“Ooohhhh!” Jillian grasped the concept instantly. “C’est magnifique!”
4: GIRL SCOUT CAMOUFLAGE GREEN
Saturday morning, after taking their hour turn at the cookie-selling event, they planted mini-Tesla on Elle and took the 7 train into Manhattan. Grand Central Station was a kicked beehive of police. Jillian led, smiling innocently at the policemen. Louise followed, leading Tesla by his leash, trying not to look like they were deceiving every adult who crossed their path.
“Is she home yet?” Jillian swung her legs, watching the city flash by. Tesla was parked beside her, his camera eyes hacked and currently not recording. Just to be sure, they had his head carefully locked onto the back of the seat.
Louise took out her phone and checked what the GPS on April Geiselman’s phone had to say. The woman was making steady progress toward her apartment from some mystery address that had kept her out all night. “She’s heading home—I think. What do we do if she doesn’t go home?”
“We sell cookies until she does.”
* * *
April lived in a high-rise on the Upper East Side. The Girl Scout uniforms got them past the doorman for the promise of free cookies. According to her phone, April was now home, so they went straight to her apartment.
They rang the doorbell and listened intently as soft footsteps came to the door. There was a long silence as they were examined through the spyhole. After a full minute, the locks were thrown and the door opened.
April was surprisingly young and pretty. She was wearing a tight black dress and last night’s makeup. “Wow, I didn’t think Girl Scouts went door to door anymore. Are you sure you’re allowed to do this? It’s not really safe, even with a dog that big.”
“Hi,” Jillian said. “Can we ask you some questions?”
“I’ll buy a box or two. I love Thin Mints. Let me get my purse.”
She started to close the door but Louise put her foot in the door. “Wait! We want to know what happened to your babies.”
Jillian glared at her for going off script.
“My what?” April said.
“Eighteen years ago, you visited the Cryobank fertility clinic in Manhattan and were implanted with four embryos—but you live in a one-bedroom apartment. What happened to your babies?”
April glanced down the hallway and lowered her voice. “How do you know about that? Who told you that?”
“Your babies are our sisters,” Louise said. “We’re the embryos that weren’t implanted in you.”
“Oh, Jesus,” April whispered. “Come in.”
The apartment was cluttered but clean. The floor was swept but every surface was crowded with interesting stuff. Books. Art. Toys. They parked Tesla in the corner, staring at the door. April disappeared into the kitchen to make tea.
“I always thought that there be a day when the doorbell would ring and it would be her wanting to know who the hell I thought I was, having a baby for money and walking away, leaving her there, on that world.”
A baby. “You only had one? A girl?”
There was silence in the kitchen. April came to lean on the doorway. “Yeah. A little girl. You know, you can only leave Pittsburgh once a month, and she was born the day after Startup, so I was there with her for thirty days, knowing that she wasn’t really mine. It was so hard to walk away. To stay away. But as they say—you make your bed, you have to sleep in it.
“I wanted out off Elfhome. I was seven when Startup took Pittsburgh to Elfhome. It woke us up in the middle of night. The power off. The phones not working. Giant trees where our backyard had been, pressed right up against our house. A saurus attacked our neighbor’s house the next morning. We could hear them screaming. My dad told us to lock ourselves in the bathroom and he went down the street with his hunting rifle and shot it.
“Here.” She went across the living room to a bookcase and got down a picture frame. “This is him with it.”
Her father looked like an African explorer with a thick mustache and tan hunting jacket. He beamed with pride at the camera behind the saurus’ massive head, its mouth propped open to show off hundreds of long sharp teeth.
“One day twenty-first century, the next you’re living in the Stone Age, complete with dinosaurs. My parents loved it, but it scared me. Strangle vines ate our dog. A tree ate my favorite teacher. A fish ate one of my friends. There was a bunch of us standing on the riverbank looking at this strange big fish. It was a fish. We thought as long as we didn’t go into the water, we’d be safe. And then all of the sudden…” She made a fast snatching motion with her hand. “And the girl standing right next me was gone. There was just one of her shoes…”