7 Souls (4 page)

“Yeah.” Mary’s memory focused, now that she was facing Ellie again. “And Mom left
first
, right? She got into one of her—”

“We talked about Dad.” Ellen put it matter-of-factly, as she always did, and Mary had to force herself to remember that her sister wasn’t upsetting her on purpose—she just didn’t seem to realize how uninterested Mary was in that endless, ongoing argument. “You remember? Mom said that she wished he was here to see you turn seventeen, and you couldn’t—”

“All right, all right.”
And can we drop it?
Morton Shayne had been in the ground for ten years, but his absence was always a fresh topic for her mother and sister at precisely the moments that Mary was trying to have a good time. “I didn’t say the right solemn thing and Mom got all sad and left. Can we not—”

“Whatever, whatever.” Ellen waved a hand impatiently. “Sorry—it is what it is. Anyway we stayed another ten minutes, and then you had somewhere to go.”

“Where?”
Mary tried to concentrate, but she couldn’t recall anything about what her motives or whims had been—besides, of course, getting
away
. “Did I say where I was
going?
Did anyone
call
me?”

Ellen shook her head serenely. “You got in a cab and took off. You were in some kind of hurry, but you didn’t say anything else.”

“Ellie, this is
serious
—I’m freaked that I can’t remember what I
did
.”

“Oh, you’re
fine
—come on,” Ellen said dismissively. The lamplight gleamed off her glasses as she checked her watch. “Nothing
happened
—you met some people and killed some brain cells and—”

“Ellie—”

“—partied somewhere until you did a face-plant and stumbled home in the morning just like a million other nights. Honestly, get over it.”

“Mary …? Ellen …?”

Both sisters’ shoulders slumped, in unison.

Even though their mother’s voice, muffled by two closed bedroom doors, was barely audible, it still cut through to Mary’s ears like a surgical scalpel.
That voice
, with the double shot of eternal tragedy and helplessness, like she was calling her daughters’ names through mosquito netting as she lay dying in a Ugandan leper colony.

“Mary-fairy? Ellie-belle? Can you come here?”

Every morning was exactly the same. Before the girls left for school, rain or shine, Mom had to have her broncho-dilating drugs for her emphysema and a glass of diluted orange juice (two parts Tropicana, one part Fiji). She needed it all brought to her in bed, followed by her pack of Virginia Slims from the dresser and her antidepressants and mood stabilizers for the bipolar disorder and her OxyContin and B
12
for the chronic fatigue syndrome. It had been the same nearly every day for a decade—for so long that Mary could barely remember what her mother had been like before, when Dad was still alive. It was like she had been a different person altogether.

Ellen and Mary stared at each other, hopelessly.

“Can you take this one?” Mary asked.

Ellen gave her a nasty smile. “What’s it worth to you?”

“Come
on
, Elle!
Look
at me! It’s
already
like eight o’clock and I’ve got to take a shower and figure—”

“It’s only seven-forty-five.”

“—out what to
wear
. I will buy you a pony, I will steal you a new laptop, I will do your dishes for a month….”

And you don’t really mind
, she added silently. It was true. Ellen obviously got some kind of codependent satisfaction from taking care of Mom. If Ellen ended up doing it more often, Mary had determined, it had to be because, on some level, she
wanted
to; it made up for not having a boyfriend to take care of.

Not that Mary would have ever said that to Ellen.

“Ellie? Mary-fairy?” Mary heard Mom’s stricken voice, that patented deathbed voice, calling for them again. “I need you, honey….”

“Please, please, please,” Mary chanted, gazing yearningly at her sister. “You’re
already dressed!
I’ve got to
change
, I’ve got the worst hangover in the history of America, I’ve got a
Shama test
I haven’t even
studied
for—”

“And it’s your birthday.”

“What?”

Ellen was smiling at her, gently, sweetly, but her eyes were flat and expressionless behind her glasses. “What’d you think—I
forgot?”

Mary hadn’t thought that Ellen had forgotten. But hearing her mention it, Mary felt a familiar wave of anxiety passing over her.
My birthday
, she thought, with a sinking feeling.
All the attention, all the praise … all the pressure to be perfect, to give everyone the little bit of me they need
. All the energy it took to play the part—to be
Mary Shayne
for another day—was going to be amped up double, triple, today.
Gorgeous! Bold! Raven-haired!
Stylish without trying, cynical without being too dark, smart without being intimidating, funny without pissing anybody off, sociable but unapproachable … all those qualities she had to effortlessly exude, all the responsibilities of being the senior class’s very own superstar for another day. And she hadn’t even
begun
to figure out what to wear, which was a major struggle in and of itself. It was the kind of thing Ellen would never understand.

