The Brightest Stars of Summer

by Leila Howland

  “I know what you mean,” Zinnie said. “I don’t like dressing up either.”

  “But you just said you liked dresses,” Max said, confused.

  “But I didn’t really mean that,” Zinnie said. “I meant—” She started to protest more, but stopped when she could feel that she was just making the situation worse. She usually didn’t like wearing dresses. This one had been a total exception. As Max bent his head to tune his guitar, Zinnie looked to Marigold to back her up, but Marigold pointed to her sealed lips. Zinnie had told her not to talk to Max, but she didn’t mean now, when Marigold could have helped her out.

  “Then why’d you say it?” Max asked with curiosity.

  “I don’t know,” Zinnie said, shaking her head.

  “Man, girls are so complicated,” Max said, and he looked longingly at Marigold. “Well, not all girls. Marigold, do you have any requests? I can play a lot of songs.” Marigold shook her head no. Max started to pluck a tune on his guitar and began to sing.

  “There is a very shy girl I know, hey, hey, hey. She doesn’t like attention, but I can tell she has a lot to say,” Max sang. “She doesn’t care about dresses or makeup or what her hair looks like at all. She’s from a big city, but she’s a country girl in spite of it all.”

  Oh my goodness, he’s singing about Marigold, Zinnie thought. She watched Marigold pause in her laundry hanging and blush.

  “Okay, so I rhymed ‘all’ with ‘all,’ but, hey, I’m making this up as I go along!” Max said playfully as Marigold hung the last of the napkins.

  A shy girl? Zinnie thought. A girl who doesn’t care about makeup and stuff? Please! Zinnie wanted to put an end to the madness and yell, “This isn’t true,” but she sensed that Max was set on liking Marigold no matter what.

  It wasn’t every day that Zinnie came across someone as fun and creative as Max. The fact that it was a boy who was her imaginative equal both didn’t matter at all (a fun friend is a fun friend!) and mattered a ton (this was Zinnie’s first boy-who-is-a-friend or possibly boyfriend). Why did Marigold have to interfere?

  Tony’s pickup truck rumbled down the driveway.

  “Hi there, girls!” Tony called as he parked. He smiled and waved. If he was up to something suspicious, he was a really good actor. “And hello, Max!”

  “Hi, Grandpa!” Max said, strumming his guitar.

  “Hi, Tony,” Zinnie said as she and Marigold exchanged a quick look. “I was wondering, do you know how to fix up cars?”

  “I sure wish I did know how, but cars aren’t really my thing.”

  “What about boats?” Zinnie asked. “Do you like to fix up boats?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Tony said. “You’re not going to believe this given where I live, but I’m not much of a sailor. More of a landlubber.”

  “Interesting,” Zinnie said, pinching Marigold.

  “Are you looking for a new mode of transportation?” Tony asked. “I could build you a skateboard if you like.”

  “Grandpa built one for me this fall,” Max said. “I painted it black and red. It’s so cool.”

  “No, thank you,” Zinnie said. “I’m just trying to learn more about my new great-uncle.”

  “Well, I’m an open book. So if you have any questions, just ask. Are you ready to get to work, Max?” Tony asked, pulling his own guitar out of the backseat. “And by work I mean play a little rock and roll.”

  “Yup, I’m coming, Grandpa!” Max turned back to Zinnie and Marigold, flashed one of his sunbeam smiles, and said “I’ll see you later.”

  “See you later,” Zinnie said. Even though she had a story to write and a mystery to get to the bottom of, for the moment all she could think about was Max, and the way his smile made something inside her melt like ice cream in the sun.

  28 • Hidden Words

  “I just can’t seem to put it together,” Zinnie said to Ashley a couple of days later. She hadn’t seen her friend in a few days because Aunt Sunny had kept the sisters busy with wedding preparations. It had been a blast to pick blackberries for the cake at Davis Farms and see the animals there, too. And taste testing lemonade recipes was fun, but Zinnie was glad to be back at the town beach, hanging out at the snack bar. “Tony is up to something.”

  Marigold was sure that nothing fishy was happening with Tony, and it didn’t bother her that he clearly wasn’t fixing up a car or a boat. She said Zinnie had probably misheard him on the phone. Zinnie wasn’t convinced.

