The Poison Apples (25 page)

“She was doing quite well, and we put her in a less closely watched wing of the building. We think she just … climbed out the window in the middle of the night.”

There was a long pause.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered.

Melted snow dripped down my forehead onto my nose, and from my nose onto my chin. I didn't say anything.

“Let me get you some dry clothes,” she said gently.

I shook my head, still speechless. She reached out to help me take off my jacket, and I jerked away from her.

“Are the police”—I couldn't even believe the words that were coming out of my mouth—“are the police looking for her?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. But they haven't had much luck.”

I nodded numbly, then turned around and started walking out the door.

“Wait!” she called out. “You can't go back out in this weather!”

I wrenched open the big glass doors, stepped out into the dark night, and started to make my way back down the long, slippery driveway.

It was snowing harder now, half sleeting, and the sky was a mottled, churning shade of black and gray. The wind whipped against my face and I could feel my wet hair freezing into long icy strips.

I didn't care.

My mother was gone.

And it was all my fault.

This time there was no point running. After all, I didn't have anywhere to go. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and looked at it. Reena hadn't responded to my text message. Of course. She was probably furious with me. Now she and Alice were going to refuse to be my friend, due to my failure as a member of the Poison Apples.

I was alone in the universe.

I'd never known despair like this. It obliterated everything. It made the bleakness of the world around me—the storm, the night, the wind, the cars whizzing past me on the highway—seem insignificant. The hopelessness rising inside my stomach and taking hold of my heart was much, much scarier than any blizzard.

Walking along the edge of the road, I turned my face up to the sky and let the hail and snow pelt my cheeks and eyelids.

“I GIVE UP!” I screamed. “DO YOU HEAR ME? I GIVE UP TRYING TO CHANGE MY FATE! LUCK IS LUCK AND I'M JUST UNLUCKY!”

A car screeched to a stop next to me.

Now I was going to be murdered by an axe-wielding serial killer.

I wasn't even sure if I cared.

Someone rolled down the passenger-side window.

“Molly?” a voice asked.

I tried to squint into the car, but I could barely see through my soaked glasses and all the snow flying in front me.

“Oh, my God! It is you! Molly Miller, get in the car right now!”

The car door opened.

It was Candy.

Maybe the last person on the planet I wanted to see.

“No,” I said. “I will not get in the car.”

“I can't hear you! Get in the car!”

“No,” I whispered.

I heard an exasperated sigh, and then a plump arm reached out of the car door and yanked me inside. A second later I was sitting silently in a puddle in the passenger seat, shivering and refusing to look up.

“What in God's name are you doing out here?” Candy shrieked.

I peered into the backseat. Spencer was sitting in the darkness, staring at me, her eyes wide with fear.

“I was trying to visit Mom,” I muttered into my lap.

“Were you standing in our front yard an hour ago?” Candy demanded.

I nodded, sinking my head deeper into the neck of my soaking wet jacket.

“I thought so! We've been driving all over town looking for you! Why didn't you knock on the door?”

I shrugged. The misery inside my chest was deepening and thickening.

“Molly! Say something!”

I finally turned and looked at Candy. What I saw actually surprised me. Her face looked pale and drawn. She looked … worried. And sad.

“Why didn't you tell me about Mom?” I asked her. My voice cracked.

She shook her head. “I … I can't believe this.” The edges of her mouth started trembling. “I
told
your father that we owed you a phone call.”

“Then why didn't you?” I asked, my voice getting louder and angrier. “Why didn't you?”

“He didn't think you wanted to talk to us. And he didn't want to hurt your schoolwork or disrupt your—”

“She's my mother!” I screamed. I couldn't tell whether it was melted snow or tears running down my cheeks. “For God's sake! She's my mother!”

“Oh, Molly.” Candy held out her arms. “Come here.”

I recoiled and threw myself against the car door, pressing my face into the window. “No!”

