There was a litany of things for Nora to worry about as she sat on the plane the next morning: Alice Walker for one, who would probably never forgive her for leaving for two whole days, who would pretend not to know Nora upon her return, lifting her nose in that snooty-dog way she did sometimes when Nora accidentally ran out of her favorite food. Then there was the cost of the plane ticket, which Trudy had sworn was a steal, but because of hidden costs had actually ended up costing a small fortune. The last time Nora had spent a similar chunk of money was two years ago, when she had purchased a new sofa at Burlington Furniture. It had been a necessity—her old one had gotten so threadbare that Tom (who she had been dating at the time) had come over one evening for dinner and gotten stabbed by a small wire when he sat down—but she had tossed and turned over the purchase nevertheless. She didn’t like to spend money. Especially on herself. It made her anxious.
Then there was the whole ordeal about what to wear, which had completely thrown her for a loop. She stood in front of her closet for a full twenty minutes after getting out of the shower, feeling slightly dumbfounded. Nora never fretted about her appearance. Ever. She dressed for work exactly the way she ate—grabbing whatever was closest. Trudy did not have any rules about what they wore to work, which meant that she could indulge in her usual assortment of jeans or khaki pants, a soft long-sleeved T-shirt, and sneakers. Nora had a collection of sneakers that rivaled that of any professional sports player. It was her only indulgence, born out of her necessity to walk, and she took great pleasure in adding to it. To date, she had eighteen pairs, each one labeled and stacked in its original box in her closet.
And yet she’d paused this morning. More than paused. She’d worried. Were her clothes too frumpy? The sneakers too weird? Did she look like one of those stereotypical librarians, whose idea of fashion included forty-two cardigan sweater sets in different colors? She’d settled finally on a black turtleneck, pressed khaki pants, her brand-new gray-and-orange Sauconys that still smelled like wet leather, and the brown barn jacket she wore everywhere. It had a soft corduroy collar, tortoiseshell buttons, and deep pockets. She brushed her brown hair back until it fell in its natural middle part and tucked the ends under with her round brush. A bit of Vaseline on her eyelashes to make them shine, a slick of lip balm, and a spritz of the overly floral perfume Marion had bought her last year for Christmas completed the picture. A final glance in the mirror was not reassuring, especially since a small pimple was just starting to bloom in the middle of her chin, and the faint, C-shaped scar on her forehead, which stood out like a careless scribble mark on her otherwise unremarkable face, seemed to glare at her. But it would have to do.
Now she was settled in the coach section of the plane, squeezed in between an elderly man with a tweed cap pulled down low over his forehead and an enormous woman dressed all in purple. The woman was fingering a plastic sack of peanuts, and the man smelled like old tobacco. Nora turned her head and held her breath. Pungent smells were a surefire way to get her sick in any sort of moving vehicle. She grabbed the white paper bag stuck in the pocket of the airplane seat ahead of her and tucked it in between the seats as the wheels of the plane began to move.
“You get airsick?” The large woman in purple eyed Nora’s barf bag as the plane started to move. A black hair stuck out of her chin like an exposed root.
Nora shook her head. Crossing her arms over the front of her chest, she slid down into the seat, tucked her head down low, and closed her eyes. If she could just disappear, she thought—just for a little while—maybe she could make it through. The plane rumbled and lifted, and for three, four, five seconds, Nora’s stomach felt weightless.
Grace didn’t talk for two days when Nora was first assigned a room with her at Turning Winds. This was fine with Nora. She herself was still in the throes of her own self-imposed silence, and she dreaded the annoyed looks she knew she would get once everyone found out she wasn’t a fan of speaking. Grace seemed to be in a state of her own; she stayed in her bed most of the day, curled up like an underfed cat against two purple pillows, drifting in and out of sleep. Her tangle of blond hair framed her face like an angel’s, and she had wide, sapphire-blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. Every once in a while, she would lift her arm and examine the inside of her wrist, as if she were preparing to do surgery. Then she would drop it again and sigh. Nora was reading Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, intrigued by the first line: “For a long time, I went to bed early,” but she was having a difficult time getting through the rest. It was dull and too dense to sustain her attention. She kept her head down and reread the same sentence a third time, trying to convince herself to continue.
“I’m not staying here, you know.” It was early evening on the third day when Grace finally decided to speak. Nora looked up, relieved at having been interrupted and curious to hear what this strange girl had to say.
“My mother’s at a hospital,” Grace said by way of explanation. “But it’s totally temporary. She’s coming back in, like, a month, and then we’re going home.” Her arms were wrapped around the purple pillows, her fingers clutching the edges the way a child might hold a favorite doll.
