by Diane Farr
In the parlor, the coffee table lay on its side. Check. The carpet was all rucked up. Check. Furniture askew. Pillows on the floor. Knick-knacks scattered where they fell. Check, check, check. In the dining room, one of the chairs had been knocked over and the portrait of Grammy Norland was crooked (from the force of me hitting the wall).
In other words, lots of evidence of a violent confrontation. No blood, she was relieved to note. But major roughness had gone down.
Clues as to my present whereabouts? None whatsoever.
She read my text and listened to my voicemail message four times. No clues. Called my phone and heard it ring inside the house.
And that, as she later explained, was what sent her running to Norland’s Nursery after all. I can’t really blame her. She had to do something. At least she didn’t call 911.
But that’s why, when I walked through the door, I walked in on a totally freaked-out Nonny. Arguing with Meg over whether or not they should call the cops. It sounded like they had been arguing about it for a while, in fact.
Nonny is terrified of anyone remotely connected to law enforcement, so the fact that she was arguing for calling the cops is rather touching.
“Don’t call the cops,” I said.
There was a brief moment of stunned silence. Then they tackled me, screaming. With joy and relief, I should say.
Mostly.
Nonny did, finally, shake me a little bit. It was mostly a grab and a hug, but a little bit of a shake, too. “Where were you? I nearly died of fright.”
“Um,” I said. “The vegetable garden.”
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “You were not in the vegetable garden.”
“Just now, I was.” I had skatched there from the gym, to scope out the house before entering. Lance’s lessons were not totally wasted.
“But honey, what happened?” Nonny hauled me into the dining room and cranked up the chandelier. At full strength, it’s the brightest light in the house. “Are you all right?”
I stretched out my arms. “Not a scratch on me,” I assured her. “I’m fine. Just a little shook up.”
She rushed forward, frowning. “There are, too, scratches. What did that awful boy do? I knew, the minute I saw him—” She bit off whatever she had been about to say. “Meg said he was beating you.”
I looked down. She was right; my altercation with Lance had left traces. “He didn’t beat me. Come on.” My eyes met Meg’s over Nonny’s head, which was bent over the worst of the scratches. Meg looked annoyed at me for contradicting her. “Okay. When she saw us, it probably looked like he was beating me,” I conceded. “But he didn’t beat me in the end. I won.”
Nonny started shooing me toward the downstairs bathroom. “That’s not what Megan meant, and you know it. Get in here and let me baby you.”
My skin looks and feels delicate, but it’s actually as tough as leather. I used to bounce back from the most horrific falls when I was a child, without so much as a skinned knee. Nonny hasn’t had too many chances to dab me with Neosporin and fuss over me. So I let her.
Meg hung out in the doorway and watched. She wasn’t saying much. She didn’t look good, to tell you the truth. Today had probably been almost as hard on her as it had been on me, and nobody was making a fuss over her and trying to make her feel better.
Resolved: I will make a fuss over Meg. And I will make her feel better.
Nonny, meanwhile, was in full caretaking mode. As soon as she was done anointing my hurts, such as they were, she headed for the kitchen to bake cookies. And brew tea, of course. It comforts her, to bake and sew and stuff like that. Especially in times of crisis. Especially a crisis that involves almost losing me. (We’ve had a few of those, over the years.) Anyhow, there was no point in trying for dinner. We were way past dinner. Cookies, on the other hand, are good at any hour.
She paused in the act of pushing the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen, and looked back at us. Meg and I had trailed after her as far as the dining room. Nonny had an odd, happy/sad expression on her face. “Someday, some boy is going to take you away from me,” she said.
“Not this year,” I said solemnly.
“Good.” And she disappeared into the kitchen. Humming, yet.
I looked at Meg. Meg pointed at her own ear and rotated her index finger in a little circle. It’s something we learned from watching old Warner Brothers cartoons. “Yeah,” I said. “Screwy.”
We wandered out to the porch. Sunset was long gone, and the air was blessedly cool. Meg dropped into one of the wicker chairs. Foonf. And sighed.
