Moonpenny Island Read online

Mama frets Cecilia doesn’t have enough friends, and this is true, though it’s not Cele’s fault. Besides Perry Pinch IV, the island school has four other high schoolers, and none of them even remotely qualifies as a good, let alone perfect, friend. Once upon a time, Cele and Flor played together. They invented so many excellent games! Town—that was their best. Good old Town. Let it be said that Flor was not the one to put an end to that.

  “I’m getting a head start on chemistry.” Cecilia nibbles her radish. “Considering Mrs. Plum probably doesn’t know a molecule from a mole, and I’ll mainly have to teach myself.”

  “But,” begins Flor, and her big sister shoots her the death ray. The words The library isn’t open today vaporize.

  “It’s a whole month till school. ¡Dios mío!” scolds Mama. “Plenty of time to study!”

  Cecilia circles her arms around their mother, rests her chin on Mama’s shoulder. She’s always been prettier than Flor, but lately? Her dark eyes are bright, her hair shiny as a waterfall. A person would think she was in love, and she probably would be, if she lived anywhere else. Moonpenny has everything a person could dream of, Dad always says. Of course, he doesn’t dream of having a boyfriend.

  “Whoever heard of a mother discouraging her kid from studying?” Cele says. “You’re loca! My mamacita loca.”

  Over Mama’s shoulder, she smiles at Flor. Lately, Cecilia has become a real smile miser, so this is a surprise. It should make Flor suspicious. Instead, her foolish mouth votes to smile back.

  Dad’s late for dinner, highly unusual. He is a police officer. The police officer. He drives a beat-up SUV with a mail-order clip-on light and carries a gun he’s never once shot, except at the targets behind the VFW. In summer, Dad’s job is fishing water snakes out of nervous ladies’ rain barrels and tipsy tourists out of the lake. Winters, he checks on closed-up cottages, settles late-night arguments at the Cockeyed Gull. Now and then Thomas wishes for a big car chase or a wild shoot-out, like on TV, but Thomas is only six, plus a boy, so what can you expect.

  Flor is grateful their father’s job isn’t dangerous. And she’s proud of him. Everyone on the island likes Dad, except when they don’t, and that’s always because they did something they shouldn’t have and got caught. Getting caught is guaranteed, on Moonpenny.

  Today he’s gone out to check on old Violet Tinkiss, who lives alone. Dad makes sure Violet and her two-legged dog, Minnie, have food and her roof’s not leaking too bad.

  No way that should take this long. Mama’s fussing over her dried-up chicken frijoles when tires crunch the gravel driveway. Dad comes in and collapses into a kitchen chair. He looks terrible. Thomas sounds an alarmed whistle.

  “What happened?” cries Mama. “Where were you?”

  Dad is big. His dangling arms practically touch the floor.

  “Accident,” he says. “Out by the neck. That fool Perry Pinch flipped his car.”

  “Oh, no!” everybody cries—everybody except Cecilia, who goes statue still. “Is he all right? How did it happen? Was there another car?”

  Flor remembers how she and Sylvie hollered at him to slow down. Sylvie! Poor Sylvie. She’ll die if anything happens to her brother.

  “He’ll be okay,” says Dad. “Looks like he broke his arm and bruised a couple of ribs. Perry Senior is flying him over to Toledo General. The car’s totaled. He must’ve been going like a bat out of you-know-where, on that narrow, winding road.” Dad runs his hand from the back of his head to the front. His reddish-brown hair leaps to attention. “At least he didn’t have anyone with him. The passenger side was stove in.”

  Cecilia starts crying, so quietly only Flor notices.

  “Was he drinking?” Mama’s hands fly to her hips.

  “Could be.”

  “You didn’t do the test?” Mama’s voice whittles to a point.

  “Now what’d be the good of that?” Dad pulls at the skin under his jaw. “Trust me, that boy has learned his lesson.”

  “Just like I was saying last night! He could’ve hit someone! What if a child was in the road?”

  Mama would’ve made a good lawyer or judge, the kind who throws people in jail for life. Thomas gives a here-they-go whistle and crawls under the table. The tears roll down Cecilia’s cheeks faster than she can wipe them away.

  “Well, he didn’t,” says Dad. “And Perry Senior’s not likely to let him drive again anytime soon.”

