Emma Moves In

by Clare Hutton

  They found Uncle Luis and the little kids. Mateo had opened his box of crayons and was carefully counting to make sure there were twenty-four, but he kept losing track and starting back over at one. Tomás was whining and complaining that his feet hurt, and Uncle Luis looked as if he wished vacation was already over and he was safely back to teaching algebra to ninth-graders.

  “Can we go get ice cream?” Natalia asked. “Emma hasn’t been to Sweet Jane’s yet.”

  “Sure,” Uncle Luis said glumly. “If we’re not outside to meet you in half an hour, tell your mother I’ve run away.”

  Zoe patted him on the back as they left.

  Sweet Jane’s was at the other end of Waverly’s main street and sold all kinds of sweets: cookies and brownies and little hand-dipped chocolates in the shapes of flowers and suns. But mostly they sold ice cream from a long glass case that seemed to have every flavor you could imagine.

  “Black raspberry’s my favorite,” Zoe said, pointing to one with swirls of different shades of purple.

  Natalia had to try all the weirdest flavors before she ordered anything: Cinnamon Bear, which was bright red and had tiny bear-shaped graham crackers in it; Crispy Crunchy, which was marshmallow ice cream with chocolate chips and chunks of rice cereal treats mixed in; Ultimate Darkness, which was just chocolate with chocolate chips and chocolate-covered nuts and chocolate-covered pretzels. The girl behind the counter just laughed and passed over more tiny spoonfuls to try.

  Emma was pretty sure she wanted mint chocolate chip, but she tried the Ultimate Darkness, too, and the Dulce de Leche caramel, just in case those were better.

  “Jalapeño?” Natalia said thoughtfully. “Do you dare me?”

  “I absolutely don’t dare you,” Emma said. “That sounds awful.”

  “I dare you,” Zoe said. “Go ahead.”

  The shop door burst open and two girls about their age came in, and Natalia squealed and ran over to them, the jalapeño ice cream forgotten.

  “Hi, Bridget, hi, Caitlin,” Zoe said, sounding polite but not especially interested.

  “This is my cousin Emma,” Natalia told the girls, and they said hi to Emma, too, then went on giggling with Natalia.

  Emma started to feel a little left out, standing in the ice-cream parlor while Natalia and her friends laughed about something Emma couldn’t hear. Zoe had gone back over to the ice cream and was waiting for the girl behind the counter to scoop her up a cone of the black raspberry.

  “I guess they’re really good friends of Natalia’s?” Emma asked, wandering back over to her.

  “Natalia’s friends with everybody. She’s a social butterfly,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes. “Bridget and Caitlin are okay, but Natalia and I don’t really hang out with the same people at school. Usually we’re in different classes, but they put us in the same class this year.”

  “Oh,” Emma said, surprised. Didn’t Zoe want to be in the same class as Emma and Natalia? If Zoe and Natalia didn’t stick together at school, who was Emma going to be with? She had pictured the three of them always together, the way they had been on holidays and vacations. She addressed the girl behind the counter. “Mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone, please.”

  Natalia hugged her friends good-bye when she saw that Zoe and Emma were ordering. She came over and ordered a double scoop of Cinnamon Bear and Ultimate Darkness.

  “That seems like a gross combination,” Zoe commented, and Natalia widened her eyes indignantly.

  “Ish delicioush,” she said, mouth full.

  “Let’s get ice cream for Uncle Luis and the boys,” Emma suggested, and they ordered a scoop of chocolate for each of the boys and rum raisin for Uncle Luis. Each carrying two cones, they stepped back out into the sunshine.

  The mint chocolate chip was delicious, creamy and sweet, and Emma decided not to worry about school yet. Zoe and Natalia were her friends and her family and it would all be fine. They still had two days to go before school would begin.

  Emma, sitting on the air mattress, bit her lip, thinking. Was that too much blue? The skirt and the shirt were different shades, but still … she didn’t want to look blah and all one color on the first day of school tomorrow. She wanted the other kids to like her, to look at her and be, like, “Hey, she looks like she’d be nice to know.”

