The Forget-Me-Not Summer

by Leila Howland

  27. It’s Raining Cows

  In a matter of seconds the raindrops started to really come down, but Marigold was the only one who seemed to care. She ducked against the rain and shoved her Night Sprites book deep into her purse. These people are nuts, she thought, noticing that almost all of them were laughing as they collected the trash and loaded their arms with beach chairs, towels, pots of seafood, and baskets of rolls. They were smiling as they covered their plates with other plates and shoved their sodas into their beach bags and started to climb back over the dune. As if this were normal! As if it were cool to be stuck on the beach in the rain! As if her leather bag weren’t going to be ruined—the second purse in less than a week! Not to mention her brand-new gladiator sandals!

  “Come on,” Marigold said. She rolled up their towel and took Lily’s hand. She stood up and looked for Zinnie, who would be easy to spot because her hair became so wild and frizzy in the rain, it stood up four inches from her head. Sure enough, she found her in a second. She was helping roll up tarps and talking to a boy. “Zinnie!” Marigold called. “Come on, let’s go!”

  Zinnie and the boy stopped rolling up the tarp, turned around, and looked at Marigold. Zinnie’s eyes were wide. Oddly wide. Wide with warning. Marigold shrugged a kind of what’s-up? shrug. And then she realized who it was: Peter Pasque! The boy she’d told her name was Seraphina Snoopy! The boy who’d seen her topple backward into the water! She was about to run her hands through her hair, something she always did when she was nervous, when she felt Lily’s hairstyling creations all over her head. There was one ponytail sticking straight up on top and two more next to her ears. The back of her head was covered in braids. She knew she looked like a total freak, but there was no time to fix it.

  “Hey, Lily, I’ll race you to the car!” Marigold said, and took off. “Run fast and pretend we’re being chased by the hairy cows!”

  “You can’t catch me, hairy cows!” Lily called. Then, a few seconds later: “Marigold, wait up!”

  Marigold paused for a moment, giving Lily a chance to catch up, then grabbed her arm and sped up again, practically pulling Lily, who was breathless and giggling, over the dune. “It’s raining cows!” Lily sang, laughing in the afternoon shower.

  “And the cows are mad and they’re after us,” Marigold said, hoping to get Lily to hurry up, but instead, Lily sat down and stuck her tongue out, claiming that she was thirsty. Marigold scooped Lily into her arms and raced down the dune and dropped her sister into the backseat of Aunt Sunny’s station wagon. She hopped in front and caught her breath as Lily giggled in the back, thrilled by the downpour. Marigold had wanted to see Peter again, but not when she was soaking wet with an insane up-do! And not when she’d be forced to reveal her true identity, which was now inevitable.

  At least she hadn’t had to see him face-to-face today. Phew! She started to remove one of her braids when Lily shrieked. “No, Marigold! Don’t! Don’t take them out! It looks so beautiful, and I worked so hard!”

  Marigold’s fingers froze as she watched Lily’s face assume a precrying frown. “Okay,” Marigold said in her calmest voice. “Don’t cry.”

  “Promise you won’t touch it?” Lily asked, her lower lip trembling ominously.

  “Promise,” Marigold assured her, sinking in her seat on the chance that Peter might walk by the car. “At least not until I go to bed.”

  “Not even then,” Lily insisted as Marigold slid into a strange crouching position below window level. “You need to keep it like this the whole summer.”

  “But I won’t be able to sleep with this—” Marigold began to say, but at that very moment Zinnie opened the car door and climbed into the backseat, along with Peter Pasque.

  “I told him our real names,” Zinnie said, dripping with rain. “I had to. Aunt Sunny introduced me. I guess this was the surprise from the surprise brownies.”

  Peter grinned. “Why do you look so miserable, Marigold? Did the rain ruin your hair?”

  28. The Surprise

  “Now my shoes are destroyed,” Marigold said, trying to stay calm as she buckled her seat belt over herself and Lily, who was seated on her lap. Being cool was not easy with her hair done up in these silly braids. And to make matters worse, she had been demoted to the backseat. Aunt Sunny was giving Peter and his mother, Jean, a ride home because they had walked here. Jean, as an adult, automatically got shotgun. “Another pair ruined! The first pair—” She stopped herself.

