The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [65]
By then, however, she had already become friends with Molly Francoeur and, happily, learned that she might have underestimated this other child. Now it was early Sunday afternoon, and Molly had just been dropped off at their house for another playdate. Hallie and Garnet had taken the girl out to the greenhouse this time. The snow that had fallen the other night had melted off the roof, and the early March sun was warming the structure, but they still kept on their snow jackets. The three fifth-graders were creating a tableau with Hallie and Garnet’s large American Girl dolls and furniture, not especially troubled by the reality that some of the dolls’ clothing and tables and beds were supposed to look like they were from eighteenth-century Tidewater Virginia while the other accessories were supposed to replicate the Northern Plains a hundred years later. Molly spoke with the laconic cadences that Hallie and Garnet had come to recognize from many (though not all) of the people they ran into at school, at the dance studio, or with their mom and dad at the supermarket or the hardware store.
They had just decided that the three dolls would be sisters—three beds and three dressers in a row, the dolls in their beds for the night—when Molly folded her fingers under her arms to warm them and said, “Maybe they should be triplets.”
“And maybe they’re orphans,” Garnet said, and Hallie had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Garnet loved building games around orphans. Over the years, she had made Beanie Babies, Barbies, and trolls into orphans. It didn’t surprise Hallie that now she wanted to make their American Girl dolls orphans, too. Usually Garnet’s orphan scenario was straight out of Annie or A Little Princess. There was an evil lady running an orphanage, and out of the blue a loving and spectacularly wealthy guardian angel would exact revenge on the orphanage director and whisk the Beanie Babies, Barbies, or trolls off to a life of luxury and unimaginable happiness. Sometimes the angel would be a prince, and sometimes there would be two angels—the orphans’ parents come to rescue them.
“Okay,” agreed Molly, and Hallie decided there was no reason for the dolls not to be orphans. The game would be a little predictable, but it was Sunday afternoon, she was tired from going to Mom’s boss’s house last night, and she didn’t have a better idea. “And maybe they’re cursed,” Molly added.
Hallie thought about this: It was definitely a new wrinkle. She and Garnet had never put a curse on their American Girl dolls. The closest they had come to using a curse as a device in any of their games had been a brief phase so long ago that Hallie had only the dimmest recollection. It had something to do with a couple of their “ball gown” Barbies and the two Disney princesses who wind up out like a light: Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. “What’s the curse?” she asked Molly.
The child’s lips were chapped from months of cold weather, and she curled them together while she formulated a response. Garnet looked back and forth between Molly and her, waiting. Hallie had the sense that her sister didn’t want to deviate too far from the orphan game. Finally Molly unpuckered her lips and said, “They’ve been poisoned.”
“With an apple?” Garnet asked.
“No, that’s too boring,” Molly said, and Hallie agreed. The girl pulled her hands out from under her arms and with one of her hands pointed at the greenhouse walls around them. “Maybe something poisonous was grown in here. What’s a good poisonous plant?