Claire held the baggie up to her nose. “It smells like feet,” she said.
“The question is—do we tell Mom?”
“No,” Claire said. “Definitely not.”
“We have to say something,” Meg insisted.
“Why?”
“If you keep someone’s secret, you’re just as guilty as they are. You’re an accomplice.”
Claire felt hot in the closet. There really wasn’t any air.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll talk to Elv tonight.”
ELV DIDN’T COME home for dinner. Annie and Claire and Meg had pizza and a salad. The sisters exchanged a glance when Annie asked if they knew where Elv was. They shrugged and said they had no idea.
“Is that Justin Levy her boyfriend?” Annie wanted to know.
“Hardly,” Meg said. “He’s just madly in love with her.”
“Meg!” Claire said.
“Well, everyone knows he is. He spray-painted that thing on the wall.”
“What wall?” Annie said.
He had spray-painted I would tear out my heart for you on the side of the old Whaling Museum in town. Everybody was talking about it.
“The salad’s good,” Claire said.
“I would tear out my heart for you,” Meg said.
“That’s about Elv?” Annie had noticed the shaky writing, the yellow spray-painted declaration of love.
“Yep,” Meg said.
“We assume, but we don’t know,” Claire said. She gave Meg a look. “Justin Levy has emotional problems.”
“Major ones,” Meg agreed.
“For all we know, that graffiti could be about Mary Fox,” Claire ventured.
They all laughed.
“I would tear out my cerebellum for you,” Meg joked.
“I would conjugate Latin for you,” Claire piped in.
“I would love you all the days of my life,” Annie said to her daughters, glad that she wasn’t Justin Levy’s mother.
THEY WERE UPSTAIRS doing their homework when Elv finally came home. She smelled like burning leaves. “Hard at work?” she said. She picked up one of Meg’s books—The Scarlet Letter—and thumbed through. “Who would name someone Hester?”
Meg reached under her bed and brought out the shoebox.
“Well, well,” Elv said when she saw it. She put down the book. “Look what the little detective found.”
“We don’t want you to get in trouble,” Claire told her.
“Trouble with a capital T?” Elv sat down on Claire’s bed. She was sitting on Claire’s feet, but Claire didn’t complain. “I wish you wouldn’t look through my personal belongings,” she said to Meg. “Just because you’re jealous.”
“Jealous?” Meg laughed. She didn’t sound very happy.
“It started in Paris and you know it. You couldn’t stand that you didn’t have the guts to do what I did.”
“You mean sleep all day? Or be a whore?”
Elv reached over and slapped her sister. “You’re a jealous bitch and you know it.”
Meg clutched at her burning cheek.
“You wanted to blame me for cutting your hair, but that was your decision. It’s not my fault you’re ugly.”
“Stop it!” Claire said.
“I told you,” Meg said to Claire. “This is who she is.”
Elv went to the open window and slipped outside. Claire got up, grabbed the shoebox, and replaced it in the closet. “Mom can’t find this.”
“Are you taking her side?” Meg said.
“No.” Claire slipped on a pair of flip-flops. She wished Meg had never poked around in the closet. She wished she had left things alone.
“You are. You always do.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re no better than Justin Levy. Another one of her slaves.”
“You don’t even know her,” Claire said coldly. “You just think you do.”
CLAIRE WENT DOWNSTAIRS, then out the back door to the garden. Behind her the house was quiet. There was the muffled sound of the TV as their mother watched the news. The evening was pale, the air unmoving. There was Elv, sitting beneath the arbor, smoking a cigarette. Her white T-shirt clung to her. She was barefoot, and the soles of her feet were dark with soil. Her black hair hung to her waist. She didn’t look anything like them anymore. She looked like the queen of a country that was too far away to visit. There were moths in the garden, fluttering about blindly. The bedroom light was turned off now. Meg had probably slipped into bed, crying the way she did, quietly, so as not to disturb anyone.
“You shouldn’t have been so mean to her,” Claire told Elv.
“That wasn’t mean. It was honest. She is a bitch.”
“She said I was like Justin Levy.”
“Yeah, right. Justin is pathetic and you’re brave. If anything, you’re opposites. Meg doesn’t have a clue.” Elv suddenly threw up her hands. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned.
Claire stopped where she was.
There was a tiny bird in her path. Both sisters knelt. “He fell out of his nest.” Elv picked up the fledgling. “He’s a robin.”
Claire was startled by how fragile the baby bird was. She could see through its skin to its beating heart. There were only a few stray, luminous feathers.
The girls went in search of the nest, but they couldn’t find it in the dark. There were spiderwebs that were frightening to walk through. Claire kept brushing them away, even when they were no longer there. The crickets were calling. Elv sat down in the wet grass. She looked so sad and beautiful. She was everything Claire wanted to be.