Seven Stories Up Read Online Free Page A

sake.” The girl reached over, picked up something blue, and tossed it at me. “Here. Try this on.”
    I slipped the blue robe over my nightgown; it wassmooth, made of rich folds of silk. It reminded me of the sleeping mask. “You can wear it back to your room, then just leave it at the front desk. Tell Mr. McGhee it’s for Molly.”
    “Mr. McGhee?”
    “The hotel manager,” she said.
    “Oh, umm, sure,” I said. I guessed this meant I
was
still in the hotel. Only now the hotel wasn’t deserted? How could that be?
    Then an idea began to form in my mind, a crazy, scary, spectacular idea. “Molly?” I said. “
That’s
your name? Molly.”
    “Yes.” The girl put a hand to her chest in a funny formal gesture. “
I’m
Molly.”
    I stood there, nodding slowly. All the while my brain was scrambling, trying to fit the pieces together. The thought flitting around in my head was so impossible, I couldn’t believe I was even having it. But nothing else made sense.
    I looked at the photo on the bedside table. The two people in the picture stood in front of a big black car. The man wore a suit and a dark hat pulled low over his forehead. He had a mustache. The woman was staring off into the distance. She was beautiful, in a pale dress and a tiny veiled hat.
    Behind me, Molly said, “That’s my mother. She’s away. But perhaps you saw Papa downstairs?”
    I turned back around. “Perhaps,” I said slowly. “
Perhaps
.” I tested the word out, and it felt funny in my mouth.
Perhaps
wasn’t a word I usually used.
    “Which floor are you staying on?” Molly asked. “I don’t think you said.”
    “I—oh, I don’t know. That is, I’m not sure I remember.” I glanced across the room at a magazine on the dresser. If only I could hold it for a second, I might be able to confirm my impossible suspicion. “Hey,” I said, “can you—maybe remind me of today’s date? It’s, like, the eighteenth, right? August eighteenth?”
    Molly shook her head. “It isn’t
like
the eighteenth. It
is
the eighteenth.”
    “Oh, yeah, that’s what I meant,” I said. “August eighteenth, nineteen …”
    “Well, 1937, naturally!”
    I sat back down on the bed. Hard.
    1937?
    1937!
    Had fifty years just melted away? It wasn’t possible. And yet …
    Molly kept right on chattering. “I don’t suppose youknow how to play any card games? I like to play cards during breakfast, when I have company.”
    “Yeah,” I said distractedly. “Sure I do.”
    Molly beamed. “How nice!”
    All the while I was thinking:
Magic? Magic?
It was happening. To me, Annie Jaffin. I’d fallen into a dream, a story, the past. Mom hadn’t told me anything about this place, but now I’d get a chance to explore it myself. 1937! What would
that
be like? Flappers? Were flappers from the thirties? Or Marilyn Monroe?
    I looked up. Molly was watching me intently, the way she might have watched a TV show (not that she’d ever seen one—I was pretty sure they didn’t have TVs in 1937). “You look,” she said, “as though you’re thinking about something fun.”
    “You could say that,” I said, grinning uncontrollably.
    “What is it? Will you tell me?”
    “Oh, I can’t,” I said. “But it’s nothing. Really. I promise.”
    “Please?”
    I shook my head. “If I told you,” I said, “you’d think I was bonkers.”
    “Bonkers?”
    “Nuts,” I said.
    She still looked puzzled. “Nuts?”
    “Crazy,” I said. “Because it’s impossible. The thing I’m thinking about.”
    “Well, I like impossible things,” said Molly. “The impossibler, the better.”
    I wasn’t sure what to do. In so many books I’d read, magic was supposed to be a secret. I didn’t want to break the rules and have my adventure end before it began. But what if Molly was supposed to be part of my adventure? Maybe Molly and I had a treasure to find or a mystery to unravel. Maybe we were supposed to bring two star-crossed lovers together.
    “Okay,” I said at