Moonpenny Island Page 8

  This brings up the question: what doesn’t Flor know about Sylvie?

  She runs upstairs. An email, she has to send one. The computer is in her parents’ room, where Mama’s side of the bed is unnaturally smooth. Her brush lies on the bedside table—she forgot it. Her dark hair tangles with Flor’s so you can’t tell whose is whose. Dad’s pillow is on the floor, like he had a one-man pillow fight, and when she picks it up, she gets a whiff of his nighttime smell, that salt-and-bread smell. It turns her into a little kid again, climbing into their big bed to be safe from demons and kidnappers. Safe—that’s how easy it used to be to feel safe.

  In the corner, the computer’s already shut off. The thing is so old, a person could tragically die in the time it takes to boot up. Not that she really wants to email Sylvie, anyway. Flor needs to talk to her. To hear her best friend’s voice, her tenderhearted voice, saying the precise, perfect things to make her feel better. Another idea for how to get sent home from Ridgewood occurs to her. Sylvie can pretend Flor, her lifelong friend, died. It’s practically true.

  Flor sits on the bed and attempts to channel Sylvie’s brain waves. She leans forward, coaxing them across the mainland, over the lake and inside her skull, but all she gets is quiet. It’s so quiet, Flor feels alarmed. Is Sylvie sending her a message of peacefulness? Of calm and serenity? Flor jumps up. Is Sylvie telling Flor to feel those things? Or is Sylvie herself feeling peaceful and contented? Flor swallows. Is it possible Sylvie is not thinking of her at all?

  In her own room, Thomas occupies ninety-nine percent of her bed. Flor knows she won’t be able to sleep, so she takes out the antediluvian copy of Anne of Avonlea Mrs. Defoe gave her. About to begin her first teaching job, Anne Shirley bursts with dreams. She wants to awaken the love of beauty in her island students, to stir their young hearts to great things.

  Thomas moans in his sleep. When Flor touches his hair, a smile breaks out. His grown-up bottom teeth are coming in crooked. They lean toward one another like they’re engaged in a loving, toothy conversation. Flor closes her book and tries to picture an eleven-year-old Mrs. Defoe, reading it, dreaming of becoming an inspiring teacher. Even with an imagination as excellent as Flor’s, it’s a stretch.

  Slipping out of bed, she pushes open her window and sticks her head into the chilly night. The lake is inky black, with a thin drizzle of moonlight. Flor listens to it slap against the rocks. Again, again. That lake! It’s so wide, so heartless. It separates her from two of the people she loves best in the world.

  So what, says the lake. Slap. Too bad for you. Slap. What are you gonna do about it? Slap.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Life’s a crooked shelf, and things keep rolling off before Flor can catch them. They’re out of bread and milk again—who knew they ate and drank so much? Who knew Mama spent half her life going to the store? Flor stops at Two Sisters the next afternoon. The place is empty, except for Queenie, leaning on the counter frowning at her sudoku.

  “What’s up?” she says to Flor.

  “The sun,” says Flor.

  Every time, they say this.

  “How’s your mama doing, hon? And your grandma?”

  “Okay.” Flor sidles down the aisle. Two aisles, that’s the whole store, and a cooler. It’s Friday, and Island Air doesn’t deliver till tomorrow, so all that’s left is skim milk.

  “She say when she’s coming back?”

  “Not for sure.”

  Flor sets the bread and milk jug on the counter. But Queenie doesn’t ring them up. Instead she pushes her puzzle aside and shakes her head.

  “I remember when my sister left. The first year, I wanted to murder her. I couldn’t believe she’d do that to me.”

  Queenie’s sister, Duchess, married the guy from the mainland who installed their new cooler. They live in Cleveland now, though they visit every summer.

  “She and I promised each other we’d run this store together till we were little old biddies. We’d have us twin rockers, right there by the postcards. But she up and fell for that devil of a man. I’ll tell you, Flor. She wrenched the heart right out of me.”

  “You can’t map the ways of the heart,” Flor hears herself say, and Queenie rears back.

