Now You See Her by Joy Fielding Page A

closer.
    “Don’t,” Devon warned.
    Marcy noted the pieces of glass that were scattered around Devon’s feet and the tulips that were lying half in, half out of what remained of their crystal vase. Water was splashed across the top of Devon’s open-toed sandals, the red polish of her toenails wet and shiny in the moonlight. Her hands were curled into tight fists at her sides, white granules squeezing out from between her clenched fingers and falling toward the floor like snow.
    “What is that, sweetheart?” Marcy asked, flipping on the overhead light, seeing a familiar cardboard box lying on its side on the counter. “What are you doing with the salt?”
    In response, Devon raised her fists to her face, began shoveling the salt into her mouth.
    Marcy was instantly at her side, tearing Devon’s hands away from her face. “Devon, for God’s sake, what are you doing? Stop that. You’ll make yourself sick.”
    Devon’s eyes suddenly snapped into focus, as if she were seeing her mother for the first time. “Mom?” she said, opening her palms and letting the remaining salt spill free.
    Marcy felt the avalanche of tiny, hard crystals as they landed on the tops of her bare feet. “Are you all right?” She began frantically brushing her daughter’s hair away from her face, trying to wipe away the salt still stubbornly clinging to her lips and chin.
    Devon looked from her mother to the floor. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”
    “What is it, sweetheart? What happened?”
    “I don’t know. I was reaching for a bag of potato chips and I stopped to admire the flowers. You know how they say you have to stop and smell the roses? Even though these are tulips and they don’t smell. Only I knocked over the vase and I couldn’tfind the potato chips. Do you remember Vicki? Vicki Enquist? She’s really tall, almost six feet, her nose is a little crooked? She was like my best friend in the seventh grade, do you remember her?” she said, all in the same breath.
    Marcy was about to answer that no, she had no memory of anyone named Vicki Enquist and could Devon please slow down, that she wasn’t making any sense, but her daughter had already moved on.
    “Her mother was like this famous gardener or something. She had, like, her own TV show or something in Vancouver. Anyway, she was there tonight. Vicki, I mean, not her mother. At the party over at Ashleigh’s. And she looked so pretty,” Devon said, suddenly bursting into tears. “Her nose didn’t look too crooked at all. And I felt really bad about all the times we teased her. I was really mean to her, Mom.”
    “Sweetheart, please. You’re scaring me. Why don’t we sit down?”
    “I don’t want to sit down. I want to go dancing.” Devon pushed herself onto her toes and did a clumsy pirouette. “But everybody else just wants to sit around and get high,” she said, losing her balance and tumbling into her mother’s arms.
    “Is that it?” Marcy asked, holding her daughter at arm’s length, forcing Devon’s eyes to hers. “Are you high, Devon? Have you been doing drugs?”
    “I’m so thirsty,” Devon said, ignoring the question and extricating herself from Marcy’s grip.
    “I’ll get you a glass of water.”
    “There’s water on the floor,” Devon said, as if noticing it for the first time.
    “I’ll clean it up in a minute.”
    Devon suddenly sank to her knees, began moving the water and salt around the large sand-colored squares of the ceramictile floor with the palms of her hands, as if she were a child who’d just discovered the joys of finger-painting.
    “Devon, please, sweetheart, be careful of the glass. No, don’t put that in your mouth. Please let me help you up.”
    “I don’t want to get up.”
    “You need to let me help you.” Marcy succeeded in dragging her daughter to her feet and sitting her down in one of the four kitchen chairs clustered around the large oval-shaped pine table. “I’ll get you some water. Please, baby. Tell me