Nora blinked.
Grace waited.
Nora pressed her lips together.
“You don’t talk?”
She looked back down at her book, shook her head.
“Why not?”
Nora shrugged.
Grace rolled her eyes. “Great.”
The door banged open then, startling both of them. Ozzie strolled in, glancing around the room with quick, eager eyes. Nora had seen this girl at nightly dinner—a requirement for all of them living at Turning Winds—noting how she always sat at the head of the table and directed the conversation. Nora hadn’t dared meet her eyes. Now she couldn’t take them off her. Ozzie was a picture of nonchalant authority, arms crossed over the front of her denim jacket, long legs encased in a pair of dark brown corduroy pants and heavy black boots. A red cap sat atop her head, trapping all but a few wisps of black hair beneath it, and her ears were pierced with tiny gold hoops. She was pretty, but in a hard sort of way, with deep-set eyes and an angular chin, as if someone might have to take a chisel to get to the soft stuff underneath.
“Hey.” Ozzie walked over to Nora and stuck out her hand. “Ozzie Randol. I’ve been meaning to give you a formal introduction since you got here, but I haven’t had the chance ’til now.”
“Excuse me.” Grace had raised herself from her mattress and was eyeing Ozzie with an indignant gaze. “Have you ever heard of knocking? This is our room, you know.”
Ozzie leveled a gaze at Grace and then turned and walked back over to the door, where a chubby pale-faced girl lingered, picking at the edge of the doorjamb with a thumb. Nora had seen this girl before too, hanging around the outside of Ozzie’s door, or occasionally sitting on the wicker rocking chair on the front porch, leafing through an old, worn copy of Madeline that someone said she’d brought from home. Now, dressed in sneakers and an ill-fitting blue sweat suit, Nora thought the girl looked a bit like a bruised marshmallow. Her orangey hair, braided and secured with rubber bands, hung like tails over her shoulders, and her cheeks were as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Without taking her eyes off Grace, Ozzie knocked once on the back of the door. Twice. And then a third time, with great deliberation. “Better?”
Grace slit her eyes as Ozzie walked back across the room.
Nora suppressed a small smile.
“That’s Monica,” Ozzie said, jerking her thumb in the marshmallow’s direction. “She came last year, two days after me. We’re roommates.”
“Nice to meet you,” Monica said, taking a few steps into the room. Her teeth were too widely spaced, and there was a large bump on the ridge of her nose. “What’s your name?”
Nora reached around for the little notepad she kept in her back pocket at all times. It had a blue unicorn on the front and was full of lined paper. “Nora,” she scribbled.
“Nora,” Ozzie read aloud. Her eyes flicked from the paper back up to Nora. “You don’t talk?”
Nora shook her head.
“Why not?” Monica asked.
Nora stared at her the way she always did whenever someone asked her a dumb question. After a few seconds, Monica looked away again.
“Nothing wrong with not talking,” Ozzie said. “Shit, I know about a dozen people who should keep their mouths shut at all times.”
“Is one of them you?” Grace shot from the bed.
“Depends on who you ask,” Ozzie replied without turning around. She settled an arm on top of Grace’s dresser, studying Nora for a moment. “So when did you get here? Monday, right?”
Nora nodded. Today was Wednesday. The last two days had disappeared in a blur, consumed with curious stares, endless questions (all of which Nora had answered with a nod or a shake of her head), and forms to be signed. She was glad that part of things was over.
“That’s what I thought.” Ozzie glanced at the top of the dresser and picked up a tiny figurine a few inches from her elbow. “I thought I saw—”
“Hey!” Grace’s voice was sharp. “You put that down!”
Ozzie eyed Grace the way someone might regard a rabid animal. “Who is it?” she asked.
“The Blessed Virgin Mary,” Grace said. “And it’s private property. Don’t you touch it again.”
“The Blessed Virgin Mary?” Ozzie put the statue back. “Who’s that?”
Grace’s face paled. “Jesus’s mother?”
Ozzie laughed. “I’m just fucking with you. I know who she is.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re Catholic?”
“No,” Grace retorted. “I keep a statue of the Blessed Virgin on my dresser because I’m an atheist.”
The left side of Ozzie’s mouth lifted into a smile, and then she shrugged, as if determining that the ensuing argument was not worth it. She sat down on Nora’s bed instead. “So,” she said, “Monsie and I always come in and check out the new goods. Ask a couple questions, try and get the lowdown, see what the deal is.”
“Could you just leave?” Grace followed her with hateful eyes. “You’re really not welcome here.”
