, she felt drawn to the back bedroom. She stood there now in the center of the floor, looking around carefully. The wallpaper was so faded and tattered, she could barely make out the pattern of lavender flowers. The paper hung in strips, the old paste exhausted. Should she bring the pail of water and the mop up here? If she scrubbed hard, the old floorboards might gleam again, the way she was certain, suddenly, they once had gleamed. Early afternoon light filtered in through the murky windows. Violet pulled down the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt, spat on the cuff, and used it to polish a clean place on one long window. She peered down into the concrete yard. Maybe once there had been flowers growing out there. Long ago.

Violet took out the letter and reread it.

 

I look at the flowers in the garden and think how wrong it is that they soak up the sun and rain while you are kept indoors....

She would pull herself together as the mysterious Hal advised. She would prove to Jazzy and Rosy, as she had by working so hard today, that she was healthy and well. She wouldn't be Baby anymore. She would be one of the triplets, part of their club, somebody just like they were.
I'm trying, Hal,
she thought.

Then she screamed as the room dipped and the windowpanes rattled in their frames. She screamed as the floor rolled like the heaving deck of a ship at sea. Downstairs she heard Jasmine and Rose call her name. But she couldn't stop screaming, and she huddled in a corner of the room as old plaster rained down on her from the tattered walls.

Flames
—and three shadowy figures running out of the rubble behind them with outstretched arms, howling for help...

Her sisters found her there when the quake ended. "Oh, VI!" cried Jasmine, hugging her.

Violet blinked up at them.
That little girl—who would help her?

"We heard you and we tried to come," babbled Rose, her anger forgotten. She joined the hug. "But we could hardly walk, so we stood in the doorway, you know, the way you're supposed to do if there's no big table to duck under. We came up as fast as we could. You're not hurt, are you?"

"We couldn't bear it if anything happened to you," moaned Jasmine. "It only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like forever. We were so worried." She laughed shakily, brushing plaster dust off Violet's shoulders. "Look, you're covered in snow!"

Violet stood up and took a deep breath. Two quakes in two days. Two visions, as well. Her muscles tensed, bracing for aftershocks. She looked around the little bedroom at the damage. So much plaster had shaken down that the wooden lathes inside the wall were exposed. In one place, near the windows, the sill had cracked through and fallen to the floor. Violet caught her breath and stared, the shadow children momentarily forgotten.

There was a piece of paper sticking out from the crevice beneath the window where the sill had been. "Look," she whispered.

Jasmine and Rose stopped jabbering about the Richter scale and looked, but Violet was already across the room. She tugged the paper free. It was an envelope like the other, yellow and britde with age. Violet felt giddy when she saw the same curlicued Fon the front. "See?" she demanded. "You don't think I managed to hide this inside the window ledge somehow, do you? Just to get your attention? Do you?"

Jasmine shook her head, her eyes wide.

Rose reached for the envelope. "Well, let's open it!"

"I'm the only one here whose name starts with a
V,
" said Violet, grabbing the envelope back. "The letter is for me."

"Don't be crazy. It can't really be for you if it was inside the wall." Rose shook her head.

"Oh yeah? Listen to this!" And Violet read the letter aloud, her voice triumphant and wondering at the same time.

 

"
My own beloved Baby V,

"
Is your heart still aching? I ache myself when I think of the pain you have been in. It is dreadful that the twins should be so difficult and demanding when they know you are poorly. It seems to me
they
need a caretaker even more than you do! I long to be able to comfort you in person during your illness, yet your parents forbid me to come near. The frustration of it is enough to cause me to collapse as you have! There are your parents, going about their work as ever,
bristling with health, and pitying my Poor Lamb, but they don't seem to realize the best medicine for you would be to let us be together. I can see you only outside the window, yet even at that distance you look like heaven to me. Darling, you must grow well again. You have the purest heart and the strongest will of us all. You also have the love of one who will give you his eternal devotion.

"
Be brave, my love. Remember the time you were lost in the crowds—how frightened you were ? Tet you overcame that fear and prevailed. I see you as lost in the bosom of a family that tries to control you. They simply do not understand you as I do. But soon, very soon, you will prevail once more. We will be together as we are meant, I know it. Be of strong heart.

"
Your Hal
"

 

"That is
so
cool," breathed Jasmine.

"Well, it's a real mystery, I'll grant you that." Rose looked baffled. "I wish there were a date on these letters. I wonder who put them in these hiding places? Oh, you guys, won't it be fun to try to find out who these people were?"

"We do know who V is," said Violet softly. "But I'd give anything to find Hal."

Her sisters stared at her in silence for a long moment. "Oh no," said Jasmine finally.

"You can't really think these letters are meant for you!" Rose snorted.

"Well, look at what he said in the first letter about 'abominable twins.' Who was being so unsupportive and disbelieving in the restaurant? And now? Look what it says about my heart. Who else do you know who has had open-heart surgery?" Violet reread the letter and felt that same heart thumping steadily in her chest. "And parents going about their work?"

"Parents always do that. And the letter is old. Much older than you," objected Rose.

"Bring the letters home," said Jasmine. "We can study them later. But we'd better get going. Mom and Dad will be worried about us."

"Yeah," said Rose. "There might be aftershocks. And we've done more than enough cleaning for one day."

"For a week at least," agreed Jasmine. "For maybe a whole month." They left the room together. At the top of the stairs, Rose turned back.

"Come on, Baby. We can't leave you behind."

