The Story Sisters

“Or you can burn it and put a hex on someone,” Elv recommended as she clipped some more. She was concentrating hard. She’d never cut someone’s hair before. At last, Meg went to look in the mirror. Elv had cut her hair very short. Too short. The ends were raggedy from the dull scissors. She looked like a boy.

“It just has to grow out a little,” Claire said. “Right?”

“I need a break,” Elv said. Once things were changed you couldn’t go back. She knew that. Now Meg would know it too. She went out through the window. The leaves outside their window were rattling. Claire could hear her climbing down the hawthorn tree. Meg was still looking at herself in the mirror. She seemed in shock. “She did this on purpose.” Meg’s face was blotchy, as though she might cry. She ran a hand through her hair. It stuck straight up. “She’s not going to cut hers.”

“Of course she will,” Claire assured Meg. “We always look the same.”

They waited, but Elv didn’t return. She didn’t come home until it was almost morning, climbing in through the window, exhausted. She’d spent the night in Justin Levy’s bedroom. She’d made him sleep on the floor. He did whatever she told him, which was pathetic, really. They smoked weed, which didn’t affect her in the least, and then she told him to get on the floor. She dreamed of black stars, black water, a black sun in the center of the sky. When the other girls woke up, Elv was finally asleep in her own bed, her long hair knotted, still in her clothes, as if she’d been out dancing in Arnelle all night long.

Annie took Meg to the salon. Denise did the best she could, but Meg’s hair wound up being even shorter. She looked like an Olympic swimmer wearing a boy’s haircut. When they got back home, she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out. Annie and Claire waited in the kitchen. They could hear her quietly sobbing.

“What made her do that to herself?” Annie wondered.

It was ninety-nine degrees, utterly sweltering, and the meteo-rologists were predicting triple digits and thunderstorms. True summer wasn’t even here and it was already unbearable. Annie began phoning around to see if she could have central air-conditioning put in. There were fans set up all over the house. Some folks were paying double for air conditioners being sold out of the back of vans on Northern Boulevard.

Annie felt panic-stricken. Three teenaged girls took up a lot of space in a house. They grumbled and were moody; they kept secrets and cried for no apparent reason. They were moving further away from her. She could not remember the last time they’d all sat down for a meal together, had a discussion, watched a movie. Claire was trying to get Meg to come out of the bathroom, speaking that awful Arnish. The panic spread into Annie’s chest. She called around for air conditioners, but there were no air conditioners to be had on all of Long Island. Everyone was hot and dissatisfied and out of sorts. If she wanted an air conditoner she’d have to buy it from one of the scam artists, who were over-charging like mad, and she wasn’t about to do that.

“It’s a good thing we cut our hair,” Claire said when Meg finally emerged from the bathroom, her face splotchy, eyes red.

Claire was getting her casts off at the end of the week. Maybe she’d be happy then. Maybe everything would finally be set right, the way it used to be when she didn’t always feel she had to choose between her sisters. “At least we’ll be cool during the heat wave,” she said to Meg. “And you-know-who won’t be.”

Their mother was still busy on the phone in her search for an air conditioner. Meg leaned in close. She didn’t want Annie to overhear. She didn’t even want it to be true, but it was, and it was her duty to let Claire know.

“Elv isn’t who you think she is,” Meg said in a strange, small voice. “Watch out for her.”

ON THE DAY Claire had her casts taken off, the heat finally broke. It was wonderful and odd to suddenly have her arms back. She felt spidery and ill at ease. She was awkward doing the simplest tasks—pouring a glass of orange juice, brushing her teeth. She’d cut her hair, and now Meg and Elv weren’t speaking. When they passed each other in the hall, they looked away, as if a shadow was passing by, one they needn’t recognize. School would soon be over. Next year everything would be better. They would all go to Paris in the spring; it would be the three of them, the way it was supposed to be. In every fairy tale there were always three sisters: the eldest was brave, the middle one was trustworthy, and the youngest had the biggest heart of all. Elv had hung a map of Arnelle in their closet. Sometimes Claire sat in the closet with a flashlight and tried to memorize it. The rose gardens, the thorn-bushes, the huts made of stone and straw, the paths to the castle, the lake where the water was so deep no one could ever reach the bottom, the meadow where the horse that had been rescued wandered freely, without a saddle or reins.

AS THE SCHOOL term neared its end, Annie was called in to the principal’s office. Elv was barely passing her classes. She fell asleep in Latin. She talked back to teachers. Annie could see her through the glass door, out in the waiting room. Just last week Elv had refused to take the SATs. She didn’t want to go to college. She wanted something different. Maybe she’d live in Paris and work for Madame Cohen and sit in cafés in the evening and walk along the river.

The principal called Elv into his office when he and Annie were done with their meeting. “Did you have anything you wanted to say?”

“Ni hamplig, suit ne henaj.” Elv looked at the floor. You’re a pig and a dog, she had told him. A little smile played around her lips.

“I think you see what I’m talking about,” the principal remarked to Annie.

“Can’t you just go along with things and be polite?” Annie said as they walked out to the car.

“Is that what you want? For me to be polite?” Elv yanked the door open and folded herself into the passenger seat. She flipped down the visor so she could look into the mirror as she applied green eyeliner. In Arnelle, members of the royal family all had green eyes. She hadn’t had the heart to tell Claire that she was not included in the top echelon, although she would have loved to let Meg know. Meg who was so perfect, who didn’t know the first thing about real life.

“Are you upset about something?” Annie said. “You can talk to me. You used to talk to me.”

Elv laughed. “A hundred years ago.” In Arnelle, a hundred years went by in an instant. Time was transparent. You could see right through it. Look through the glass, the Queen had told her. See how simple it is to walk back in time?

Elv leaned forward to get a better look in the mirror. As she did, her sleeveless T-shirt pulled back. You could see her flesh through the fabric. Annie saw a flash of one of the black stars.

“What is that?” she asked. She had a tumbling feeling. She’d been shy as a girl and had felt a sort of desperation whenever she’d had to speak in public. She felt a wave of desperation now.

Elv gazed at her shoulder and pulled her shirt over her skin. “I’ve had it for a long time,” she said coolly. “You just never noticed.”

“Elv. Please. Talk to me.”

“I’m not going to be polite, if that’s what you want to talk about. You can forget about that. “ Elv had a strange feeling in her throat. If she wasn’t careful, she might say something. She turned to look out the window. Everything looked the same in North Point Harbor, everything was green. It was a relief to be invisible, to be marked by stars. She didn’t have to listen to another word her mother said, even if she begged Elv to talk to her, even if she was crying.

“Can we just go?” Elv said.

Her mother started the car.

MEG WAS THE one who found the marijuana in the closet. It was in a shoebox, along with matches and some rolling papers. She pulled Claire inside and they sat there under the green map of Arnelle in the dark. Meg flipped on a flashlight. Claire had grown and was now as tall as her sisters. If only there hadn’t been that stupid disaster with the haircuts, people would have thought they were triplets. They would have had great fun in school, tricking teachers and classmates alike.

“It probably belongs to Justin Levy,” Claire said. “She spends a lot of time with him.”

Meg grimaced. “I doubt that. Justin’s not her friend. He’s more like her slave. Everyone knows she’s just using him.”

Justin had his own car and would drive Elv anywhere she wanted to go. She didn’t even walk to school with her sisters anymore.

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.