“You’re postponing the inevitable,” Mallory told her.
“Exactly,” her twin agreed.
Merry’s mother was usually halfway ready to be in a bad mood just from having twins who were almost fourteen and an eleven-year-old son. She was freshly frazzled by a new full-time job as the chief emergency room nurse at Ridgeline Memorial. It was a crushing schedule with more chaos than Campbell liked. Sleep had become her sacrament, and the twins had awakened her by yelling. So Merry was already on thin ice when, just two strides from the door, she heard her mother say, “Meredith. What happened to your face?”
Merry said, “I’m . . . I’m trying a new makeup.”
“You look like you escaped from the mummy diorama at the Natural History Museum.”
“If I take it off, it’ll be worse.”
Campbell lowered her newspaper. “I, ah, doubt that.”
Meredith grabbed a clean washcloth, ran it under the tap, and dabbed at a small place on her forehead. She turned to face her mom. Campbell stood up. “Meredith!”
“I wanted my skin to be clear for tryouts!” Merry pleaded.
“So you touched it up with a blowtorch?” her mom asked, as skeevy little Adam started making noises like the sound of bacon frying.
Reluctantly, Merry explained the toothpaste cure.
“Brilliant,” Campbell said. “That’s brilliant, Meredith. Could I have a minute’s peace? Well. Let’s get some heavy-duty moisturizer on it. And I’ll ask a dermatologist if there’s something I can bring at noon.” She began dabbing judiciously at Meredith’s temples. “It’s worse up here. You’ll be lucky if this clears up by Christmas!”
“That’s three months!”
“I was exaggerating,” said Campbell. “But winter’s clearly coming early if mice are coming in.”
The house did have an unseasonable chill for so early in October. Tim banned heat until Halloween. For a few weeks, they’d have to get out the sweaters with the big weird flowers and farm animals on them, the ones knitted by Grandma Gwenny—which no one ever wore anywhere outside except to Grandma’s or places like church, where no one cared if you looked like you were wearing the wrapping paper for a fruitcake.
“Mom, you’re an angel,” Merry said fervently, hugging Campbell impulsively.
“Everyone says so,” Campbell replied, giving Merry a shoulder squeeze when her usual behavior would have been to wrap her daughter in an octopus grip. She turned back to her newspaper, and, with just the wisp of a puzzled glance, Meredith ran out the door. Mallory was slipping into the front seat and withdrawing into the tent of her own hoodie.
“What’s up, Brynn?” Drew asked. He meant Mallory, who was truly his buddy and who wouldn’t have answered if he’d called her by anything but her last name.
“Didn’t sleep much,” Mallory said. “Didn’t go for my run, so I’m not awake.
And
I don’t feel like talking.”
“What else?”
“If I wanted to tell you why I’m not talking, then I’d be talking. Which I’m not.”
“Meow!” Drew said.
Merry spoke up, “That reminds me. I had this idea about the lion. . . .”
“Laybite!” Mallory cautioned her, using their old twin-language for “Stop it!” She said again, so quietly Drew didn’t hear, “Laybite, shosi-on-up-on.”
“Excuse me for thinking!” Merry snapped.
“Don’t bother,” Mallory told Merry. “I’ll let it pass because you don’t do it much.”
“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” Drew teased them. “Maybe you’re wearing animal prints to Homecoming. Isn’t that what they call them? My mom says those are in this year.” Merry smirked. No one ever saw Mrs. Vaughn’s clothes because, although Drew’s sisters were in college, their mom still put on an apron the size of a pup tent and baked five loaves of bread and five dozen cookies a week. She must leave them on people’s porches after dark, the way Aunt Kate did with bags of carrots and zucchini. “Aren’t dresses on the tiny minds of females this time of year?”
“In your dreams,” Mally said. “Which is to say, not mine.”
“Oh well,” Drew said, cranking up one of the ancient rock CDs in his collection. “Stop praying. I’ve already got a date.”
Mally sighed. “I should warn her you have athlete’s foot.”
“Don’t try to fool me, Brynn. I know you’re speechless.”
“That would be because I’m sleeping. I can get in ten good minutes before school. It’s freezing in here.” As if it heard her, the wind obligingly blew a bushel of dry leaves through the passenger-side window. Mallory sat up to spit out a mouthful. “Ugh! I just used Pearl Strips on my teeth.” Both of them stared at her, Drew nearly taking out his own mailbox. “Well, don’t look like I said I had a hair transplant! I do like my teeth to be nice!”
