Sacred (23 page)

“Come
on
, Scarlett!” Dragging me by the arm, Lily headed toward the staircase. “See you guys later,” she called.

The Adamses’ staircase was painted Tiffany blue, and the wide, white-paneled walls of the front room were covered
with black-framed family pictures. The whole house was a shrine to family. There was a table in the far corner dedicated solely to puzzle building—a half-finished picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was there now—and next to the couch were a few of those luxuriously oversized beanbag chairs that cost several hundred dollars apiece, just ready to be collapsed into during Family Movie Night.

Under the long, white-framed front window were shelves and shelves of games—card games, board games, video games. Their colorful boxes formed an inviting mosaic that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Pottery Barn catalog.

Upstairs, to the left, lay the children’s wing, and to the right was the master suite. Jasper and Henry preferred to share their space, so Jack and Laura had taken out the wall between their rooms to create one large room where they could construct, paint, color, and explode things to their hearts’ content.

Lily’s room was at the end of the hallway. She had her very own bathroom—probably, more than anything else about her family’s wealth, her bathroom was the thing I was jealous of. So luxurious, to have her own toilet, her own sink, even her own tub!

Her bedroom was a welcome sight. She had an ornate wood-framed double bed that had been her mother’s girlhood bed, and the room’s short wall had a built-in desk-and-bookshelf unit. It was cluttered in typical Lily fashion, books and papers spilling off its surface. Behind the desk was a large corkboard, and Lily had pinned up magazine pictures of her current actor-crush alongside a birthday card the twins had made for her.

But the most fabulous part of the room, hands down, was Lily’s closet. She turned to it now with a grin and flung open the doors. “Okay, Scar,” she said. “Let’s do some shopping.”

Lily’s closet was better than any store our little island had to offer, and better than nearly any shop on the mainland too. Her mother only had one daughter, as Lily liked to point out, and Lily had inherited her love of shopping and fine things directly from Laura. At least once a season, Laura and Lily would head to the mainland to do some serious “bolstering of the economy,” as Jack liked to call it, and would return several days later laden with bags for the entire Adams family. They would always pick up something for me—nothing too big, so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable or indebted, but always something beautiful.

When they’d returned from Italy, they had brought me a little violet unicorn made from Venetian blown glass. I’d held it in front of my window and looked at the play of light through its delicate body, wondering at the artist who had created something so fragile. It was too delicate to exist, really; how had it survived the plane trip all the way across the Atlantic, then across our country, then on the helicopter to the island? I was terrified that I would drop it, after it had come so far, that it would shatter into little violet shards all over the wood floor of my bedroom, so I’d laid it back in its velvet-lined box and tucked it in the top drawer of my bureau, pushed all the way to the back.

Lily pulled open her closet doors with a flourish. “Want to see what I’m going to wear?”

“Sure! Who did you decide to go with?”

Lily had had three invitations to the Undersea Ball: Josh Riddell, who had been harboring a not-so-secret crush for years now; Connell, who’d decided to take a swing at it; and Mike Ryan.

“I haven’t chosen yet,” she said, pushing aside piles of clothes as she searched for the dress.

“Lily! Today is Monday! The dance is in five days!”

She shrugged. “Then I have four to decide.”

I shook my head. Lily was one of a kind. And
I
wasn’t about to change her. “Let’s see the dress,” I said.

“Here it is!” Her voice was triumphant, and she pulled a gossamer confection of white gauze and silk from the hidden recesses of the closet. “It’s an undersea theme, right, and this dress reminds me of a mermaid. See how it’s gathered at the bottom?” She spread out the skirt and I admired the beautiful beading.

“What shoes are you going to wear?”

“Those.” Lily gestured to the ugliest pair of black lace-up boots I’d ever seen. I think they had steel toes.

“Are you kidding?”

“I never kid about fashion,” Lily said, deathly serious. “Anything pretty would be way too obvious. These boots give the dress a little panache.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Fashion isn’t always about looking pretty, Scarlett.” Uh-oh. Her voice was heavy with the time-for-a-fashion-lecture tone.

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted, before she could get too deep
into the history of tulle or something. “So help me pick something. But I, for one, want to look pretty.”