  She pressed her hands against her stomach, which was beginning to squirm with anxiety. She’d thought that it wouldn’t matter meeting all these strange kids, because she’d have Zoe and Natalia. But it sounded like they didn’t even stick together at school. Would they want to hang out with Emma? Who would she go with if they went in different directions?

  She sighed and crossed out the blue outfit. There must be something better she could wear.

  She had that red-and-white-striped skirt, but wouldn’t that be too Fourth of July–looking with the blue shirt? Wait, the red-and-white skirt was still packed in a box, waiting to move into Seaview House, Emma realized. She wasn’t even sure what she had to wear tomorrow other than the old summer clothes she’d been wearing for the last couple of weeks.

  She sighed and crumpled up her list. There was nothing wrong with the clothes in her suitcase. She was just tired of them.

  Natalia was sprawled across her bed, reading, while Zoe was drawing at her desk. But at the sound of the crumpling paper, they both looked up.

  “What’s the matter?” Zoe asked.

  “I’m sick of living out of suitcases,” Emma said. She gritted her teeth. This would be a really stupid thing to cry about. But she could picture herself, dressed in faded, worn summer clothes, standing all alone at school as Zoe and Natalia ran off with different friends. Each of the three of them separate instead of the tight team of three Emma had imagined.

  Zoe and Natalia exchanged a look, and Natalia got up and came to sit on the air mattress next to Emma, crisscrossing her legs. The air mattress gave a protesting squeak and sank a little lower.

  “But isn’t it really fun living out of suitcases?” Natalia tried. “You can pretend you’re camping?” Emma and Zoe both stared at her, and Natalia grinned sheepishly. “Okay, maybe not. But it’s not forever.” She knocked her shoulder against Emma’s gently. “And we like getting to live with you.”

  Zoe picked up the crumpled list from where Emma had dropped it and uncrumpled it. “You need an outfit for school tomorrow,” she said, reading it.

  “I realized those clothes are all packed,” Emma admitted.

  Natalia bounced up, and the air mattress vibrated wildly. “You can borrow something of mine!” she said. She flung open her closet, and Emma frowned. It was hard to see what Natalia had because everything was jammed in together, but there were lots of really bright colors, wild patterns, and T-shirts with funny pictures or sayings on them. “How about a T-shirt that says Brightest Witch of Her Year on it?” Natalia asked. “Or you could wear this dress with the stars.” The dress sparkled in the sunshine coming through the window, each glittery star sending out a ray of light.

  All Natalia’s clothes are perfect, Emma thought. Perfect for Natalia. They looked just like her.

  Some of them Emma would love to borrow, sometime. But Emma didn’t want to start a new school dressed up as Natalia. She wanted to feel like herself.

  “Ugh, she doesn’t want to wear your clothes, Natalia,” Zoe said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Natalia asked indignantly. “Emma dresses more like me than she does like you.”

  “So not true,” Zoe said loftily. “Emma has natural style.” She turned to Emma. “I know what you need.” She opened her own closet, which looked just as neat and organized as Zoe herself—as different from Natalia’s closet as Zoe and Natalia were from each other. Shirts were separate from pants, were separate from skirts, were separate from dresses. Everything faced the same way on its hanger, and—Emma tilted her head, squinting—it kind of looked like the different sections of clothing were then sorted by color.

  “Wow,” Emma said.

 
“You haven’t seen this before?” Natalia asked. She was still frowning about Zoe’s criticism of her wardrobe, and her tone was a little grouchy. “Doesn’t it make her look just a little bit crazy?”

  “I like being able to find anything as soon as I want it,” Zoe said calmly. “Anyway, my mom bought me this dress and I never wore it. It’s nice, but it didn’t feel like me. I think it feels like you.”

  Zoe pulled a dress out of her closet. It was soft and knee-length, with thick blue-and-white stripes, and pockets in the front. Emma could imagine herself starting school in it tomorrow.

  She hesitated. The dress was perfect, but she didn’t want to hurt Natalia’s feelings.

  “Oh, go ahead and take it,” Natalia said. “I know you want to. And Zoe’s right, it’ll look nice on you.”

