Moonpenny Island Read online

  “If you go, I’ll be the whole entire sixth grade,” says Flor.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll be all alone with Joe Hawkins and Mary Long, who all she can ever talk about is her disgusting allergies.”

  “Flor. I can’t help it.”

  “I’ll be so alone, I might as well jump in the swim hole and drown myself right now.”

  Sylvie doesn’t speak. Flor reads her mind, right through the back of her blond head. This isn’t just about you, Flor O’Dell.

  That makes Flor feel rotten. Rotten to the core. She picks up the biggest rock in sight and hurls it into the water.

  “It’s all your brother’s fault.” Another rock, another and another. She’s a rock-hurling machine. “If he wasn’t a stupid mess-up who crashed his stupid car because he’s so stupid, this never would have happened!”

  Even as Flor spits out the words, she knows they’re not really fair. But they feel good. She hurls another rock. Like the world is fair! Out of breath, she waits for Sylvie to stick up for her beloved brother. Flor is dying to argue, dying to yell her head right off her shoulders.

  Instead Sylvie just slips her glasses back on and crosses the road to her house. The house of the almighty, the royal Pinches, where all the curtains are pulled and nothing stirs. Head down, one purple high-top in front of the other, she climbs the steeply sloped, perfectly groomed lawn and opens the front door. Flor can feel in her own bruised chest the soft click that door makes as it closes.

  Chapter Four

  Usually the Pinches travel to and from the mainland in their private plane. But not today. Their car on the two-o’clock ferry, that’s how Sylvie’s leaving for school.

  There’s so much stuff, she and Flor can’t both fit in the packed car. Mr. Pinch drives it to the ferry landing while the two of them follow on their bikes. Slowly. Glaciers would be like race cars next to them.

  Since they knew for positive Sylvie was going, they’ve had a million sleepovers at Flor’s, and two million picnics at their secret spot on the back shore, and three million bike rides on their valiant, spirited steeds, but so what. They still can’t believe it.

  The Patricia Irene plows the bay, looming bigger by the second. Mr. Pinch paces beside his brand-new car, replacement for the one Perry Junior wrecked. Sylvie’s father is the kind of man you feel you should salute. He wears hard, shiny shoes at all times, and his forehead is so immense, he might have an extra brain in storage.

  “You took long enough!” he says.

  “Sorry, Daddy,” says Sylvie, and all the starch goes out of him. He gives her shoulder a squeeze and smiles at Flor.

  Who absolutely refuses to smile back.

  Sylvie puts her purple bike in the bike rack. She’s not bringing it. Her aunt and uncle have a garage full of bikes, and besides, she’ll be taking a bus to school now. Ridgewood Academy. Acres of green lawns, buildings out of Harry Potter, with smiling, handsome students who loll around under trees all day, mesmerized by their smiling, handsome teachers. Sylvie and Flor have looked at online pictures of the place till their eyes fell out.

  The Patricia Irene grinds her gears, slowing down. Mr. Pinch takes Sylvie’s backpack.

  “Good God!” he says. “What’s in here? Rocks?”

  Sylvie smiles and whispers to Flor. “I went to the quarry yesterday.”

  Examining the Ridgewood website, she and Flor both noticed the same thing. Not a rock in sight. Everything was lush and yielding, gently rolling, the exact opposite of this stubborn, craggy place.

  Tears prick Flor’s eyes. But she will not cry. No crying. She and Sylvie have a solemn pact.

  Last-minute cars are pulling up, getting in line. Here comes a van, bikes on the roof, fishing poles jutting out a window. Its door slides open, and who should tumble out but Thomas. He grabs the door handle and rolls it shut with all his six-year-old might, then just stands there, toeing the gravel.

  The head of his dirt-loving summer friend, Benjamin, pops out the window. His family must be leaving today too.

  By now Flor can make out the faces of the ferry passengers. Mostly they’re year-rounders coming back. But up on the top deck, all by herself, is a girl in a ridiculous sweatshirt. It flaps around her knees and covers her hands, plus she’s got it pulled up over her nose and mouth, so pretty much all you see of her is her work boots, her eyes, and a frizz of hair wafting in the breeze. Very strange. Very peculiar.

