Alice Hoffman - The Story Sisters

“That you’re beautiful?” Justin ventured.

Elv laughed. That was too funny. People saw with their eyes and nothing else. The day she met a man who knew her for who she was would be the day she would be rescued from this pathetic human world. “That I’m invisible,” she said. There, she said to the Queen of Arnelle. There’s your proof.

AT NIGHT, AFTER Meg was asleep, Claire got into bed with Elv to hear stories about Paris. She heard about the different shades of green the river could be, about the way the rain had fallen in sheets. Claire asked for the black painting, but Elv said she couldn’t remember what she had done with it. It was ugly, any-how. When Claire wanted to know about the man Meg had told her about, Elv said he was nothing to her.

“That Meg,” she said. “What a bigmouth. She couldn’t keep a secret if you paid her.”

“Tell me something,” Claire begged. “Tell me a secret.”

“You have to swear you’ll never tell.”

“You know I won’t.”

Elv whispered to Claire that on the night she found the cat, stuffed and mewling in a burlap bag, thrown into the water like so much garbage, there had actually been two bags. She hadn’t told Meg or their ama. Elv hadn’t been able to reach the second kitten. That haunted her. She couldn’t let it go.

“You saved one,” Claire said.

“But not the other.”

She showed Claire the black stars on her shoulders. Claire was hushed and impressed. “Mom will kill you,” she said admiringly.

“She’ll never know.” Their mother was an optimist, which in Elv’s opinion meant she was a fool. “She never knows anything.”

They were whispering. They could hear the hawthorn tree and Meg’s sleepy breathing and the wind outside. Claire had a lump in her throat. They had secrets they couldn’t say aloud. “Where did he take you?” she asked. She had wanted to ask this question for four years. It had taken that long for the words to come out. Some words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn’t unknow. Elv had been missing for an entire day. Claire had run back and waited at the stop sign. She’d stayed there until it grew dark, until the fireflies appeared in the woods. Until Elv came back. She wouldn’t tell her then, and she wouldn’t tell now.

“Go to sleep, Gigi,” Elv said. “Close your eyes.”

IN THE FIRST week of June, there was an unexpected heat wave, with temperatures reaching into the nineties. It was the kind of weather in which people did stupid things, such as throwing themselves off a dock into the cool water, only to break their necks on the rocks. Elderly residents were warned not to go outside. Birds died in their nests. On impulse, Claire decided to have her hair cut short. She usually was a follower and she thrilled herself with her own fierce determination to make a change. She was broiling in her casts, nearly fainting with the heat. Her scalp itched and there was no way for her to scratch it. Annie took her to the hair salon on Main Street, where a young woman named Denise fastened a smock around her shoulders.

“Are you sure? You have such beautiful hair. It seems a shame.”

Claire was sure. Denise cut her mane of heavy black hair to just below her chin. They would donate what had been shorn to Locks of Love and a wig would be made for a cancer patient. Claire loved her hair short—it was so much cooler—but when her sisters saw her they were horrified. The older girls were at home watching an old black-and-white movie about a werewolf. They had been captivated by the poor werewolf’s plight, enough so that they actually didn’t argue the way they usually did. When they saw Claire’s haircut, each let out a shriek. Elv said, “Who did that to you? I’ll bet it was Mom’s idea.” Meg, near tears, cried, “Oh, Claire. Now we don’t look alike.”

Meg’s own long black hair was braided and clipped atop her head. She didn’t like anything to change. She favored long, involved books like Great Expectations, wherein the villains turned out to be heroes and there was always someone who would save the day just when it seemed all had been lost.

“Now we’ll never look alike,” Meg said sadly.

“There’s only one way to do it,” Elv advised, once their mother had left the room. “If that’s what you want,” she said to Meg. “But you’re probably all talk.”

Meg tilted her chin. She knew her sisters had secrets. She could hear them whispering in bed. “You think so?” she said. “I’ll go first. Then we’ll see if you have the nerve.”

They went upstairs and sat on the floor. Elv lit a black candle she had brought home from Paris. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt she’d found at a shop on the Rue de Tournon. It had been hideously expensive, but she’d wanted it so. She slipped it into her purse when the shop owner wasn’t looking. You could see right through the fabric but Elv didn’t care. She went to get the scissors and a towel to drape around Meg’s shoulders. Then she locked the bedroom door.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she pressed. “A thousand percent sure? This isn’t something you can change your mind about later.”

Meg nodded. She was very calm. She hadn’t had her hair cut since she was ten years old. She thought of it as her only good feature. She was just as beautiful as Elv, but she didn’t realize it. Now she unplaited her hair. Perhaps she was even more beautiful than her sister when she wore her hair down.

Claire sat on the edge of Meg’s bed. She felt guilty and responsible. “I only cut mine because I’m so hot in my casts and I can’t braid my own hair. I can’t even wash it. Maybe you shouldn’t, Meg. You don’t have to.”

It was a surprise when Meg was suddenly decisive, as she was now. They had always looked alike and that was what she wanted. She firmly ignored Claire’s protests.

“There’s no other way. Cut it.”

Elv unclasped Meg’s braid and began to cut. It took a while because the scissors were old and hadn’t been sharpened. She handed Meg the braid when she finally managed to saw through. She kept cutting after that, to even out the edges. Hair continued to fall on the towel and the wooden floorboards.

“You can donate it to Locks of Love,” Claire suggested. “For a sick child.”

“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.