The adrenaline surge from the earthquake still filled Violet's blood. Suddenly she wanted to dance and sing and jump around. She clutched the letter, staring at her sisters through the doorway.
Be of strong heart,
she remembered.

"Don't ever call me Baby again!" she shouted at the top of her voice, and smiled when they flinched. Then she stuck the second letter into her back pocket with the first. Her sisters stood silently aside when she came out into the hallway, and they followed behind her as she led the way downstairs.

The girls rode a cable car, then walked to the Powell Street Station, where they disembarked into a carnival atmosphere. People swarmed everywhere. Music blared. Delicious smells of Thai, Chinese, Polish, Mexican, Italian, and Greek food mingled with the everyday smells of hot dogs and french fries, wafting with the music through the brisk October air. "
Mmm.
" Rose sniffed. She pointed. "Look, they've blocked off the streets. It's a street fair."

"It makes me hungry again," commented Jasmine.

"Wish we had time to stay and check it out," said Rose, glancing wistfully at the booths lining the streets, tables of earrings and necklaces, essential oils, carved wooden pipes and animals, puzzles and games, used toys stacked in cardboard cartons, T-shirts with slogans piled on wooden crates.

The minor earthquake did not seem to have disrupted the festivities in the least, though there was an air of heightened excitement around a group of people repairing a booth of scarves and jewelry that had toppled in the quake. Violet couldn't understand how people could just continue with their day almost as if nothing had happened.

She had been strong and buoyed up back at the shop, but now she felt shivery and strange. Deep in her stomach a cold lump of fear was growing, and she felt queasy, as if she might be sick. She stood with her feet apart, firmly planted on the sidewalk. Was that a shudder she felt beneath her? "We'd better get home," she said.

"No, let's stay," begged Jasmine. "Just for a few minutes."

"Well, let me check when the BART leaves," said Rose, ever practical. She pulled the schedule for the trains from the front pocket of her overalls and scanned it, then checked her watch. Around them the tumult rose as the musicians playing the accordion and fiddle on the corner gave their spot over to a new group of rap singers. "We have twenty minutes."

"Perfect," said Jasmine. "Just enough time to get a snack."

How could anyone even think of eating when the earth might start heaving again at any time? Violet shook her head, trying to muster some of the confidence she'd felt back at the shop, but her sisters started off down the steep street.

She had no choice but to follow them. The street was closed to traffic but teemed with people of every size and color, of all ages, speaking half a dozen different languages. Violet stayed close to Jasmine and Rose. Every few yards, it seemed, another band was playing, and the varied types of music merged as one loud song in Violet's head, thumping along with her heart.
This
was the sort of Saturday she'd longed for—a day in her sisters' company, working and playing together—but now she was too uneasy to enjoy it.

They walked single file, picking their way along the crowded sidewalk, with Rose leading the way, Violet safe in the middle, and Jasmine bringing up the rear. Violet found herself scanning the faces of people they passed. Was she looking for the shadow children—or for the man named Hal? She didn't know.
I wouldn't know Hal, anyway,
she thought.
Unless he wore a name tag.

Rose stopped by a stall of feathered earrings. "Oh, look at these!" The other girls stopped to admire the jewelry.

Jasmine sniffed the air. "Anybody want a burrito?"

"Sure," said Rose, lifting a large dangly pair of pink feathers with silver beads to her ears. The man tending the stall held out a small mirror, and she stooped to peer into it.

"We'll be back in a sec," Violet said, trailing after Jasmine.

There was a long line at the Mexican food stall. Jasmine grew restless as they waited.

"I wanted to check out the used books over there," Jasmine told Violet, pointing. "Can you wait alone?"

"Yes," said Violet. "And I'll buy the burritos, too." The letters from Hal in her pocket made her feel generous, and the delectable smells of Mexican food banished her queasiness.

Jasmine grinned her thanks and disappeared into the throng of people. Violet moved closer to the Mexican food stall. The line moved quickly. In moments, Violet was holding three chicken burritos wrapped in white butcher paper. She scanned the crowd but could not see either of her sisters. So she headed down the street, where Jasmine had gone to look at books. She reached the corner without finding a used book stall, and stood in consternation, trying to peer through the crowds to the next block. Maybe Jasmine had gone farther?

Violet crossed the intersection and wandered down the next block. Sure enough, there was a stall of used books. But no sign of Jasmine. Violet stopped to ask the vendor if he'd seen a girl with long brownish gold hair, wearing a green sweater and blue-jean overalls.

"Seen a hundred girls like that today," the old man said. "See a couple hundred more before I close. You want to buy a book? You like to cook? We got cookbooks. We got thrillers. You into history? We got boxes of old stuff, some of it real valuable. Just take a look around."

Violet shook her head. "No, I have to find my sisters."

"Sisters, you say? What's the other one look like?"

"The same. Same hair. Green sweater and overalls."

"That the uniform or something?" He chortled. "Or are they twins?"

Violet sighed. "Triplets." She craned her neck, seeing one of her sisters' gold heads at the next stall. Hurriedly she headed away. There! There was Jasmine—or was it Rose?—just up ahead.

Violet pushed past a couple with two children in a double stroller and stumbled into a cluster of elderly women. "Sorry. Sorry. Oh, wait up, Jazzy! Rosy!"

But when she reached the golden-haired girl, she found it was neither Jasmine nor Rose—not even a girl. The golden-haired figure was a grown woman, hugely pregnant, walking a tiny spotted dog on the end of a leash.