“Oh my God. Chill. Out.” Ozzie leaned back on her elbows and placed the heel of one foot atop the toe of the other. “You’ve had your panties in a bunch ever since you got here, you know that?”
Grace sat up a little straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“All you do is snarl at people. You give these snotty, one-word answers when we talk at dinner and—”
“When we talk?” Grace burst out. “How about when you talk? All you do is hog the conversation! No one else can talk at dinner.”
Ozzie shrugged. “Monica talks at dinner. Ella talks at dinner. Samantha and D’Shawn and Roberta all talk at dinner.” She kept her gaze fastened in Grace’s direction, tipping her stacked feet in one direction, then the other. Nora still wasn’t sure which name belonged to the other four girls in the house, but she had to agree with Ozzie. They had all (except for her, of course) contributed to at least one dinner conversation over the past few days, mostly to tell the others where they were from, what ages they were (almost everyone was in high school; the youngest, Ella, was in eighth grade), and how long they’d been at Turning Winds. D’Shawn, who smoked an endless stream of Newports despite the fact that she was seven months pregnant, had just told everyone yesterday that she’d arrived here when she was twelve. Now, at eighteen, she had only a few months left before she had to leave. She was going to move in with her boyfriend, Frederick, and his mother, who was crocheting a blanket for the baby. D’Shawn’s eyes had flashed when she relayed this last bit of information, and Nora couldn’t help but wonder what it was about Frederick’s mother that had conjured such a look. Whatever it was, she was pretty sure D’Shawn was not going to have an easy time of it.
“Oh please,” Grace retorted. “You fire so many questions at them that they don’t even know where to start. I wouldn’t call that talking.”
“At least they answer,” Ozzie said. “You just sit there like a prima donna. ‘Yes, no, I don’t know.’ You think you’re too good to be part of the discussion?”
“Seriously?” Grace rolled her eyes. “Just leave, okay? Please. Just leave.”
“I will.” Ozzie turned her attention toward Nora. “After I ask the new girl a few questions.”
“Well, she doesn’t talk.” Grace rolled over on her bed so that she was facing the wall. “So good luck with that one.”
Ozzie grinned and raised an eyebrow. “But you can write in your little notebook there if you want to answer, can’t you?”
Nora nodded.
“Okay, then. I just have two questions. First, do you know what your name means?”
Nora shook her head, puzzled.
“I don’t know either.” Ozzie looked aggravated. “Usually I know. I know a lot of names’ meanings. Like Grace. Grace means ‘love.’ Monica means ‘advisor.’ Ella means ‘little girl.’ Nora, though.” She shook her head. “I haven’t come across a Nora yet.”
Nora bit the inside of her cheek. She felt uncomfortable, as if she had just failed at something she hadn’t known she was being tested for.
“Is it just Nora?” Ozzie pressed. “Or is Nora short for something else?”
“Just Nora,” she wrote on the pad.
“Yeah, Ozzie’s not short for anything, either. Actually, I think my mother may have mistaken me for a pet when I was born.” She grinned, a gesture so forgiving of whatever her mother had put her through that Nora just stared. “Okay, second question,” Ozzie said. “You get to see her at all? Your mother, I mean?”
Nora shook her head. She hadn’t seen Mama since she was twelve years old, after Mama had walked into the kitchen and seen Daddy Ray, her second husband, with his arms around her daughter. Nora had been frozen stiff, eyes shut tight as the syrupy smell of rum drifted out of his mouth, and his dry lips moved along the swell of her neck—quietquietquietandthenitwillbeover—but Mama had blamed her anyway. This time, though, she had thrown the remote control so hard at her that Nora’s forehead had split open like a peach. When Nora’s seventh grade teacher asked her the next day what had happened, Nora told her. It was the last time she remembered talking. She’d been in and out of foster homes since then until three days ago, when a spot in Turning Winds had opened up.
“How about supervised visitation?” Ozzie pressed.
Nora shook her head again, biting her lip until she tasted blood. Mama hadn’t wanted visits. None. She’d been firm about that.
“What about Christmas?” Grace turned over suddenly, looking at Nora from the bed. “Or your birthday?”
The edges of Nora’s ears had gotten so hot that she was sure everyone in the room was staring at them. She knew it was unusual for a parent to drop completely out of sight like this; most of the other girls she’d run into over the years had, at the very least, been permitted supervised visits, usually hanging out with their mothers and fathers in a large room at the Children and Youth building while a caseworker sat nearby and watched. To be forgotten completely was a rarity as well as a hidden source of shame, another reminder of her unworthiness. But she picked up her notepad anyway. “It’s better for all of us if we don’t.”