  “Out of the mouths of babes! It’s a good thing you understand that, hon.” Her expression goes solemn. “I mean, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  Queenie goes from solemn to sad. She starts to bag the groceries.

  “When you catch a firefly in a jar, you let it go or you keep it. Now which do you think is the better course of action?”

  Even the highest-quality grown-ups can ask questions that really . . . why are they wasting everyone’s time? But Flor likes Queenie, so she says, “I always let them go.”

  “Of course you do, hon. And know what? I let Duchess go, and now her and me are back closer than ever.” She presses her hands together. “It’s different, being separated.” She peels them apart. “But love can stretch just as far as you want.” She stretches them wide. “Just as far as far as you need it to.” Stretches them wider yet.

  Flor nods, because she is polite, but that’s enough of this strange pantomiming. She reaches for her money, but Queenie refuses to take it. Instead she tucks a couple of packages of Thomas’s favorite rainbow-sprinkle doughnuts in the bag and pats Flor’s head.

  “People have been leaving home as far back as Adam and Eve,” she calls as Flor heads out the door.

  Back home, when Flor gives Thomas one of the doughnuts, he tears off a piece and offers it to the air around his knees.

  “Sit,” her brother commands. “Good boy.”

  “Now what?”

  “Paw?” Her brother holds out his hand. His eyebrows disappear up under his hair, and his face floods with delight. “Good boy!”

  He’s so convincing, Flor almost sees the dog.

  He’s out the door and into the field, throwing sticks and yelling “Fetch!” It’s his own fault they can’t have a real dog. Dad would let them in a minute. But when Thomas was three, he pushed gerbil food so far up his nose he had to be life-flighted to the mainland. Thomas enjoyed that helicopter ride so much, Mama’s afraid he’d do it again. No more nostril-sized kibble or pellets in this house. No more pets. You’d think the coast was clear, now that he’s six, but Mama always says that when it comes to Thomas, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. She babies that boy—Dad is right. How has she managed to stay away from him this long?

  Flor’s knees go wishy-washy. Looking down, she realizes she’s standing on the spot Mama’s feet have worn in the floor in front of the sink. She’s fitted her own feet exactly into it.

  When did her feet get so big? Another mystery.

  Yet another one, though by now it’s so normal it might not fit the mystery category: where is Cecilia?

  Flor plucks a yellow leaf off the geranium on the windowsill. Whenever she calls Sylvie, she gets the message. She’s sent three emails with suggestions, some excellent and some desperate, for ways to get sent home, and Sylvie hasn’t replied to a single one.

  Another yellow leaf. This plant is dying! No one has watered it since Mama left. Flor sets it in the sink, gently runs the tap over it. She swears she hears that geranium murmur, You saved me. It must be terrible to be a house plant. Like being in a zoo. Only a flower pot instead of a cage.

  Sylvie won’t rebel. Flor knows it. Sylvie doesn’t have it in her. She’s too soft, too gentle. Always, always, Flor has loved this in her friend, but now? Now it feels like a betrayal.

  The phone rings. Flor grabs it and stares at the number.

  “It’s you!” she cries.

  “It’s you!” Sylvie echoes.

  “Are you okay? When I tried to channel your brain waves, I got dead air.”

  “I’m sorry, Flor! It’s been cra-cra-craaaazy around here. Saturday I went to this big sleepover party, and then Sunday I was a zombie but my aunt insisted that . . .”

  “Wait. You went to
a sleepover party?” This is another thing they know about, from TV and movies, but have never experienced for real. “Was it . . . was it fun?”

  “Sort of. I was so nervous, I was afraid I’d throw up. I had these babyish polka-dot PJs my mother bought, and everyone else had band T-shirts. Un, again. But then we made these Shrinky Dink necklaces, not the kind where the pieces are already cut out but the kind where you make your own? Everybody liked mine.”

  This is probably Sylvie-speak for “Everyone went wildly insane for mine.”

  “They asked me if I’d make some for them too.”

  “Wow.” The faucet is dripping. Flor gives it a shove.

  “I saved the best one for you, Flor.”

