The masterkey, p.1
The Masterkey, page 1
The Masterkey
Olivia Wildenstein
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
MURDER AND MAYHEM
Acknowledgments
Also by Olivia Wildenstein
About the Author
Afterword
1
Age is not a one-size-fits-all number. I’m seventeen, but there isn’t a single seventeen-year-old out there to whom I can relate. Not even my twin sister, Ivy.
She enjoys being seventeen. She says it’s not something you can change, so you might as well accept it. Even though I have a fake ID that says I’m older—which I made when I was fifteen so I could go see R-rated movies without a chaperone—there’s no forging my real age.
I’m dying to be older, to be done with high school, to leave home for good, to get out of Kokomo. Ivy says she wants to live in New York, so I guess that’s where we’ll head when school’s over. I don’t really care where we end up, as long as it’s far away from Mom, and as long as Ivy and I are together. We can’t live apart, the two of us.
Just as I think about my twin, she bursts into the house, shaking spring rain off her umbrella. Ivy’s not a fan of rain, but that’s because it ruins her shoes and makes her hair frizz.
“I saw Dr. Frank today.”
I lower my gaze to the bolognaise sauce. It makes a strange gurgling sound as it cooks, like a live animal drowning, but it’s only ground beef. Ground beef isn’t alive. Besides, there’s more tomato than meat, because meat is too expensive. “Why did you see her?”
“I passed her in the street, Asty. On East Markland Ave. She stopped by Jo-Ann’s to buy yarn for a scarf she’s knitting.”
I put down the wooden spoon. “What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.” Ivy shivers and dries her hands on a kitchen towel. “Do you like her?”
“She’s nice.”
Ivy’s wet blonde locks glint under the cone-shaped ceiling lamp. “Do you feel like she’s helping you?”
I shrug. “Sure.” My twin is convinced I need help, so I keep weekly appointments with Dr. Frank, after which I swallow pills she prescribes. Not every day, but often enough to appease Ivy.
“She said you were more forthcoming than at the beginning of the year.”
“I thought she didn’t tell you anything…”
Ivy narrows her blue eyes that are a deeper shade than mine. “She didn’t give me any specifics, Asty. Anyway, I’m so late. I hope Mom won’t be mad. The salesclerk took forever cutting the samples.”
“When has Mom ever been mad at you?”
Ivy winces. I smile to lessen her guilt. Mom likes Ivy; she doesn’t like me. It’s one of the only things that’s not a secret in our family.
My twin retreats toward the veranda where Mom works around the clock, sewing quilts based on pictures customers send her. They’re well made—I’ll give her that much—but I don’t understand how people can pay a couple hundred bucks for fabric copies of photographs. They should blow up their pictures and frame them. It would make more financial sense. I suppose most people don’t have much financial sense.
Through the closed door, I hear my sister and mother speak, but I don’t hear what they say. I put a lid on the tomato-meat sauce, turn the heat to low, and go take my shower while no one’s occupying our only bathroom. I spend extra long under the hot spray, letting the water rinse away the scent of dried sweat from this morning’s PE class. Some girls take showers in school; I don’t. I always keep my gym clothes on underneath my school clothes, so I don’t have to parade around in the nude.
Wrapped in my towel, I pad back into the kitchen to check on the sauce, which has thickened. Sometimes I feel like a witch, like cooking is magical. I throw together all these different ingredients and they bind in the most extraordinary fashion to create something new.
I put the pasta to boil, cross the small living room toward the adjoining veranda, and knuckle the closed door. “Dinner will be ready in five.”
I don’t know if they hear me because an audiobook is playing inside. They’re always listening to books on tape. I wonder if it’s to mask their conversations or if it’s because they don’t have much to tell each other.
I try the doorknob. I’m surprised when it gives. Mom usually locks her door. I peek inside. “Dinner will be ready—”
Mom shuts the bottom drawer of her sewing table with her foot. The soft bang echoes against the glass walls of the veranda.
Ivy glances up at me, blue eyes wide. The waning evening light cuts a gilded path across the bright room, making Ivy’s hair shimmer gold and Mom’s gray hair shine silver.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” I say.
“I’m not hungry,” Mom says. “Besides, I need to finish this for Friday.” She gestures toward the fabric pooled at her feet.
Disappointment fills my stomach. I’m not hungry either, but I want us to sit at the table like a normal family. Even if it’s merely pretend.
“Ivy?” I ask hopefully.
“I really should—”
My face crumples.
She folds what she’s working on in half and then folds that half into more halves until it’s just a tiny square of blue satin. Over the metallic drone of the sewing machine, she says, “I really should eat.” She walks out and pulls the door shut behind us. “Want me to set the ta—” She stops in front of the small wooden table I’ve already set for three. I even clipped a couple branches from the buttonbush outside the veranda and put them in a water glass. The glossy green leaves give the table a splash of chicness. Ivy loves chic things.
“This is…lovely,” she tells me.
Her words penetrate and linger in the tomato-and-garlic-scented air long after she’s spoken them.