“What about your dad?” Ozzie pressed.
“Never met him,” Nora wrote.
“Stepparents?” Ozzie’s eyes widened.
“No one.” Nora underlined the words twice.
“Yes!” Ozzie punched the air with both fists. “Finally! Someone in the house who can be part of our group!” She reached out and slugged Nora gently in the upper arm. “Congratulations!”
Nora’s forehead furrowed.
“No visits for Monica and me, either,” Ozzie explained, tapping her fingertips against the front of her chest. “At least not until we’re eighteen.” She slid a knowing look in Monica’s direction. “And you can believe when we’re eighteen, we’re gonna go get our visits. Oh yeah. We’re gonna have some accountability questions to ask those motherfuckers on our visit.”
Nora blinked. Maybe Ozzie wasn’t all light and forgiveness, after all.
Ozzie swung her head over in Grace’s direction. “Grace over there doesn’t get any visits either, but she’s too good to join our group. Aren’t you, Gracie?”
“Don’t call me Gracie,” Grace said. “And I don’t get any visits because I’m just here temporarily. I don’t need visits. I’m only going to be here for another month.”
Ozzie regarded Grace for a moment and then dropped her eyes. “You could still join for a little while.”
Grace picked at the skin around her thumb. “I don’t like being anyone’s third wheel.”
“Well, now that Nora qualifies, you won’t be,” Ozzie said. “It’s just us four. Which means no third wheel and no more excuses.”
Grace looked over at Nora and scowled. “If she wants to join, maybe I’ll think about it.”
“What am I joining?” Nora wrote in her notebook.
Ozzie reached over and put a long arm around Nora’s shoulders. “Our secret posse, Norster. It’s hard to get in, and it’s a privilege to stay. So far, it’s only been Monsie and me. We have a meeting once a month. Upstairs, in our secret place. Tomorrow night is this month’s meeting. It’s gonna be great. Once you become part of us, your life will never be the same again.”
Nora hoped the electric exhilaration coursing through her wasn’t too apparent; there was nothing worse than coming across as overeager. Or desperate, which was really pathetic. But she had never been asked to be a part of something before: Mama and Daddy Ray had always lived in their own world, deliberately apart from her; each of her three different foster families had all but ignored her after realizing she wasn’t going to talk; and so far, there was no one she had even considered wanting to get to know at school. This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to her. This was everything. She glanced over at Grace, hoping she would say something first, but Grace seemed to be enthralled with the inside of her wrist again.
“Few ground rules before you decide if you want to join,” Ozzie said. “You have to bring a stick and something of your own to every meeting.”
“A stick?” Grace looked up. “Like from a tree?”
“Yes,” Ozzie said. “A stick from a tree, Grace.”
Grace slit her eyes again. “What do we need a stick for?”
“You want to be part of the group?” Ozzie stood up and put her hands on her hips. The edges of her fingernails were threaded with dried blood.
“Maybe.” Grace tossed her head. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then bring a stick.” Ozzie headed for the door. “And something of your own. It should be something that shows off a talent of yours.”
“What kind of talent?” Nora wrote.
“Whatever you want,” Ozzie answered. “Monica’s a really good cook, so she always makes a snack.”
“I’m thinking something with chocolate for tomorrow.” Monica blushed.
“And I’m a good joke teller,” Ozzie continued, “so I always start with three great jokes. It can be anything. As long as it’s yours and nobody else’s.”
Nora stared at Grace one last time. She wondered what Grace had that nobody else in this room did. She already knew what she would bring. It was all she had.
She lifted her pencil one last time. “Okay,” she wrote. “I’m in.”
“Great.” Ozzie grinned and looked over at Grace. “What about you, Queenie?”
“Oh.” Grace leaned back, letting her head fall between her shoulder blades. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Ozzie said.
Grace lifted her head again, perusing the group of them with her blue eyes. “All right,” she said slowly. “I guess I’m in, too.”
Nora didn’t panic as she followed Ozzie’s slow ascension through what looked like a chimney in the attic of Turning Winds the following night; despite the narrowness of it and the fact that it smelled like a dirty diaper, she already trusted Ozzie for a reason she could not put her finger on, and she knew—she could feel it in her bones—that she wanted to go wherever this girl was going to take her now.