  “Why do you think that?” Ashley asked as she handed Zinnie an ice pop.

  Zinnie told her what she’d heard him say. “He wasn’t talking about a car or a boat. Something isn’t right.”

  “Look, my parents know Tony,” Ashley said. “Everyone knows Tony. Before you make any accusations, you need more information. You don’t want to cause any unnecessary drama.”

  “Anyway, you need to focus on your story so you can get into that writing class of yours,” Ashley said.

  “You’re right,” Zinnie said. She could feel her worry line forming on her forehead as she furrowed her brow. “I can’t think of anything! But I have to write that story soon or I won’t have a chance of getting in, and then I’ll have to do sports, which I hate. . . .”

  “Hey, don’t freak out,” Ashley said, taking her by the shoulders. “You still have a little time, right?” Zinnie nodded. “We’ll think of something. Hey! How about my original idea for a thriller—the Lighthouse of Fear!”

  “My teacher did suggest that I go someplace I’ve never been before and describe it using all five senses. . . .”

  “Okay, I’ll take ya,” Ashley said. “Meet me here in the morning. And make sure to bring garlic.”

  “Garlic?”

  “My nana says it keeps away the bad spirits,” Ashley said.

  “All right,” Zinnie said. “Whatever you say.”

  Zinnie returned to her towel and pulled out her notebook. Her pen was out of ink, so she looked in Marigold’s bag. There was that iPad. Only it was wrapped in a T-shirt, like Marigold didn’t want Zinnie to see it. Mrs. Lee’s words came back to Zinnie: “Be a detective!”

  Zinnie eyed Marigold swimming her laps and then opened the iPad. She was surprised to find a password. Her mother had specifically asked—or, fine, encouraged—Marigold to share the iPad even though it was hers. A password did not seem to be in the spirit of sharing. Zinnie knew that a password should keep her from going any further down this road, but Mrs. Lee’s words seemed to be telling her to press on and find the story.

  Zinnie typed in Marigold’s birthday. It didn’t work. She typed in their phone number back in Los Angeles. Didn’t work. She tried the number of their home address. Nope. Then she thought of a number that Marigold had been obsessed with all year: 0701. The day the Night Sprites movie came out. She tapped the numbers and, presto, the iPad came to life. I really should be a detective, Zinnie thought, and then noticed that the screen had opened to what looked like a diary. Zinnie’s breath caught in her throat and she checked to see that Marigold was still busy swimming.

  I shouldn’t be doing this, Zinnie thought. She was about to close the iPad when she saw her name. If I’m going to be ordinary, I need to be more like Zinnie, it read. I can’t go that far. Ugh. Zinnie’s heart thumped in her chest. So that was why Marigold was borrowing her clothes! It wasn’t because she was going casual or because she admired Zinnie’s style. Zinnie didn’t feel so bad about invading her sister’s privacy anymore. But then it got worse. She read these lines: Poor Zinnie. I worry that she won’t even find a boyfriend because she really is such a spaz.

  Was this true? Was Marigold right? Something was waking up in Zinnie’s stomach. Only it wasn’t butterflies, it was anger. Zinnie felt her face flush right up to her hairline. Her breath became shallow, and she could hear the air whirring in her ears and the steady thump of her pulse. Could her own sister really have written such mean things about her? Sisters were supposed to have each other’s back, not stab them there.


  Her rage began to transform into an idea. Mrs. Lee had said that good stories always have a transformation in them. Here was a transformation. Marigold was trying to transform from her regular, glamorous self into someone who was ordinary.

  This wouldn’t just make an okay story, Zinnie thought. It would make a great story. It was the opposite of most transformation tales, in which an ordinary girl learns that she’s a princess, or a losing team tries very hard and practices all the time and then becomes the best team, like in some of Dad’s favorite sports movies. Instead it was the reverse. A girl who is so beautiful and special tries to be ordinary. And just as Mrs. Lee had promised, the story was right under her nose. The best part was, she wasn’t going to have to use her imagination that much. She could just watch Marigold and write what she saw. Relief cooled her anger at her sister. The deadline was just days away, and at last she knew what to write.

