True Colors

by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock

  “You never know what’s under there,” she said, meaning fish, frogs, and crayfish. Nadine yelped every time anything so much as a minnow swam past her legs.

  Nadine was right about the water being cold, too. She’d inch into the water, a step at a time, squealing like a pig, but I just dove in. Better to get it over quick.

  That’s how Nadine’s older brother, Keith, swam, too. He’d barrel into the water, splashing us, which only made Nadine squeal louder.

  “I’m telling Mom,” Nadine shouted.

  “Oh, for crying out loud, it’s just water,” Keith said. “C’mon, Blue, I’ll race you to the raft.”

  I liked feeling I was part of Nadine’s family, even if it was just for the summer. I especially loved the nights when I got to sleep over. Mr. Tilton would build us a campfire by the lake, and Nadine and I roasted marshmallows for s’mores and watched for shooting stars zipping across the sky. We lay tucked into musty army sleeping bags, slathered with bug repellent, whispering and giggling and telling ghost stories to each other until we were both too scared to sleep. One night, while Nadine was telling the story about the escaped murderer with a hook for an arm, Keith snuck up on us, and just as Nadine got to the part where the woman hears the scrape, scrape, scrape of the hook on the roof of the car, Keith tapped both of us on the shoulders. Nadine screamed so loud I thought they’d hear her in Canada, and I almost peed my pants. It was a long time before we forgave Keith, and an even longer time before we dared tell ghost stories again. Nadine was forever saying how she wished she were an only child, but I often wondered what it would be like to have a brother like Keith. He was tall and handsome, and told even scarier ghost stories than Nadine.

  So I rode down the Tilton driveway, my stomach tumbling with excitement, and looking forward to a summer of swimming, picnics, camping out, baseball, and tons of talking and laughing with my best friend.

  If I’d known how the summer was really going to turn out, I would have wheeled Dolly around and galloped in the other direction.

  chapter 5

  Mrs. Tilton and Nadine were just finishing supper when I arrived. Right away, I knew things were different.

  For one, I hardly recognized Nadine; not only had she shot up about a foot, but she’d done something funny with her hair. She’d always had a ponytail; now she looked like she had a Pekingese perched on her head. Second, Nadine didn’t squeal and hug me the way she always did. Third, she and Mrs. Tilton were the only ones at the table.

  Mr. Tilton wouldn’t be here for the summer, Mrs. Tilton said, what with the war and work he had to do for the government. Keith wouldn’t be coming up, either. He’d joined the army and was over fighting in Korea.

  I could hardly imagine a summer without both of them, but I tried not to show how disappointed I was. It wouldn’t be the same without Keith telling ghost stories, or scaring us, or racing me to the raft, but at least Nadine and I would have a good time together.

  “Sit down and join us,” Mrs. Tilton said. “You must be starved.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Feels like my belly button’s trying to shake hands with my backbone.”

  Mrs. Tilton laughed and shook her head.

  “You Vermonters have such quaint expressions,” she said. I didn’t know what quaint meant, but I just smiled and sat down while Mrs. Tilton fixed a plate for me.

  “I hope you like chicken divan,” she said.

  I hoped I did, too. Mrs. Tilton served a lot of food I’d never even heard of, things like artichokes and Roquefort cheese and eggplant Parmesan. Nadine swore they even ate snails, but thank goodness Mrs. Tilton had never put any of those in front of me.

  Mrs. Tilton wasn’t like anybody I’d ever seen in real life. She was more like a movie star, tall and willowy and glamorous, like Lana Turner, and she talked with a French accent. She painted her fingernails and wore makeup, even during the week! She wore clothes that no one around here wore, like scarves (not wool ones, either) and pants that weren’t overalls but were made out of some whispery fabric that shimmered when she moved.

  “Not very practical,” Hannah’d say, and I’d nod. They weren’t practical at all, and that’s what I loved about them. All my clothes were either handmade or hand-me-downs, stained and mended, and I always bit my lip when I saw Nadine and Mrs. Tilton wearing matching mother-daughter outfits.