  “You mean your wedges, Marigold?” Peter asked with a devilish grin. Marigold had never heard her name pronounced the way Peter did, Maah-ri-gold. She wasn’t at all sure that she was okay with it.

  “Peter, how do you know about wedges?” Jean asked with a laugh, turning in her seat to face him. Then she noticed the book peeking out of Marigold’s bag. “Oh, are you reading the Night Sprites series?” Jean asked.

  “Yes,” the three sisters answered at once.

  “Do you know that they’re making a movie of this?” Jean asked. “Directed by Philip Rathbone?”

  “Yes,” Marigold said. Did she know? Of course she knew! It was all she thought about. Day and night. At the town beach. In her boat bed. While eating plain yogurt at the breakfast table.

  “And I suppose you know where Philip Rathbone spends two weeks every July?”

  “No, I don’t,” Marigold said, leaning forward.

  “Right there,” Jean said, and pointed to the mansion on the hill, tapping her fingernail on the window.

  “The monstrosity!” Lily said.

  Aunt Sunny laughed and added, “The piping plover–destroying monstrosity!”

  Marigold gazed up at the mansion in awe. Zinnie had been wrong, she thought. This was the surprise from the surprise brownies. She and Zinnie locked eyes and smiled. It started to rain bullets. It started to rain so hard that a wall of water fell on the station wagon and Aunt Sunny had to pull over. But Marigold didn’t mind the pounding rain or clouds that darkened the sky. Inside her mind the sun was shining.

  29. Lights-Out

  After a dinner of granola and blueberries because they all were so stuffed from the clambake, they gathered in the living room. The rain was drumming the windows. Marigold, whose mood that afternoon had been as bright as the flower for which she was named, was sitting at Aunt Sunny’s ancient computer, practically sweating with exasperation. It had taken the stupid old thing nearly ten minutes to turn on and crank to life. Now she was attempting to get online to search for information about Philip Rathbone. Who lived—it made her giddy each time she thought it—right here in Pruet!

  She was just beginning to think it would be faster to get this information if she flew back to their home in Los Angeles, where they had Wi-Fi and computers from this century, when the Google home page finished loading. She typed in “Philip Rathbone” and “Pruet,” hoping to dig up some clues to where he spent his time in this dinky podunk town so that she could run into him. Marigold hit Search, and the computer moaned from the strain. This was going to take all night, but she was determined. She grumbled in frustration and waited. And waited. And waited. She looked at her sisters.

  Zinnie was on the sofa under the big bay window that looked out into the garden. She was reading a Night Sprites book by the light of a lamp whose slightly dusty shade was decorated with, of course, a sailboat. Zinnie leaned against the wool blanket that rested on the back of the sofa. It was the Night Sprites book that Marigold had finished last night, and she could see that Zinnie was almost at the end. She was probably reading the part that took place in the haunted forest, where Seraphina and Xiomara had only until first light of dawn to rescue the amethyst amulet, and the demon ravens were hot on their trail, so they put on a musical performance to charm them. There was a clap of thunder, and Zinnie jumped. She gasped silently and touched her heart for a moment before she caught her breath and turned the page.

  Lily was sitting on the knotty mermaid rug, gluing buttons to an old hatbox. Aunt Sunny had found the buttons i
n the attic last winter and said that she’d known they would come in handy one day, even if her more sensible self had told her to throw them out. Lily was creating a bed for Benny, the bunny, who Lily had always insisted enjoyed sleeping in boxes, especially fancy round ones covered with buttons of every conceivable shape and size: big, sturdy black buttons; tiny, pearly white buttons; triangle-shaped hot-pink buttons; and even tiger-striped buttons.

  “I’m so glad I didn’t throw those away,” Aunt Sunny said, pausing in her newspaper reading for a moment to check the progress of Lily’s project. She laid the Buzzard’s Bay Bugle on her lap and peered over her glasses to take a closer look. “That’s a nice pattern you’ve made, Lily. Benny will be so happy to have such an ornate bed.”

