me was a way of making Brownie points with God.
Anyhow, after a couple of weeks they told Miss Jenks they couldn’t believe I was the same girl she’d told them about.
Well, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been the girl she’d told them about in the first place. That had been an act. I really am a very good actress, which is why I know I can get in the movies. It takes more than just a pretty face. More than just a beautiful face, even. It takes talent, which I proved I have.
“Sylvie, Ed Sullivan is on! Sylvie, come on and watch Ed Sullivan with us! Maybe Señor Wences’ll be on!” Honey and Bunny both came rushing into my room.
“Is it that late?” I felt sort of groggy. Somehow the afternoon had passed after I stopped counting hours. I had missed supper. I must have fallen asleep.
“Sylvie, come on!” Bunny said. “You’ll miss the famous people in the studio audience. Maybe James Dean’ll be there.”
“James Dean is dead, Bunny. He can’t be in the studio audience.”
“Maybe President Eisenhower then.”
“He’s in the hospital. Remember? You prayed for him.”
“Maybe the prayers worked. Come on, Sylvie, you have to watch with us. You always watch with us.”
“Okay, okay.”
They each took one of my hands and practically pulled me out of bed. I looked at them in their seersucker nightgowns, their blond curls frizzy from the heat and their bath.
I hugged them against my hips. Next week, when I wasn’t here, would they miss me? Would they wonder where I was?
Maybe some Sunday night they’d be watching Ed Sullivan and the camera would pick out a famous face in the audience and Ed would say, “And over here we have that up-and-coming new star—” and Honey and Bunny would start screaming, “It’s Sylvie, it’s Sylvie!”
Only, by then I wouldn’t be Sylvie anymore.
After eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, I’d never be Sylvie Krail again.
Chapter 3
“Sylvie, I really don’t like to go off and leave you alone like this.”
“Oh, Aunt Grace, you’ve left me alone before.”
“But not when you’re sick. It’s different.”
“You can leave me Mrs. Reemer’s number and I can call you if I need anything. I don’t want you to miss your canasta game on account of me.” I used my sick-but-brave voice again. She had to go to that canasta game.
“Well, that’s true. I’m only ten minutes away, after all.”
“I’m a big girl, Aunt Grace. You know I can take care of myself.”
“I guess you can. And if you’re still feeling bad when I come home, we can call the doctor then.”
“Sure, that’s right. You go and have a good time. I know how you look forward to your canasta.”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh, there’s Betty already.” Aunt Grace patted her hair and tugged at her turquoise pedal pushers. She ran to the twins’ room and called out the window. “I’ll be right there!”
She came back into my room. “I’ll see you later, dear. I hope you feel better. You just rest and take care of yourself.”
The doorbell rang again.
“I must run.” She fluttered her fingers at me and hurried out of my room.
“Good-bye, Aunt Grace,” I said softly.
I waited until I heard Betty Kramer’s car pulling away, and then I jumped out of bed. The first thing I did was to run downstairs and make myself a bologna sandwich, because I was starving from not having eaten anything but toast since yesterday. I could only finish half of it. I guess I was too nervous to eat. I filled up much faster than I thought I would.
I took a shower and sprinkled myself all over with Cashmere Bouquet. I wished I had time to shampoo my hair, but it would have taken too long to dry. Even though I don’t have oily-type hair, I like to wash it twice a week to keep it looking its best, and I hadn’t shampooed since Friday. But I had to settle for just brushing Minipoo through it. I figured it would be all right since I wasn’t wearing it loose, but in a French twist, which makes me look at least eighteen.
I pulled the suitcase down from the top of the closet. I nearly dropped it on the floor, it was so heavy. I put on all the crinolines and my pink dress and clipped my white pop beads around my neck. I pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk and yanked the envelope from the back. I put it inside the zipper pocket of my straw pocketbook.
I took a long, careful time with my makeup. I put on pressed powder and some rouge and black mascara and curled my eyelashes so they’d look even longer and more dramatic. I dabbed some “Strike Me Pink” lipstick onto my brush (all the stars tell you a lipstick brush is an absolute must) and outlined my lips. I filled them in with the lipstick, then blotted them on a tissue.
I stood back and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like I could be in the movies, I thought. And with my French twist and my gloves and my white slingback heels, I definitely looked eighteen. Maybe even twenty.
I lugged the suitcase and hatbox downstairs and put them next to the front door. In the kitchen Aunt Grace kept a pad that has “Shopping List” printed on it, with a little pencil attached.
I sat down at the table with the pad and wrote my good-bye note.
Dear Aunt Grace,
I’m going to my mother. I found out she is in a place in Rochester and I have to see her. I’m sorry to fool you like I did about being sick but it was the only way. Thank you for everything and don’t worry about me. Say good-bye to the twins and Uncle Ted for me.
Sincerely yours, Sylvie Krail
I left the note on the table and went to call a taxi.
This was going to be the only tricky part of my plan. If Mrs. Bates next door saw me getting into the taxi with my suitcase, she’d know something was up. Betty Kramer was our neighbor on the other side, and she was with Aunt Grace at Millie Reemer’s, and the neighbors across the street probably didn’t know where Aunt Grace could be reached because she wasn’t all that friendly with them.
But Mrs. Bates always did her laundry on Mondays, hanging it out on the turn-around clothes pole in the backyard, so I was hoping that’s where she’d be when the taxi came.
The taxi company said the cab would be here in fifteen minutes. I told them I had to catch a train, and they said not to worry, the next train to the city wasn’t for half an hour, so I sat down in the chair next to the front door to wait.
I thought that note was pretty smart. Like I told my mother in the letter, I had a very good plan of how to get away without being found and that note was part of my plan. Everybody would be looking for me all the way to Rochester, and I wasn’t going in that direction at all. By the time they realized I wasn’t in Rochester, I’d probably be in California. And they’d never think to look for me in California.
I couldn’t sit still. Here I had planned this trip for months, years almost, and it was finally only ten minutes away from beginning, and I thought I’d die waiting for that last ten minutes to go by.
It wasn’t so hot today, which I was glad about, because when it’s very hot I sweat and my bangs get all limp and the angel wings on the side droop until they’re flat. (Some people call them devil wings instead of angel wings, which I think is funny, that they should be called opposite things.) Anyway, they’re like Brenda Starr in the comics wears her hair. They’re not really bangs, they sort