The Story Sisters. Alice Hoffman

their boyfriends when Elv was nearby. She seemed dangerous even to them, willing to try anything. Give her a pill and she’d take it, offer her a drink and she was always willing to accept. Her cool bravery was legendary. Justin Levy had seen her flustered, though. Once when they were down at the beach she saw a car in the parking lot and bolted. She was shivering by the time Justin caught up with her on Main Street.

      “Is he still there?” she’d said to him. She was wearing her bathing suit, a damp towel wrapped around her. She didn’t even think about calling the police. All she thought of was running.

      Justin shrugged, confused. She’d made him jog back to check.

      “No cars in the parking lot,” he assured her when he returned, out of breath, her loyal messenger.

      After that Elv continued to allow Justin to tag along until he foolishly proclaimed his love for her. He was getting tiresome. By the middle of August, she’d had enough.

      “What’s wrong with me?” Justin had asked mournfully when she told him to stop stalking her.

      If Elv was someone else, she would have said It’s not you, it’s me—that’s what everyone said to get out of someone’s grasp. Instead, she was honest with Justin.

      “You’re not who I’m looking for,” she replied. She was looking for someone who had no fear of iron or ropes. An escape artist, that’s what she wanted. A man who could turn her inside out, make her feel something, because nothing else seemed to. She could sit in the bedroom closet and cut herself with a razor and still feel nothing at all. She could pass her hand above a candle and when it flamed up have no reaction. All she had to do was close her eyes.

      Justin had actually cried when she dumped him, as if to prove her point.

      “Oh my God, Justin. Find somebody nice. Someone better than me. I am the last person you should be with. You should thank me for giving you this advice.”

      After that, whenever Justin saw her he didn’t say hello. He took to wearing a black coat even though it was August. He wore sunglasses at night. People started laughing at him.

      “You look like an idiot,” Elv said when she next ran into him. It was at the tea shop and she was there with Brian Preston, who was known for his drug use and also for burning down his family’s summer house in the Berkshires. Brian was stupid and good-looking and entertaining. “At least take off your sunglasses,” Elv told Justin.

      When he did, she could tell he’d been crying again. Didn’t anybody see what the real world was like? She felt repulsed by his weakness. Mr. Weinstein down the street had died and now his bassett hound was on the lawn all the time. Mrs. Weinstein didn’t allow the dog in the house and whenever she passed him Elv felt like crying herself. She had to stop that. It was useless. It was like trying to win her place in the court of Arnelle, or trying to get rid of the black seed inside her, the taste of iron and of lye. She’d cried that day when the man in the car took her to his house and locked her in a room, until she realized it wouldn’t do any good. She had done everything the Queen had asked and had received nothing in return. Arnelle was pointless.

      She had decided to change the story.

      She was going over to the other side.

      

      THE TOWN WAS thick with Virginia creeper, wisteria, weeds that suddenly grew three feet tall. It had been that kind of summer. There were thunderstorms and hail. The news reported a strange rain of live frogs one wet, humid night. Children ran out with mayonnaise jars to try to capture them the way they used to catch fireflies. The air felt electric, sultry; it pressed down on you and made you want to sleep, turn away from your troubles, tell yourself lies. Even smart people are easily tricked, especially by their own children. When everything smells like smoke, how do you know what’s burning? Things that should have added up for Annie seemed like mere coincidence: cigarettes found in the garden, doors slamming, boys throwing pebbles at the window, finding that neighborhood boy Justin Levy sitting in the hedges one evening in his black overcoat, crying. If she set the pieces side by side, she might have been able to interpret them.

      When Annie visited her mother, she asked for her advice. She was worried about the Story sisters. One was quiet, one was standoffish, one seemed to be disappearing before her eyes, becoming someone else entirely. Perhaps they’d been more affected by the divorce and Alan’s defection than it had first appeared. Or maybe it was Annie’s fault—she’d been depressed, wrapped up in her souring marriage. She went to the garden for solace rather than to her girls. She’d cut herself off, didn’t date, rarely saw friends—a poor example of how to live in the world.

      “Young girls are moody,” Natalia told her. The task of raising children was a difficult one.

      “Was I like that?”

      “Well, you were well behaved. I never had to punish you. But you used to cry for no reason. It’s an emotional time of life. You try things on, you put them away.”

      “Was I like Elv?” Annie wanted to know.

      “No.” Natalia shook her head. That man in Paris had skulked around long after the girls had gone home in the spring. Natalia had found a knife and a length of rope beneath the bed in the guest room later in the month when she was cleaning up. She’d brought the little rescued cat, Sadie, with her from Paris to New York. It sat in her lap in the afternoons while Martin took his nap. Natalia often thought back to that night when her granddaughter had sneaked back into the apartment, dripping with river water, managing to be both fierce and tenderhearted. “Not like Elv.”

      The last time the Story sisters had visited her apartment, Natalia had found Elv in her closet, asleep on the floor, curled up like a little girl. The jewelry box had been open and a gold chain was missing. Natalia was sure Elv would wear it, then return it to its rightful place. But she never saw the necklace again.

      Sometimes when she looked at her granddaughter—her black-painted fingernails, the expression on her face when she thought no one was looking, the marks on her skin that were so even it appeared as if she cut herself—Natalia felt afraid for the child. Her friend Leah Cohen had told her that demons preyed upon young girls. They came through windows and found ways to open doors. Natalia had always listened to these stories with half an ear; now she was hesitant to dismiss them. She found herself locking the doors whenever Elv came to visit so that no one could get out or in. She had grown convinced that you could lose someone, even if she was in the very next room. She remembered her friend’s warnings more clearly. Although Natalia didn’t believe in butting into her daughter’s business, she took Annie by the arm before she left for home.

      “Look closely at Elv,” she advised. “Look inside.”

      

      SHE STARTED BY searching the attic. It was one of the reasons they’d bought the house in the first place, the sloping eaves, the large space, the old hawthorn tree that cast shadows through the window. The perfect place to raise three girls. They had painted the woodwork antique white and papered the walls. Annie found the shoebox where the marijuana was hidden first, then a vial of pills—Demerol stolen from the grandparents’ medicine cabinet. Taped to the closet wall there was a series of photographs of Elv kissing various boys. There was a mysterious map as well. Inky green paths led through a garden of thorns. Demons were wound in a frantic, scandalous embrace.

      A journal had been left in Elv’s night table. Annie took it down to the garden. Her hands were shaking. She felt like a witch in a fairy tale, raiding the castle, sifting through bones. There had been rain that morning, and the heat had broken. Birds were searching for worms and the tomatoes were covered with glistening drops. Most of the writing in the journal was in Arnish, with captions beneath green and black watercolor paintings. A girl with wings was held captive, abducted from her true parents. Roses died, iron bars were set around a beating heart torn whole from a now lifeless body, a man named Grimin tied up faeries and fucked them till they bled, goblins drifted through the trees ready for rape and destruction.

      Annie hadn’t imagined Elv knew about such things, let alone that she was filling a journal with erotic and dangerous