  Nadine seemed to fit right in at our house, but I always felt embarrassed to have Mrs. Tilton over, seeing our shabby furniture, the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor, and the peeling wallpaper, and I felt uncomfortable having her eat with us. Hannah was a good cook, but she made things like tuna pea wiggle, dried beef gravy, and shepherd’s pie (I just couldn’t see Mrs. Tilton eating tuna pea wiggle, on crackers, off a chipped plate), and Hannah didn’t get all worked up if there happened to be a hair in the mashed potatoes (“Just pick it out, it won’t kill you,” Hannah’d say). Seeing Mrs. Tilton and Hannah side by side was like sitting a sleek, shiny barn swallow next to a hen. Nadine complained about her family, but I didn’t see what she had to complain about. To have a mother like that, and a dad, and a brother … some people are just plain lucky.

  I dug into the chicken divan. Mrs. Tilton wasn’t the cook Hannah was (though you knew you’d never find a hair in your food, either), but it tasted good just the same. I drank three glasses of water too (at home, Hannah and I always drank milk, but I felt funny asking Mrs. Tilton for milk instead of water).

  “My goodness, you’re thirsty,” Mrs. Tilton said, filling my glass again.

  I nodded.

  “I feel completely rizzared,” I said.

  She stopped pouring.

  “Rizzared?” she said.

  “It means ‘all dried up’—you know, like a raisin,” I said.

  Mrs. Tilton smiled.

  “I’ll have to tell Keith that, in my next letter,” she said.

  Her mentioning Keith reminded me how strange it seemed not to have Mr. Tilton and Keith eating with us. That’s one of the things I’d always loved about being at Nadine’s, all of us eating together, Mr. and Mrs. Tilton talking about politics, or an art exhibit they wanted to see, or places I’d never heard of, like Naples and Machu Picchu, and Keith would be cracking us up with knock-knock jokes. At home, meals were awfully quiet with just me and Hannah. Mrs. Tilton seemed quieter than usual, too, but it was probably because she was worried about Keith.

  Mrs. Tilton wasn’t the only one being quiet. I kept glancing at Nadine, wondering why she wasn’t talking a mile a minute, like usual.

  “A lot of deliveries today?” Mrs. Tilton asked.

  I nodded, and swallowed quick so’s I wouldn’t have to talk with my mouth full.

  “Mrs. Wells, the Monitor, and the Trombleys,” I said. I didn’t mention anything about Raleigh or the Wright brothers.

  “How’s he doing, the poor man?” Mrs. Tilton asked, meaning Mr. Trombley. “Hannah told me about his accident in her Christmas card.”

  “He’s still dwably,” I said. That was a word Hannah used when someone was sickly.

  Mrs. Tilton laughed.

  “Rizzared and now dwably,” Mrs. Tilton said. “Sometimes I feel like I need a Scottish dictionary to figure out what you’re talking about up here!”

  I didn’t tell Mrs. Tilton that we sometimes had trouble understanding her accent, too.

  “They must be having a hard time, him being laid up this long,” she said.

  “I just left off a whole hamper of food there,” I said.

  “That Hannah,” Mrs. Tilton said, shaking her head. “She’s always helping out others.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t tell her I was mad at Hannah and Mr. Trombley both. Hannah and I’d been saving for months, trying to tuck away enough money to take a trip to Prince Edward Island, but after Mr. Trombley got hurt, Hannah knew they couldn’t pay the hospital bills, so she’d put all the money we’d saved into an envelope and left it in their mailbox. That way, they wouldn’t know who’d don
e it.

  “I’m sorry, Blue,” Hannah had said, “but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself knowing how much they needed the money.”

  “That’s what I love about this place, the neighborliness,” Mrs. Tilton went on. “Everyone helping out everyone else.”

  Well, in my opinion, sometimes they helped each other out too much.

