across a street, sitting in a cafe, walking through a park. It’s both odd and neat to see someone from one of my own stories walking about in the city. It gives me a better idea what it must feel like for you when you bring the numena across.”
Izzy really wished that Rosalind could overcome her shyness. She just knew that the two of them would get along famously. She’d often considered secretly setting up a meeting between the them, but then she’d think of John, she’d think of how Rosalind had entrusted her with her feelings, and she wouldn’t let it go any further than a thought.
“And Cosette?” she asked. “Do you ever see her?”
Kathy shook her head. “I’m too civilized to visit the kinds of places that she’d hang around—don’t you think? But I’ll bet Jilly’s seen her.”
“I think Jilly knows every fourth person in the city.”
“More like every third—and she’s working on the rest.” Kathy paused. “How come you’ve never told her about the numena? It’s so up her alley.”
Izzy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not trying to be selfish or anything, but I feel like everything would change if I told anybody else.”
“You told me.”
“That’s different,” Izzy said. “That’s more like telling another part of myself.”
“Are we going to be friends forever?” Kathy asked.
Izzy turned to look at her roommate. Kathy looked so serious that Izzy stifled the humorous response she’d been about to make.
“We’ll be friends forever,” she assured Kathy.
Kathy gave her a quick smile. “That’s good, because, you know, you’re the only good thing I ever had in my life that didn’t turn around and hurt me.”
“Look around you,” Izzy said. “All these people are your friends, Kathy. None of them would be here if it wasn’t for you.”
“I know. But the way I feel about them isn’t the same as I feel about you.”
Izzy put down her wineglass to give Kathy a hug. “That’s because a person can only ever have one real best friend,” she said, “and we’re stuck with each other.”
Kathy hugged her back. “Stuck together. Like salt and pepper.”
“Crackers and cheese.”
“Bacon and eggs.”
“Now I’m getting hungry,” Izzy said.
“Me, too.”
Izzy plucked her wineglass from the windowsill where she’d set it down earlier; then, arm in arm, they aimed their way through the crowd to see what was left of the potluck dinner.
A few weeks after the open house at the Newford Children’s Foundation, Izzy came back from sharing a picnic lunch with Tom Downs to find her studio looking as though it had been vandalized. There were sketchbooks, loose papers and art books scattered everywhere. The floor was a jumble of paint tubes, brushes, pencils, sticks of pastel and the like. The easel lay on its side, her current work-in-progress beside it on the floor—faceup, she realized, thanking whatever gods there were for small mercies.
She walked numbly through the mess. Straightening the easel, she replaced her canvas on it, then slowly took stock. Her first thought was that the place had been burglarized, but nothing appeared to be missing. A quick inventory of her numena’s gateway paintings told her that all were still present and hadn’t been harmed. But who could have done this?
She bent down to start putting pastel sticks back into their box when some sixth sense made her look under her worktable. There she saw a familiar red-haired figure leaning against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs.
“Cosette,” she said, the shock plain in her voice.
The wild girl turned a tear-streaked face toward her. “I ... I knew it was wrong ... even while I was doing it,” she said in a small broken voice, “but I ... I just couldn’t stop myself “
Izzy knew she should be angry, but the hurt and confusion she saw in Cosette’s features wouldn’t allow the emotion to take hold. She regarded the wild girl for a long moment, then crawled under the table to join her. She gathered Cosette in her arms and stroked the bird’s nest of her hair, gently working at the tangles with her fingers.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I was ... I was trying to draw a picture, but it wouldn’t come out right. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t come out right at all, at all. But still I tried and I kept trying, but then everything ...
everything started to feel ... I felt like I was choking ... and I just pushed all the papers off the table and it didn’t ... the choking feeling wasn’t so bad then ... and the more I kicked things around, the more it went away. I knew it was bad. I knew it was wrong. I I ... I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself “
“I used to get just as frustrated when I was learning how to draw,” Izzy told her.
Cosette gave her a grateful look. “I have to be able to do it,” she said. “I just have to.”
“Nobody’s good right away,” Izzy said. “It takes a lot of hard work to get anywhere with it.”
“But I’ll never get it because I don’t have anything inside me. I thought doing it would put something inside, but you have to be someone first. Like you. You are someone. I want to be just like you.”
“You don’t have to be like me to be able to do art,” Izzy told her. “Every artist is different.”
But Cosette shook her head. “No, I have to be like you.”
“Whatever for?”
“I want to be real.”
“You are real,” Izzy told her.
“No, I’m not. I’m like Solemn John.”
“John’s real, too.”
Cosette shook her head again. “He says you don’t really believe that. And if you don’t believe it, then it must be true, because you’re the one who made us.”
“I didn’t make you,” Izzy said. “All I did was open a door for you to step through.”
“Then why does John say what he does?”
Izzy sighed. “John and I have a problem communicating with each other.” Which was an understatement if she’d ever heard one, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other in years, but Izzy put that firmly out of her mind. That wasn’t the issue here. Cosette was.
“Not everything he says means exactly what it seems to mean,” Izzy went on.
“Like what he says about the dark man?” Cosette asked.
It took Izzy a moment to understand what Cosette was asking. “You mean Rushkin?” When Cosette nodded, Izzy said, “John just doesn’t much like him, so he suspects the worst about him.”
“So he doesn’t ... eat us?”
“I ..... Izzy hesitated. Her head filled with images of that old dream, the snowstorm, Rushkin with a crossbow, her winged cat dying, Paddyjack rescued by John. But then she heard Annie Nin’s voice in her mind.
“I don’t think he does,” she said.
“I still wish I was real.”
“You are real. Honestly. Look me in the eye, Cosette. Can’t you see that I believe what I’m saying?”
“I suppose.”
They sat quietly under the table for a while longer, neither of them speaking until Cosette finally sighed.
“Are you very mad at me?” she asked.
Izzy shook her head. “No. I understand what happened. Will you help me tidy up?”
Cosette gave her a shy nod.
