Free It's Just a Jump to the Left by Libba Bray

coupe swerved dangerously up the road and came to a stop below, just narrowly missing the platform. Two smartly dressed girls stepped out. Evie grinned and waved wildly. “Dottie! Louise!”
    “We heard you were leaving and wanted to come see you off,” Louise said, climbing over the railing.
    “Good news travels fast.”
    “In this town? Like lightning.”
    “It’s swell. I’m too big for Zenith, Ohio, anyway. In New York, they’ll understand me. I’m going to be written up in all the papers and get invited to the Fitzgeralds’ flat for cocktails. After all, my mother’s a Fitzgerald. We must be related
somewhere
.”
    “Speaking of cocktails…” Grinning, Dottie retrieved what looked like an innocent aspirin bottle from her pocketbook. It washalf-filled with clear liquid. “Here. Just a little giggle water to see you through. Sorry it couldn’t be more, but my father marks the bottles now.”
    “Oh, and a copy of
Photoplay
from the beauty parlor. Aunt Mildred won’t miss it,” Louise added.
    Evie’s eyes pricked with tears. “You don’t mind being seen with the town pariah?”
    Louise and Dottie managed weak smiles—confirmation that Evie
was
the town pariah, but still, they’d come.
    “You are absolute angels of the first order. If I were Pope, I’d canonize you.”
    “The Pope would probably love to turn a cannon on you!”
    “New York City!” Louise twirled her long rope of beads. “Norma Wallingford will eat herself to bits with envy. She’s sore as hell about your little stunt.” Dottie giggled. “Spill: How’d you really find out about Harold and the chambermaid?”
    Evie’s smile faltered for a moment. “Just a lucky guess.”
    “But—”
    “Oh, look! Here comes the train,” Evie said, cutting off any further inquiry. She hugged them tightly, grateful for this last kindness. “Next time you see me, I’ll be famous! And I’ll drive you all over Zenith in my chauffeured sedan.”
    “Next time we see you, you’ll be on trial for some ingenious crime!” Dottie said with a laugh.
    Evie grinned. “Just as long as they know my name.”
    A blue-uniformed porter hurried people aboard. Evie settled into her compartment. It was stuffy, and she stood on the seat in her green silk-satin Mary Janes to open the window.
    “Help you with that, Miss?” another porter, a younger man, offered.
    Evie looked up at him through lashes she had tinted with cakemascara that morning and offered him the full power of her Coty-red smile. “Oh, would you, honey? That’d be swell.”
    “You heading to New York, Miss?”
    “Mm-hmm, that’s right. I won a Miss Bathing Beauty contest, and now I’m going to New York to be photographed for
Vanity Fair
.”
    “Isn’t that something?”
    “Isn’t it, just?” Evie fluttered her eyelashes. “The window?”
    The young man released the latches and slid the window down easily. “There you are!”
    “Why, thank you,” Evie purred. She was on her way. In New York, she could be anyone she chose to be. It was a big city—just the place for big dreamers who needed to shine brightly.
    Evie angled her head out the train window and waved to Louise and Dottie. Her bobbed curls blew about her face as the sleepy town slowly moved behind her. For a second, she wished she could run back to the safety of her parents’ house. But that was like the fog of her dreams. It was a dead house—had been for years. No. She wouldn’t be sad. She would be grand and glittering. A real star. A bright light of New York. “See you soon-ski!” she yelled.
    “You bet-ski!”
    Her friends were shrinking to small dots of color in the smoke-hazed distance. Evie blew kisses and tried not to cry. She waved slowly to the passing rooftops of Zenith, Ohio, where people liked to feel safe and snug and smug, where they handled objects every day in the most ordinary of ways and never once caught glimpses into other people’s secrets that should not be known or had terrible