Blythe sat down beside me, holding a box of tissues. When I looked over at her, I saw the salt water had gotten her, too. I wiped her cheeks with my tissue, then held it so she could blow her nose. We leaned into each other as the waves of grief passed, the tissue box smashed between us. The room lit slowly as the rain stopped and the last rays of sun fell in across the jagged tree line to the hardwood floor. When my eyes cleared and Blythe’s breath was even, I sat up.
“We need to talk to Mom.”
“How was school, girls?” Mom scrunched her hair as she turned off the hair dryer. Her damp clothes were on the floor, and she’d changed into a silk robe. When Dad was alive, he’d been the one who picked us up from school, made our lunches, cooked dinner. This was how we saw Mom most often—in the mirror above her dressing table. We saw her readying for evening client meetings and weekend furniture events, or returning from them and preparing for bed. I felt a pull to her side, to let her make room for me on the bench, to lean into her and breathe in the scent of Chanel. So I reminded myself why her hair was wet.
I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorway. “At school today, we found out that Charlie owned this house with Dad.” Blythe glanced at me and imitated my stance.
My mom’s fingers shook as she pinched at her hair to get the water out. She stared at us in the mirror, tight lines around her eyes. But when she turned to look at us, I could swear her hair had grown more highlights.
“That’s correct.” She gave a bland smile. “We were planning to tell you, but—”
Blythe lifted away from the door frame. “Were you also planning to tell us what business Dad planned to start here?”
Her mouth dropped open. Behind us, her bedroom was dark, and I found myself wanting to turn all the lights on. “How do you know about the . . .” Her mouth clamped closed, and she turned back to her own reflection. “We were planning to tell you. We wanted to let you settle in.” Was this what they’d been talking about the day we moved in? Whatever they were allies on? But after what we just saw . . .
“Were you also planning to tell us about your . . . relationship?” I met Blythe’s eyes in the mirror. She nodded and spoke: “And how long it’s been going on?”
Maryann Interiors slid her eyes from me to Blythe. “I don’t know what you mean.” My stomach churned, and I dug my fingers into my palms to keep myself from poeting.
“We saw you. In the driveway.” Mom gave a short laugh and looked at her wedding ring. It glinted under the task lighting. She twisted back to us.
“It’s not what you think.” She closed her eyes for a long moment, and as her face relaxed, I saw the mom I knew before Dad went into the hospital. I waited for her to say something that would put ground back beneath my feet. Outside, the rain tapped the earth again. It felt like something was missing, like we were listening to Nature Sounds, not to our life. I thought of Emily’s poem about the way long summers end so mysteriously.
Maryann Interiors smiled with all her teeth. “This house was an opportunity to leave our memories behind. An opportunity to make something with what’s left of our—”
“Maybe we liked our memories,” I said. Blythe reached across the doorway and took my hand. “You told us we had to leave,” she said. I met Blythe’s eyes. When I’d complained about missing riding our cruisers to school, about how there were no vintage shops in Thornewood, and about how I wished we could have taken our beach-glass garden with us, Blythe just nodded. But I could hear it in her voice now—she missed home, too. Maybe she never chimed in because she couldn’t bear to talk about it. This was being a twin: sometimes we shared the same heart.
“We did have to leave,” Maryann Interiors said. “Your father and I thought there would be years to pay back the loans on this house. But he didn’t have years.”
“Why didn’t he have years, Mom?” I asked. We had brought up the reason for his sudden death only once before, and she had turned away and cried. We hadn’t asked again.
Mom pushed her hands over her face, wiping away tears. “There wasn’t anything anyone could have done. I can’t talk about it—”
Something hot unfurled in my chest, like my hope bird was turning into a phoenix. “You can’t talk about Dad. You can’t talk about the house. It’s amazing you can get any words out at all.” Blythe squeezed my hand, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Who’s Charlie, Mom? Was he really Dad’s friend?”
“Yes,” she growled. “He was your dad’s best friend. And I can’t sell the house without his approval.” Blythe and I looked at each other.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means make the most of it.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “We’re not going back home.” Home. Home with a green sea-glass garden, home with my rusty cruiser, home feeling the ocean breeze in my hair as I rode my bike to school, home where Blythe and I had friends who thought we were quirky, not weird. Home, where it was summer all the time. I brushed my thumbnail over my lower lip.
“As imperceptibly as summer grief, the summer gone. Summer grief, summer gone, summer grief, some are grief.”
“That’s not as cute as it used to be, Sabine,” Mom said. I ground my teeth. “Blythe is making the most of things. I’ve had a wonderful report from her biology teacher.” I narrowed my eyes. She wasn’t turning us against each other. Not tonight. I heard my father’s voice chastising my mother for playing favorites, telling her that what I lacked in intellectual merit I made up for in creative spirit. And behind his voice, poetry stumbled through my mind. I swept my hand back to my lower lip, but Blythe saw and grabbed my arm, keeping me from poeting.
Mom took off her pearl earrings and dropped them into her jewelry bowl with two distinct clunks, then held her head high. “I certainly hope I’ll be hearing good things from your teachers soon, Sabine. It shouldn’t be too hard to impress now that you’re not on an honors track.” I set my mouth, waiting for the right words, but they didn’t come.
