Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley

by Stephanie Greene

  Alice grabbed Sophie’s arm with her wet hands and squeezed.

  “Ow!” Sophie cried, yanking her arm away. “What was that for?”

  “That’s how tight it was.” Alice’s face was fierce. “It cut off my circulation. I’m lucky I didn’t die.”

  “Die from what?“Jenna came out of a stall and stood next to them. Sophie and Alice exchanged a meaningful glance.

  “I don’t know…” Sophie said to Alice. “Do we want to tell one of them?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Alice.

  “One of them?” Jenna said, looking back and forth between them in the mirror. “Who’s them?”

  Sophie and Alice exchanged another heavy look.

  “Destiny and those girls,” Sophie told her.

  “I’m not one of them,” said Jenna.

  “Then why are you growing a ponytail?”

  “Destiny wanted us all to have one because we’re a team,” Jenna said. “I cut mine off last night, so she’s mad at me. I’m sick of her having to be the boss all the time.”

  Sophie had never seen anything more comforting than the sight of Jenna’s familiar, jagged hair. Still, she had to make sure.

  “Then who are you one of?” Sophie said.

  “One of us.”

  “Us? Who’s us?”

  It felt as if they were spies, speaking in code. All those “thems” and “us’s” and short sentences meaning complicated things. Sophie wished they could speed it up a bit.

  Jenna must have felt the same way. “You and me and Alice!” she said impatiently, making a little circling motion with her hand.

  “You mean you like it better when you and me fight and Alice makes us stop?” Sophie said.

  “Of course.”

  “Me, too,” said Alice.

  “Me, three,” said Sophie.

  They went out into the hall.

  “So what were you talking about?” Jenna said.

  Alice told her.

  “I hate those things,” Jenna said. “I tried on a tank top that had one built into it. I called it the tank top of doom.”

  Sophie stopped. “You wore one without telling us?”

  Jenna stopped, too. “I tried it on in the store for about two minutes. Destiny and some of the other girls were bragging about wearing them.”

  “You still should have told us.”

  “I would have, but I wasn’t invited to your sleepover. I can’t believe you had one without me.”

  “You can’t spend the night during lacrosse.”

  “You still should have invited me.”

  “You two, don’t fight,” Alice said happily. “Tell Jenna about Jiggles, Sophie.”

  Sophie did.

  It got them laughing so hard that the reading specialist came out of her office to find out what the commotion was about and threatened to send them to the principal.

  “Can you imagine having to tell Mr. Potter about chests?” Alice whispered, clinging to Sophie andJenna as they fled down the hall.

  “When it’s just the three of us, we’re going to call them boobs,” Sophie told Jenna as they slid into their seats.

  That round of hilarity got them raised eyebrows from Mrs. Stearns.

  Sophie had vowed she wouldn’t say another word to her parents about her present. That didn’t mean she couldn’t bug her brothers and sisters.

  Her birthday was getting closer and closer. So far, Sophie hadn’t seen a single important telltale present sign. No shopping bags that people quickly hid when Sophie burst into a room. No bits of wrapping paper hidden at the bottom of the garbage.

  Nothing.

  “Don’t you want to know what I want for my birthday?” she asked Thad, leaning against the door to his room.

  “It’s taken care of.” Thad was on his bed, bobbing his head in time to the music on his headphones. “I got you the prettiest little fuzzy dice for the rearview mirror you’ve ever seen.”

  “Very funny,” Sophie said.

  “Who said I was joking?”

  “Nora?”

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  “You’ll share your toys with me on my birthday, won’t you, Maura?” Sophie said, helpfully balancing a block on top of the tower Maura was building.

  “Mine!” Maura said, and snatched it back.

  The only person in the family who acted as if he might be planning something was John. One day Sophie found him scribbling furiously on a piece of paper when she went past his room. John shrieked and dived under his bed.

  Sophie got down on her hands and knees and peered underneath. “What’re you making?” she said hopefully. “A surprise for my birthday?”

  “None of your beeswax!” John shouted.

  He held the paper closer to his chest and inched back against the wall. “It’s something for me and Trevor! Go away, you big nosy-body!”

  “What do I care?” Sophie said as she got to her feet. “It’s probably more war strategy. That’s all Trevor and you ever talk about.”

  “That’s all you know,” John muttered.

  NINE

  Mrs. Hartley wasn’t in the kitchen when they went down for breakfast on Monday morning. Mr. Hartley had left the day before to move a family to New York. Their mother should have been hustling around the kitchen, yelling at everyone to come down.

  Instead, Nora and Sophie discovered her in a miserable heap under the blankets in the middle of her bed.

  “Mom?” Sophie said, pushing open the door. “It’s seven o’clock.”

  The heap moaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Nora asked. She grabbed Sophie by the arms and held her in front of her like a shield as they advanced cautiously into the room. “Tell me you’re not sick.”

  Mrs. Hartley folded back the blanket enough for them to see her damp hair and pale face. “Don’t come any closer,” she said weakly. She gestured for them to stop, then let her hand flop back onto the blanket. “I’m sick to my stomach, and I don’t want any of you to catch it. I think it’s a twenty-four-hour bug.”

  Nora immediately clamped her hand over her nose and mouth.

  “It’s too late for that,” Sophie said. “The family room was probably full of your germs when we played Monopoly last night.”

  Her mother groaned and pulled the blankets up over her face again.