“Pearl Strips?” Meredith gasped. “You just started flossing last year!”
This is Monday to the tenth power,
Mallory thought.
“It doesn’t close,” Drew apologized. “The window fell down into the well that day I bulldozed the housing development playing mortal combat with David Jellico.”
“Which we jokingly refer to as the first time he tried to kill me and my sister,” Mally snapped.
“Forgive me for wrecking my car to stop him! How quickly we forget the knight in shining armor!”
“Hardly shining . . .” Mally said, stifling a yawn. Drew’s green Toyota was now verifiably two-tone, rust-over-emerald.
“Jeez, Brynn! You’re snarky even for you. What’s eating you this morning?” Drew asked, leaning across Mallory to turn up the volume on the CD player. As quickly as he did, Merry slipped out and back into her seat belt in order to turn it back down.
“You don’t have to blast that thing!” Merry shouted. “I am a human being too, you know. You can talk to me.”
“Okay,” Drew said, “I’m loving the mask.”
Blushing, although no one could tell, Merry said, “It’s a skin treatment.” Merry had just applied a new layer of makeup over the moisturizer.
“Hope it works,” Drew said. “I mean that sincerely.”
They passed Tony Arno, who ran the five miles to school in miniscule shorts until the temperatures hit the single digits—to the disgust of all the guys and the rapture of the girls—and somehow never stank the rest of the day. “Hi, Tony!” Merry called out the window, smacking heads with her sister, who appeared not to waken. “He’s so cute. He could have any girl.”
“Yes, he’s very cute,” Drew agreed with a sigh. “Especially the Speedo.”
“You’re just jealous. I heard he likes Neely,” Meredith went on. She began to chatter about Neely Chaplin, the new girl from Chicago, and Merry and Caitlin’s only real rival for the second spot on varsity. Meredith didn’t want to brag, she said, but she basically considered her own spot assured. Her tumbling alone would nail it.
“I may have ignored this before,” Drew said. “Ten times at least, but not because it isn’t fascinating.”
“Drew, you know flyers are the hardest to find.”
“Absolutely. I have a hard time finding
you
if your dad forgets to cut the grass. Or forgets to get me to cut it.”
The last few blocks were crowded with bikers and, as they neared the school, the smokers, who gathered around the fire hydrant at the required fifty feet from the school entrance, exactly opposite the picture window of the principal’s office.
By that point, Meredith had wound herself up so tightly on the subject of tryouts that she was like a mechanized toy, practically bouncing in the seat; she couldn’t have stopped if Drew had burst into flames. As he turned into the lot, Merry went on, “You know, Drew, small can be weak. And you can be a flyer and still be a lousy tumbler. But if you’re strong, you can be too big to get thrown. I can do both. That’s why Crystal isn’t all-around. Imagine trying to lift Crystal Fish on one shoulder.”
“I actually imagine that quite a bit,” Drew said. Crystal was totally gorgeous, all five feet, eight inches of her, with twisty blond hair that hung to her hips and legs that the boys at Ridgeline seemed to consider some kind of local resource, like a silver mine.
“Don’t be such a stereotype. Guys revolt around Crystal like planets around the sun,” Merry said. “It’s absurd.”
“They revolve, you mean,” Drew said gently.
“They revolt around you,” Mallory said, waking up.
“It’s true. I haven’t had a serious relationship in six months,” Merry said. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“Not that I can see. Guys love women who never close their cell phones,” Drew said. “It gives them their space.”
But Merry was deep in conversation on the phone with Alli, who was repeating her comments to Caitlin, and waving to Erika. The cheerleaders approached the car and absorbed Meredith as she hopped out of the backseat, as if they were first graders playing amoeba tag.
“You want to get out here too, Brynn?” Drew asked gently. From within her hoodie, Mallory shook her head, and Drew headed for his usual parking space behind the field house.
The first bell howled like a tornado siren.
GOLDEN EYES
F
or Merry, ten minutes between bells were a lifetime of gossip opportunities. She ran with Alli and Caitlin, Erika and Crystal falling into rank like soldiers, to “their” table in the Commons. It seemed an eternity since the last time they’d seen one another, nearly forty-eight hours ago.