Blythe rolled her eyes. “Whatever’s going on, you’d better figure it out.” She clutched my hand. “This move was the last insane thing we’ll be putting up with.”
All I could say was: “Yeah!” before Blythe marched us out of there.
Back in our bedroom, she slumped against the door. “Well, that went well.” Blythe pushed her hair back into her usual ponytail and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Maybe they’re not dating. Maybe they’re just . . . hugging friends?”
“Hugging friends? That sounds like Netflix and chill,” I said, and Blythe shrugged. I was so confused. I headed toward the bed, ready to curl up with the tissue box again. But when I sat down, I realized something was missing. “Where are the letters?” I asked, patting the bedspread.
Blythe glanced over. “We were only gone a few minutes. Look harder.”
I threw my covers back. Nothing. I crouched beside the bed, but there was nothing under my Jenny Lind besides newly formed dust bunnies. “Did we put them on your desk?”
Behind me, Blythe picked up her laptop and shuffled papers, scattering Post-it notes. We looked on her bed, on the chaise, beneath the chaise, and in the closet.
We even looked in the bathroom.
But the shoebox of letters was gone.
8
AND THIS OF ALL MY HOPES WILL FLY
As we walked out of the house the next morning, I tripped over a drop cloth then slammed my elbow into a scaffold as the circular saw roared to life. I was still coughing up sawdust and humiliation as I sat down for first period, nursing a bruise. I couldn’t believe Charlie had not only stolen those letters right out of our room, he’d also called my morning scowl “the French housewife look.” When Kai walked in, I tried to lose the scowl, but it refused to budge.
Kai lifted his eyebrows as he sat beside me, on time for once. “I’m thinking your grump face isn’t only over our French project?”
I curled my
lip and looked at the board. Assignment: in pairs, create a project using at least seven verbs of le subjonctif. Get creative; 100 points. Well, great. “The scowl may be a permanent fixture,” I said. “We confronted my mom, but she won’t tell us anything. We may have to resort to breaking and entering to get to the truth.” I thought of Charlie’s garage apartment. That’s where he must have taken the letters—letters that must hold secrets, otherwise why steal them back secretly? Why not get us in trouble? I scrunched my face up. “Feel like accessorizing another crime?”
He imitated my scowly face. “I do like to carry a purse during criminal activity.” I laughed, ruining my criminal mastermind look.
Monsieur Cade whacked the blackboard with chalk to drown out our chatting. “Fais attention! Le subjonctif! This may seem childish,” Monsieur Cade said in French, “but your subjunctive boards will help you understand a most important and difficult tense.”
I scanned the class. Partner work. I knew no one besides Kai because this was a third-year class, not a second-year class. I turned back to the front, crossing my fingers beneath my desk. Monsieur Cade passed a hat for students to pick group numbers. I reached in and wished hard to be in Kai’s group. I drew a seven. Kai leaned over my desk to see my number. He placed his slip of paper beside mine.
Seven. Our eyes met, and he smiled. I looked back down at the sevens. I felt a flash, like my soul shining, and I wondered if wishing made this happen. “Library after school?” he asked.
I nodded. The library was my new favorite place.
I skipped through the quad after school, thinking of Kai’s eyes, and whether they were more ocean-on-a-sunny-day blue, or more cerulean blue. And I wondered whether I could do a school project with him, given the extreme nervousness that gripped me every time he was around. I tried not to imagine the poetry that could burble up.
“There you are!” Emma clomped out of the fine arts hall and swung her arm through mine. We stopped outside the library in a patch of sunshine. She was sans-glasses today and wearing a slinky glittery one-armed sheath dress with a belt of broaches and a hem of tattered ruffles. She was like something out of a fashion blog. “So, I found something. About your house.” She pulled out her phone and turned it to me. “A new permit was filed this week.”
My cheeks burned, all thoughts of dresses gone. “What kind of permit?”
“This is all I have.” She enlarged the photo. Permit Application for 6 Magnolia Street filed by owner Charlie Parker on behalf of the Mission Project partnership. Below that was the name of our construction company, a big zone c stamp, and a description of work. In Charlie’s slanted cursive, it said: Transitional housing and meeting center in conjunction with the Mission Project. “Transitional housing? What’s that?”
Emma balked. “How should I know?” I looked again. Why wasn’t my mom’s name under owners? What if she didn’t know about it?
“Will you send that to me?”
She tapped her phone. “Sent. But don’t worry. Not many permits get the go-ahead in Thornewood. Plus, you already have one for restoration.”
“They’re replacing the floors right now.” I cringed at the thought of the circular saw.
“You know, Thornewood doesn’t give warnings for inspections. It’s how we raise revenue. But I’ll message you before, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking about not getting fines. I was thinking about why Charlie had filed a permit for something called transitional housing. Not that I was planning on staying long at number six, but it’s not like I wanted to be kicked out, either.
“Headed to the library?” Emma twirled the hem of her skirt, looking down her nose at the ruffles, like they might not be exactly what she’d been going for.