  “Thanks,” she said to Zoe. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.” Zoe shrugged. “It matches your eyes; it’s meant to be yours.”

  “It’s cute,” Natalia said reluctantly. “Kind of preppy maybe, but less boring than most of the stuff in Zoe’s closet.”

  Emma hugged the dress to her, feeling lighter and happier. Maybe she was living out of a suitcase still, but at least she had something new for tomorrow. And it seemed like the twins weren’t annoyed with each other anymore.

  The front door banged, and Emma heard her mother and Aunt Alison’s voices downstairs.

  “Girls!” her mother called. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Go where?” Emma asked.

  Natalia grimaced apologetically. “Oh, shoot, we forgot to tell you. They called while you were in the shower to see if we wanted to go check out what they’ve done to Seaview House.”

  “Great!” Maybe this meant that they were a lot closer to moving in than Emma had thought. With any luck, she wouldn’t be living out of a suitcase for much longer.

  Seaview House was a mess. There was no furniture in the downstairs rooms, and the floor was gritty with tracked-in dirt. A hole gaped in one wall, showing a tangle of pipes.

  “I thought the construction was going to be almost done by now,” Emma said, feeling faint. What were they doing to Seaview House?

  “Where’s all the furniture?” Natalia asked, looking around. Zoe said nothing, running her fingers over a windowsill and then scowling at the plaster dust now coating her fingers.

  “It is almost done,” Emma’s mom told her. “Once the bedrooms down here are finished and it’s painted, and the new kitchen is in, we’ll furnish the rooms.”

  All three girls looked around doubtfully, and Aunt Alison laughed. “You’ll see that all this chaos will have been worth it when it’s done. There’s even one room down here that’s already finished.” She turned down a short hall and opened a door that Emma remembered as leading into a musty-smelling dark-paneled study that no one had used much since Grandad Stephenson had died, way back when Emma was little.

  Emma gasped. The room had been totally transformed. It was bright and airy now, the dark paneling gone, the walls white and blue instead. Flowered curtains hung at the windows, and the furniture was familiar—a big bed made of dark wood with high posts on each corner and a matching chest of drawers, a dainty dressing table, and a small secretary desk with a top that folded down.

  Zoe looked around. “This is stuff from Grandma Stephenson’s bedroom,” she said. “What’s it doing down here?”

  “This is going to be her new room,” Aunt Alison said. “It’ll be hard for her to get upstairs to her old room, so this is all fixed up for her.”

  The girls exchanged glances. The room was nice, but it seemed so final to change Grandma’s room.

  Natalia asked what they were all thinking. “So, Grandma isn’t going to get better enough to go back to her old room upstairs?”

  “Well,” Aunt Alison said, “it’ll be easier for her to get around every day if she’s on the ground floor. It takes her a while to climb stairs.”

  Emma looked around. The windows of Grandma Stephenson’s new bedroom looked out onto the terraced garden. When they were open, the scents of the flowers and the bay would blow right in. “It’s a nice room,” she said. “Has Grandma seen it? She’ll like being right over the garden.”

  Her mother slung her arm around Emma’s shoulders. “Of course she’s seen it,” she said with a smile. “Who do you think told us how she wanted all the furniture arranged?”

  “Come on upstairs,” Aunt Alison said. “We have more to show you.”

  “Onward with the tour!” Emma’s mom said.

  Upstairs, it was more of the same—new bathrooms being put in, pipes sticking out of the walls in some of them, the sharp smell of paint and the grit of plaster dust everywhere.

  This isn’t going to be finished for ages, Emma thought glumly.

  Emma’s mom wiggled her eyebrows at Emma. “Want to see your room next?”

  My room? When Emma had stayed with Grandma during visits, she’d slept in a guest room that they’d already passed: It had had its worn pink wallpaper scraped off, and looked just like all the other half-finished rooms.

  “We thought we’d have more privacy if we lived at the top of the house,” her mom explained. She pushed on an almost invisible door. It had been covered with wallpaper to match the hallway exactly. Emma’s mom led them up the hidden staircase that ran from the basement to the attic, with narrow landings outside the entrance to each floor.

