After a minute, we pulled apart and stared at each other, stunned.
“I — I can’t believe that just happened,” Reed said.
Boldness flared up in me like a torch. “I can,” I said.
He stepped back. His voice trembled. “No, Willa, you don’t understand. Jonathan’s your stepfather. And he’s my boss. He can never find out.”
“He doesn’t have to find out,” I said, relishing the defiant sound of my own voice. “Why should he?”
He wrapped his gentle fingers around mine, his eyes cast down. “I’m not going to ask you to lie for me.”
His thumb made a circle on my palm and left me breathless.
“You don’t have to ask me,” I whispered.
He reached up and touched my hair, smoothing it gently against my cheek. “Have a good weekend,” he said quietly.
The look in his eyes said he wished he could say more.
But we both knew he wouldn’t.
Monday at lunch, I was still half lost in thoughts of Reed and our kiss. The past week had been so blissfully ghost-free that I’d hardly even thought about the murders. An unprecedented sense of normalcy was slipping over me. I was even getting night after night of uninterrupted sleep. It was a little eerie.
“Earth to Willa,” Marnie said, interrupting my reverie. “I said, do you have plans Friday night?”
“Who, me?” I asked. “I never have plans.”
Marnie laughed, filling the air with music. “My dad got me tickets to the premiere of the new Kurt Conrath movie. Want to come? But there’s a catch — you have to help me kidnap Kurt and take him home and lock him in my closet forever and ever amen.”
“Um,” I said. “Okay. I’ll need to ask Mom, but … What should I wear?”
“All black,” she said. “Ski mask. You don’t happen to have a kidnap van, do you?”
I tried to laugh, but even joking about kidnapping stirred up unwelcome thoughts of the visions.
“Wear something trendy,” Marnie said. “A dress.”
I had no desire to be part of a huge, chaotic Hollywood function, but the alternative was sitting at home daydreaming about Reed and still waiting, slightly on edge, for more ghostly messages.
“I have a dress,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s trendy.”
“Don’t,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “Do not show up in a dress you wore to some auntie’s wedding, please.”
Oh. “Then I don’t have anything.”
“No worries. Just come home with me Friday.” She patted my head. “Mama Marnie’ll fix you right up.”
After school on Friday, I found myself feeling almost enthusiastic as I rode with Marnie to Hancock Park, where the streets were lined with old-school mansions. Her house was light brown with a pointy roof and colorful flowers everywhere. It looked like Hansel and Gretel’s cottage — if Hansel and Gretel had been millionaires.
Marnie’s bedroom was much pinker than I would have expected, with fuchsia walls and a huge white fairy-tale bed. A makeup vanity with a big round mirror was pushed up against one wall, and the chandelier above the bed dripped with teardrop-shaped crystals. The carpet (what you could see of it, anyway, between piles of clothes, books, and papers) was plush and white.
I set my overnight bag in the corner. This was going to be kind of a dress rehearsal for Mom and Jonathan’s Palm Springs trip.
“I like your room,” I said, to be polite.
“I hate it,” Marnie replied, heading to her closet. “My mom did it during her interior-decorator phase. They shipped me off to summer camp in Oregon, and when I came back, I was living inside a Barbie Dreamhouse. Only it’s more like a nightmare house. I swear, the color literally burns my retinas.”
“They won’t let you change it?”
She shrugged. “It gives me leverage when I want something from Mom.” She went into her walk-in closet and pulled out a gold-sequined minidress. “What do you think? It’s vintage. Mary Quant.”
“Um,” I said, trying to conceal my horror.
Her face fell. “You don’t like it? I was going to wear it with my white go-go boots.”
“Ohhhh,” I said. “It’s for you? In that case, I love it. It’s great.”
“Willa, you wear overalls on purpose. You think I would break the laws of time and space by putting you in sequins?” She tossed the vintage dress onto her bed, as if it were a T-shirt she’d picked up on clearance from Target. Then she ducked back into the closet.
When she came out holding a slim-fitting cherry-red dress with three-quarter sleeves, I could have hugged her. She handed the dress to me. The fabric was slinky and soft, and the design was simple — a plain high neckline, two pieces of red fabric forming a flattened X at the waist, and delicate gathers at the ends of the sleeves.
“Willa like?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Willa like very much.”
“That’s vintage, too,” she said. “It was my great-grandma’s, in the forties.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
She gave me an approving smile. “It beats overalls, anyway.”
Marnie had an array of powders, creams, and blushes that she kept in a case like a professional makeup artist. I was surprised to realize that I remembered how to apply it all — two years of not caring what I looked like hadn’t erased the muscle memory of blending eye shadow and making the fish-mouth mascara face.
After we both finished our makeup, Marnie ran her hands through my hair and made an unhappy chirping sound. “What about your hair? How retro are you willing to go? I’m thinking maybe an updo. Keep the ’40s vibe going.”
“I don’t know how to do anything like that,” I said, feeling embarrassed.
“Oh, I do,” she said, dragging her desk chair into the bathroom. “Sit and prepare to be beautified.”
I was a little surprised, to be honest. Marnie seemed so low-maintenance. Only when I saw her vast array of hair-styling implements did I realize how much effort she must have put into looking low-maintenance. Twenty minutes later, after a lot of tugging and twisting and stabbing me in the scalp with bobby pins, she gave me permission to turn around.
“You,” she said, “look legit. I should get an award for this. Maybe I should be a stylist for a living. Dad produced a movie last summer about a model who’s also a spy — Runway, did you see it? Never mind, nobody saw it, it was a huge bomb — and the stylists gave me lessons.”
Her chatter melted into a hum in my ears while I stared at myself.
Marnie had made me into something … someone … from another era. My hair was pulled back to the nape of my neck in a low, thick bun that shined like it was made of pure silk. With the cat-eye makeup and the red lips, I looked like … a movie star.
“Stare much?” Marnie teased. “Okay, go get dressed. I have to transform my own raven locks, such as they are.”
She curled the ends of her hair in a perfect gravity-defying flip. Her lips were frosty pink and her eye makeup behind her glasses was thick and black, with tons of mascara. Then she slipped into the sequined dress while I put on my red dress, and we stood looking at the full-length mirror. Suddenly, I was enthusiastic, for real. The world of psychics and visions and ghosts and murders seemed far away — and getting further every minute.
Marnie went into the closet and reappeared carrying a pair of white knee-high boots for herself and bronze-colored thick-heeled pumps for me. “Ready, Willa? Let’s go gift the world a little awesome.”
A whole block of Hollywood Boulevard was closed off for the premiere. The traffic nearby was basically standing still. So the driver of our hired sedan had to drop us off three blocks away.