And then with the same surprising strength with which she'd yanked me into the car, Candy reached over, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled my body against hers. My freezing-cold face was smushed against her warm chest. Her round arms laced tightly around my back.

“Let go of me!” I said muffledly into her sweater, but I wasn't even sure if she could hear me.

“Molly Miller,” she told me, “you are coming home with us.”

I shook my head, still contained in her warm vise grip.

“Yes,” she said. “You are.”

I succeeded in wrenching my face far enough away from her bosom to make myself heard. “I don't want to have to leave Putnam Mount McKinsey,” I bawled. “I like it there. You and dad are going to make me—”

“We won't make you do anything.”

I stared at her. She stared back at me, her eyes still filled with that new, unfamiliar sadness.

“We won't make you do anything, okay?” she said again.

It was the strangest thing. I hadn't executed my revenge plan. I hadn't destroyed her relationship with Spencer. I hadn't done anything.

But the words I'd been wanting to hear all semester were coming out of Candy Lamb's mouth.

So even though I was still miserable, and full of despair, and terribly, terribly lonely, I pressed my face into the warmth of Candy's chest and cried. And she let me cry for what felt like a long time. Until Spencer piped up from the backseat: “Hey! When are we going home?”

I turned around in my seat. “Hey,” I said, wiping my eyes, “Spencer.”

“What?” she said, staring at me suspiciously.

“I'm sorry if I haven't been around that much this fall. I love you, you know. You're my sister.”

She turned and gazed thoughtfully out the window. I was kind of expecting her to respond with
I love you, too, Mol
. Instead, after a long silence, she said: “Well, the twirling finals are next weekend. You can come see me then if you really want.”

I smiled weakly. “Okay,” I said, “that sounds great. Can I bring my friends Reena and Alice?”

She nodded.

“Awesome,” I said. “I'll be there.”

A small, almost imperceptible smile crossed my sister's face.

I sat back and fastened my seat belt. Candy cleared her throat, started the ignition, did a three-point turn in the middle of the empty highway, and started driving back to the center of North Forest.

Halfway home a small beeping noise came from the pocket of my jacket.

Reena had sent me a text message.

SIX

Alice

Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The embodiment of everything wonderful and horrible about New York City.

I stepped off the bus into the dimly lit building, and I breathed in a smell that I'd almost forgotten existed during my three months at Putnam Mount McKinsey.

That signature smell—the smell of midtown Manhattan and its seething bus and train stations—can be only described as a combination of car exhaust, urine, garbage, and roasting peanuts.

Strange to say, it is not entirely unpleasant.

I was so busy inhaling and exhaling, filling my nose with the scent of the city I'd missed so much, that I almost forgot about Jamal, standing next to me with his duffel bag, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

We'd taken the bus all the way from Massachusetts to Manhattan together, sharing a seat, holding hands, and listening to the same iPod (he got the right earpiece, I got the left).

Now it was time to say good-bye.

He had to take the A train to 175th Street in Washington Heights. I had to take the Number 2 train to R.'s apartment on the Upper West Side.

I threw my arms around his shoulder and buried my face in the nook behind his ear. That nook was my favorite thing about Jamal Chapman. Well, I had a lot of favorite things about Jamal Chapman. But the nook ranked pretty high. It was soft and tender and always smelled incredible.

He pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “Are you gonna be okay?”

I frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know. Seeing your Dad and R. again. I don't want them…” He looked away, embarrassed. “I don't know what I'm talking about.”

“Oh, Jamal.” I reached out and touched his cheek. “It's okay. I'm okay. I mean…,” I trailed off. I'd just gone blank in the head. “Have a good vacation. That's what I mean.”

He nodded, still looking worried, and then hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulders and trudged away under the flickering Port Authority lights.

“The Yankees suck!” I called after him.

“The Mets blow!” he yelled, not turning around.

And then he rounded a corner and was gone.

I sighed.