“You don’t have to do the dishes—that’s silly,” Ellen said. “But there’s one thing you
can
do for me today.”

“Anything,”
Mary pleaded desperately.
“Anything
, I swear.”

But the desperation was an act—Mary was already relaxing. Ellen was going to do it; she was going to take care of Mom and let Mary off the hook. Mary could tell.

“What I want you to do”—Ellen had leaned crazily to one side and was reaching down for her canvas book bag, on the book-cluttered floor beside her bed—“is have a wonderful birthday.”

Mary stared at Ellen, who held out a small object—something wrapped in a pretty cloud of bright purple tissue paper with a gold ribbon. A birthday present.

“Where are you …?” Mom called plaintively.

“Go ahead,” Ellen said. “Take it. I’ll totally handle Mom; don’t worry about it. I’ve got three free periods anyway—I was going to skip homeroom and chill. You go ahead and I’ll see you at school.”

“Oh, Ellen …” Mary lunged over and grabbed her sister, pulling her into a bear hug. It should have lasted only a few seconds, but Mary found herself not wanting to let go. “Ellie-belle, you are a
goddess
.”

“Yuck!”
Ellen’s voice was muffled by Mary’s crazy, matted hair as she firmly hugged back. “You smell
awful
, girl. Hurry up and take a shower while I do Mom.”

“Thank you,”
Mary whispered, giving Ellen a final squeeze before letting go. “Thank you.”

“Here,” Ellen said awkwardly, pressing the gift into Mary’s hand. “Now, come on—stop wasting time. You’re seventeen—go out there and seize the day.”

“You’re a goddess—truly,” Mary repeated, rising to her feet. One part of her mind was already scanning through her wardrobe, facing the terrifying challenge of figuring out what to wear. “You’re
sure
you’re okay with this?”

Ellen smiled serenely. “Of
course
I am, dear sister. Now get out of here.”

2
9:06
A.M.

W
ALKING SOUTH DOWN
P
ARK
Avenue under the pale white sky, right thumb beneath the faded strap of her familiar book bag, Mary tried to tell herself that she felt better—that everything was back to normal.

It almost worked.

She definitely
looked
better—but then, that wasn’t saying much. She had probably never looked
worse
than the crazed, polyester-and-tennis-shoes-clad vagrant she’d been just ninety minutes before, climbing out of the taxicab (and, as expected, facing a $24.99 fare—before tip—that she had to pay for with the Crate and Barrel cleaning lady’s twenty-dollar bill and the sweetest, most apologetic smile she could muster). After a three-minute power shower and a few minutes at the mirror, cleansing her poreless vanilla skin and blowing out her shoulder-length jet-black hair and applying Givenchy Illicit Raspberry to her full lips and Shu Uemura Basic around her ice-blue eyes, she’d begun to feel almost human again. The steam had been billowing from the Shaynes’ tiny bathroom as Mary riffled through her overstuffed closet full of size zeroes, impatiently hurling useless couture across her hatefully cramped bedroom. The discarded tops and trousers and dresses on their store hangers cascaded loudly against the thin, cracking wall, while behind that wall, Ellen was ministering to Mom—Mary could hear their muted voices and the clinking of glasses as Ellen struggled to get the orange juice mixture just right.

Finding something to wear hadn’t been easy. All the clothes were wrong: the silver Badgley Mischka dress from Amy was too much; the floral Nela dress that Joon bought her at the Bendel preview party was too pretty; the Dior shirts from that sample sale were utterly ridiculous and needed to be burned in some sort of voodoo bonfire. Mary tugged down more hangers, scanning each outfit within milliseconds, asking the same embarrassing question over and over—the question she had secretly asked herself every morning and every night out for the past three years:
What would you wear if you were Mary Shayne?

She never asked it out loud because she knew what Amy and Joon would say if they heard it: “What do you mean,
if
you were Mary Shayne? You
are
Mary Shayne.” They just didn’t seem to get it. There
was
no Mary Shayne—there was just this skinny, wet-haired girl who happened to have been born pretty, standing in her last pair of clean white panties and a black Victoria’s Secret bra that she’d dug out of the middle of the hamper and sifting anxiously through un-returned loaner dresses in her musty closet.

The worst of the hangover seemed to have washed away with the sweat and dried blood that had spun down the shower drain beneath her feet.
You met some people and killed some brain cells and partied somewhere
, Ellen had said, dismissing all her fear, all her confusion about the night before. Mary tried to believe it. Whatever had happened, she was determined not to let it ruin her birthday. The shower felt like it had cleansed her completely, and she vowed not to worry anymore—especially since she had to concern herself with the far more pressing issue of what to wear to school.