  The secret staircase hadn’t changed at all, Emma saw with relief. It was narrow and dark and beautifully familiar. When they were seven, she and Natalia and Zoe had spent most of one Christmas afternoon racing their new dolls down the stairs on sleds made of cardboard. It had been very satisfying to see them zoom down from one landing to the next.

  Natalia and Zoe ran ahead up the stairs, their mom hurrying after them, but Emma lingered a little, enjoying the secret stairs. They were musty and creaky and a little bit spooky, but in a good way.

  Emma’s mom stayed with her, linking their arms together, and Emma leaned against her. “How are you doing?” Emma’s mom asked. “I’ve been so busy that it feels like we haven’t really talked for a while. Are you okay at your aunt and uncle’s house? Are you excited about school tomorrow?”

  Emma thought about it. She wasn’t really excited about school, or she was, but there was a deep anxious pit in her stomach whenever she thought about it. And living at Natalia and Zoe’s family’s house was fine, but she missed her mom and dad.

  “Nothing’s really wrong,” she said slowly. “It’s just hard because it’s different, you know?”

  Her dad never cooked at the restaurant on the night before school started; that was a night for him and Emma. If they were back in Seattle, she knew, her dad would be taking her out tonight for their special father-daughter back-to-school pizza night. They’d go to the pizza parlor downtown that had huge, greasy pies and share one with pineapple, olives, and mushrooms on it, which they both liked and her mom thought was a disgusting combination.

  And when they got home, her mom would make them all cocoa and they would slump down on the couch together and watch something funny and dumb on TV until Emma was full and laughing and didn’t have any room inside to worry about the next day.

  But tonight she’d be here, and her dad was back in Seattle for at least another week. Emma wondered what Zoe and Natalia’s family did the night before school started.

  “I mean, everybody’s being really nice to me,” she told her mom. It was true, even if Zoe and Natalia weren’t always nice to each other. “I don’t want you to think I’m not happy to be here.”

  “Oh, Emma,” her mom said, squeezing her arm affectionately. “Please don’t worry about the fact that you’re worrying. It’s natural to be nervous about a new school. But Natalia and Zoe will help you, and pretty soon it’ll feel like you’ve always been here.”

  “I guess so,” Emma said. She decided not to mention that Zoe and Natalia might not both stick with her at school, not if they didn’t stick tog
ether with each other. Instead, she turned the corners of her mouth up in a smile. “I think I’m all set for school,” she said, making sure she sounded cheerful. “Zoe and Natalia helped me pick out the perfect outfit.”

  “Good. And remember, I’m only a phone call away.” Her mom squeezed her arm again and looked up to the top of the stairs, where Natalia was bouncing impatiently on the attic landing.

  “Emma, hurry up,” she called. “My mom won’t let us go in ahead of you. She says it’s your new place, so we have to wait.”

  When Emma and her mom pushed open the hidden door to the attic, Emma had to stop for a moment and stare.

  Seaview House had a large attic. It had expanded as various new parts of the house had been built, over several generations, so now there were a couple of different big rooms. The floor wasn’t level between them and you had to step up or down as you crossed from one wing of the house to the other. The whole thing was filled with generations of put-aside stuff, from the front layer of things like Christmas ornaments and beach toys and the badminton set that got pulled out regularly to tons of old furniture to boxes labeled things like MAUDE’S WEDDING DRESS (whoever Maude was) and a ton of trunks and boxes that weren’t labeled at all. It was an amazing place to explore on a rainy day.

  Now the piles and piles of stuff had been moved so that the rambling rooms on the left side of the staircase were more crowded than ever, and on the right side of the staircase was a new white wall and a red-painted door.

  “Go on,” Emma’s mom said, smiling, when Emma hesitated, so Emma turned the knob and opened the door.

  Inside, the scratched attic floorboards had been polished so that the dark wood shone, and the walls were freshly painted white. A tiny gleaming kitchen led into a small bright living room. A half-open door showed yet another new bathroom (but finished this time, it looked like, with plumbing and everything). On the far side of the living room were two more doors, and Emma’s mom pointed to the one on the left. “That one’s going to be yours.”