  Just then the rain picked up and thunder shook the house.

  “This is one heck of a low-pressure system,” Aunt Sunny said.

  “It’s like a freaky haunted house,” Marigold said as three bright veins of lightning cracked the sky.

  “The raven lord must be angry!” Zinnie said as wind rattled a window. Marigold knew that was a line she’d just read. Boom, another roll of thunder.

  “I think the hairy cows are running on the roof,” Lily said, sending everyone into a fit of laughter.

  But the laughter turned to a collective gasp as the room went totally dark.

  “Looks like we’ve lost power,” Aunt Sunny said. “Stay where you are. We don’t need any cracked skulls. I’ll grab the lanterns. They’re in the closet next to the whistle hole. Or are they above the icebox?”

  The girls heard her get up and move around the room she knew so well.

  “Where’s the whistle hole?” Marigold asked.

  “Who knows?” said Zinnie. “What’s an icebox?”

  Then all three sisters jumped as lightning illuminated the room in a flash. Marigold leaped onto the sofa next to Zinnie and surprised herself by clinging to her. It wasn’t a half second later that Lily was on the sofa too, squeezed in the middle, with an arm around each sister.

  30. By the Firelight

  “I just love a roaring fire in the middle of a storm,” Aunt Sunny said, and poked at a glowing log in the fireplace with a long metal stick. They were seated around the fireplace. Aunt Sunny was in an armchair, Zinnie and Marigold were on the rug, and Lily sat in a small rocking chair.

  Zinnie was transfixed as flames twisted into the air. Aunt Sunny had made the fire with a few of the logs that were stored under the stairs and some kindling from a brass bucket by the fireplace and an old copy of the Buzzard’s Bay Bugle. They had a fireplace back home, but it turned on by remote control. Zinnie couldn’t remember the last time they’d used it. This fire was alive and jumping, and the glow it cast on their faces made them all look a little magical. As Zinnie watched orange sparks leap up the chimney, she imagined the tiny lights were Night Sprites, dancing away from danger. She hadn’t been able to finish her chapter because the lights had gone out, and her imagination was still going.

  “This rocking chair is perfect for me,” Lily said. It was true. Her sturdy little feet touched the ground.

  “It is,” Aunt Sunny said. “Ham made it for me.”

  “But you’re too big,” Lily said, rocking a few times to demonstrate how well it suited her.

  “Yes,” Aunt Sunny said, and Zinnie saw sadness pass across Aunt Sunny’s face and settle in the corners of her mouth. Her voice softened to a near whisper. “We always thought we were going to have children.” She leaned over and poked at the fire again, even though it was going strong. It was quiet for a few moments, except for the snapping fire.

  “Do you think we should get the ice cream?” Zinnie asked. She knew there was coffee ice cream in the freezer, and Aunt Sunny had said it was one of her top five favorite things in this world. “Since it might melt anyway if the power is out?”

  “That’s a great idea,” Aunt Sunny said. Zinnie stood up, turned on her flashlight, and headed into the kitchen. “It’s in the back of the icebox. And let’s not bother with the bowls. Just four spoons,” Aunt Sunny called from the living room.

  “So if the icebox is the freezer, what’s the whistle hole?” Zinnie asked, returning to her spot on the rug with the carton of ice cream and four spoons.

  “It’s the toilet,” Aunt Sunny said with a smile. Lily giggled.

  “What?” Marigold asked.

  “Why do you call it the whistle hole?” Zinnie asked.

  “I’ll tell you. But first I need a bite of ice cream.” Zinnie handed Aunt Sunny the ice cream, and Aunt Sunny took a big spoonful before sending the carton along to Marigold. “So, back in ’78, Mr. and Mrs. William P. Winthrop, summer residents who made a vast fortune on Wall Street, decided to sail around the world.”

  “The whole world?” Lily asked.

  “That’s right,” Aunt Sunny said. “And they set out on their journey from right here in Pruet on a schooner called Elizabeth. In preparing for their trip, they’d gotten to know Ham, who had done some repairs for them. Ham could charm the pants off just about anyone, even New York millionaires. You can imagine our delight when we received a letter from South America, inviting us to join them on the journey from Greece to Germany.”

