What a Doll!
Authors: P.J. Night
Contents
PROLOGUE
Crrrrrreak!
The heavy wooden door groaned loudly as the old woman opened it.
It was time to get started.
She lit a few candles and carefully went to work. Her long, straggly white hair swayed across her back as she slowly wiped the dust from each shelf.
The room was dark and small with no windows. The woman removed her wares from their boxes and dusted each item carefully before putting it on a shelf.
First, a shelf of candles in every color, shape, and size. The glass countertop was where the jewelry wentâbracelets, necklaces, and earrings that jingle-jangled when you moved around. There were containers of beads for making your own jewelry, beads in every hue. Then, last but not least, a shelf of small cloth dolls. Their embroidered eyes stared lifelessly out into the shop. There were also small vials of oil and perfume, large and small wooden sculptures of people and animals, and a tall stack of old books. There were glass goblets, crystals, drums, wooden instruments, dried gourds, shells, snakeskins, skull figurines, and blocks of wax.
A black cat slowly wandered in, carefully sniffing at the air, which was full of smells new to him. He seemed startled when he saw the old woman, and arched his back and hissed loudly. The woman, seeming aggravated, stomped one foot, shooing him out of the room.
Once the cat had scampered out, the woman sighed loudly, then put her lamp on the counter and plugged it in. It had a red velvet shade with fringe around the edges.
She turned the lamp on and the room glowed red. She was ready now. Ready for the first poor soul who wandered in.
CHAPTER 1
One Friday night Lizzy Draper and Emmy Spencer were watching TV and
eating popcorn at Lizzy's house. This was because Lizzy didn't seem to want
to do anything else.
“Pass the popcorn, Lizzy?” Emmy asked her best friend.
Lizzy passed the bowl over with a slightly annoyed look. “It's
Liz, remember?” she asked Emmy. “Now that I'm not five
anymore?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, Liz,” Emmy mumbled. Emmy had a bad feeling
in her stomach, the same feeling she'd been having for a few months now. Things
were different between the lifelong best friends. There was no denying it. It was
simple: Now that they were in seventh grade, Lizzy had become popular, and Emmy had not.
Lizzy was talking to boys, and Emmy was not. Lizzy was wearing lip gloss, and Emmy was
not. Lizzyâ
“Hey, you know something?” Lizzy interrupted Emmy's
thoughts. “You could maybe start going by a more mature name yourself.”
“What do you mean? Change my name?” Emmy said.
“No, silly,” Lizzy said. “Just go by something like Em.
Or Emma.”
“Em might be okay,” Emmy responded. “But my full
name's not Emma. It's Emily.”
“Right, but Emma is much cooler,” Lizzy said, looking totally
serious.
“I kind of like Em,” said Emmy. “But it would take some
getting used to. Hey, I know. Instead of Liz, I could call you Lizard.” Emmy
laughed at her own joke.
“Like when I was three?” Lizzy asked sarcastically.
Emmy thought it might be a good idea to change the subject. “So what
are we going to be for the costume party this year?”
Lizzy paused and examined the pattern on the rug. “Oh,” she
said. “I was going to tell you. I'm going to do a group costume with Cadence
and Sophie.”
Ouch. Emmy tried to keep the hurt out of her voice. “But we had so
much fun last year,” she said.
The costume party was part of their school's spirit week, which was
only a few weeks away. When Lizzy and Emmy were in sixth grade, they heard rumors about
how competitive some of the kids got with their costumes, and they were a little scared
to participate. But then Emmy had the most brilliant idea: Lizzy could dress up as a bug
and Emmy could go as a can of bug spray. Lizzy had loved it and so had everyone else.
They even won an honorable mention for such a creative costumeâan honor very few sixth
graders ever received.
Emmy had been thinking of ideas for this year's costume for months
now, but apparently it was all for nothing. At this moment, Emmy was feeling a lot like
she was an actual bug and Lizzy was the spray.
“I know,” Lizzy said. “Sorry.”
Lizzy's mom, Marilyn, poked her head into the family room.
“You girls should turn off the TV soon,” she said.
“There's nothing else to do, Mom,” Lizzy said with a
hint of a whine. Emmy couldn't help but notice that Lizzy had stopped calling her
mother “Mommy,” which Emmy still called her mother. What was with all these
name changes?
