“You’re people.”

Plus the Frog
Suzan Donamas

The yard sale sprawled across Mrs. Delacroix’s lawn like a small disaster — mismatched furniture, boxes of paperback novels, a stationary bike no one had ever used. Jennifer drifted toward a rack of vintage scarves while Ian scrolled his phone, walking slowly so he didn’t have to admit he’d stopped paying attention to where he was going.

Holly trailed behind them both, which was more or less the story of her life lately.

“Look at this,” she said, picking up something from a card table near the garage. “What even is this?”

It was a lamp. Ceramic. Glazed in a brown-green that might have been intentional or might have been a glaze-firing accident. It had four stubby legs, a wide flat mouth, and eyes that bulged in a way that suggested either a frog or some creature that had never existed and was better off that way.

“A frog,” Jennifer said, without really looking.

“I don’t think frogs have tails,” Holly said.

“Put it down,” Ian said, also without looking.

Holly did not put it down. She turned it over. A small sticker on the bottom read $2 — WORKS! which seemed optimistic given that the lampshade was the shape of a mushroom and slightly singed.

“I want it,” Holly said.

“Holly—”

“I have two dollars.”

Jennifer looked at Ian. Ian looked at his phone. Jennifer sighed in the specific way of older siblings everywhere and said, “Fine. It’s your two dollars.”

—

Holly paid for it herself and carried it back to Jennifer’s car herself, and when Jennifer and Ian walked ahead talking about something Holly wasn’t part of — a party, someone named Marcus, some reference she didn’t have — Holly put the frog lamp carefully on the back seat beside her and looked at it.

It looked back. Its bulging eyes had that quality.

“They used to be more fun,” she told it. Not a wish. Just a fact.

—

At home, the lamp went on Holly’s nightstand, where it looked approximately terrible and also, somehow, correct. She plugged it in. The mushroom shade glowed amber. Holly fell asleep reading.

—

In the living room, Jennifer was explaining to Ian for the third time why he should just try talking to people at these things instead of standing there looking like a hostage.

“I talked to people,” Ian said.

“You talked to me.”

“You’re people.”

Jennifer leaned back against the couch cushion and looked at the ceiling. She thought, not for the first time, about when they were younger — when Ian would have been the one to drag Holly around the yard sale finding weird stuff, would have been the one buying the ugly frog lamp, would have made up a whole mythology for it on the ride home. She missed that kid. She missed the way they used to all be in something together.

I wish, she thought, vaguely, tiredly, that Ian was more like he was back then. More like me, I guess. Someone who’d actually play with Holly.

The lamp in the other room flickered.

—

It was subtle, the way reality adjusted. Like a film cut. Jennifer blinked and she was twenty dollars lighter in her memory, somehow, and two years younger in her bones. She was eighteen. Holly, who had wandered in from the hallway, was ten, small again in a way that tugged at something.

And on the couch where Ian had been sitting was a girl Jennifer almost recognized — dark-haired, fourteen, looking around the room with the mildly alarmed expression of someone who had just materialized mid-thought.

“What,” said the girl.

“Anne?” Jennifer said. The name arrived fully formed, settled, true. Anne. Her sister Anne, the middle one. Of course.

Anne looked down at her hands. Looked at the room. Looked at Holly, who waved.

“Hi, Anne,” Holly said cheerfully, apparently untroubled.

Anne stood up very carefully, walked to the hallway, walked back.

“Jennifer,” she said. “Why do I feel like something is extremely wrong?”

“I’m not sure what you—”

“I’m not Anne,” Anne said. “Or I am, but I wasn’t, like, twenty seconds ago, and also something in Holly’s room is glowing.”

—

They found the lamp together. Holly thought this was all very exciting. Jennifer felt sick. Anne stood in front of the nightstand and looked at the ceramic frog-thing for a long moment.

“This did it,” Anne said.

“I think I did it,” Jennifer admitted. “I made a wish. I didn’t mean to, I was just thinking—”

“What did you wish for?”

Jennifer looked at the floor. “I wished you were more like you used to be. More fun. Someone who’d play with Holly.”

Anne was quiet for a moment. Then: “I think I resent that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Is there a way to—” Anne picked up the lamp. It was warm. She looked at its terrible face. “I wish it was the way it was before. Before Jennifer’s wish.” She paused. “Please.”

The light flickered.

—

Ian was back on the couch. Twenty, eighteen, sixteen — Jennifer felt herself land in her right age like stepping off a boat onto solid ground. Holly stood in the doorway, twelve again, looking faintly confused.

“Did something happen?” Holly asked.

“No,” Ian said, looking up from his phone.

“Something happened,” Holly said, with the certainty of a younger sister. She walked over to her nightstand and looked at the lamp. It looked at her.

She thought about how Ian was back but nothing was different. Still on his phone. Still not interested. She thought about how much she wished she had someone to do things with — not a big sister who was practically an adult and a brother who was somewhere else in his head, but someone who got it. Someone her age. Someone who understood.

She looked at the lamp.

She looked at Jennifer, who was already shaking her head.

“Holly—”

“I wish Anne was real,” Holly said quickly. “And that she and I were twins.”

“Holly, no—”

The lamp glowed very, very brightly.

—

Ian looked up from his phone. There were now two twelve-year-olds sitting on the floor. One was Holly. The other was looking around with an expression of profound curiosity.

“Hi,” said Anne.

“Hi,” said Holly.

They were, somehow, both thirteen. The math didn’t matter. The lamp had its own ideas about math.

Jennifer sat down on the couch next to Ian. Ian set down his phone.

“Are we,” Ian said slowly, “going to talk about this?”

From the floor, Holly and Anne had already discovered they liked the same music. They were talking over each other, finishing each other’s jokes, laughing at something no one else had heard yet.

Jennifer watched them. Something loosened in her chest.

“Maybe later,” she said.

Ian looked at the lamp, which sat on the nightstand glowing amber through its singed mushroom shade, looking extremely pleased with itself — or as pleased as something could look when no one was entirely sure what it was.

“We should probably put that somewhere safe,” he said.

“Definitely,” Jennifer agreed.

Neither of them moved.

Anne got up from the floor and approached Ian, still on the couch but a little less sprawled than before. She examined him with a familiar intensity, the same intensity that he looked back at her with.

“I used to be you,” Anne said suddenly.

He inclined his head in what might be called a nod.

“I like being me better,” Anne announced, turned and moved quickly to rejoin the game she and Holly had been playing, a sort of roleplay where they were both recent college graduates planning their lives and careers. Holly favored nursing, but Anne thought she might be a teacher.

Jennifer and Ian exchanged looks. “A very safe place,” said Jennifer.

Ian nodded. “No one can make any more wishes. Especially none that might make Anne disappear.” They looked at each other, and a bleak sort of emotion, terror or horror, flickered across their faces.

“She’s our sister now, too,” said Jennifer and Ian definitely nodded to that.