The outfit had to be birthday presentable without drawing attention. It couldn’t be too dressy or it might convey the promise of a late-night rager to the sex-crazed seniors, but it couldn’t be a Strokes T-shirt and some get-away-from-me sweatpants or it might draw a totally different kind of attention. She didn’t want anyone asking, “What’s wrong with Mary today?” She couldn’t have anyone thinking there was anything remotely unusual about this birthday—that was essential. She’d finally settled on a black FCUK tee, True Religion jeans from Patrick, black leather Frye boots and her black Michael Kors trench. Another minute and a half to snag a banana and swap in her spare BlackBerry battery, and she was gone.

For the next hour—as she’d done once a week, without fail, all senior year—Mary tried to restore her sanity. Her first class on Fridays was a free period, and using that precious hour as her own private time was practically the only thing that got her through the end of the week and into the weekend. She’d seen an old movie called
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
once and fallen in love with it (and with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the luminous, vulnerable, adorable, perfect main character). The movie’s title wasn’t hard to figure out, since the opening scene showed Holly standing in front of the perfect limestone facade of Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue (in a perfect black gown she was obviously still wearing from the night before), eating a danish and drinking from a paper cup of delicatessen coffee while looking in the famous jeweler’s windows at the diamonds on display. Later in the movie, Holly explained how good those windows made her feel, and Mary understood exactly.

Ever since then—all senior year—Mary had spent her Friday mornings the same way: after getting off the crosstown bus, she would buy a Starbucks cappuccino and wander down Madison Avenue for the next hour, looking at the clothes in the fashionable store windows and making her peace with the universe. She had never tried to explain it to anyone (except once, to Ellen, who, predictably, sympathized without really understanding), but her solitary, peaceful, Friday-morning
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
routine actually kept her sane. She even found herself humming “Moon River” under her breath, like in the movie, as she gazed through the plate glass at the tall, skinny, perfect mannequins in their perfect clothes, their lovely, sculpted cheekbones catching the morning light, radiating serenity and self-confidence and perfection that Mary imagined she could soak up like a recharging battery, preparing herself for the hours and days to come.

Now, crossing Ninetieth Street, coolly returning the avid stare of a reasonably cute young businessman who was walking in the other direction, Mary tried to tell herself she felt fine. Men looked at her so constantly, so dependably, that their attention was really only notable when she
wasn’t
getting it, or when she was getting the wrong kind, like during that horrible Crate and Barrel moment—a memory she was determined to permanently expunge. She was never going to tell anyone about that.

But what happened last night?

A flock of birds circled silently in the featureless sky. The air was wet and still, with a faint scent of rain to come.

Forget it. Whatever it was, it’s over now
.

On the corner of Eighty-second Street, she checked her BlackBerry again—still no birthday texts or e-mails—and leaned to inspect her lipstick one last time in the mirrored window of a parked Porsche Cayenne. Then she took a deep breath, tried to clear her head, and turned the corner, ready to face the day.

C
HADWICK STUDENTS WERE SPREAD
out across the entire block like grazing cattle, smoking cigarettes, making phone calls, leaning against the granite walls of the neighboring apartment buildings and sitting Indian style against the tall iron gates of the school, screaming with laughter and, no doubt, spouting off about Eastern philosophy and the sociopolitical ramifications of Britney’s latest comeback.

Mary strode confidently down the sidewalk, approaching the crowd, trying to look completely disinterested while she furtively scanned the faces for her friends. Any minute now they would see her coming—one by one, the heads would turn, as they always did: a chain reaction of avid male eyes and envious female eyes as the one and only Mary Shayne arrived, fashionably late, flawlessly dressed as usual.

And then the birthday greetings will start
. She remembered what it had been like, a year before—the nonstop attention of her adoring fans had begun moments after her arrival at school: Melanie Kurzweil ran up and poured a small bag of Hershey’s Kisses into her hand; “Giant Brian” Moss had grabbed her from behind and given her a ticklish birthday kiss on the back of the neck; even the eternally depressed Darin Evigan broke his two straight days of black-turtlenecked silence to hum her an emo rendition of “Happy Birthday” (she had pressed her hand to her heart and complimented his “haunting” voice). It started immediately and continued all day long.

But now, as she waded into the thick sidewalk crowd, nobody was looking at her.

Nobody acknowledged her at all. There were a couple of glances from students who blocked her path—they spared her a look as they got out of her way—but basically nothing. All that stress over her clothes, and it didn’t seem to make any difference.

