It took a while to get the car going. The car made a wrenching noise when Claire pulled the shift into first gear, which made them laugh all over again. Finally they figured out a system in which Claire shifted and Elv steered as she worked the gas and the clutch. They stalled out at the stop sign on Spring Street, got the giggles, then managed to get going again. They drove to the house where their father and Cheryl lived. They had both transferred to another school, out in the Hamptons. There was a For Sale sign out in front. Claire and Meg had never even been invited over for dinner. Not even while Elv had been gone. Thankfully, no one was home when they pulled the Miata into the garage.
“Good work, kiddo,” Elv said appreciatively.
“Leave the windows open.” Claire couldn’t help being practical. It was in her nature. “That will air out the smoke.”
“Very smart.” Elv rolled down the windows of the Miata. “But of course you would be. You’re my sister.”
Claire felt a flush of pride. She wondered what it was like to be so fearless.
Elv returned the car keys to a peg on the garage wall. “He’ll never know. Self-involved people never look any farther than their own asses. And he definitely is an ass.”
“Maybe he’ll think Cheryl took it for a spin,” Claire said. “Maybe they’ll fight and break up and he’ll come back to Mom.”
“I don’t think so,” Elv replied. “I wouldn’t wait around hoping for that.”
They snuck out of the garage and walked through town.
“You’re a pretty great accomplice,” Elv said. “A plus.”
Claire felt a shiver of pleasure. They shouldn’t have taken their father’s car. Still, it was a compliment.
Elv was a fast walker, and Claire had to hurry to keep up with her. She found her sister fascinating. When they got to their block, she thought she saw Mrs. Weinstein looking out of the bay window of her living room. Maybe she was thinking of that time Elv had torn up the roses from her yard for a protection charm to hang above her bed or the time Elv yelled at her for mistreating Pretzel, keeping him tied up on the lawn.
“You’re a pretty good driver,” Elv told Claire. She missed having Claire as her ally. Meg had done her best to steal her away, but that was over with now. “Let’s celebrate by eating.” They used to do that all the time. Sneak food up to their room and snack all night.
When they arrived home, Claire and Elv went to the fridge and took out everything chocolate: ice cream, fudge sauce, brownies. They were laughing about how many calories they could fit into one bowl when Meg came downstairs. She stood in the doorway, watching.
“Hey,” Claire said when she noticed Meg. “You’ll never believe what we did.” Claire had poured a ton of chocolate sauce into her bowl. Now she was adding chocolate chips. “Oh my God,” she said to Elv. “This is probably a million calories.”
“More like a zillion.” Elv grinned. “Add more chips. Oh, and candy bars!”
“Don’t you have homework to do?” Meg reminded Claire.
“What are you? Her mother?” Elv was at the snack drawer getting out a Kit Kat bar, which she broke into pieces to add to the sundaes. “Let’s utterly pig out,” she said to Claire.
“Yum,” Claire said. “These look amazing.”
“You have a paper for American lit,” Meg said to her. “You told me you did. I said I would help you.”
“You’re such a baby,” Elv told Meg. “Miss Goody Two-shoes. Why don’t I just hand you a knife and you can stab me in the back?”
“Come on,” Meg said to Claire.
Claire left her sundae on the counter. She put her spoon in the sink. She could smell the smoke in her own hair. “I guess I’m not that hungry,” she said.
She grabbed her book bag and followed Meg upstairs.
“Go ahead,” Elv called after them. “You’re both babies!”
The girls went to their room. They set to work on the term paper in bed. The lock on the door was clicked shut. Claire glanced at the space where Elv’s bed used to be. She missed there being three of them. She missed the way things used to be.
“She’s really okay,” Claire told Meg. “She’s not exactly the same, but she’s Elvish.”
“If you say so.”
Meg had begun to see the school counselor. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Claire. She stopped by Mrs. Morrison’s office every Tuesday and Thursday at ten o’clock. Sometimes she talked and sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she sat there and cried. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted to see Mrs. Morrison. Maybe it was because she felt alone even when she was in a room full of people, even when she was in her very own bed talking to Claire. The one thing she knew for certain was that it would never be the three of them again.
“She’s still Elv,” Claire ventured.
“Take my advice,” Meg said. “Don’t trust her.”
IT WAS THE middle of the night when it happened, a blue-black rainy night. The rain began at midnight, tapping on the windows before coming down in sheets. Claire suddenly woke with a fever. There had been midterms at school, and she’d been coughing and had a painful sore throat; now her illness suddenly took a turn, her fever spiking to 103. She got out of bed in her nightgown, drenched. Everything looked funny: her room, the light through the window. Meg was sound asleep. Claire wished Elv was in the next bed and she could get under the blanket with her and Elv could tell her she would feel better soon the way she did when Claire was little.