Steam blasts my face as I drain the pasta. “What does Mom keep in that drawer?”
“What drawer?” Ivy grabs a carton of milk from the fridge and pours herself a glass. She sniffs it before drinking, then searches for the expiration date. “Wow. This is a week old.”
“Does it smell bad?”
“No, but it’s a week old,” she repeats as though I didn’t hear her the first time.
Mom doesn’t want us throwing out food until it smells. It’s one of the few things we agree on, one of the few things she and Ivy don’t agree on. This shared value hasn’t brought Mom and me closer though.
“They put so many preservatives in stuff today. It’s probably still okay to drink,” I reassure my twin.
“Not taking that risk.” She pours the milk into the sink, nose still wrinkled.
As the ribbon of white vanishes down the drain, I hear the nickels and dimes it cost clatter down along with it. I remain silent. I don’t want to sound like Mom, always nagging Ivy about being wasteful.
I set two steaming bowls on our placemats. “So, what’s in Mom’s bottom drawer?”
Ivy drags her hand through her straightened curls. I rubbed some serum on mine like my sister taught me, but it did nothing to tame the frizz. I probably didn’t put enough in, but I don’t like putting unnatural stuff on my body. Taking medication for my mood swings is poisonous enough. I only take it every other day, but Ivy doesn’t know that. She’d be really angry if she knew.
“Rolls of fabric,” she answers.
“Then why does she lock it?”
She wraps a gigantic mouthful of pasta around the tines of her fork and shovels it inside her mouth. “This is really really good,” she says after swallowing.
Pride inflates my chest and satiates my hollow belly better than food ever could. But then I think of Mom’s eternally locked drawer and suspicion supplants pride.
“Is it really only fabric?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounds like an eye roll. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Pensive, I pick up my fork and dig into the gloppy red mess that feels like my life. This mess, though, I can make disappear. The turmoil inside me, that won’t go away until Mom does.
Or until I do.
2
“The sun feels so damn good. Classes should take place on the quad.” I nudge Ivy, who’s sitting cross-legged next to me.
“That’s an idea,” she mumbles, not paying attention.
“Vitamin D’s good for the brain.” I glance at my friend, who’s bent over her phone. “It also makes facial hair grow. Did you know that?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. Totally.”
“Stop checking your Instagram feed and listen to me, Redd.”
Ivy puts her phone away. “I wasn’t checking my Instagram feed. I was reading about the new reality TV competition that’s starting this summer. The Masterpiecers.”
“What are people competing for?”
“Getting a free ride to the art school.”
“Is that the place you want to go to?”
“Yeah. But unless I get a scholarship, there’s no way I can afford it.” She rolls onto her back. “I can’t believe you’re already done with your second year of college. That’s insane.”
I smile, feeling a quick rush of satisfaction. “One more year to go.” I’m taking a bunch of summer credits to finish in three years, so I can apply to become a cop.
“Officer Cooper.” Ivy makes a face. “Still sounds weird.”
“Why?”
“Because. You’ll be a law enforcer. You’ll have a badge, and a gun, and stuff.”
“Which will come in handy to get yo
She snorts. “Like I ever get into trouble.”
“Um. Have you forgotten the time you stole a pack of watermelon bubblegum from under the cash register of the CVS, and the salesclerk caught you?”
“Because Mom wouldn’t buy it for me.”
“And then Aster took the blame.”
She rumples her forehead. “That was horrible of me.”
Silence stretches between us as we both recollect the shopping expedition that started as an excursion to the movies—her mother wasn’t actually taking us to see a movie; she was dropping us off for the afternoon because she had stuff to do—and ended with a slap that sent Aster skidding sideways and collapsing onto the sidewalk. I didn’t have a cell phone back then since I was only nine, but I told their mom to leave before I had a passerby call the cops.
Mom was away at a baking conference in New York. She’d been planning that trip for so long that I hadn’t called her, but I’d phoned my dad from a concerned bystander’s cell. He came to pick us up and took us home.
Mom returned that night too—Dad had called her even though I’d told him not to—and she’d stormed off to pay Mrs. Redd a visit. To this day, I’m not sure what happened, but Ivy and Aster ended up staying with us for ten days.
“Shouldn’t have brought that up,” I mutter.
Ivy bites her lower lip.
“At least we got a prolonged sleepover out of it.”
The bell rings in the squat rectangular building behind us, signaling Ivy’s lunch period is over. “Man, that felt quick.”
“Time flies when you’re with me.”
She stands up and dusts the back of her jean cutoffs. “Why are you here anyway? Don’t you have sun on your campus?”
“I’m taking Aster to the DMV to get her driver’s license in an hour. Wanna come?”
“In New York, no one drives.”
“This is Kokomo, not New York.”
“But one day, I’ll be in New York. You just wait and see.”
Ivy is stubborn, ambitious, and overflowing with talent, so I don’t doubt that one day she’ll get what she wants. Everything she wants. I don’t think she’d ever settle for anything less. We’re kindred spirits in that way.