  The cars on the ferry and the ones waiting to board all start their engines. Rmm rmm, rev rev! What’s the hurry? Why do adults make such a colossal deal out of being exactly on time? You’d think driving on or off a ferry at the precise moment the ferry guy waves his stupid flag was a matter of life or death.

  Flor rolls her eyes at Sylvie. Who nods, like I know. That’s when it hits Flor for real and true. Who’s she going to talk to now? Who will understand her even when she doesn’t say a word? Nobody, that’s who.

  The solemn pact is in great danger.

  “What’s in all those bags and boxes anyway?” Flor bursts out. “It looks like you packed for forever.”

  Sylvie’s blue eyes swim with tears, and Flor bites her dumb tongue. Why’s she scolding Sylvie? What’s wrong with her? She reaches in her pocket and pulls out the surprise.

  “Look.”

  Of course Sylvie remembers. The second she sees it, she knows precisely what it is.

  “That day at the swimming hole!” She wipes her eyes, reaches for the rock with its delicate white fan fossil. “You took it.”

  “So I did.”

  “Should we make another wish? Do you think it works twice on the same one?”

  Really, it will be wish number three, but Flor doesn’t tell Sylvie that.

  “If we do it at the exact same time,” she assures her friend.

  “On the count of three.”

  “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . .”

  Every cell in her body, that’s what Flor uses to wish. But when she opens her eyes, Sylvie’s looked away. Like she’s already done wishing. Or like her wish already came true.

  Thunk! goes Flor’s heart. No, it’s the snout of the Patricia Irene, bumping the dock. The seagulls perched on the pilings flap their wings, annoyed. The boat ramp goes down, the thick chain gets unhooked, the flag guy waves. One by one, the cars roll onto land.

  Flor slips the fossil back into her pocket. Inside her a pressure is building, pushing against her edges till any second she’ll explode. Pieces of her will fly in every direction, leaving nothing except a small, sooty stain where she once stood.

  Perry Pinch IV is nowhere in sight. Sylvie hasn’t even mentioned that despicable boy, not once.

  “Hey, you two.” Mrs. Pinch leans out the car window. She’s wearing even more makeup than usual. Her face is like a cake with so much icing, you get sickish halfway through. “Sylvie’s not going to Outer Mongolia. You two can email and phone! And it’ll be Thanksgiving before you know it.”

  The ignorance of grown-ups is so painful Flor has to look away, just as a golf cart rolls by. A Santa look-alike, only skinny, is at the wheel. Beside him sits that girl, huddled into her cocoon of a sweatshirt. She stares at Flor so hard, you’d think she had X-ray vision.

  “Sylvie!” Mr. Pinch’s voice makes them jump. “Get in this car!” The cars waiting to board begin moving forward. Sylvia trembles but doesn’t move. “Sylvie Pinch!” It is the voice of a Man Who Is Obeyed. “Right this second!”

  Sylvie grabs Flor’s arm.

  “You have to promise me something,” she says. “You won’t want to, but you have to.”

  “I want to! I will! What?”

  “Look out for my brother.”

  Flor stares. What? How in the world is she supposed to do that? Perry is wild. He’s big trouble. He hasn’t said more than two words to her in years.

  Plus she hates him.

  “Sylvie!” hollers her father. People turn to look. The mayor is speaking! “Now!
Right now!”

  “But Syl—your father. He’ll look out for Perry.” How can a Pinch possibly need help from Flor? The Pinches have everything going for them.

  Sylvie’s eyes brim. So much for their solemn pact. It’s impossible, but Flor’s already-broken heart breaks even more.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll do it.” And though she’s got no idea how or why, she says, “I promise. I swear on our fossil.”

  Sylvie hugs Flor hard, then fits herself into the Sylvie-sized space in the backseat. All those boxes and suitcases—if only Flor could stow away inside one! The pressure inside her is going in reverse, tightening into a dark solid weighing a million pounds.

  Everything moves in reverse now—the ramp pulled in, the chain hooked up. The Patricia Irene blasts her horn and now there’s water, churned up and ugly, between the ferry and the island. All the seagulls lift off at the very same moment—how do they do that? They follow the boat, swooping and squawking. Benjamin the Dirt Boy flings bits of bread, and they snatch it midair.