“Almost there,” Ozzie said over her shoulder. “Hold your breath until we get all the way through. It stinks.” Nora nodded. She wished Ozzie would keep her voice down. It was after midnight and the other four girls in the house were asleep, but God only knew what would happen if one of them woke up. Then there was Elaine, who worked the night shift at Turning Winds, drowsing downstairs in front of another episode of The Twilight Zone. Elaine was large and thick, like a tree, and she wore loud T-shirts with sayings on the front like KEEP TALKING; I’M RELOADING. An apple tattoo with an arrow shot through the middle of it adorned her upper arm, and she drew in her eyebrows with a black pencil. Since they were in school for most of the day, Elaine was the one who had the most contact with the girls, but it was quick and brusque, as if she did not want to get to know them very well. “I’m not here to be your friend or your mother,” she’d told Nora the first day she’d arrived. “My job is just to make sure you stay out of trouble.” Nora hadn’t been too sure what kind of trouble she was referring to, but she would bet money now that climbing to the roof in the middle of the night would qualify.
They emerged all at once into fresh air, and it swept over Nora’s face like a salve. She inhaled deeply, mouth, then nose—once, and then again. Monica and Grace were already up there, their backs resting against a wrought iron railing, legs crossed beneath them. Truth be told, there wasn’t much room to do much else; the entire enclosed space—which Ozzie informed them was called a widow’s walk—was about as large as a throw rug. But they were up high. And my God, Nora thought as she stared up at the moon above them—full and yellow as a soft-boiled egg yolk—was this the first time she had ever really looked at the moon? The light around it was a neon blue, enclosed yet again by a thinner, paler line, a pulsing white heat. If she rose up on her tiptoes, she thought, she might be able to touch it. The first line from the novel Catch-22 flickered across her brain: “It was love at first sight.” And it was. Right here, right now, she felt something stir inside her that she hadn’t even known was there. She’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Ozzie sat down next to Monica, motioning for Nora to do the same. Nora settled in between Grace and Ozzie, her knees touching theirs on either side. “Everyone here?” Ozzie asked. “Monsie, me, Grace, and Nora.” She hesitated, looking at Nora. “That reminds me. I looked up your name last night. It’s Greek.”
Nora felt something tense inside.
“It means ‘light,’” Ozzie said. “Isn’t that cool?”
Light. Nora couldn’t imagine Mama ever feeling anything close to lightness when it came to her. She’d barely used her name at all, in fact, referring to Nora most of the time as “girl” or “you.” Nora turned the word over inside her mouth. Light. She liked the feel of it, small and smooth, like a marble. Or a jewel. Something waiting for just the right moment before it exploded into a million fractured pieces of energy. She nodded, smiling shyly at Ozzie.
“What’s your name mean?” Grace asked Ozzie. “I don’t think I’ve ever even heard it before.”
Ozzie straightened up. “It’s a male name.” She surveyed the group with a quick glance, as if daring any one of them to laugh. “It’s Hebrew,” she went on. “And it means ‘strength.’”
Monica nodded in satisfaction. Grace raised her left eyebrow and then lowered it again. Nora grinned. As if the word could mean anything else.
“Okay then,” Ozzie said. “Let’s start. Rules first.” She grabbed a notebook sitting off to the side and handed it to Monica. “You want to read, Monsie?”
Monica pushed her orange bangs out of her face and cleared her throat. The light from the moon cast a soft glow over her face, blurring her pudgy features, softening the scraggly edges of her hair. “Rule number one: Never speak of the group outside of this circle. To anyone. Ever. Rule number two: Members must always bring something of themselves to share at every meeting. Rule number three: Stick wishes are private, unless a member wants to discuss them with the rest of the group. No stick wish—no matter how weird—will be judged. Failure to abide by any said rules can result in immediate dismissal.” She looked up. “Okay, that’s it.”
Grace frowned. “What the heck is a stick wish?”
“Hold your horses, jumpy,” Ozzie said. “Those come last. Is there anything anyone wants to add?”
Grace shook her head.
“How about you, Nora?”
Nora hesitated, bringing her fingers to her earlobe. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring something up at the first meeting. Especially if you were new. And you didn’t talk.
“Go on,” Ozzie urged. “I can tell you want to say something. You’re part of the group now. You can tell us.”
Nora flicked her eyes at Ozzie and then pulled out her pencil. “What about a name?” she wrote.
Monica and Ozzie exchanged a glance.
“I told you,” Monica said. “Every group needs a name.”
“We talked about this before,” Ozzie said. “I think a name for the group is a great idea. It’s just—I don’t want some dopey, sissy name, you know?”
“I still don’t think The Velvet Moondrops is dopey.” Monica pouted. She looked at Grace and then at Nora. Both girls dropped their eyes.
“If we pick a name for the group,” Ozzie continued, “it has to be a really great one. Strong, you know? Determined. Sure of itself. Like us.”