“I can't believe my ears,” her mom said. “You two
have always found fun things to do together at your sleepovers.” It was true.
They'd make crazy concoctions in the kitchen, pretend to open up a beauty parlor,
write short plays and perform them for their parents, carve bars of soap into funny
shapes, and do plenty of other creative stuff.
Lizzy sighed loudly and said nothing more, finally turning off the
television when it was time for dinner. The two girls sat silently at the table they had
sat at together so many times before, since they were babies in high chairs. Their moms
had met when they were pregnant with Lizzy and Emmy, and because they were next-door
neighbors on a street deep in the heart of Brooklyn, New York, they spent countless
hours with their baby girls in their kitchens, out running errands, at the playground,
and even on family vacations together. Lizzy and Emmy had always been inseparable, just
like their moms. Until lately.
Twirling spaghetti on her fork, Emmy was lost in thought. How could she
feel so lonely with her best friend beside her? Maybe it was because they weren't
really best friends anymore. That thought made her so sad she dropped her fork on her
plate. It was all she could do to keep herself from putting her head down on the
table.
“What's the matter, Emmy?” Marilyn asked.
“Nothing,” Emmy said. There was a time when she could tell
Marilyn anything, and this wasn't that time. Marilyn and Joanne, Emmy's mom,
had always depended on each other to take care of the other's daughter in a pinch.
If Joanne couldn't get away from work and Emmy was sick at school, Marilyn would
pick her up at the school nurse. If Marilyn had to go to a meeting out of town, Joanne
would watch Lizzy until she got back. It was like each girl had two moms. Of course, it
was even better than that because it was also like each girl had a sisterâLizzy was an
only child, and Emmy had a little brother.
Living next door to each other had always been so much fun. The best part
of all was that they could see right into each other's bedrooms. They had all
sorts of fun with this, shining laser lights or flashlights on each other's walls
in the dark and throwing things back and forth through their open windows. They did have
one rule they agreed upon long ago, though: no spying.
As the girls cleared the dishes, Emmy noticed Lizzy looking at her
closely. She seemed to be focused on Emmy's long dark hair, which she wore in two
braids. On the way up the stairs to Lizzy's room, Lizzy swished one of
Emmy's braids like a horse's tail.
“I have a great idea,” Lizzy said as they entered her room.
“Let's give you a makeover.”
Emmy was pleased that Lizzy wanted to do something,
anything,
with her. And they had played with makeup before. They used to
love playing dress-up and putting on fashion shows for their parents. It would be fun.
This sleepover isn't going to be totally awful after
all,
Emmy thought.
“Awesome,” Emmy said, smiling. “Where's your
mom's makeup case?” It was what they'd always used when they played
dress-up.
“No makeup,” Lizzy announced, swishing Emmy's other
braid. “Hair.”
“Oh. Okay,” Emmy said, and removed the rubber band from each
braid. She ran her fingers through her braids to undo them, splaying out her long pretty
hair over her shoulders. Her hair was so long it almost reached her butt.
Lizzy looked at Emmy's hair thoughtfully. “I have a
vision,” she said, grinning, and left the room. “I'll be right
back.”
Emmy sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the mirror. She couldn't
wait to see what Lizzy was going to do. Would she weave a sophisticated inside-out
French braid, like she did so well? Use a curling iron? She was so relieved that Lizzy
seemed more like her old self that she didn't notice what Lizzy was holding in her
hand when she came back into the room.
Scissors.
Lizzy help them up like a magician's wand. “You're going
to look great, Em,” she promised.
Emmy's heart stopped. “Um,
L-Liz . . . ,” she stammered. “I don't want an
actual haircut. I thought you were just going to braid it or something.”
“But haven't you noticed how badly you need one?” Lizzy
asked. “We're in seventh grade now, but your hair is stuck in
fourth.”
Emmy instinctively put her hands to her hair to protect it. What would her
mother say if she came home with her hair cut off? She loved her daughter's long
hair. So did Emmy, actually. She loved feeling it cover her back, she loved brushing it,
she loved braiding it herself. She'd never wanted shorter hair. For her entire
life Emmy had never allowed it to be cut more than an inch to get rid of split ends. It
had always been long. And so had Lizzy's light blond hair until this year, when
she'd gone for a short cut that she described as “sassier than long
hair.”