  Where is she? Are her parents actually holding her prisoner in the car? But no, there, up on the top deck, frantically waving her arms. Flor waves back as the ferry shrink-shrink-shrinks, to the size of a toy boat, to just the idea of a boat.

  Just the idea of a friend.

  How do people, immigrant people, ever say good-bye to their families and everything they love and move to a strange new place? How do they stand it? It must tear them to pieces! And then she thinks, Mama’s parents did. And when Mama left the mainland to live here, she sort of did. And then Flor thinks, Maybe you get used to saying good-bye. But then she thinks, Not me. Without Sylvie, Flor’s world has shrunk down to her parents, brother, and sister. She’s got no one else to spare. If she had to lose anybody else . . .

  “I would die,” she whispers.

  “We’ll see about that,” says someone beside her.

  Thomas. It’s been so long since he spoke instead of whistled, she almost doesn’t recognize his voice.

  “Don’t think just because your dirt-bomb friend’s gone you can start hanging around me again,” she tells him.

  “We’ll see about that.” Hands in his pockets, he rocks back on his heels. Benjamin is already fading from his undeveloped brain, she can tell. Thomas is six. Plus a boy. He’s all about now, and what next.

  “You have no idea what heartache is,” she informs him.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. You are not starting that. Absolutely not.”

  “We’ll see. . . .”

  She grabs her bike and jumps on.

  She rides bareback, fingers twined in Misty’s thick mane, fast, taking the first turn, faster. Airport Road skims the east edge of the island, and she gallops past the miniature runway, past the bug-infested nature preserve, past the turn to the windswept neck where old Violet Tinkiss lives. Flor keeps her head down, partly so Misty won’t hit a bump or hole, but mostly because who cares, who cares what she’s passing? Who cares about anything?

  The sudden honk of a horn shoots her heart into her throat. She skids onto the side of the road as a pickup barrels by. PINCH PAVING AND STONE says the side, and guess who’s driving. Which he’s absolutely forbidden to do, which he’s doing the very minute his parents leave, which is now Flor’s responsibility since she promised Sylvie she’d watch out for him . . .

  “Stop!” She shakes her fist, so furious she can’t see straight, can’t know if she sees what she thinks she sees, which is someone in the passenger seat sliding down out of sight.

  Chapter Five

  Tomorrow. School starts tomorrow.

  Cecilia’s been in her room all day. Her domain, that’s what school is. Name an award, Cecilia O’Dell has won it. You could paper a wall with all the photos of her accepting certificates and trophies and plaques. When Flor peeks in, she expects to see her sister hunched over her desk, pre-studying, but instead Cecilia lies on her bed, eyes closed and arms flung over her head, like she just fell from the sky.

  “Cele?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I need to ask you something.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Flor creeps into the room. It’s the size of a closet, which it was, till Cecilia wore down Dad with her pleading not to share a room with Flor anymore, and he somehow bumped out a wall and added a tiny window. It smells like nail polish and hair product in here, but also like freshly sharpened pencils and brand-new notebooks. Cecilia’s desk looks like she lined things up with a ruler. Flor sighs, remembering their favorite old game, Town. Cecilia, the mayor, sat writing proclamations. Flor got to be the doctor, the store owner, the beauty-salon lady. Thomas would beg to play, and they’d hand him the wastebasket and tell him he was the garbageman, which he actually liked.

  “Did you ever make a promise you couldn’t keep?”

  Cecilia props herself up on an elbow. She’s put something on her eyes that makes them look smoky and mysterious. Mysterious is not a word anyone normally associates with Cecilia. Trustworthy. Polite. Adult-friendly. These are your common Cecilia words.

  “No,” says this dark stranger.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m the exception. Lots of people break their promises. Probably most people. Toothpicks! They break promises like toothpicks.”

  Is this supposed to make Flor feel better or worse?