She readjusts the red bandana she’s sporting to keep her hair back. “Bye, Joshy.”
I roll my eyes. “Gotta stop calling me that. I’m not twelve anymore.”
“You’ll always be twelve to me.”
“Go away. You’re gonna get detention.” I lie back down. “Plus, you’re blocking my sun.” We grin at each other.
She leaves, and I plug my earphones into my phone to listen to music while I wait for the other twin.
I must’ve fallen asleep, because when I look up, Aster’s crouched beside me, her incredibly light eyes roaming over my face.
“How long have you been laying out here?” she asks, prodding the skin on my jaw with her fingers. “You’re lobster-red.”
I heave myself up. “It’ll turn into a tan.”
“Burning is really bad for you, Josh.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Mom.”
“I’m serious. I don’t want you to get cancer.”
“I don’t want to get cancer either.” I smile at her and take out the now-silent earphones. “Ready?”
“I think so.”
As we walk over to my car, which I parked in the school lot, I notice her narrow shoulders are pulled tight, and her lips are squeezed into a line straighter than the markings of my parking spot. “What’s up?”
“Remember that Pac-Man game I programmed for Ivy at the beginning of the year?”
Back at the beginning of the school year, Aster impersonated Ivy during an IT test. She’s really good with computers, unlike Ivy. If she’d kept the code simple instead of adding cool features, the girls would probably have gotten away with it. Long story short, they got caught.
“The principal doesn’t want to remove the low marks from our GPAs.”
“That sucks.”
She clicks her seatbelt on. “It especially sucks for Ivy. Her GPA’s not that good. She spends too much time sewing with Mom instead of studying.” She sucks in a breath and twists toward me, cheeks flushed. “Maybe I should record our classes. She loves listening to stuff when she sews. Then at least she could keep up with the curriculum.”
I squeeze Aster’s hand once before gripping my steering wheel. “You’re so considerate.”
Her cheeks become beet-red at my compliment.
“Look at that…our skin tones match,” I tease.
She doesn’t laugh. Instead she faces her window.
I didn’t mean to make her feel bad, but I don’t apologize because it’ll fluster her more. Instead, I pump the volume of the stereo up until Jay Z’s killer rhythm rocks the car and drowns out the awkwardness.
After three songs, I turn the volume back down and ask, “So who you going to Junior Prom with?”
She looks over at me. “I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a good answer.”
She picks a piece of lint off her baggy jeans. I don’t know if it’s her new medication, but she’s lost weight. My forearm is larger than both of her thighs put together. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but she’s definitely too skinny. After she passes her test, I’ll take her for a celebratory donut run at Mom’s bakery. She’ll like that.
“Why aren’t you going?”
“Because I don’t have a dress.”
“I’m sure Mom has a dress you could borrow.”
She shoots me a horrified look.
“Oh, come on, Mom has great taste.”
“I can’t wear one of her dresses. What if someone pours punch over it? Or—”
“Sounds to me like you’re making excuses.”
“I’m not. Besides, Ivy’s going with Sean, and I don’t have a date.”
I brake in the middle of the street. Thankfully there’s no traffic. I pull over to the curb.
Aster frowns. “Aren’t we a little far to park?”
I get out of the car, jog around the front, and sweep open her door. And then I get down on one knee. “Aster Redd, will you take me to Junior Prom?”
Her expression goes from shocked to crazy shocked. Even her mouth gapes.
I add, “Please?”
“Josh, you don’t have to—”
“Redd, I want to! Come on. I promise to make it fun.” When she still hasn’t said anything, I add, “And I really do miss high school dances. It’s the only part of the high school experience I miss.” I don’t, but Aster will go if she thinks she’s doing me a favor.
She smiles. “Okay.” Her full lips part wider over her perfect white teeth. “Okay, I’ll go with you.” A woman pushing a stroller passes by us. “Better get up before someone thinks you’re proposing,” she whispers.
When Aster smiles, she really is the most beautiful girl ever. She morphs back into the pigtail-wearing girl I chased through my granddaddy’s sunflower field, the girl who shrieked when her sister asked to go higher on the tire swing, the girl who pressed a palm against her mouth when she laughed.
I almost forget she’s like my sister, and I also almost forget she was diagnosed with schizophrenia five years ago.
3
Moments like the afternoon I went to the DMV breed fragile dreams. Dreams of love and a blissful future bursting with exquisite reds, sunny yellows, and cobalt blues.
For the millionth time since Josh asked me to prom, I close my eyes and replay his proposal. I shouldn’t read too much into it, but what if—
Ivy barrels into our shared bedroom.
I sit up in bed.
She’s holding something behind her back.
When she doesn’t say anything, I ask, “What’s going on?”
“I heard you’re going to the dance.”
I imagine Josh told her. I wonder if he told her how he asked me. The thought makes a blush crawl over my jaw. I toy with my hair, twisting it into a long, coarse rope. “Yeah.”
“I’m so glad because I made you this”—she pulls out something from behind her back—“and I would’ve hated to see it to go to waste.”