  “That boy needs to suffer some real consequences.”

  “He’s suffering, guaranteed,” says Dad. “Cracked ribs are no joke.”

  Dad never starts these arguments, so far as Flor can see. And once they get started, he tries to end them as quickly as possible. A mistake. When’s he going to realize that only makes Mama angrier? When’s Mama going to realize he is who he is?

  “Smells great, Bea.” He lifts the lid from the skillet, trying to distract her. “I’m so hungry I could eat my own arm.”

  “The law goes for everyone. Including the almighty Pinches.”

  “There’s extenuating circumstances,” says Dad.

  “If his parents won’t punish him, the law needs to step in.”

  Dad carefully replaces the lid. He was born and raised here. Being the island cop is his lifelong dream come true. Taking the job to heart does not begin to cover it. Under the table, Thomas starts to whistle, then thinks better of it. Dad’s voice cracks the silence.

  “If you’re saying I’m shirking my duty, Beatriz, I’d appreciate an apology.”

  “What I’m saying—” Mama begins.

  But now a spoon arrows through the air between them. It bounces off the refrigerator and clatters to the floor.

  “I can’t believe you two are arguing over this! You’re heartless and cruel. Beyond heartless and cruel!”

  Cecilia pounds up the stairs. Slam! It’s a wonder her bedroom door doesn’t fly off the hinges. In the kitchen, no one moves. Flor’s the one who makes big stinks, not Cecilia. Mama stares at nothing, then grabs a spoon and starts dishing out dinner. Creeping out from under the table, Thomas digs in, but Dad says he needs a shower, and no way can Flor eat now.

  “I have to go see Sylvie,” she says, and though Mama believes skipping a family meal is a sin against God, she nods.

  Flor swings into the saddle and flies down the road, Misty’s mane streaming. Up that long steep driveway, horse and girl as one. Mrs. Pinch half opens the door.

  “Oh, hello, Flor.”

  Her mother—that’s where Sylvie and her brother got their looks. But tonight she seems exhausted. And she smells funny, sweetness layered on top of bitterness.

  “Is Sylvie . . .”

  Mrs. Pinch shakes her head. She doesn’t bother to tell Flor what happened because by now, word’s out all over the island. News here travels at approximately the speed of light.

  “She begged so hard to go along to the hospital, her father gave in.”

  “Oh.”

  Mrs. Pinch will never win any warm-and-friendly contests, and right now it’s plain the one thing she wants in this world is to shut that door. But Flor sticks her foot in the crack.

  “I’m glad Perry’s going to be okay,” she says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell Sylvie to call me, okay?”

  “It won’t be till tomorrow. If then.”

  “But whenever.”

  Mrs. Pinch special orders cosmetics and beauty products, flown in by Island Air. Flor thinks her anti-wrinkle cream must not be working—she looks older than last time Flor saw her. But then, Flor hasn’t seen her up close in how long? Pretty much the entire summer, since Sylvie always wants to go to Flor’s house.

  “I’ll tell her,” says Mrs. Pinch.

  “And tell her—”

  The door shuts.

  The sun’s almost down, the lake a dull shade of gray. Woodsmoke from the campground floats on the air. Why does that smell always make a person feel lonesome? When Flor pictures Sylvie in a brightly lit, scrubbed hospital, her friend see
ms farther away than ever. Their afternoon together feels like last year, at least.

  That odd look that came into Sylvie’s eyes—it creeps back to haunt Flor. What did it mean?

  Misty stumbles, snapping Flor’s head forward, and just like that, she knows. I’ve got a secret. That’s what the look said. You don’t get it.

  Impossible! Transparent. Just-washed windows. That’s how she and Sylvie are to each other.

  She has to stop by the side of the road to calm herself down. Clouds scud in, wrecking the sunset. Slap slap slap goes the lake, teasing and bullying the silent rocks.

  Digging in the pocket of her shorts, she pulls out the fossil Sylvie set on the tip-top of their quarry castle. Flor swiped it, just before they left. Now, in the dusky light, the white fan seems to glow with its own light. She rubs it with her thumb and makes her wish again.

  Chapter Three

  Some things in life change wham-bam, dramatic and sudden as a pin and a balloon.

