“I don’t know,” Violet said. “I honestly don’t know her very well. When we were little, Rose was like this cleverly arranged slide show, projecting whatever my mother wanted her to be. And I don’t mean typical good-girl stuff, like try to be polite, try to be kind. My mom really wanted Rose to be a child actress. She was always taking her to acting coaches so she could perfect her fake Cockney accent or dyeing her hair different colors for castings: Irish red, California blond.” Violet had a brief but vivid flashback of her mother bent over the bathtub, hosing bleach out of her nine-year-old sister’s hair. How envious she had been at the time. In retrospect, the whole business horrified her. Later, she’d seen Rose crying about her burned scalp. Violet rubbed her palm across her mouth and shivered. “Even in everyday life, Rose seemed to be reading from a script. It wasn’t till last year that she finally broke character.”
“Did she wild out?”
“Sort of. She dropped her major in theater arts and went undecided. I think she was looking to transfer into something in the science department. Rose didn’t want to live at home anymore. She started screaming her head off about wanting a student room in New Paltz, probably so she could be closer to her boyfriend. No way she was gonna bring him home. My parents have all sorts of rules about ‘no shut doors’ and ‘no boys allowed upstairs.’”
“Is he right for her? Her boyfriend … what’s his name?”
“Damien.”
“How very dark … and French. I know a Damien at Vassar. What’s his last name?”
“Koch.”
“So is he? Right for her, I mean?”
“Dunno. Probably. It sounds like he got her back into theater or whatever. Personally, I never met him. Rose always kept her relationships top secret. She didn’t talk about them. She never once brought a guy home to meet my parents.”
“Maybe she’s not into guys? That’s the reason most people hide who they’re dating.”
Violet shook her head. No way Rose was sapphically inclined. “I think it was more like she knows no one will ever be good enough for her in my mother’s eyes. Besides, I always got the sense Rose was an undercover freak. A few months before she left home, I was giving her a hard time about being the Virgin Mary, and she looked at me with this filthy smile and said, ‘If you only knew what I’ve been up to.’ After she was gone, when the cops were searching her room, they found this little vibrator hidden behind the smiling side of her comedy/tragedy masks. My mom looked furious. My dad almost died of embarrassment.”
“Cops?” Edie asked with interest.
“Yeah. It was scary for a few days. My super-considerate sister moved out without any warning. My parents reported her missing. Turns out she’d only run away. It didn’t take the cops long to find CCTV from the MetroNorth station. The footage showed Rose buying a one-way ticket to Grand Central. She’d been alone, pulling a suitcase. She didn’t look the least bit distressed.”
How was it possible to hate someone straight down to their marrow and still miss them? Violet missed Rose. Desperately. She had never let herself think that before, not one time in all the months since the first responding officer had pulled her aside and pointedly asked, “What do you think happened to your sister?” Even when Josephine started obnoxiously doting on Will and when Douglas—a marginal figure to begin with—fell clean off the pages of the family history.
Sure, there was a time not too long ago when Violet was crying nightly and throwing things at her wall, and she took Rose’s absence as further proof that everyone would discard her in the end. But as the year progressed, Violet had found blotter paper, THC, and transcendence. She’d learned to turn her brain inside out and leave her emotions behind.
But ever since Rose’s letter had arrived, Violet had been feeling like she’d stepped in the same shit again. Her feelings had roared back at high volume. She felt light-headed, off-center. Her shoulders were clenched so tight it hurt to turn her head.
Edie was wearing a look she’d probably borrowed from one of the many shrinks she’d seen over the years. “Was it some kind of cry for attention? You think your sister is BPD?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Sorry. Borderline personality disordered. It’s like, an I-love-you-I-hate-you-Don’t-leave-me kinda thing. Emotional roller-coaster shit. Do you think she ran away hoping you all would come hunting her down?”
“Maybe. When we were kids, Rose’s favorite game was hide-and-seek,” Violet said. “She loved hiding at the bottom of the laundry basket, knowing everyone was pulling their hair out trying to find her.”
After lunch Violet borrowed Edie’s phone card. Clutching the greasy yellow receiver, her back to the booth’s closed accordion door, Violet was faced with a first-world problem. She could not remember her best friend’s phone number, which she’d always dialed from the saved entry on her cell phone.
She had three misdials.
She thought for a second and admired the graffiti that still showed through a janitor’s efforts to scrub it off (Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?). Then it occurred to her to call 411. Thankfully, Imogene’s parents had a landline.
Two conflicting voices said hello. The frazzled one belonged to Imogene’s mother. The kind of endearingly monotone one was Finch. “I got it, Mom,” he said.
Violet felt as though her tongue had been cut out. “Finch,” she said. Violet’s desperation—she was dying to talk to Imogene—gave her voice a breathy, stalkerette quality.
“Yeah. Is that Violet?”
For the past few months, she’d been trying to put the way she felt about Finch out of her mind. She wouldn’t allow herself to call it a crush. Crushes weren’t a precursor to love, they were a precursor to having your heart chewed up like Shark Week.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Violet said. “Listen, is Imogene there?”
“She’s in the shower. What’s up? Where have you been?”
“Is there any way you could get her? I don’t really know when I’ll be able to call again.”
“Man, Hurst. Are you in the clink or something? Is this your one phone call? Do you need me to call a lawyer for you?”
“I’m not in jail. Just get Imogene, okay? I’m calling on a phone card and I don’t know how much money’s on it.”
After Violet spent a few more minutes perusing the phone booth graffiti, Imogene finally picked up.
“Violet? Are you okay? Finch said you got busted for those seeds. That’s outrageous! They’re legal! For fuck’s sake, we bought them in the gardening section of Gordon’s Fairtrade Farm!”
“I didn’t get arrested. It’s a long story. My mom’s lying about me, I think. Saying I’m abusive to Will. My dad brought me to Fallkill.”
“Wait. What? The mental hospital?! What are you doing there? Do you need us to come get you?”
“You can come visit me. I can’t leave until they say it’s okay.”
“Which ‘they’? The doctors or your parents?”
“The doctors.”
“How is she saying you abused Will?”
“I don’t know. Something happened to his hand. A knife or something. I’m afraid I might be in serious trouble. My mom is trying to decide whether she’s going to press charges.”
“You’re fucking kidding, right? This is serious, Violet. You have to get the fuck out of there. My parents will get you out of there. My mom’s right here.”
“No. Imogene, don’t