“Of course you do,” Lily answered, tolerant as if she were talking to a child. “There’s no
subtlety
to your style, Scarlett. You’re so
obvious
.”

“Well, I don’t want to be
obvious
, but I do want to be pretty. This is my first real date with Will.”

“You still haven’t kissed.”

It wasn’t a question. I shook my head.

“So, pretty it is.” And Lily got down to work.

Twenty minutes later, Lily’s room looked like an organza bomb had gone off in it. I was reminded of a line from
The Great Gatsby
, which we were still reading in class, from the scene where Daisy finally goes over to Gatsby’s mansion and he makes an ostentatious display of his wealth, bragging about his “man” who buys clothes for him several times a year, and he spreads his shirts—silk, flannel, linen, in a rainbow of hues—for Daisy to admire. She collapses in tears, crying something like, “They’re just so beautiful! It makes me sad, because I’ve never seen so many beautiful shirts before.”

And that’s how I felt, looking at the banquet of dresses lying before me. Pink tulle, like a ballerina’s tutu, red sequins, fluffy yellow confections of lace and organza … If Daisy had seen this spread, she may have had a stroke.

“I think this would be great with your eyes, Scar.” Lily was half buried in the closet, and she emerged triumphant, waving a light blue shift as if it were a prize fish and she had just caught it.

It was probably the simplest dress of the bunch; made of watery blue silk, slightly shimmery, it had long, fitted sleeves and was cut rather high, straight across the collarbones. It was long and straight and perfectly elegant.

“This one was a mistake,” Lily admitted. “I thought maybe it would fit me if I wore some serious Spanx, but no matter what kind of heavy artillery I strap on, there is no way I can cram these girls into that dress.” Lily gestured to her breasts with a sigh.

She thrust the dress in my direction. The silk was cool and slippery in my hands. “Try it on.”

I retreated to Lily’s bathroom to change. Last year, I would have stripped down to my underwear without a qualm, but since our visit to the beach, I was feeling less comfortable than before.

I pulled off my sweater and T-shirt and pushed down my jeans, but before I slipped into the dress, I figured I might as well pee.

A streak of blood across the toilet paper stunned me.

My period. This should be no big deal … I’d had my period for the last three years. But as I sat naked on the toilet, my white panties stretched across my ankles, I strained to remember the last time I’d had to buy tampons. It had been at least several months—since midsummer, the best I could figure—since I’d last had my period.

I flushed the toilet and rummaged through Lily’s medicine cabinet, finding her tampons—not my brand, but they would do.

I had read about girls who stopped getting their periods if
their calorie intake was too low. I just hadn’t thought I could ever become one of them.

My reflection in Lily’s bathroom mirror stared back at me, wide-eyed. I stepped back to get a better look at my body. Beneath the strap of my bra, each of my ribs clearly showed through my skin. My collarbones, too, were evident.

But there was improvement: My belly, as my fingers traced across it, felt, if not round, at least not concave as it had. My thighs, though they still didn’t touch at the tops, were curved again, not just femur bones coated with skin and tendon.

My hair, as I ran my hands along the length of it, felt less brittle, and it shone a bit underneath the bright lights of the bathroom. The scar I had created on the inside of my wrist lay like a white bracelet, a reminder of how close I had come to falling—or rather jumping—off the precipice of health.

My period was back. Normally, this would be an irritation before a school dance, something to groan about. But not today. Today, the red blood that flowed from me was proof of life—proof that my body could heal, that it
was
healing, that I had not irreversibly damaged myself.

Lily pounded on the door. “What’s taking so long in there?”

So I unhooked my bra, dropping it on the counter before slipping myself into the silky sheath of the blue dress. It had no hooks, straps, buttons, or zippers, but there was a slight stretch to it that enabled me to fit it across my shoulders and hips.

The dress was several shades lighter than my eyes and it fit me beautifully.

I swerved around to see the back; it dipped low, and I lifted up my hair to expose the bare skin of my back.

“Come in,” I called to Lily.

She came in and looked at me appraisingly. “Hubba hubba,” she said, and smiled. “Will hasn’t got a chance.”

