Sherri’s room revealed nothing. There was a double bed made up neatly, with a patchwork quilt folded in thirds at the foot of it. There was a dresser and a nightstand, and the nightstand drawer was empty. Who had empty nightstand drawers? The absence of secrets felt like a secret unto itself. The closet was small, the way closets were in these houses, with non-fancy wire shelving, the kind you bought at Home Depot and that left marks in some of your shirts if you weren’t careful. Four pairs of shoes were neatly lined up on one of the shelves. Who, Alexa wondered, had only four pairs of shoes? It looked like the closet of a nun.
One bedroom was empty—like, literally empty, nothing in it, and Alexa thought about how her mother would have turned it into some kind of funky home office with maybe a standing desk and a few succulents from Sage. Well, Sherri was a single mother, a working mother, so no surprise that she hadn’t quite gotten around to interior decorating just yet.
Alexa progressed to the third room, which was clearly Katie’s. It was messy in the way that Morgan’s room was messy, with scattered bottles of nail polish on the floor, probably not closed all the way, and a paperback open on the bed. The dresser drawers were closed only partially, with pieces of T-shirts and pajama bottoms sticking out of them. On the pillow—thepillow! This was so something Morgan would do—was an uncapped marker, and Alexa reached for it. She saw the cap on the nightstand, which was on the far side of the bed, and as she was reaching for it she put her hand on top of the pillow to steady herself. There was something hard under the pillow (Morgan would do that too, leave something weird under the pillow—a contraband snack, maybe, or acopy ofThe Fault in Our Stars,which she’d been told she was too young to read until at least seventh grade) and before she could even think about what she was doing Alexa slid the object out.
It wasn’t a snack. It wasn’t a copy ofThe Fault in Our Stars. It was a composition notebook with a black-and-white marbled cover, very similar to the “grief journals” her mom had bought for Morgan.Don’t open it,Alexa told herself as she was opening it.Don’t you dare open it, you know that bad things happen when you stick your nose places it doesn’t belong. In eighth grade, for example, she sneaked on to Google Docs and read Mia Rosenberg’s narrative nonfiction draft and found out it was all about how angry she was at Alexa for stealing her boyfriend, Elijah Connor. In fairness, Elijah Connor had never cared that much about Mia, and everybody knew it, and anyway Alexa only dated him for two weeks because he turned out to be really, really boring.
And it was not like it was a diary, for Heaven’s sake! It was probably full of math equations. Diaries of eleven-year-old girls were typically pink and hardbound and closed with those tiny padlocks with keys that went missing all the time. This was just a notebook. Alexa would prove it, by taking a small peek inside.
The first line on the first page said, “I’m not supposed to write any of this down. I’m not even supposed to talk about it.”
“Alexa!” Katie called from downstairs. “Where’d you go? Alexa! They’re going to announce the winner!”
Alexa slammed the notebook shut. Was there actually somethinginterestinggoing on in this drab little half-house? She called, “I’ll be right down!” and tucked the notebook back under the pillow. She wasn’t sure if Katie heard her so she yelled, “Coming!” even louder, and instantly there came a banging from the other side of the wall. Ghost, or neighbor? She wasn’t sure. She banged back, three times, and after that there was only silence. Probably a ghost.
She hightailed it down the stairs and into the living room to see who won the cupcake war. It was not yet dark, not even really twilight, and there was no need to turn on either of the mismatched table lamps that sat on the elderly tables in the living room. Even so, Alexa found that she was suddenly considering Katie Griffin in a whole new light.
While they were watching, there came a knocking at the front door. Katie and Alexa looked at each other, startled.
Outside the door stood a shriveled specimen of a woman. She was holding a small dog with giant ears. The woman made Alexa think of what would happen if somebody took a walnut and glued it on top of an old rag doll. She was looking at Alexa sternly.
“Can I help you?” asked Alexa. She had no problem being stern right back.
“Noise!” the woman said, her face crumpling into even more wrinkles, if that was possible.
“Excuse me?” Alexa couldn’t stand looking at really old women up close. It was depressing. Supposedly their tiny little eyes contained the wisdom of the ages or whatever, but all Alexa saw was a complete lack of collagen and the absence of an actual neck.
“Too much noise!” said the woman, pointing an angry finger toward the house. “Somebody was just banging on the wall at me.”
“You banged first!” protested Alexa.
The woman ignored this. “The crying all the time, the screaming. It’s too loud!”
Alexa smiled her sweetest smile and said, “It’s under control. I’m so sorry we bothered you. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Who was that?” asked Katie when she returned to the cupcake wars.
“An angry old lady,” said Alexa.
“Miss Josephine,” said Katie, nodding sagely. “From next door.”
Alexa was about to ask Katie about the “crying all the time,the screaming,” but she decided to hold her tongue. There was something going on in this house. And she was going to find out what it was.
Cupcake Warshad become a real nail-biter, and she asked Katie if she could get her anything from the kitchen while they waited for the winner. She was going to start right now being the world’s best babysitter so that she got asked back again.
32.
Sherri
You are strong,said Sherri in her head at Derma-You once her training was complete.Katie is safe, and you are strong. This was her mantra for the evening. Her counselor in the program had taught her about mantras. Sometimes she recycled, because it was difficult to think of a new one every day. They were all variations on a calming and empowering theme:Your body is capable, your spirit is capable.Or,The rest of your life is the best of your life. (She’d been pretty proud of that one, with the rhyme.)
She reached for the file of a woman named Penelope Butler, who would be in at seven thirty for her fourth laser treatment to remove her underarm hair. Unwanted hair was just one of the things you could make disappear at Derma-You. You could also say good-bye to lax skin, liver spots, spider veins. Moles, cellulite. Skin discoloration. Scars. It was shocking, really, how many things could be removed from the human body.
The doctors were three smooth, ageless women—at once the advertisers for their goods as well as the dispensers—who flew in and out so quickly in their white coats that Sherri could hardly keep them straight.
The door opened and a woman walked in. Miranda Ramirez, who had a seven o’clock consultation for fillers. She smiled uncertainly, the way Sherri had learned all new patients smiled ontheir first visit. They wanted to change something about themselves, but they were ashamed to admit to that want. They looked around to see if anyone they knew was in the waiting room.
Sherri smiled back. She had noticed that some of the other women who worked at the front desk—there were usually three at a time, one checking patients in and one checking them out, while a third manned (womaned) the phones—were often hurried and graceless when they talked to the patients. They could have been dealing with oil changes or tax appointments, not the precious, vulnerable parts of these women’s bodies, the over-hairy or over-scarred or flabby bits that required special attention.