  “I know I never would have survived those first summers here without Hannah,” Mrs. Tilton said. “Nadine was such a colicky baby, and her crying was driving me to distraction. Hannah knew just how to calm her.”

  Nadine rolled her eyes.

  “Please, Mother,” she said. “Do you have to tell that story every summer?”

  Since when had Nadine started calling Mrs. Tilton Mother? I wondered. Before, she’d always called her Mama. And she’d always loved it when Mrs. Tilton or Hannah told stories about her. One thing you could say for Nadine, she liked being the center of attention.

  I liked those stories, too, of how Hannah plunked us down together on a quilt while she picked berries, or set us in a laundry basket while she milked cows. Mrs. Tilton marveled at how Hannah could tend babies and do farm chores all at the same time.

  I set down my fork and looked at Nadine.

  “How about a swim before chores?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Nadine said. “The water would absolutely ruin my hairdo.”

  My mouth fell partway open. Nothing had ever kept us from swimming her first night here. When had Nadine started worrying about her hair?

  “You could borrow my bathing cap,” Mrs. Tilton told her.

  A bathing cap? The only people I knew who wore bathing caps were Hannah and the old ladies in her quilting group.

  Nadine rolled her eyes again and shook her head, making her hairdo look like a wet dog shaking itself.

  “Too bad there isn’t a pool here,” she said. “Back home, my friends and I hang out at the pool all day long.”

  I stared at her as if she had two heads. Why would anyone want to swim in a pool instead of a big, beautiful lake?

  I went home wondering what had happened to Nadine. I’d seen enough science-fiction movies over the years for me to entertain the idea that aliens had come and switched bodies with her, and to wonder if Martians were holding the real Nadine on a spaceship somewhere in our galaxy.

  chapter 6

  The next morning, while Hannah and I were weeding the garden, I was still worrying about whether Nadine was an alien or not, and how I could tell, when I saw her biking up our driveway. Her hair was back in a ponytail, so maybe this was the real Nadine.

  I studied her as she hopped off the bike and opened the gate to the garden, looking for clues. The real Nadine had a small mole on her left ankle, but that didn’t help me, because the Nadine coming into the garden had on ankle socks. I’d have to be clever and ask her something that only the real Nadine would know.

  Nadine said she’d come to help us weed, which made me suspicious; in The Thing from Another World, the alien was a frozen vegetable, so I watched to make sure Nadine wasn’t trying to give secret messages to the carrots and squash.

  At first, Nadine seemed like her old self, and a wave of relief washed over me. Maybe all she’d needed was to be here, to be reminded of what she’d always loved about our summers together, but the more Nadine talked, the more I realized that instead of coming to help weed, she’d only come over to brag.

  First, she talked about all her friends back home, which just made me mad. I didn’t talk about my friends with her. Well, I didn’t really have any other friends, but still. If I had, I wouldn’t have mentioned them in front of her.

  Then Nadine went on and on about the article she was writing for her school newspaper on England’s new queen, Elizabeth II, and the coronation, which wouldn’t be until next year, and wouldn’t it be just divine to be able to go to the coronation, and what she’d wear if she could go, and then she went on about how she’d already received special mention for an article she’d written on Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis Simpson, and wasn’t it just so romantic and tragic how Edward had had to choose between the throne and the woman he loved, and he’d given up being king so that he could marry Wallis.

  I snuck a glance at Hannah. When we’d heard of King George’s death on the radio in February, Hannah had said it was a good thing George had been king during the war instead of Edward because Edward and Wallis were nothing more than a couple of shallow, self-centered ninnies.

  The corner of Hannah’s mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles, but she just kept pulling weeds and didn’t say a word.

  I was pretty sure an alien wouldn’t be interested in Edward and Wallis, so I gave up on that idea, but why was Nadine interested? The old Nadine wouldn’t have given a hoot about that stuff. It wasn’t like they were her family, and all that had happened before Nadine and I were even born, but I wasn’t about to say that to the new Nadine. I just knew she would have gotten all huffy.