Meanwhile, still in the parking lot, startled by the sound of the bell, Mallory almost hopped out before Drew finished parking. Then she flopped back against the seat.
Why bother?
Something was wrong. She didn’t know what.
Drew looked at her with concern.
“Brynn, you want me to walk you in? What’s going on?”
“Nothing really, Drewsky. I’m sorry I was a jerk this morning.”
“Don’t change for me, Brynn,” Drew said with a laugh. “You’re a jerk every morning.” He tried again. “Brynn? You know you can’t hide from me. You have the look on your face that freaks me out. With good reason, I might add. I fear that look. It usually involves some kind of damage for me.” He pulled the top of her hoodie down over her eyes.
“I was only teasing before, Drew,” Mallory said softly. “I hope you have a great Homecoming. Who’re you going with?”
“Pam Door.”
“Captain of the cheerleaders and a senior! You big stud!” Mally said.
Drew almost said he was settling for Pam Door because he couldn’t have the girl next door, but had long ago made the choice to keep Mallory his buddy instead of giving in to the crush he’d felt for years. But as they began to go their separate ways, she looked so small and vulnerable in his old black hoodie. Something was wrong, he thought, with a quick twist of his gut. She hadn’t even tried to slug him when he jerked her hood down over her eyes.
Mallory could feel herself tuning Drew out as she headed for the main entrance. She could barely muster a wave. Drew was watching her as though she had sprouted tentacles from the crown of her shiny cap of black hair. But she didn’t look back. The unease dripped down her neck like cold droplets. She hadn’t warmed up since she’d opened her eyes. What was it? Mallory hadn’t seen anything, unless you counted a big white cat knocking over some cheerleading shoes.
Not like David. Not like any of that. Dragging her feet, she walked slowly toward the big glass doors of C building.
Just as she took her first step inside, someone grabbed the back of her sweatshirt. Turning sharply, she found herself face-to-face with Eden Cardinal, whose gleaming hair was brushed long and loose today, blue-black in the sun.
“What’s up, Shortie?” she asked Mallory. “Are you some kind of spy for elves?” Mallory glanced down, then looked up at Eden and grinned. She was wearing black from the top of her head to the tips of her Converse high-tops. She hadn’t noticed.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m undercover to report girls whose butts are hanging below their skirts. That’s my eye level.” Eden laughed and grabbed Mallory’s arm. It still amazed Mally that a junior like Eden, who couldn’t have possibly answered the number of “hellos” directed her way as she walked down the hall, didn’t brush off Mallory’s lowly freshman self like dandruff. Mally never called Eden to suggest they do something. She wouldn’t have dared. But when Eden called her, she was always up for anything, even running errands. So grateful was she to see Eden and comforted by her assured presence, Mallory almost opened her mouth to spill her worries.
But Eden spoke first.
“Mal,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you. I mean ask you. I mean find out from you.” Eden turned all giggly and bubbly, in a way she never was, almost like Merry’s merry band of nits. What was that about? “Your dad owns Domino Sports and I need . . . sort of a sporting good.”
They slipped into a corner of the glassed-in Commons.
Exactly where I saw the lion,
she thought with that same cold creep of anxiety. Eden popped two dollars in change into the coffee machine and handed Mallory a steaming cup of hot chocolate before grabbing one of her own. Mally finally remembered her manners and noticed that the paper cup was hot as a live coal. “Thanks! Ow!” she said. “Yikes. My hand is so cold I didn’t realize I was getting second-degree burns.”
“I know! It’s freezing today,” Eden said. “I wore gloves!”
“And plus, I’m brain-dead today. I slept just awful-awful. Now, what were you saying? What’s a sort-of sporting good?”
They were interrupted briefly to watch Mr. Yee forcibly untangle Trevor Solwyn and her boyfriend, who were making out against the pillar way too ferociously for 8:06 A.M.
Eden said, “I know your dad’s fall sale is coming up, and I wondered if he had any double sleeping bags.”
“Sure. He keeps a couple of them, mostly for wedding presents for people who are going camping on their honeymoon. Which I think is sort of a contradiction in terms, don’t you? If I ever get married, it’s a big hotel in Maui or nothing.”
Mally and Eden slipped into the crowds making their way out of the Commons. Both of them had math first hour—Eden in Pre-Calc across the hall from Mally in Geometry.