The overcast sky shone overhead, cold and white. The front gates of the school—where the usual Zac Efron wannabes and bargain-basement Hayden Panettieres sat with their backs against the wrought iron, trying to look sullen and disaffected—were veiled in dark shadows. Mary caught herself shivering. The expensive fabric of her T-shirt rubbed painfully against the raw scratches on her lower back, making her squirm—she was twisting her body around, reaching beneath her book bag to rub her tender skin when she saw him, and froze.

Trick
.

Patrick Dawes, devoted boyfriend, was standing right in front of her. Somehow, she had managed not to see him at all until the last moment. He was wearing a vintage Cambridge University blazer over an A&F hoodie with extra-low-slung jeans, which exposed the slim trail of light blond hairs that ran down from his navel, disappearing behind the taut elastic waistband of his Calvins. He stood squarely on both feet, fingers in his jeans pockets, steel TAG Heuer glinting on his wrist. It was impossible to read his expression: his dark brown eyes gazed coolly at her, as if she wasn’t his girlfriend—as if she was a Starbucks barista who’d just asked him how she could help him.

He was still so unbearably beautiful. That’s what had made Patrick such a maddening (but exciting) puzzle in her life during the three months they’d been together. Those little blond Greek-god curls, those naturally golden eyebrows, that flawlessly sculpted, lean, sinewy body—his beauty was completely impervious to his C-grade personality. No matter how tiresome he could be, no matter what he’d done to piss her off, she
still
felt that bolt of sugar-sweet electricity run through her chest whenever she saw him.

Something’s wrong
, Mary thought. She knew it, immediately; there was just no question about it.
Did someone die?

But it wasn’t that. He hadn’t been crying; he didn’t look stressed at all. He looked fine—rested, even, which was unusual; his telltale reddened eyes usually betrayed his pot-related insomnia and fatigue, marring his classical features in a way that was only visible up close. But not today: he looked like he’d gotten nine hours of sleep and run ten miles. Mary began to feel a tightness in her stomach, as if the day’s bleak chill was seeping into her body and making her shiver with nervousness.

“Trick?”

She hadn’t wanted to speak first. She had wanted to stand there and smirk prettily as he unveiled a turquoise Tiffany’s box with a milky white ribbon, or a pair of Fall Out Boy tickets, or even a single daisy from behind his back; she wanted him to kiss her deep and hard in front of the whole school and whisper happy birthday in her ear. But he just
stood
there, looking at her. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t move.

“Come on.” Trick jerked his head, beckoning her down the street. “Let’s walk.”

“Walk?” Mary had completely lost her composure. The sea of kids around them was still jostling her, talking and texting and wandering from place to place, but their voices seemed to change, to dissolve into a mounting roar like an approaching subway … and Mary realized that she was more than nervous: she was frightened. Something was definitely up. “Where do you—”

The scream she heard next, the desperate, distant voice behind her, made Mary flinch as if jumper cables attached to a car battery had suddenly been jammed against her shoulders.

“Mary!”

A high male voice—a teenager’s voice, calling her name.

“Mary! Mary!”
it repeated. The fear, the desperation in the voice nearly made her forget to breathe.
Everyone
was looking, craning their necks to peer behind her.

Mary turned and looked. Through the crowd, she could see someone—a small figure—running right toward her, but could only make out thin, sandy blond hair and a dark Windbreaker.

“Mary,
look out!”
the boy screamed.
“Look out, you’re in danger!”

The crowd was moving now, pulling back in shock, eyes and mouths wide. Mary finally saw who was screaming her name.

Scott Sanders.

In another context it would have been funny: short, plump Scott Sanders, her physics buddy, her savior in so many classes and before so many tests, his plain, kind face distorted in wild-eyed, crimson-tinted fear, his gut visibly swinging up and down as he ran clumsily toward her. His glasses tumbled from his face, clattering to the sidewalk as he rushed at her like a bull charging a matador, his unbrushed hair corkscrewed around his head like he’d stumbled out of bed and run all the way to school.

But it wasn’t funny at all.

“Mary, for Christ’s sake
—” Scott was no athlete; he couldn’t run and scream at the same time without stumbling and panting. His book bag was flying up and down behind him like a red canvas piston.
“Mary, you’ve got to listen—you’re in serious danger—”

And then they stopped him. It wasn’t the whole Chadwick football team, just a few of the linebackers (who, as usual, had been lounging against the fence punching each other in the arms); they moved fast, darting forward with their muscular arms raised, converging on Scott as he propelled himself down the sidewalk like a runaway train headed straight for Mary.

“Hey, assface,” Pete Schocken snapped—he had gotten there first, and he moved his tall, thick body directly in Scott’s path so that Scott slammed into his raised arms like a thrown garbage bag smashing against a tree. “What the hell, man?”