  29 • A Writer Writes

  Later, as Marigold was turning the seed packets into place cards at the kitchen table and Tony’s band was rehearsing in the yard, Zinnie went into her writing room with a glass of Aunt Sunny’s iced tea and a scone and shut the door.

  Just to be extra sure that she wouldn’t be interrupted, Zinnie used the hook-and-eye device to lock the door. Then she opened her laptop and started to type the story of an extraordinary girl who wanted to be ordinary. The words flowed. It was easy to describe her sister’s extraordinariness in great detail. After all, Zinnie had been observing her for her whole life.

  Sounds of Tony’s band playing “Here Comes the Sun” drifted in the window as Zinnie tried to capture Marigold on the page. There was her legendary sense of style, her bright blue eyes, her ladylike hands with long fingers and colorful nails. And, of course, her hair! From her the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed to her high-pitched sneezes to the way she leaned just a tiny bit to the left when standing still, Zinnie described how the little things Marigold did came together like notes of music in a great song, the kind that makes you want to sing in the car.

  After Zinnie felt she’d painted a portrait of her sister so that the reader could see her in her mind’s eye, she experimented with different names: Skylar, Esme, and Zora. Isabelle, Annabel, and Lulu. Sarah, Katie, and Jane. Each one took Zinnie too far away from her sister. She decided to name her character Marianna. It was close enough to keep her source of inspiration bright and alive as she wrote, but different enough so that she felt free to take some liberties.

  Taking a sip of iced tea and a bite of the scone, Zinnie wrote about “Marianna’s” journey over the past few weeks. She was careful to change the major details. She imagined that Marianna, instead of being an actress cut from a movie, was a talented but somewhat stuck-up ballerina who also happened to have a great love of fashion. The ballerina was cut from a performance when an understudy proved to be just a little bit better. Zinnie described Marianna’s longing to forget about ballet and the stage. She was tempted to skip the part about Marianna chopping off her hair, but it worked so well with ballet—because didn’t all ballerinas have long hair that they twisted into buns? Yes, she was sure they did. She had to keep that detail.

  Zinnie wrote about Marianna’s trip from L.A. to a small town in Rhode Island. Marianna was traveling to a much older cousin’s wedding. (What else could it be besides a wedding? Zinnie wasn’t going to write about a funeral!) She described Marianna’s plans to hide her grace and brilliance in order to complete her transformation. Then she wrote about Marianna’s reuniting with her boyfriend from last summer, “Pedro,” who she was hoping to dance with at this wedding, and how he rejected her. Instead of making Pedro a sailor, Zinnie made him a surfer. They had surfing here, right? Of course they did. She’d seen surfboards on top of cars in Pruet.

  She wrote about another boy, “Lawrence.” “Lawrence” was the last name of the boy they called Laurie, Jo’s boy-who-was-a-friend in Little Women, and Zinnie thought her character’s name was a brilliant literary allusion. (She had only learned about allusions this spring, and here she was, already using one!) Laurie loved to play Jo’s games, just as Max did Zinnie’s. The Lawrence in Zinnie’s story was falling for Marianna but for all the wrong reasons. He was in love with the personality she was creating, not the person that she was. Zinnie tried to think of something that Lawrence could do to show that he liked Marianna besides singing to her, but since Zinnie had witnessed such a scene so recently, it seemed to find its way onto the page practically on its own.

  Zinnie had to type quickly to keep up with her ideas. Her mind was buzzing as her fingers flew across the keyboard. When she finally took a break and looked up from the screen, she saw that the sun had lowered in the sky and Tony’s band was packing up. She checked the clock on her computer and realized that she only had a half hour left before they had to pick up Lily from camp. She couldn’t believe it. She had been writing for almost two hours and fifteen minutes straight—that was three class periods—and she’d barely noticed. As her imagination waned from a rapid boil to a simmer, she was both energized and slightly exhausted. It was a great feeling.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom, and a brief stop at the fridge for a green apple, Zinnie read over her last paragraph:

  Marianna was wearing her ordinariness like a mask. As sweet Lawrence sang to her, she touched her hair with nervous hands, forgetting for a minute that it was too short for twirling. She liked being sung to, and yet none of the words rang true. How long could she keep her extraordinariness hidden? How long can someone not be herself before she gets tired? Or, she wondered with fright, was she even still extraordinary at all?

