Thursday, October 29, 1993

T

ommy had retreated into his attic dark room. Nora sat on her bed, listening, waiting for Marla and Philip’s squabbling to transform into snores. Even then, she waited a while longer, making sure they were deeply asleep. Not that they’d get out of bed to ask what she was doing, not that they’d even hear her moving around. Still, she wanted to be sure that no one knew, that no one would notice even a footstep.

While she waited, she kept replaying the day. Annie’s coldness, her ultimatum, her threatened consequences if she didn’t get the pictures. Nora’s life would be hell. She’d go to the cafeteria at lunchtime and see Annie sitting with all the glittery popular girls, and nobody would make room for her to join them. Nora would stand, tray in hand, having nowhere to go. Would she have to sit alone? With dorky kids she didn’t even know? Or with Natalie and Charisse and their dweeby, immature friends from elementary school? No way. She’d sooner throw her food out and skip lunch altogether, forever.

For sure, Nora needed to get those photographs. Without Annie, she’d be as friendless as Tommy. Her tears dropped onto her pajamas. It was so unfair that he was her brother. Weirdo. Creep. Freak. Because of Tommy, Annie was slipping away.

Or already had.

But with any luck, she could fix it. She wiped her face and got out of bed. Cautious and silent, she crept down the hall to Tommy’s room. The door, of course, was closed. She knocked softly, making sure he was still upstairs, and when he didn’t answer, she tiptoed inside. The stale air, the heaviness of his scent, almost made her gag. Being there, invading his private space, felt wrong, even shameful. But hell, he’d invaded her privacy, hadn’t he? He deserved to be invaded back.

Nora snapped on the lamp. On the desk, she scanned clusters of broken insect parts, loose pins, a stack of small foam boards, the microscope. If she were Tommy, where would she stash the pictures? In the overflowing dresser? The cluttered closet? In the mini freezer with his bugs? Under the mattress or the bed? He had a thousand possible hiding places. She turned in a circle, trying to choose.

She started with the dresser and opened drawer after drawer, feeling the contents for pictures or negatives, anything that wasn’t fabric. She touched his T-shirts and sweaters, his underwear. Felt something smooth among his socks, pulled at it. Strange. An old stretched out pair of Marla’s pantyhose must have gotten tangled in the laundry. She threw them back into the drawer and kept searching.

In his closet, she stepped over a mountain of blue plaid shirts and found a shoebox stuffed not with shoes, but photographs. Jackpot! She almost screamed with joy, certain that she’d found what she was looking for. She took the box to the lamp and began going through it.

The photos were extreme close-ups of grasshoppers, flies, moths. Cicadas. Nothing of her and Annie. But there had to be. She dug deeper, pulled out more. Found shots of Marla. Candid shots of women Nora didn’t know. Close-ups of women’s hands, earrings, eyebrows, shoes, hair, lips.

But not one of Nora and Annie.

She was still rifling through the photos when the ceiling creaked. Tommy was moving around upstairs, probably closing up his darkroom. Nora hurried, tossed the photos back in the shoebox and shoved it into the corner of the closet where she’d found it, behind the pile of laundry and a Lord and Taylor bag with something dark—maybe a shiny purple scarf—rumpled on top. Weird. Never mind. Tommy was clumping down the steps. She darted for the door, quietly shut it, dashed to her room and jumped into bed where she remembered that—oh God—she hadn’t turned off Tommy’s desk lamp.

She lay on her bed, listening, waiting, listening to see if Tommy noticed the light. If he’d accuse her of going into his room and snooping. Minutes passed. When he didn’t burst into her room, she began to relax. Except not really, because she hadn’t found the photos, and Annie’s party was just a day away.