I curled up on the swing. The day suddenly caught up with me, and I felt drained. We sat there for about a minute, breathing the fragrance of Nonny’s gardenias on a summer evening. When Meg spoke, her voice was soft.
“So tell me. What really happened?”
Silence fell again while I struggled to find an answer. It would help, for example, if I were a little clearer myself on what had really happened. But also, my newborn spellspinner instincts were whispering, don’t tell, don’t tell. And I honestly didn’t know how much I should heed that inner voice. Or if I should totally ignore it and tell Meg everything, the way I always had.
Finally I shook my head. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“You said I was right about your birthday. Start there.”
So I did.
I left a lot of stuff out, but it still took a long time. We ate all of Nonny’s cookies, and almost fell asleep right there on the porch, and by midnight we still weren’t done. So Meg spent the night, just like the night before my faux sixteenth birthday. Which seemed like years ago.
It’s great to have my best friend back.
Meg borrowed a nightie and collapsed. She fell on the trundle bed the way she sits—foonf. Like her strings have been cut. But she managed, as always, to land squarely in the middle of the pillow. I had to laugh.
She didn’t move. “Whasso funny?”
“Go to sleep.” I hit the light switch and went to bed, still smiling. The moonlight poured through my open window, spilling silver light across my quilt. A breeze rustled in the peach tree and teased the curtains, bringing the fragrance of the night into my room.
I do love summer.
It was easier to say this, somehow, right before going to sleep. “Meg.”
“Mm?”
“You’re a peach.”
It wasn’t exactly a flowery speech, but I meant every word of it. Besides, sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
Trust me, Meg understood. I rolled over to the edge of my bed and peeked down at her. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling.
I snuggled back into my pillows. “I think it’s pretty amazing that you’re still my best friend. After I banished your boyfriend. Or whatever he was.”
She gave a snort that might have been a laugh. “Oh well,” she said. “Easy come, easy go.” I heard her roll over on her back. Her voice became momentarily clearer. “The thing is, I should have known he was a spellspinner.” She sounded disgusted with herself.
“Oh, come on. How could you have known? It’s freaking me out, by the way, to hear that word in your voice. Just so you know.”
“I mean I should have known that Lance was whatever kind of thing you are. Duh! Obviously what attracted me in the first place was that he reminded me of my best friend.” She was heading into Scientist Mode now. I could hear it in her voice. If I didn’t nip it in the bud, she would soon be wide awake and in the middle of a lecture. “This is a fairly common phenomenon. It’s why some girls get crushes on their friends’ brothers—”
I made a gagging sound and threw one of my pillows at her. “I will never have a crush on Donald. Get over it. Both of you.”
“Hey! I’m just saying.”
Silence fell. It was a wonderful, companionable, comfortable silence. I luxuriated in it, watching the moon glide slowly across the sky. I dozed, thinking Meg was asleep, but then I heard her mutter agains
t her pillow. “Zara?”
“Yo.”
“You’re not telling me everything. Are you.” It wasn’t really a question.
I came wide awake then.
For some stupid reason, tears prickled against the back of my eyelids. She was right.
I had changed.
“I don’t want to have secrets from you,” I whispered. “Not ever.”
“You will, though.” I heard her flip her pillow over, changing to the cool side. She sounded incredibly sleepy. “It’s okay, Zara. I’ll probably have secrets from you, too. Can’t stay twelve forever.”
I thought about it. “We didn’t know each other when we were twelve.”
“Whatever.”
She promptly went to sleep. Or so I thought.
Five minutes later, she mumbled again. “Zara.”
“I can’t believe you’re still awake.”
“‘M’not.” Her mouth was mashed against the pillow, so her voice was muffled. “M’just warning you. When I wake up? I won’t remember half the stuff you told me tonight.”
I smiled at the moon. The moon smiled back.
“In the morning,” I promised Meg, “that half won’t matter.”
…
…
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Table of Contents
© 2010 by Diane Farr Golling
Books by this author:
Dedication
Acknowledgements
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