  It’s good! Zinnie thought. I wrote something real and it’s good!

  She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She had done it. She had written a story that she was certain gave her a shot at getting into the Writers’ Workshop—and with time to spare before deadline! There was only one problem. It didn’t have an ending. Did Marianna rediscover her greatness and find a way to get back into the ballet? Or did she lose her extraordinariness altogether? And what about the story line about the two boys? Which one of them was she going to dance with at the wedding?

  Zinnie usually liked to give her stories happy endings, but she had noticed that most of the stories in Muses didn’t have happy endings. Some of them didn’t seem to have endings at all. She also thought of Marigold’s comments about her being a spaz, and how she wondered whether or not Zinnie would ever get a boyfriend. Zinnie came to the conclusion that a happy ending was not necessarily in order. She wished that she had more time before the deadline for the Writers’ Workshop so that she could see how the story finished in real life at Aunt Sunny’s wedding, but she had to email this to Mrs. Lee before then.

  “Time to pick up Lily,” Marigold said from the doorway. Zinnie jumped a little in her chair and slammed her laptop shut. She had forgotten to lock the door again after going to the bathroom. “Jeez,” Marigold said. “You’re jumpy. Did you finish your story?”

  “Uh . . . almost,” Zinnie said, spinning in the office chair to face Marigold. “I just need to think of an ending.” After writing about her all afternoon, Zinnie noticed that Marigold appeared different somehow.

  “Do I have something on my face?” Marigold asked, wiping her mouth and then smiling so that Zinnie could see her teeth. “Is my tongue blue? I just ate a Popsicle.”

  “No,” Zinnie said, studying Marigold’s expressions so that she could maybe add another detail to her story later.

  “Okay!” Marigold said, placing a hand on her hip. Zinnie also noted that Marigold’s left foot was pointed out a bit. “You’re looking at me like I’m from another planet or something.”

  “Sorry,” Zinnie said, shaking her head. “I’m just thinking about my story.”

  “You’re not writing about me, are you?” Marigold asked.

  “No! No way. I’m writing about . . . time travel.”

  “Oh, okay,” Marigold said, and walked out of the office
. As Zinnie followed her through the kitchen and out the back door into the breezy July afternoon, she felt relief that Marigold had bought the lie. But she could also feel the lie itself, crawling across her heart like a caterpillar.

  30 • Flashlight Tag

  “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine . . . ,” Zinnie called from the stone archway in the pear orchard. “Sixty!”

  Marigold lay under the bench with the stone angel sitting on it. She was hiding from Zinnie, who was “it” in this fifth and final round of flashlight tag. Aunt Sunny, who was drinking coffee with the other grown-ups on the picnic blanket, had told them one more game and then it was time for bed. Marigold had a great hiding spot. Under the big tree near the driveway, the bench was still within bounds but far from the stone archway, which was “it jail,” the place where, once they’d had been tagged, they had to sit and wait for the last person to be found.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” Zinnie called.

  Marigold grinned as she watched the beam of Zinnie’s flashlight illuminate the vegetable garden in the opposite direction. She was pretty sure she was going to be crowned the evening’s ultimate flashlight tag winner. The reward was the last remaining snickerdoodle cookie.

  But that wasn’t the only reason Marigold was smiling. Peter was visiting tonight, and he was hiding—she guessed from the way he’d darted off to the right—behind the shed. He, Jean, and Mack had stopped by to bring Sunny a bunch of candles that were left over from their Christmas party. They thought Aunt Sunny could use them for the wedding reception. Aunt Sunny had accepted the gift and insisted that they stay for dinner.

  “I’ve made enough spaghetti for a small army!” Aunt Sunny said. Tony, Max, and Max’s parents, Paul and Cindy, were all there for dinner, too.

  “I’m in the army, so I can say it’s true—Sunny cooked enough food for my whole batallion. And I made tons of meatballs,” Paul said, squeezing Max’s shoulder. Marigold knew that Max’s dad was in the army, and he looked it, too. He had muscles and very short hair. He also had one of the biggest, warmest smiles Marigold had ever seen. It was clear that Max got his smile from him. Max’s hair, on the other hand, came from his mom, who was petite, with the same shade of light-brown hair as Max.