  But usually, change is sneakier. More like that balloon leaking its air, deflating bit by bit. For instance, Moonpenny Island, at the end of the summer season. First, a cottage or two gets shuttered up, Camp Agape pulls in its dock, fewer cars roll off the Friday-evening ferry. But the sun still pours down, and Mama still works at the gift shop, selling salt and pepper shakers shaped like lighthouses and sweatshirts that say MOONPENNY ISLAND—WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT?

  Then the clouds smother the sun, and the temperature dips, and the fudge lady decides it’s time to head to Florida. Her pulling in her flag and setting out the CLOSED sign is some secret signal, because now the leaking starts for real. You can practically hear it, hiss hiss. One cottage after another, shut up tight. The chicory fades and the Queen Anne’s lace folds itself into spindly little baskets. Fewer fishing boats go out—fewer than ever, since the algae was bad again this year, and the walleye and pike aren’t what they used to be. Two Sisters quits stocking fancy food. And at Sunday Mass, lots of empty pews. Father Park heaves a sigh when he sees the collection basket.

  Flor always used to love this time of year. It’s her island, after all—hers and Sylvie’s and their families’. They just let the summer people borrow it for a while. The pulling back, the dwindling down and burrowing in—she’s always loved it. Dad says that proves she’s a born and bred islander. Who needs the rest of the world? That’s his philosophy.

  Still. Late last winter, when the lake was good and frozen, Flor stepped out on the ice and found herself having a peculiar thought. She could walk to the mainland if she wanted. That made her remember a show she’d seen, about the first creatures to haul themselves out of the goopy prehistoric water and live on land. They resembled a cross between a fish and a lizard, neither this nor that, with beady eyes and stumpy fin legs. Not what anyone would call attractive. Yet Flor was impressed. It wasn’t every day a creature did something that dramatic. That risky.

  Standing on the ice that afternoon, she wondered what it’d be like to walk out and stand in the middle of the lake, equal distances from the island and the mainland, the familiar and the untried new. Like a lizard-fish deciding, Should I go for it? She slid a little farther out, testing, but suddenly the ice groaned and she freaked and raced back to shore.

  Anyway. This coming winter, one major thing will be different. For third, fourth, and fifth grade, she and Sylvie have sat in the same classroom, first as the youngest kids, then the middle, finally the oldest. This year, they’ll move into the sixth, seventh, eighth grade, taught by the infamous, the dreaded, Mrs. Defoe. Mrs. Defoe wears brown. Exclusively. She assigns six-hundred-word book reports and makes you memorize the Gettsyburg Address, though who lives there remains a mystery. She is so old, both Sylvie’s and Flor’s fathers had her, and Dad still pretends to shiver in fear whenever he sees her. Sylvie, who never does well in school, refuses to even speak Mrs. Defoe’s name. All summer, school has been banished as a topic of conversation.

  And then, wham-bam, pin to the balloon. All of a sudden, school is all they talk about.

  Because it turns out Sylvie is going away. To private school on the mainland. She’s going to live with her aunt and uncle, whose kids are in college now.

  How can it be? It can’t be.

  “You know my parents have talked about it forever,” says Sylvie. “They think I’d do better in private school.”

  “Parents talk about all kinds of stuff they’ll never really do!”

  “I know, but—”

  “Sylvie! You didn’t even tell me you applied!”

  “It happened so fast. After Perry cracked up the car . . .” Sylvie pushes her purple glasses up her nose. She folds her hands in her purple lap. They’re sitting on the Pinches’ private beach, a crescent of sand across the road from the house, and they’re wearing matching T-shirts they got years ago, with pictures of wild horses. Sylvie’s voice is flat, as if she’s reciting the times tables. Which she was always terrible at. “My mother says if only Perry had gone to a better school, he would’ve realized his . . . what do you call it?”

  “Potential?”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  Their T-shirts are too small, especially for Sylvie, who is growing in ways Flor’s not. She keeps tugging hers down in front. Flor flops backward on the sand, catapults up.

  “I don’t see what Perry’s got to do with you.” She’s refusing to accept this. She’s positive she can stop it. She will save Sylvie. “You don’t get in trouble! You’re realizing your potential just fine right here.”

  “If you don’t count almost failing math. And being slow in reading. And . . .”

  “You’re not slow! You’re careful.”