  And then Sylvie tells how they all wore their necklaces to school on Monday, and Mr. Darby, the art teacher, who all the girls think is dreamy, said way cool, and this one girl Blake, who has purple streaks in her hair, not to mention two holes in each ear, said Sylvie was a genius designer, and it just so happened they were starting a clay unit that day, and now Mr. Darby is forcing her to join the art club.

  The faucet won’t stop dripping. Poking her finger in and out of it, Flor listens. Now and then she gets in an umm, but it’s not like Sylvie needs her to say anything.

  “Mr. Darby says I have a real feel for three dimensions. And Flor, I know what he means. It’s like, reading and math—they just lie there smacked down flat on the page. You know?”

  “Not really.” Flor spins away from the sink. “When I read something good, it’s like I’m right inside it. It’s all around me, not flat at all.”

  “Yeah, but that’s you, Flor. That’s not me!”

  “Well.” Flor’s spine goes stiff. “I guess that’s true.” She turns back to peer at the field, where her brother is having a dog hallucination.

  “I wish Moonpenny School had art! I mean real art, not cutting out paper snowflakes. We didn’t even know what we were missing. We—” She breaks off to speak to someone else for a moment. “I have to go. My aunt signed me up for soccer!”

  “What! You hate sports.”

  “She says soccer will give my self-esteem a boost. Probably it’s going to give me a dislocated head.”

  “Sylvie. Wait. I have to tell you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “My mother.” Drip. Drip. “She left.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, not left left. Lita’s sick, and she went to help.”

  “Oh no. Poor Lita!” Sylvie’s voice crumples. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “It’s just bronchitis. You don’t die from that.”

  “Oh, whew. That’s good!” Sylvie sighs. “You miss your mom, I know. Everything seems really weird and wrong. You keep thinking she’s in the other room, but she’s not. Like when the power goes off but you still keep trying to turn on the lights.”

  “Exactly.” Flor sags against the sink. As much as she missed her friend before, it was only a tiny teaspoon of missing compared to right now.

  “That’s how I felt when I first got here! But your mother had to go! And she misses you too. She loves you and Thomas and Cele more than anything. Just keep telling yourself that.”

  “You left out my father.”

  “What?”

  “There’s another thing. . . .”

  “Okay! Okay!” Sylvie calls to her aunt. To Flor she says, “I’ll call tomorrow, same time. I promise!”

  “Don’t break any bones, okay? Or . . . wait. Maybe if you did, they’d send you home. Maybe just a small . . .”

  “Must exit.” Her alien robot voice. And she’s gone.

  Flor stares at her big ugly feet. She didn’t get to tell about taking that ride with Perry. And he must not have called his sister after all, because Sylvie definitely would have said.

  The astonishing fact is, Sylvie didn’t utter one word about her brother. For the first time since she left, Perry slipped her mind. A Perry-less mind, that’s what Sylvie had. Flor’s off the hook. She should be relieved.

  So how come she’s not?

  When she turns back to the window, a new sight meets her eyes. Jasper has appeared out of nowhere, and she’s playing with Thomas. Jasper swings her arm, and a stick arcs against the cloud-heavy sky. Jasper does not throw like a girl. Definitely not like a one-handed girl. Thomas races across the grass and bounds back with the stick in his mouth. He goes down on all fours, and Jasper pats his head. Flor bangs out the back door.

  “Spit that filthy thing out this second! You’ll get worms!”

  The stick shoots out of his mouth as quick as if Mama herself stood there scolding.

  “That’s not likely,” says Jasper. This afternoon she wears a knit hat pulled down to her eyes and a tool belt, with hammers and picks and other unidentifiable things dangling like charms on a giant industrial bracelet. “He looks as if he’s very familiar with dirt. Besides, his gut’s already colonized by millions of microorganisms.”

  “I can’t figure out if you’re insulting my brother’s gut.”

  “Why would I do that?” Jasper looks genuinely confused. If she’s still offended by Flor, she doesn’t act it. She tosses another stick. Her half-empty sleeve swings like a floppy pendulum. Suddenly Thomas morphs back into a boy.

  “Where’s your arm?” he asks.