Downstairs in the kitchen, the cribbage board revealed that Jack’s winning streak had gone unbroken. The Lego project was either completed or abandoned, I couldn’t tell which. The four of them were working on making a pizza: Jack was rolling out the dough, Laura was slicing veggies, and the boys were fighting over whose turn it was to grate the cheese.

“Hey, girls,” Jack greeted us as he stretched the dough, preparing to throw it in the air. “You pick a dress?”

“Mmm-hmm. Lily’s closet is getting pretty full, Jack. Pretty soon you’re going to have to build a room addition,” I said.

“Or have a yard sale,” Jack scoffed.

“Don’t you dare, Daddy,” Lily said sternly. “You know my clothes are my life.”

“No, Lil,” admonished Laura. “Family is your life. Clothes are just decorations.” She turned to me. “You staying for dinner, hon?”

I considered it. Their kitchen was so warm, so inviting; it would be nice to sit down at the table and pretend for a little while that I was part of their family.

But I shook my head. “I should get home.”

Lily folded the blue dress and tucked it inside a burlap shopping bag her mother kept stashed in the pantry.

“Come on, Scar,” she urged. “What’ll we talk about if you leave?”

“Maybe your brothers can help you pick a date,” I suggested.

“Oh, Lil, honey, you still haven’t told those nice boys which of them you’ll go with to the dance? Shame on you!” Her mother shook her head, but Jack just laughed.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “String ’em along, string ’em along.”

Laura slapped his arm. “Funny, I don’t remember you being such a fan of that technique when you were on the receiving end of it!”

I could have listened to them banter all night, and watched the twins build and destroy things, and rolled my eyes with Lily, but suddenly I wanted to go home.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lily,” I called as I headed toward the door.

“Okay … see you,” she answered, sneaking a piece of pepperoni from the pile someone had sliced for the pizza.

It was cold outside. Our last day of school before winter break was this Friday; Lily and her family would be leaving for Brazil the day after the dance, Sunday. They would be gone for two weeks, searching for pink river dolphins.

And Will would be leaving too. He’d told me earlier in the week that he and Martin were taking the ferry to the mainland on Monday, then catching a flight from LAX back home to Connecticut for a visit with old friends.

That was how he’d said it.
Back home
. He and his father had only chosen Catalina Island in the first place because of its remoteness, its isolation, the fact that here Will was mostly free from his strange pull toward violent crimes. It made sense that home to him was still on the East Coast.

I took a deep breath of the cold air. Wisps of fog laced the streets, reminding me of the finely stitched gossamer dresses piled up on Lily’s bed.

I couldn’t make them stay. I couldn’t make anyone stay … Ronny, Lily, Will, nobody. The thought weighed heavily on me, and I felt blissfully sorry for myself. Then I shook my head to clear it. Right now, the street around me was beautiful in its soft mist. Right now, Lily was safe at home with her family. Right now, Will was on the island. And right now, I intended to cook dinner.

My good intentions wobbled slightly when I peered into our refrigerator. Mom had always done the shopping, but Since Ronny Died, she didn’t make it out of the house that often, and Daddy seemed sort of confused about what to buy. He bought things that didn’t go together, like cereal and butter but no milk or bread.

Right now our fridge had some pretty sorry-looking carrots and celery, and half of a roasted chicken left over from the other night.

I checked the pantry; we had rice and chicken broth. Chicken soup, then. I could handle that.

I turned on all the lights and adjusted the dial on the little radio Mom kept on the windowsill, finding a classical
station that came through pretty well. Pulling out a cutting board, I dissected the chicken carcass the best I could, slicing away the meat and chopping it into little cubes.

Then I realized I should probably start by boiling the rice, so I started a pot for that, and I fished a hair tie out of the back pocket of my jeans so I could wind my hair up and out of the way.

I hummed as I worked, doing my best to chop the carrots and celery into even pieces, and dropping them in the chicken broth that was simmering on the stove. It was clear to me what I was doing; I was trying to re-create the feeling I’d experienced in Lily’s kitchen earlier that evening or Will’s kitchen a few nights ago. But even with the lights on and the music up, even with the salty smell of the simmering vegetables and broth, there was an element I couldn’t replicate, not alone. There was no family.