“So if you think of anything . . .” Monica sighed and closed the notebook. “All right, rules are done for now.”
“Okay,” Ozzie said. “Now we share what we brought. Who wants to go first?”
“Me, of course.” Monica grinned, passing around a small plastic container. It was full of the chocolate-dipped pretzels she had made in the community kitchen that afternoon. Nora had smelled the melting chocolate in her room and come down, lured by the rich scent. She sat on one of the countertops, watching Monica dip the pretzels into the chocolate and then dust them with cocoa and crushed candy cane. Now everyone got four apiece. Nora ate three of them and then slipped the last one in her pocket for later.
Ozzie leaned forward as they finished eating. “Okay, I’ll go next. I only have two jokes tonight. But they’re good ones.” She cleared her throat and threw back her shoulders. “So once there was a family who was given some venison by a friend. The wife cooked up the deer steaks and served them to the husband and kids. The husband thought it would be fun to have the kids guess what they were eating.
“‘Is it beef?’ their daughter Mandy asked.
“‘Nope.’
“‘Is it pork?’ the son AJ asked.
“‘Nope.’
“‘Heck, we don’t know, Dad!’ AJ exclaimed.
“‘I’ll give you a clue,’ the dad said. ‘It’s what your mom sometimes calls me.’
“‘Spit it out, AJ!’ cried Mandy. ‘We’re eating asshole!’”
Ozzie and Monica screamed and fell over, and even Nora smiled wide and then covered her mouth, but Grace sat stoically, arms crossed.
“You didn’t think that was funny?” Ozzie asked, righting herself again and staring at Grace. “Seriously?”
“No.” Grace bit her bottom lip.
“How?” Ozzie demanded. “How was that not funny?”
“I just don’t think parents calling each other names like that in front of their kids is funny.” Grace shrugged and looked away. “We have different senses of humor, I guess.”
“Oh, for Christ’s . . .” Ozzie began, but Monica reached out and tugged at her sleeve. Ozzie took a deep breath. “Okay, whatever. I’m sorry if I offended you.” She shook her head as she began rolling up her sleeves and then dropped her arms into her lap. “Well, there’s no way I can tell the next joke, then. It’s filthy.”
Nora waited, wondering if Ozzie would back down first or if it would be Grace. They were sitting across from each other in the circle, with no more than a foot of space between them. “Well, I don’t have to tell it,” Ozzie said. She shrugged, clearly disappointed. “It’s not a big deal. I did my thing.” She reached out and poked Nora in the shoe. “How about you go next, Norster?”
Nora stared at her feet. She could feel something hot beneath the planes of her face, a slow spreading of blood under her cheeks. She wanted to read it. She knew it was a good one. She’d spent a long time selecting it last night, poring through her notebook for just this occasion. But she didn’t move. What if they laughed? Or thought it was stupid? It wasn’t an actual talent, like Monica’s cooking or Ozzie’s joke telling. She was just borrowing someone else’s words. They weren’t even hers.
Ozzie put a gentle hand on the knee. “Come on. Show us what you brought. We really want to know.”
Nora looked up. Ozzie was staring at her with a face so full of encouragement that it made something in the back of her throat hurt. She took out her notebook and handed it to Grace, who read aloud: “I collect really good first lines from novels. For tonight’s meeting, I chose the first line from the Prologue of The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It goes like this: ‘I am an invisible man.’”
Grace looked up from Nora’s notebook. “What does that mean? Is he a ghost?”
Nora looked away, mortified. The book, which revolved around a man the world refused to see, had left her pondering the unseen parts of herself, how there were sides of her that she would never, ever show another human being. Was it possible that such a thing could also be true of Ozzie and Monica and Grace? And if it was, might details eventually emerge among them, bruised flowers held in cupped hands, opening ever so slowly for the rest of them to lean in one day and touch? Could it be the reason for a group in the first place?
Or was she wrong?
Maybe she was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Then Ozzie said, “Shit, I love it! You really collect first lines?”
Nora nodded.
“That is the coolest thing ever!” Ozzie said. “God damn, I wish I had thought of something like that! How many of them do you have?”
Nora’s deflated heart began to swell back up, a balloon receiving air again. She took the notebook out of Grace’s hand. “Seventy-eight,” she wrote.
“Seventy-eight?” Ozzie sat back in disbelief. “You’ve read seventy-eight books?”
“I’ve read hundreds of books,” Nora wrote back. “But I only write down the first lines of the ones I like.”
“Fuck,” Ozzie said. “That is fucking amazing.”
“It really is,” Monica said. “I can’t imagine getting through one book, let alone hundreds.”