  “Did you go?” Zinnie asked, her mouth full of ice cream.

  “You bet your bippy! My father, your great-grandfather, taught me to never refuse a generous invitation. A bit of advice that I’m now passing on to you. We booked a flight and met them in Greece. What an adventure we had!”

  “But what about the whistle hole?” Lily asked.

  “Oh, yes, well, on the Elizabeth there were two heads on the deck. A head is what you call a bathroom on a boat. These heads were like little outhouses, one on the left, or port, and one on the right, or starboard. They were nothing more than four small walls and a hole that dropped right into the sea.”

  “You went to the bathroom . . . in a hole?” Marigold asked, so disgusted that she passed the ice cream along without taking a bite.

  “Yes,” Aunt Sunny said. “And the air made a racket in there.” She made whistling sounds.

  “The whistle hole!” Lily said, satisfied.

  “Was it . . . cold to sit on it?” Zinnie asked.

  “I’d say it was invigorating,” Aunt Sunny answered. “Anyway, we started calling it the whistle hole, and we kept it up when we returned.”

  “Um, okay, anyway. Aunt Sunny, do you know where Philip Rathbone hangs out?” Marigold asked.

  “Are you still thinking of auditioning for that terrible man?” Aunt Sunny asked. “After what I told you about the endangered piping plovers?”

  “Um, I feel really, really bad about the birds, but this movie is going to be huge,” Marigold said. “It could change my life.”

  “And the books are awesome,” Zinnie added. She didn’t want Aunt Sunny to think poorly of Marigold. This really had been Marigold’s dream, before she’d even known that piping plovers existed.

  “Well, I suppose being in a movie would be an adventure,” Aunt Sunny said.

  “Do you think you could give me just one little teensy tiny clue where I might run into him?” Marigold asked.

  “You should talk to Jean,” Aunt Sunny said.

  “Peter’s mom?” Lily asked.

  “Yep,” Aunt Sunny said. “Her husband, Mack, manages the yacht club and she manages the casino, and they might as well be the mayors of Pruet.”

  “A casino? Like Las Vegas?” Marigold asked.

  “No, no. Unless you count bingo on senior night.” She laughed a little. “‘Casino’ is an old word. It used to mean social hall or community center, and around here it still does. It’s where they hold town meetings and have the summer dances. Stuff like that. Back in the old days they even had plays there. Professional companies would come up from New York.

  “And there’s a dance there every summer after the junior sailing team races. You girls will be able to go this year if you like,” Aunt Sunny said. She scraped the last
bit of ice cream from the bottom of the carton and looked at Marigold. “So that’s my advice. Talk to Jean. But I can’t have anything to do with that man, and I wouldn’t tell him that you know me.”

  And with that, the lights came back on.

  31. A Flash of Brilliance

  The idea came to Zinnie after she’d been lying in bed for what felt like hours. The rain had stopped, and the smell of wet grass drifted in the open window. She could hear the ocean in the distance and crickets right outside and a mosquito somewhere in the room. But once the idea hit, she could see and hear only it. She leaped out of bed as quickly as those sparks from the fire had leaped up the chimney.

  “Marigold, wake up,” she said, and ran to her sister’s bedside.

  “I’m not asleep,” Marigold said.

  “We should put on a play,” Zinnie said. “We should put on a play at the casino and invite Mr. Rathbone to see it.” Marigold sat up. She was very, very still, but Zinnie could tell that she was listening. Her eyes were still focused, and she didn’t appear to be breathing. “I mean, I don’t know exactly what the play will be. And I don’t know exactly how we’ll get him to come see it. And I don’t know exactly when we’ll do it. But I think . . . I think . . . it could work.”

  “Zinnie,” Marigold said, standing up and taking her sister by the shoulders, “you’re a genius. How did you think of this?”

  “I don’t know,” Zinnie said. It had come to her as suddenly as that rain shower at the beach. And then she realized. “I know! The idea came from Night Sprites—when Xiomara and Seraphina put on that musical performance, and it totally charms the demon ravens. We’ll charm Mr. Rathbone!”