  “Mrs. Halifax didn’t want to make Daddy mad. That’s the only reason she passed me.”

  “That’s not true!” Well, maybe it is. But that’s not the point here. Flor rushes on. “The past is not the point. This year we’re moving on. You can start fresh. But that’s not even the point either!”

  It’s disturbingly un-Sylvie to sit so still.

  “We’ll change your parents’ minds, don’t worry.” Flor is getting angrier by the second. “They’re just confused. Perry wrecking the car threw them for a loop. Parents get deluded very easily.”

  “My father says the way I like to build stuff, I could be an architect. But you have to know math.” Sylvie palms pebbles, starts to make a tiny tower. “He says at Ridgewood Academy, they teach to the individual. Whatever that means. He says I’ll blossom and bloom.”

  “Delusion! You’re already the blossoming-est, blooming-est girl in the world! Besides, do you even want to be an architect?”

  “Maybe.” Sylvie carefully chooses another pebble. “I don’t know. I hate when people ask what I want to be.”

  “I know! Grown-ups always want an answer, even when there isn’t one! Like remember when you had that doll with the yellow yarn hair, and you carried it around everywhere, you loved it so much, and people would always ask you, ‘What’s your dolly’s name?’”

  Sylvie balances a splinter of driftwood atop her dainty tower.

  “And you wouldn’t answer,” Flor goes on, “because you didn’t even care about a name for her. Her name was not the point.”

  “But one day,” says Sylvie, “one day you told Mrs. Magruder, ‘Her name is Bernadette.’”

  “What? I don’t remember that.”

  “In a really loud voice, you said it.” A pause. “I remember thinking, ‘But she’s my doll. And Bernadette is an ugly name.’”

  “I must’ve been trying to stand up for you. Were you mad at me?”

  “Oh, Flor. That was back in the mists of time.”

  Bonk. Sylvie knocks over the tower. Pebbles fly. Flor is shocked. Not only does Sylvie remember something she can’t, but Sylvie’s still upset about it, Flor can tell. Suddenly they can’t look at each other. They get busy watching a cormorant, a waterbird so big and heavy only its scrawny neck and head show above the surface. Submarine birds, Thomas calls them. They
’re so greedy, such expert fishers, the human fishermen call them way worse names.

  This is weird. Flor wonders if Sylvie sees the same bird she does. All at once, she can’t be 100 percent sure what her best friend is seeing through those purple-rimmed glasses.

  But that doesn’t change the truth. Which is: Sylvie is terrible at standing up for herself. She does need Flor to do it for her.

  Zoop. Lightning fast, the cormorant dives and disappears. Automatically, Sylvie and Flor start counting out loud. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .” They get all the way to thirty-five before the bird comes back up. Not a record, but pretty good.

  All of a sudden, something thunks Flor in the center of her chest. An invisible fist, on the end of a long invisible arm.

  “Sylvie.”

  “What?”

  “How come you didn’t tell me before?” All of a sudden, Flor knows: this is the point. “I mean, you applied weeks ago, right?”

  “But it was way past the deadline and I have terrible grades and who knew if they’d let me in.” She tugs her T-shirt down for the gazillionth time. “I bet Daddy bribed them. He probably said he’d make a big donation or something.”

  A few years ago, some summer people tried to prove that Pinch Paving and Stone was polluting the water supply. They had samples from a lab that proved it. But Mr. Pinch brought in his own certified crew of experts, who produced their own samples. The water quality was excellent, they said. Before you knew it, that was that. Mayor Pinch pretty much got his way in the world.

  At last Sylvie meets Flor’s eyes. “How could I tell you? Telling you would mean it’s really going to happen.”

  “It’s not! It can’t!”

  Flor pulls Sylvie to her feet. They both windmill their arms around. The faded, ghostly horses on their matching shirts leap up and down.

  “You’re not going! It’s not fair! It’s unjust! You have to tell them no. You refuse. No! You will not go. No!”

  “Oh, Flor! You think I didn’t already try that? Like over and over?”

  But the way Sylvie says this gives Flor another knock. Right in the same place, where she already has a bruise from the first one. And when she tries to look her best friend in the eye again, Sylvie’s arms fall to her side. Her ponytail droops. She takes off her purple glasses and turns away, pretending to clean them with the hem of her too-small shirt.