“‘I am an invisible man,’” Ozzie recited. She studied the edge of her shoe for a moment, as if puzzling over something. Then she lifted her head. “How about The Invisibles?” she asked. “For a name? Our name?”
“The Invisibles?” Grace repeated the words as if saying them for the very first time. “I don’t get it.”
“No, no, it’s perfect!” A faint sheen of perspiration gleamed from the edge of Ozzie’s hairline, and her eyes were bright. “Think about it. We’ve been invisible to most people for most of our whole lives.”
“Um . . . which totally sucks?” Monica interjected.
“Which totally sucks,” Ozzie agreed. “Except”—she stopped and pointed her index finger at the whole group—“except that now we have a choice. We can choose to be invisible to everyone.” She paused dramatically. “Except each other.”
“Ooooh.” Monica raised her eyebrows. “I like that.”
“Yeah.” Grace nodded. “Me too.”
Nora closed her eyes as the moment swelled around them.
“The Invisibles!” Ozzie crowed, pulling back again and raising her fist in the air.
“The Invisibles!” Monica and Grace echoed, lifting their arms. Nora raised her hand too and made it into a fist.
Fifty feet below, the sound of crickets thrummed in the dark air. A car trundled past, its headlights glowing a lemony yellow against the side of the house, and then faded again. For a split second, Nora felt as though she were in heaven, or at least somewhere very good, somewhere far away from everything else she had known up to that moment in her life. She squeezed her eyes shut so as not to forget it.
“Okay, Grace’s turn,” Monica said. “What did you bring?”
Grace reached for a soft satchel sitting nearby. Inside was a rolled-up piece of parchment, which, when she unfurled it, revealed a drawing of a girl sleeping in her bed. Nora sat back at first, alarmed to see such a vivid likeness of herself, and then, as curiosity got the better of her, crept forward again. It was her. When had Grace even done such a thing? Nora hadn’t seen any paper or pencils anywhere; she’d never observed Grace drawing at all.
“I sketch things,” Grace explained. “That’s really the only thing I can do. I drew you when you were sleeping,” she said, looking apologetically at Nora. No one said anything for a moment. Grace looked down at her knee, touched a small scab. “That’s it, really. I didn’t know what else to bring.”
“Wow,” Monica said. “It looks exactly like her.” She pointed to the limp cowlick Grace had drawn at the top of Nora’s forehead. “Even the hair. It’s like, perfect.” She turned to look at Ozzie. “Don’t you think?”
Ozzie was staring at the picture too. “It’s really good.” She squinted at Grace, as if looking at her with new eyes. “That’s a gift, you know, being able to draw like that. You should really consider doing something with it.”
Grace blushed and then looked away.
Ozzie clapped once, as if killing an insect, and the moment was over. “Okay, now we do ‘Who Wants What?’”
“Yay,” Monica said softly. “My favorite part.”
“What’s ‘Who Wants What?’” Grace asked.
“Exactly what is sounds like,” Ozzie said. “We go around the circle, and everyone tells the rest of the group what they want. It can be anything, as long as it’s not totally ridiculous, like a million dollars or something. And then, before the next meeting, we’ll try to find a way to give it to you.”
“I want my mother to come get me,” Grace sputtered. “But you can’t give me that.”
“No,” Ozzie concurred. “But maybe we can do something close to that. What is it about your mother that you want?”
“I just want her!” Grace insisted. “Here. Right now. I want to hold her and hug her and remember what she smells like and . . .” She drifted off, a catch in her throat.
Ozzie arched an eyebrow. “What does she smell like?”
Nora listened, breathless, as Monica described her mother’s scent: a combination of burnt caramel, fresh-cut grass, and Chanel No. 5 perfume. Somehow, she realized, the rest of them were going to find a way to get that smell, or something very close to it, to Grace before the next full moon rolled around. Her heart felt close to bursting, thinking of contributing such a joy to someone else. It was the most wonderful thing she could imagine, like having Christmas every month.
“How about you, Mons?” Ozzie asked. “What do you want?”
“A hug.” Monica shrugged, blushing.
“Again?” Ozzie tilted her head. “You said that last time.”
“I want three this time.”
“You’re too easy,” Ozzie said, gathering the girl in her arms and hooking her chin over her shoulder. She held her for a good thirty seconds before letting go again. Grace went next, pulling away quickly and ducking her head to avoid Monica’s gaze, and Nora did the same thing, but not without noticing that Monica seemed to whimper a bit as she withdrew herself from her grasp. It was strange how such a simple thing could be loaded with complication; awkward in a way that was full of both need and apology.