I had made a point of not telling Jamal about the Poison Apples' Revenge Plot, even though he'd asked me during the bus ride what my specific plans were for each day of vacation. And I'd told him about most of my plans: Thanksgiving dinner with my dad and R. on Thursday, the opening of R.'s new play (a highly anticipated revival of Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard
) on Friday, and then a dentist appointment on Saturday morning.

Not only had I failed to mention the Revenge Plot, but I'd also failed—in the two weeks we'd been dating—to bring up the existence of Poison Apples at all.

Jamal knew that Reena and Molly were my best friends, and that we all had crazy stepmothers. He just didn't know anything about our clandestine meetings on the roof of Middleton. Or our plot to avenge and overthrow our respective stepmothers and reclaim our fates.

I'd like to say that I didn't mention the Poison Apples to Jamal because, as Reena had informed us that first night, the existence of the Poison Apples was Top Secret, Never To Be Mentioned to a Soul.

But the truth was, I secretly believed there was a chance Jamal would disapprove.

I lifted up my bag and started hauling it up the stairs towards the Number 2 train.
Jamal Chapman may be one of the best things that has ever happened to me
, I told myself,
but it won't do me any harm to forget about him for the next four days.

After all, revenge plot aside, I had the world's craziest stepmother to deal with.

*   *   *

“THE TURKEY IS BURNING!”

R.'s voice pierced the air like a clarion call. I leapt up from the couch where I'd planned on just taking a minute to sit and flip through old issues of
The New Yorker.
Instead I'd dozed off.

I rushed into the kitchen and found R. standing in front of the stove, a potholder covering each hand, waving her arms in the air and fanning smoke.

“It's ruined!” she wailed. Then she turned to me, dagger-eyed. “How could you mess up the
one
thing you were in charge of?”

I sighed, yanked open the door to the oven, and, pulling my shirtsleeves down over my hands, took out the tray, and slammed it down on the counter. Huge billows of smoke rose up into my face. I started coughing.

“I can't breathe!” R. shrieked, and ran out of the room.

Alone in the kitchen, I surveyed the disaster that was going to be Thanksgiving dinner.

R. had announced to both me and my father the day before that she was going to cook the entire meal herself. From scratch.

“Really?” Dad had asked mildly as we all sat over breakfast. “I had assumed we were just going to order takeout.”

R. had shook her head, her earrings a-jangle, her eyes shining. “I'm going to do it all.”

“But opening night is the day after tomorrow,” Dad reminded her. “Maybe we should all just hunker down and take it easy.”

“Don't rain on my parade, Nelson!” she snapped at him, and then her eyes immediately slid in my direction, challenging me to speak up.

Now I'd ruined the whole thing. R. had instructed me to take the turkey out of the oven precisely at 5:00
PM
, and now it was 5:30, and sitting in front of me on the counter was a … charred black mess. It didn't even look like a bird anymore.

R. stormed back into the kitchen, a silk handkerchief wrapped around her mouth like a bandit.

“Mmr dmmr in yer,” she informed me through the cloth.

“I can't hear you,” I said.

She lifted the handkerchief up for a second. “I am very disappointed in you,” she announced, and then folded it back down.

I didn't answer. Instead I just gazed out the kitchen window. Our old kitchen window—the window in our Brooklyn house—looked out on a backyard, and the swaying leaves of a dogwood tree and a London plane would brush against the glass whenever there was a breeze. R.'s kitchen window faced the wall of another looming, gray, twenty-story apartment building and part of an air shaft.

I couldn't wrap my mind around why they wanted to live here.

By 7:00
PM
, the three of us were sitting in a booth at Rick's Luncheonette, a dingy, fluorescent-lit diner around the corner from Dad and R.'s apartment.

I chewed morosely on a French fry while we all sat in silence.

R. had refused to order anything. Dad was eating some kind of horrible cole slaw.

“You know,” Dad said after a while, “this isn't so bad. We could always be starving, you know. Or homeless.”