  Jasper yanks her sweatshirt up over her nose, flicks her eyes from side to side. A trilobite curling up inside its shell, hoping to fool its predators. Flor thinks it again: there cannot be a mother in this picture. A mother would say, You think you’re invisible inside that shirt, but guess what? You’re only drawing attention to yourself. And beside, why are you hiding? You’re pretty! A mother would command, Look, I bought you this nice new shirt in your right size. Put it on this minute.

  “Are you double-jointed?” Thomas asks. “Benjamin, my friend in summer, he could fold his thumb all the way back. It made his mother scream.”

  “Thomas, what did Mama tell you about asking personal questions?”

  “Mama’s not here.” He flings himself through the tire swing and drags his fingers in the dirt. Jasper’s face softens.

  “We have that in common,” she tells him.

  Flor waits for her to say more, but for once Jasper has no info to impart. So Flor flat out asks.

  “I’ve been wondering about that. Where is your mother?”

  The corners of Jasper’s mouth curve up. “You just told your brother not to—”

  “Okay. Right. Sorry.”

  “You’re full of contradictions.”

  “I am? No, I’m not.”

  “My mother’s in Chile.” Jasper’s smile fades. “Unless she’s already back in Central America.”

  “What’s she doing so far away?”

  “She’s a renowned paleontologist, specializing in toxodontidae.” Jasper peers at the lake. The water’s the color of a beat-up pot. “My parents divorced when I was six, and I rarely see her.”

  “I’m six,” says Thomas.

  “Statistics show it’s better to have two parents. But Father and I adapted nicely.” Jasper tugs her hat so low, how can she even see? Between that hat and the oversize clothes, approximately two percent of this girl is visible. “Besides, my mother made a choice, and . . . it wasn’t me. It wasn’t us.”

  “Mothers are not allowed to do that.”

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You aren’t very observant. My mother did do it!”

  “I know, but—”

  “When I was small, I required extra care. Even more than the . . . the average child.” Jasper pauses. She’s busy clearing her throat for quite a while. “Did you know Charles Darwin was the first to uncover toxodon fossils? Toxodon platensis lived during the Pleistocene period and resembled a hippo or rhino, with a large snout and curved teeth. Its habitat was South America, and its study requires travel to remote terrain.” She tugs her hat even lower. “You know who Charles Darwin was.”

  “I said I did.” Flor puts her han
ds in her pockets. “But I don’t.”

  “He sailed around the world on the H.M.S. Beagle, exploring and collecting specimens. Back in the eighteen hundreds, most people believed that God was done creating, but Darwin proved that new species appear all the time. For example, he found that the finches of the Galápagos Islands, who all started out the same, evolved to have different kinds of beaks. Fat beaks, thin beaks, curved or straight beaks, depending on what they needed to survive and flourish. For example, some ate seeds. But others . . .”

  Flor only half listens. How could Jasper’s mother choose prehistoric roadkill over her and Dr. Fife? Her heart must be cold. Colder than the swim hole. What mother abandons her family for any reason whatsoever in this world? Flor watches her brother drag his feet and hands in the filthy dirt.

  “She made a huge mistake.” She interrupts Jasper. “I mean, colossal. Your renowned mother.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” The sun breaks through a cloud, and Jasper’s ginger-ale-colored hair fizzes in the light. “Thank you.”

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind and come back.”

  “It’s been five years.”

  “Still!”

  “All evidence is to the contrary. Your hypothesis is not supported.”

  How strange she is! Like one of those kids raised in a forest by wolves. Only for her, it’s a white-bearded guy in love with extinct creatures. Jasper picks up a rock, flips it with a quick jab of her chin, judges it worthless, and tosses it away.

  “Charles Darwin was shy. He preferred to observe the world rather than have it observe him.” She leans down to scratch Thomas’s head. “Good dog!”

  “Ruff ruff!”

  She clanks out of sight.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cecilia still isn’t home at suppertime. Never, ever has she been late without calling. “What kind of teenager is so good?” Mama always teased. “Just once, be bad! ¡Vaya, sea malita! Break some rules! Have a little fun!”