“Thank you,” Monica said, glancing shyly at all of them.
“How ’bout you, Nora?” Ozzie asked. “Anything you want right now?”
Nora’s brain raced. How could such a small question be so difficult to answer? Or was the real question that such a thing had never been asked of her before? Maybe an answer did not even exist. She shrugged, fiddling with a shoelace, her mind a blank.
“Nothing?” Ozzie pressed. “You don’t want one single thing right now?”
Nora paused in the middle of a shrug and then picked up her notebook. “THIS,” she wrote in large, capital letters, showing it to the group. Ozzie grinned broadly, and Monica reached across the circle and took her hand, just as Grace pressed a palm against her knee. “You got it,” Ozzie said.
“How ’bout you, Oz?” Grace asked as the moment passed. “What do you want?”
“Ugh!” Ozzie threw her head back. “I want so many things! I can’t decide!”
“Like what?” Monica urged.
“Well, I totally want to get laid.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “You’re on your own with that one.”
“Okay then,” Ozzie said. “I want to take a road trip. A real one. With all of you guys.”
“What’s a real one?” Monica looked nervous.
“Cross-country,” Ozzie said. “Or at least halfway. In a convertible. Blue, with white siding, the top down. Full tank of gas, and a case of beer in the trunk.”
“I thought you said these things couldn’t be totally ridiculous,” Grace said. “None of us even has a driver’s license if you hadn’t noticed, let alone a car.”
“We could always steal one,” Ozzie looked at her slyly, laughing as Grace gasped. “I’m kidding, tightwad.”
They waited as Nora wrote feverishly in her notebook and then held it up for Ozzie to read. “What is it about the road trip that we could give you now?”
Ozzie sat back and tilted her head up. For a long moment, she looked up into the night, as if studying a specific star. “Freedom,” she said finally. “The feeling of being able to go anywhere at all with nothing to worry about, nowhere to be, no one to answer to but myself.”
A silence descended on the group. It was a tricky one, for sure. But, Nora decided, she would do everything she could to try to give Ozzie something close to that feeling before the next meeting.
“All right, now comes the most important part.” Ozzie stood up, turned around, and held her arms up until it looked as though the moon had settled in between them. “We come up here every month during the full moon because this is the time that her powers are at their fullest.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” Grace paused in the middle of rolling up her parchment paper. “Is this gonna be like some voodoo ceremony? ’Cause I’m one hundred percent Catholic. I believe in Jesus and Mary. I’m not into the whole moon- and planet-worship kind of thing.”
“Mary is a symbol of the moon,” Ozzie said.
“Mary?” Grace repeated. “As in the Blessed Virgin Mary?”
Ozzie nodded. “Haven’t you ever seen a picture of her standing on the crescent moon? That’s because the moon and Mary both represent the same thing: purity.”
Grace’s forehead crinkled as she considered this. “Well, I guess it’ll be okay, then.”
Ozzie cleared her throat and began again. “The Invisibles choose to hold their meetings under the full moon because she is the strongest female force in the universe. She is our first mother. The one who will never let us down, who will stay with us always and forever.” She grabbed her stick from out of her back pocket, stood up, and faced the moon again. Her hand moved quickly as she traced the air with her stick. “Tonight we ask her to listen to us, to read the wishes we send her for our future, and to answer them someday when the time is right.” Ozzie’s hand moved faster and faster as she traced her wish in the sky; for a moment, Nora thought Ozzie was joking, because her wish was so long. But then Ozzie’s hand grew limp, and when she turned and faced the rest of them, Nora could see the glimmer of perspiration along the line of her nose. Her lower lip trembled and she sat down quickly.
“Your turn,” she said to Monica. Her voice was low, hoarse, shaken.
Monica stood up and wrote her wish out for the moon in stick letters. Grace followed, and then Nora, who stood for a full minute under the orb, just staring at the milky glow it cast on the yard below, how the light of it bathed the steeple tip of Saint Augustine’s church in the distance, turning it a silvery blue.
“It can be anything,” Ozzie whispered behind her. “Anything at all.”
Nora moved forward then and lifted her arm and began to write.
She woke with a start as the plane began to descend. Beneath her, she could feel the wheels of it emerging from the belly, its iron legs stretching and creaking like the heavy branches of trees.
The large woman in purple leaned toward her. “We’re here,” she said. Her breath smelled like salted peanuts. “You slept through the whole thing.”
Nora breathed a sigh of relief. Past the old man, out the window, she could see land again, a line of trees, and sheets of pavement as they came closer and closer into focus.
It was time.
For better or worse, it was time.