Chapter 3 - The Departure of the Unseen
The grand foyer of our house was designed to look like a spread in an architectural catalog that nobody actually lived in. It had a white marble floor that was cold even in July, a chandelier that dropped glass drops like frozen tears, and two high-backed velvet chairs where no one was allowed to sit because the velvet showed crush marks.
Brielle was standing in the center of the marble circle, holding her matching emerald-satin clutch like a scepter.
Her date, Tyler Vance, stood three paces behind her, looking miserable in a rented peak-lapel tuxedo that was two inches too short in the sleeves. Tyler was the captain of the varsity lacrosse team and the son of Richard’s primary mortgage broker. His hair was slicked back with pomade that smelled of cheap citrus, and he held a corsage box containing two white gardenias with the awkward grip of a man holding a live hand grenade.
"Look at her," Brielle was saying, pinning her corsage to Tyler's lapel with a sharp, aggressive stab of a pearl-headed pin. "She's probably up there sobbing into her sewing machine. I swear, Mom, she does this every time. She creates a crisis so she doesn't have to face the fact that she doesn't belong with our group."
"Brielle, sweetheart, don't move your shoulder, you're wrinkling the satin," my mother murmured, kneeling on the floor to adjust the hem of the emerald gown. "Richard, do you have the valet pass?"
"In my pocket," Richard grunted, checking his gold-plated watch. "Thirty seconds, Linda. Then we leave. I'm not sitting in the club turnaround behind fifty minivans."
I reached the bottom landing of the stairs.
The sound of my heels was the first thing they heard. I wasn't wearing dyed-to-match satin pumps. I was wearing four-inch black leather stilettos with pointed steel toe-caps—shoes I had purchased with my own wages from an Italian leather importer in Boston, resoled with ribbed rubber so they struck stone like hammer blows.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Tyler Vance was the first to turn around.
His jaw didn't drop in a cartoonish gasp. His eyes simply widened until the whites showed all the way around the hazel irises. The glass corsage box in his left hand tipped sideways; a green plastic ribbon slid out and fluttered to the marble floor.
"Whoa," Tyler said. It was barely a breath. A dumb, involuntary syllable.
Brielle snapped her head around, her emerald sequins hissing against the lining. "Tyler, shut up, what are you—"
The words died in her throat.
I stood on the bottom step, two feet above the foyer floor, the light from the chandelier catching the five thousand gunmetal beads along the lapels of my jacket. The charcoal faille did not reflect light like Brielle's cheap metallic sequins; it absorbed it, pulling the eye toward the razor-sharp geometry of my collarbones, the extreme, severe posture of my spine, and the stark, porcelain clarity of my throat.
My mother stayed on her knees, her hands frozen around the hem of Brielle's dress. Her mouth remained slightly open. For three full seconds, she looked at me not as a daughter, not as the girl who cleaned the kitchen counters, but as an absolute stranger who had just walked out of a high-end editorial shoot in Milan.
"Where..." Mom's voice was thin, reedy, like paper being torn. "Where did you get that?"
"I made it," I said.
Richard lowered his watch. His eyes flickered down the front of the jacket, across the severe lines of the waist, down to the heavy, architectural folds of the skirt that hung with the unmistakable, authoritative weight of eight-ply Italian silk. In his line of work, he knew luxury. He knew the difference between a four-hundred-dollar dress off the rack at the mall and an eighty-thousand-dollar custom commission worn by the wives of private equity directors.
"That wasn't in your room," Richard said. His voice was lower now, defensive, stripped of its easy paternal contempt. "Where did you get the money for that material, Leah?"
"From my savings, Richard," I said, stepping off the last riser onto the marble floor. The steel heels rang out with flat, terrifying confidence. "The money I didn't spend on tennis lessons or hair extensions."
Brielle's face went from pale porcelain to a mottled, ugly magenta. The veins in her slender neck stood out like cords. She looked at my black dress, then down at her own emerald gown—suddenly looking like a disco ball purchased from a suburban bridal outlet—and her fingers curled into fists.
"Take it off," Brielle hissed.
I paused, adjusting the left lapel of my spencer jacket. "What did you say?"
"You heard me!" Her voice jumped an octave, cracking against the high ceiling. "You did that on purpose! You let me pour the juice on the white one so you could wear that! You're trying to upstage me! On my night! Mom, make her take it off! She looks like a freak! She looks like a funeral director!"
Mom scrambled to her feet, her hands fluttering between us like wounded birds. "Leah... darling... please. It’s... it’s very dark. It’s not appropriate for a high school prom. Prom is for bright colors, for celebrations. You look... you look so severe."
"I look like myself, Mom," I said.
"You're not coming in the car," Brielle snarled, her voice shaking with genuine hysteria. She turned to Richard, stamping her heel against the marble. "Dad! Tell her! She is not riding in the Lincoln with us! If she gets in that car, I am staying home! I mean it!"
Richard looked at Brielle, whose face was already beginning to sweat through her primer, then at my mother's pleading eyes, and finally at me.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his keyring, and tossed a small, scratched metal key onto the foyer table.
"Take your grandfather’s truck," Richard said, his tone hard and dismissive, choosing the path of least resistance as he always did. "And don't park it in the front lot. Park it around back by the maintenance sheds. You're not ruining this family's evening, Leah."
"Richard!" Mom protested, though there was no real fight in her voice.
"No, Linda, she wants to be difficult, she can drive the Ford," Richard snapped, opening the front door. "Come on, Brielle. Tyler, get the door for your date."
They filed out into the cool May evening, Brielle throwing one last, venomous glare over her bare shoulder—a glare that promised blood before the night was over.
The heavy front door clicked shut.
The house went completely still again.
I picked up the key to my grandfather's 1994 Ford F-150—an old, blue rust-bucket with a cracked windshield and an engine that sounded like a threshing machine.
I looked into the foyer mirror one last time.
May you like
My reflection was steady. My eyes were clear.
"Don't worry, Richard," I whispered to the empty room. "I won't park in the front. The limousine the Harrington Foundation hired is picking me up at the corner."
