Page 57 of The Manor of Dreams

Ada glanced up. “What do you mean?”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Lucille declared, “You’re unhelpful. I’m going to bed.” The door shut behind her. Ada lay on her bed and waited until the house got quiet.

Sophie was waiting for her in the garden, perched on the steps. This time, though, she held up car keys. Her eyes glittered with mischief. “Want to go for a drive?”

“Now?”

Sophie smiled and hopped up. “Who’s stopping us?”

They got in the car. The key rattled in the ignition. Ada looked upat the house, but the windows stayed dark. They drove to the end of a long road. Sophie said, “Lucille would have given me shit for this stop sign again.”

“Well, she’s not here.”

Sophie looked over with a raised eyebrow, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with the radio knob. She grinned. “True. Where do we want to go?”

“Anywhere. I don’t know many places.”

“Let’s go to that lookout in Pasadena, then.”

Ada had never even been out this late before without her parents. Cars moved fluidly around them, their taillights winking. Sophie rolled the window down and the cool breeze skimmed over them. She took a winding road, driving them around giant, imposing houses, until she pulled over. The city beneath them was blanketed in soft lights. The inky ocean spilled out beyond the veil of mist.

Ada stared in wonder. “How do you know about this place?”

“My sister. She’d go here with her friends.”

“How is Elaine?” Ada asked. “I feel like she doesn’t come back very often.”

Sophie leaned back against the car. The wind picked up strands of her hair. “She really likes it there.”

Ada swallowed. Finally, she asked something she had always wondered. “Does Elaine not like us?”

Sophie hesitated. “She’s just a very proud person. I think staying here bothered her.”

“Because…”

“Because of your parents. And my parents.”

Was it really like that? “But—my parents don’t—”

“I know. But what our parents do is different than what yours do, isn’t it?”

Ada had nothing to say to that.

“My sister begged my parents to move, you know. But then we’d be living in some small apartment.?would be working at a laundromat and?would be doing landscaping work. Elaine wouldn’t be at Berkeley, that’s for sure.”

Ada blurted, “I’m sorry about what Lucille said the other day.”

“What for?”

Ada shifted. “I don’t know. What she said. About Elaine and her summer job.”

Sophie shrugged. “Just Lucille being Lucille, I guess.” Her voice lightened. “At least they’re not arguing over Marx at the dinner table anymore.”

People at school called Lucille a know-it-all. A stuck-up bitch, sometimes. Ada never thought that about her sister and resented the people who did, but sometimes she did witness small moments of cruelty from Lucille that grated on her. Like how she made fun of the way Elaine dressed when she came home, in her baggy jeans and loose shirts. Or how she openly talked about how dumb she thought some of her classmates were, and how none of them had a chance at becoming valedictorian next to her.

“Okay.” Sophie picked up her keys. “Want to go get food?”

They drove to a late-night diner and sat in the parking lot, sipping their milkshakes. Ada asked, “Doyoulike us?”

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