“God,” I said.
“And another man,” she added with a flourish, popping the cigarette back into her mouth. “Could you die?”
“That’s horrible,” I said. I felt guilty knowing this about a stranger, some poor girl who knew no shameful secrets of mine. With Mrs. Melvin’s mouth, it had to be all over the neighborhood by now.
“She flew in last Friday, and Mrs. Oliver said she took right to her bed in her old room and slept for forty hours straight. Poor Mrs. Rogers thought she was dying of some horrible disease ’cause Gwendolyn wouldn’t say what was wrong or why she came home or anything.” She reached over and opened the window, then lit a match and touched it to the end of the cigarette. “She woke up at four A.M. and made pancakes, and when Mrs. Rogers went downstairs to see what was going on, that was when Gwendolyn told her. Standing there at the stove flipping pancakes at four A.M. and telling this horrible story. She ate ten pancakes and burst into tears and Mrs. Rogers said she is just at a loss as to what action to take. And since then, Mrs. Oliver says, Gwendolyn hasn’t said a word.”
“Ten pancakes?” I said. This, to me, seemed like the most unbelievable part of the story.
“Haven, honestly.” Casey hated when anyone tried to take away from whatever story she was telling. “And that was when Gwendolyn took to walking.”
“Walking?”
She puffed on her cigarette, then blew the smoke out the window, where it circled across the roof and into the sky. “She walks all night long, Haven, through the neighborhood. She can’t sleep, or won’t, and Mrs. Oliver says she’s like a ghost passing on the sidewalk, long legged and freaky looking. All night long.”
Suddenly I had chills, the kind you get during the climax of a good ghost story, when you realize the scratching on the roof is the disembodied hand or that the ribbon holds her head on. I could see Gwendolyn loping along on her thin legs, casting a giant shadow across the green lawns of our subdivision. Gwendolyn Rogers, supermodel, wandering lost on the streets of her childhood and mine.
“Creepy, huh?” Casey said, taking another long drag off her cigarette and fanning the smoke outside. “Mom says she bets modeling made Gwendolyn crazy. It’s a horrible industry, you know.”
“So you said.” I thought of the Lakeview Models in their pumps and matching T-shirts, posing in front of giant fake leaves. And Gwendolyn, the town’s pride and joy, walking mad in the streets.
“It’ll be all over the papers, and People magazine, soon,” she went on, waving her hand in front of her face to fan off the smoke. “You know, it’s big news when someone like Gwendolyn goes nuts.”
“It’s so sad,” I said again. If even supermodel and beautiful hometown girl Gwendolyn Rogers could crash and burn, what would become of me ... or anyone? She’d been profiled in one of Casey’s Teen World magazines just a few months before, sharing her Biggest Secrets: her favorite food (pizza), band (R.E.M.), and beauty secret (cucumbers on her eyes to reduce puffiness after long days of shooting). And we knew these things about her, just as we did about Cindy and Elle and Claudia, girls who didn’t even need last names. Girls that could have been our friends by the details we memorized about them, or the girl next door. As Gwendolyn, supermodel and Lakeview girl, tall like me, had once been.
“Casey?” There was a sudden knock on the door and Mrs. Melvin’s thick New York accent, which always made her sound irritated even when she wasn’t, boomed through the wall. “It’s time for dinner and it’s your turn to set the table. Haven can stay if she wants to.”
“Just a minute,” Casey yelled, tossing the cigarette out the window, where it rolled down to the gutter and caught a wad of pine needles on fire. Casey, busy running around the room spraying White Shoulders on everything, didn’t notice.
“Casey,” I whispered, pointing out the window at the small blaze. “Look.”
“Not now,” she snapped in a low voice, still waving her arms. “God, Haven, help me.”
“Wait,” I whispered, getting up and going to the window. “Don’t open the door yet.”
“Can you smell it?” she said, whirling around. “Can you?”
“No, but—”
Mrs. Melvin knocked again, harder. “Casey, open the door.”
“Okay, okay, one second.” She put the perfume on the dresser and went to the door, passing the window without noticing the flame burning in the gutter. She unlocked the door. “God, come on in then.”
As Mrs. Melvin came in I was leaning against the windowsill, attempting to appear casual with my Coke in my hand and trying not to cough as a thick cloud of White Shoulders settled over me. She took one step, stopping in the frame to take two short sniffs of the air. She was a small woman, like Casey, with the same shock of red hair, only hers was styled in a bob, ends curling down neatly over her shoulders. She wore stirrup pants and a long white shirt, with huge gold hoops dangling from her ears. Her eyeliner, as always, drew my attention next: onyx black, thick on upper and lower lids, curving out past her eye to a neat flourish that made her look like a cat. It must have taken half a jar of cold cream to remove and was a bit much, especially in our neighborhood, but it was her trademark. That and her incredible sense of smell.
She sniffed again, with her eyes closed, then opened them and said curtly, “You’ve been smoking.”