  “You know, some of my ancestors were kings and queens,” Nadine said, as if reading my mind. “I had an ancestor on the Mayflower, too.”

  Not knowing who my parents were meant I didn’t know any of my ancestors, either. When my real mama came back, that was one of the things I wanted to ask her (along with some of the more important stuff, like why she left me in the first place).

  “Did you know that, in England, they celebrate every king and queen’s birthday in June, no matter when they were born?” Nadine said.

  I looked at Hannah. Was that true? Nadine had always been a walking encyclopedia, but sometimes it was hard to tell if she was just making things up.

  “They’ve done that since the 1700s,” Nadine went on. “It’s called Trooping the Color, except in England, they spell color with a u: c-o-l-o-u-r.”

  She was a walking dictionary, too. I couldn’t help but think how much easier spelling tests would be if I could just add letters to a word whenever I felt like it.

  “My birthday’s already in June,” Nadine said, “so if I ever become queen, I won’t have to change it. Isn’t that handy?”

  Hannah made a funny sound in her throat, and the corner of her mouth twisted a little higher.

  I knew some girls dreamed of being a princess (I wasn’t one of them), but leave it to the new Nadine to want to be the queen.

  Nadine rattled off all the things she’d put on her birthday wish list, things that the old Nadine would have made fun of, like high heels, gloves, and makeup. I would never have put any of those on a wish list, but then, I never made lists for birthdays or Christmas. Why ask for things you know you’re not going to get?

  I’d always wished my birthday were in the summer instead of December, where it seemed to get forgotten because of Christmas. Nadine’s birthday was June 30, and her family always made a big deal out of it, taking her out to eat at a restaurant and having a party at home, with party hats and streamers, a piñata filled with candy, a five-layer cake and three kinds of ice cream, and tons of presents. I’d never even eaten in a restaurant before. Hannah had always celebrated my birthday on December 5 (with a small cake and homemade ice cream, which was better than store-bought, but still), but that was only because Dr. Hastings had said he thought I was two days old when Hannah found me on December 7, so it was only a guess.

  As soon as Nadine finished telling us her birthday list, she went home, complaining about how hot it was. I watched her go, thinking she hadn’t done enough work to get hot, and mad that she could just leave when she wanted to, when she hollered over her shoulder.

  “Come by later for a swim,” she said, which made my heart soar. The new Nadine was going to take some getting used to, but she was still my best friend.

  She was right, too. It was plenty hot—muithy, Hannah called it. (Hannah had about a thousand words to describe weather. I took it the Scottish people talked about weather a lot, just like Vermonters.)

  I wished I could just leave, too, but we still had the carrots, beets, a
nd potatoes to do. I couldn’t help thinking how much cooler it would have been on Prince Edward Island, with a breeze blowing in off the ocean. If it weren’t for the Trombleys, we would have been there right now.

  “Stop being glumshous,” Hannah said, reading my mind. “They would have done the same for us, you know.”

  Glumshous means “sulky,” and it was something Hannah couldn’t abide. I wasn’t allowed to whine, pout, or sulk. There was a long list of things Hannah couldn’t abide, like lying, rudeness, and laziness. And weeds.

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked down the road. I wouldn’t have to work so hard when my real mama came.

  I wondered if not telling Hannah my secret about watching for my mama could be considered lying. I hadn’t actually told a lie, but maybe not telling was a kind of lie, too.

  We finished up in the garden and I’d hoped I could fit in a swim with Nadine before chores (unless she’d done up her hair again), but Hannah said we’d have just enough time to milk before her weekly quilting club meeting. All through milking, I thought longingly about diving off Nadine’s dock into that cold water. I’d go over there after Hannah left for her meeting. I was sure if I could get Nadine swimming, and laughing, I could coax out the old Nadine.

  On the way to the house, I checked the bowl I’d left for the cat and saw it’d been licked clean. She’d found the milk after all.

  At supper, I was as hungry as a pack of jackals, but I left some chicken and biscuit on my plate.