“Yeah, I—” I started, but stopped. Something in the way she was looking at me made me swallow involuntarily.
“To see Kai?” My cheeks flushed, and I reminded myself it was a study session, not a date. “Am I imagining things, or do I see you together a lot?”
“We have a project.” I tried to look studious. “For French.” I flicked my eyes to Emma’s. Had she noticed how I waited for him to sit down at lunch to start eating? Or how I walked the long way to English so I could say hi to him in the hallway? We’d even stopped to talk a few times. Maybe she’d noticed that, too.
“So, are you into him?” She laughed, and I laughed, too. And it came out way too loud.
“Uh . . .” My smile slipped into the neckline of my dress. The truth: I’m into him like he’s the best book in the world and I want to read his pages until they turn to dust in my hands. The partial truth: “He’s nice.”
“I adore him.” Emma flipped her hair and the light turned it to gold and her dress to diamonds. “It’s such a bummer we can’t hook up. But he has to concentrate on his future. School, soccer, his jobs.” She sighed. “What a waste of a great body.”
I squeezed my French text against my chest. So she did want to hook up with him. Fine. That was fine. It’d be much easier to do French homework with a friend. No, a peer. No, a colleague. A colleague with a great body. Oh no. “So . . . what are you saying, Emma? Are you two together?”
Emma flipped her hair and sighed. “You don’t get it because you didn’t grow up here.” She leaned against the wall, her dress sending sparks of light across the quad. “Thornewood looks beautiful on the outside, but it’s like quicksand. The longer you stay, the more likely you’ll never leave. Kai and I’ve wanted to get out of here together since we were little kids. And for that to happen, we both need scholarships. So I need to make the best wardrobe FIDM has ever seen. And he needs a sports scholarship even if his dream is to join—”
“Doctors Without Borders.”
She stood up. “He doesn’t need to go to Africa or whatever to be a doctor.”
She sounded like his mom or something, but I could tell what she was getting at. She liked him, and even if they weren’t a pair, she was marking her territory. “I guess not,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to mess up my friendship with Emma. Seeing what she wore to school each day was a highlight of my life. I was afraid to say more. If I did, all the feelings I had for him might spill out of me like words onto a dream pillow. And then she’d never speak to me again.
“Say you’re not going after him.” I’d known it was coming, but it still felt like a slap. Maybe the slap showed on my face, because Emma looked flustered for a moment before she shook out her shoulders. “Because if it weren’t for our workload, we’d be together.”
I met her eyes and my hope bird shriveled into a pile of feathers and hollow little bird bones. “I’d never go for a friend’s guy, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
She heaved a sigh. “Thank you. Blow off your project. Let’s go to the Berry Market for candy.”
“I can’t.” I wasn’t about to blow off schoolwork, especially if Kai needed a scholarship. Emma stepped around me and opened the library door. I guessed she was coming, too. As I turned to the library, I told myself that a crush was meant to hurt. That was the whole point. I thought of our sevens: the heart that almost was. It hurt more than I’d thought, thinking of those sevens, and the shy way Kai had smiled at me when he’d put them together. I swept my thumbnail over my lower lip. “This of all my Hopes, of all my Hopes, all my Hopes; this will fly away.”
I ducked my head and stepped through the library door.
Inside, I heard Kai before I saw him. There was a smile in his voice. And my stupid hope bird reassembled and took off flying inside my chest. When Kai caught sight of us, he waved his French book. He was on one of the leather couches beside Nate, whose hair was spiked into a faux hawk. Nate’s hair: another mystery of life. We stopped at the circulation desk, where Emma dropped her things and grabbed a return cart. I helped her shove it in the direction of the couches.
I hopped up on my side of the cart, lookin
g for a way to ease the tension between us. My dad was so good at that. “Let’s take this thing joyriding.”
She laughed, but before she could weigh in on the merits of book cart joyrides, Blythe walked up beside us, cradling her Honors Bio book in her arms. “Emma. I think we should switch lab partners. I’m presenting tomorrow, and my lab partner is a complete and total—oh, hi.” Blythe pressed her lips between her teeth as Nate rose from the couch, his limbs unfurling like fabric running off a ream.
“Well,” he said. “These sea monkeys won’t kill themselves.” He held up their book and shook it.
“Killing sea monkeys is your department,” Blythe said. “If you would accept that my critical mass theory is best, we would already be in first—”
Nate slapped a hand over Blythe’s mouth. “A partial degree increase is the way to—eww!” He yanked his hand away and wiped it on his shirt.
“Did I forget to mention that she’s a biter?” I asked, scooting around their tussle and toward where Kai was watching from the couch, one eyebrow raised.
“Take it to a table. I called the couch.” Kai motioned for me to sit, and I almost glanced back at Emma for permission. But what had she really said about them? That they’re not together. Besides, we were studying.
As I sat, Emma pushed the book cart nearer. “Why can’t someone fix this wonky wheel?” Nate pushed past the book cart, grumbling as he followed Blythe to a table a few feet away. Kai smiled but didn’t look up from our assignment.
“Book carts by nature should be flawed.” Kai lifted his eyes. “Thanks for the help.”
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