Free Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck

up out of chocolate-encrusted ice cream bonbons. Whatever. I slapped them on a tray and got out of there, heading for the dining table voices. And believe me, I didn’t look back.
    Later, after dinner, when we were loading the dishwasher, I made sure I wasn’t by myself. We bustled around the kitchen before we went to get dressed. And I kept right in the middle of the bustle. But I didn’t tell the others somebody had been there. I just didn’t, for some reason. Now, maybe I wasn’t that sure I’d even seen anything, or anyone. Maybe it wasn’t anybody real. How many kinds of real are there?

CHAPTER SIX
    Blue Velvet Night
    THERE ARE CLOSETS. Then there are walk-in closets. Then there are dressing rooms. Then there was Aunt Lily’s entire ecosystem for her clothes, makeup, jewelry, her whole history. It was a vast windowless space the size of Costco.
    And it went all the way back to her ancient childhood. She’d grown up in this apartment. There were drawers full of Raggedy Anns and roller skates and Shirley Temple books.
    But most of it was like forever Fashion Week, crammed with discounts and freebies from the last fifty years or so. And mirrors everywhere you looked. There you were in every closet door. Parts of yourself.
    “Check this out,” Tanya said, throwing open a pair of doors. Inside were shoe racks to the ceiling, two hundred pairs of shoes, at least. Then that rack pulled out, and another rack behind it had two hundred more—every open-toed, slingback, platform, ankle-strap, wedgie, spectator style since 1950 or whenever.
    “Look.” Tanya pulled out wide drawers that unrolled themselves. Inside against plush black steps was Aunt Lily’s jewelry, a treasure chest of retro-bling. The whole room flashed with emerald and sapphire and ruby lights. Natalie sighed. Makenzie stared. The earrings hung on earring trees, three hundred miniature chandeliers, at least.
    “This is just the costume stuff,” Tanya remarked. “She keeps the hard rocks in the bank. And the furs in storage. But look here.”
    Behind more doors were shelves full of bags, silk and paper with grosgrain ties in designer colors. They were the freebies you get at fashion shows, mostly Paris and Milan. And the main source of Aunt Lily’s cosmetic supply. The mother lode.
    “Look at all this stuff,” Tanya said. “It’s like . . . plunder.” She handed me a swag bag from Chanel. Inside, it was all there: the square bottle of Chanel No. 5, a lace fan, a dried-out bottle of Ultra Correction Cream, a compact with the Chanel logo. Crumbly bath salts, an evening bag on a long silk cord. All of it from probably 1964.
    “Aunt Lily is such a squirrel,” Tanya said. “Will she ever need this stuff? Or use half of it up? Even she doesn’t need this much pore filler.” Tanya looked in a mirror at Natalie and Makenzie. “But she won’t put it on eBay either. You don’t just give everything up and . . . walk away, do you?” she said to them. “Do you? You hang on to your life.”
    There was silence then, echoing like a bell that hadn’t rung. Time teetered and stood still again. Then Tanya was throwing open more doors, and racks of dresses slid out—burst forth. “Frocks,” Makenzie called them. Their hangers were on motorized carousels that revolved in the room, making the turning dresses and skirts whisper and caress each other. They sighed to be worn.
    How long did it take to see even a little of all this? Even a fraction? Aunt Lily was the goddess of the goodie bag and the give-away. Forget the scarf and handkerchief drawers. Never mind the glove stretchers and a bin full of squirmy objects labeled: “Playtex girdles.”
    But time didn’t matter, and we had to see everything—check everything out and try on everything but the girdles. We had to go through everything before we could decide what to wear. We had to put together outfits that worked for us out of this landfill of vintage outrageousness. We were going out. We had