  “The trick is to be choosy what you promise.” Cecilia rolls onto her back again. Her glamorous eyes regard the ceiling, and she smiles, like she can see straight through to the heavens above. Flor looks up, straining to see what her sister does, but it’s just that same looping crack in the ceiling, the one they call the butt crack. “Think,” says Cecilia, “can I really do this? Do I want to do this, even on pain of death?”

  Death? Who’s talking about death?

  “What if it’s too late?” Flor says. “What if you already promised something and now you can’t do it?”

  “What did you promise?”

  “Never mind,” says Flor.

  “Then never mind back.”

  She should’ve known better. When was the last time Cecilia helped her with anything besides her math, and remember what an excruciating experience that was? On the way out, Flor palms some nail polish.

  “Put that right back,” says Cecilia without turning her head.

  That night, in honor of back to school, Mama takes special requests. Thomas gets naked spaghetti. Flor gets hamburger tacos. Cecilia gets a salad, though it’s common knowledge her true favorite is an oozy cheese omelet. Last month they took a shopping trip to the mainland, and their new clothes are at the ready.

  Also in honor of back to school: no arguing.

  Not until the three of them are in bed, anyway. Then Mama can’t understand what Dad was thinking when he spent their own money for repairs on the SUV, instead of charging it to the village. Dad says he’ll get the money back eventually. Thomas already grew out of the shoes they bought him last month, and he’s going to need a new winter coat, Mama says, and try saying “eventually” to their credit card statement. Her voice rises. Dad’s sinks.

  When Thomas shows up in her bedroom doorway, Flor lifts her sheet and he climbs in.

  “You can’t help how fast you’re growing,” she tells him.

  Thomas sucks the ear of Flor’s favorite stuffed animal, Snowball the bunny, and she lets him. According to Cecilia, their parents didn’t always fight. They met when they were really young, when Dad was still a rookie and Mama came over to work for the summer as a counselor at Camp Agape. Sparks flew, Cecilia says, and wedding bells rang. She says that she and Mama, their hair brushed to a shine and perfume dabbed behind their ears, would sit on the porch waiting for Dad to get home. Cele claims to remember when Dad tried to learn Spanish, though this sounds so preposterously un-Dad, Flor bets she made it up. Being born first puts a person in charge of the story. In Cecilia’s story, small, fierce Mama and big, easygoing Dad fell in love because opposites attract. I
t’s true that, when they’re being lovey-dovey, Dad will slip his arm around Mama and say, “You can’t map the ways of the heart.”

  Maps change, though. The one in their classroom was so outdated, Mrs. Halifax had to cross out the names of some countries and write in their new ones.

  When Thomas falls asleep, Flor rescues poor Snowball. She dries and fluffs his long ears. Thomas can hog a whole bed. Another of his questionable talents. On the sliver of mattress left to her, Flor tosses and turns. Last night on the phone Sylvie said her aunt and uncle sing duets in the car and garden together on Saturdays. They call each other Pal. Weird-a-roo, said Flor. Sylvie claims they’re nice. Well, who doesn’t Sylvie say that about?

  She starts school tomorrow too. Her sixth grade has one hundred kids in it. One hundred times more than Flor’s.

  The stairs creak. Mama. Mama alone. It’s the couch for Dad again tonight.

  Out Flor’s window, a flash of heat lightning bleaches the sky. One time she and Sylvie threw all their Barbies out that window into the big lilac bush below. Why? A mystery. Another time they wrote love notes to Joe Hawkins and paid Thomas two dollars to slide them under his front door, then raced after him and paid him another whole dollar not to. On their first day of kindergarten, they held hands the entire time except for going to the bathroom. At the end of the day, they couldn’t even unbend their fingers.

  They thought that’s how it would be all the way through twelfth grade. Maybe they would even go to the same college. They’d marry brothers and live on the same street.

  Flor never has bad dreams, but it’s possible she does that night. When she wakes up, her legs feel weak and crumply. Like she’s spent hours balancing on a narrow sliver of something, and not just her own mattress.

  Chapter Six

  Moonpenny School was built back in the day, when the island had several working quarries, vineyards, family farms, and a fishing industry. Back then, armies of kids lived here. The school is three stories high, with a clock tower and everything. As long as Flor can remember, that clock has said 11:16.