  “You’re a big help,” Nora said from behind her hand as she grabbed Sophie’s arm more tightly and started dragging her toward the door. “I can’t get this, do you understand?” Her voice was a furious whisper. “I don’t have time to puke for twenty-four hours. I have the dance on Friday night.”

  “All you think about is yourself,” said Sophie.

  “We’re getting out of here. Do you hear me?”

  “Mrs. Dubowski can take Maura to daycare,” their mother said feebly. “John will have to miss tae kwon do.”

  “Right, Mom! Plan B, coming up!” Nora called brightly. They inched slowly into the hall. “You stay in bed until you feel better, you hear me? Don’t you dare come out! We’ll just keep your nasty old germs right … in … there!”

  No prison cell door was ever slammed shut more firmly.

  If Nora had had a key, she would’ve locked the door and swallowed it. Their poor old mother was waiting to throw up again, and all Nora cared about was her dance.

  “Shouldn’t we at least ask her if she wants some tea?” Sophie said, trailing Nora down the hall.

  “Don’t open that door!” Nora shouted. She ran down the stairs. “Omigod. If I get sick, I’m going to kill someone!”

  “It would serve you right,” Sophie said. “Then you’d be sick in jail.”

  Their mother showed up in the kitchen when they were eating pizza for dinner. The second Maura saw her, she held out her arms and cried, “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Great, Mom. Now look what you’ve done,” Nora said. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand. “Don’t you think you should consider the rest of us?”

  “I heard a cra
sh,” Mrs. Hartley said, pulling her robe more tightly around her.

  “John was showing us a new move,” Thad said. “Everything’s under control.”

  “What, no salad?” Mrs. Hartley croaked.

  “Go back to bed!” Nora said, pointing sternly toward the stairs.

  It was a measure of how sick their mother still felt that she obediently turned and shuffled away. Nora got up from the table and opened the door under the sink. She took out a can and began misting the room.

  “That’s for smells,” Sophie protested.

  “Smells and germs,” Nora said grimly.

  “You’re ridiculous,” Thad said as he pushed back his chair. “If the germs don’t kill us, the spray will.”

  Maura was still fussing in her highchair. “Maura might be coming down with it,” Sophie said as she lifted her out. “She’s much crankier than usual.”

  “Take her away!” Nora shouted. She sounded like a queen sentencing someone to the guillotine. “I don’t want to breathe the same air!”

  Sophie changed Maura’s diapers and got her into her pajamas. Then she pulled Maura onto her lap and tried to read her a book. Maura wouldn’t sit still. Sophie finally put her in her crib and rubbed her back until she fell asleep.

  When she heard her mother’s low, soothing voice in Maura’s room in the middle of the night, along with Maura’s fretful cries, Sophie worried that Maura was sick.

  John confirmed it the next morning.

  “Maura’s got it at both ends!” he reported gleefully, brandishing a peanut butter-covered knife as they all rushed around the kitchen. “Her mouth and her—”

  “Spare us, John,” Nora ordered. She opened the refrigerator door and took out a container of yogurt. “We know what ‘both ends’ means.”

  “What’s with you, Nora?” Thad said as he came out of the mudroom. “You running for president or something? So you throw up for a day. You get to miss school.”

  “You might not mind getting this thing,” Nora said as haughtily as she could with her nose and mouth covered by one of the white masks Mr. Hartley wore in his shop so he wouldn’t breathe in sawdust. “I’m not going to.”

  So, of course, she did. On Friday.

  “It might be better if you didn’t go up there.” Mrs. Hartley was on her way out the door to pick up John and Maura when Sophie got home from school. “I had to pick Nora up from school at lunchtime,” she said. “She’s over the worst of it, I hope, but she’s asleep.”

  “Nora hates to throw up,” Sophie said.

  “I can’t think of many people who like it.”

  “What about her dance? Can she still go to that?”

  “And take the chance of throwing up on her dance partner?” Mrs. Hartley sighed. “No, I’m afraid Nora’s down for the count.”

  Sophie tiptoed upstairs to her room. If Nora was not only sick but missing her dance, too, she’d be in a horrible mood. Better not to disturb her. Sophie was about to close her door when she heard a faint sound.

  She quietly opened the door to the attic and listened.

  “Who’s there?” called a pitiful voice.

  “It’s me.”

  “Would you bring me some water?” Nora’s plaintive voice floating down the stairs made Sophie think of a prisoner in a tower.

  “Hold on!” Sophie called. She ran down to the kitchen and got a glass of water and carried it carefully up the attic stairs. She was so intent on getting it upstairs without spilling any that she didn’t realize she was about to see Nora’s room for the first time until she was in it.

  It was so Nora.

  Everything was neat and tidy, with white walls and floor. There wasn’t a single piece of clothing or paper on the floor. Sophie’s first thought was that living with her must have been driving Nora crazy.

  Her second thought was that having to keep a bedroom as tidy as this would drive her crazy.

  It was totally Nora’s space, from the small rug beside her bed, to the strings of beads that were acting as the closet door, to the small window that was low to the floor because the room was tucked into the eaves and the ceiling slanted.

  Sophie could see the tops of the trees in their backyard and clear over the fence into the yard of the house behind theirs. She’d never realized how sunny her own room was until she stood in the cool gray shadow of Nora’s.

  “Water…” Nora moaned from under the covers.

  “You have to sit up,” Sophie said. She waited while Nora struggled to a sitting position, then handed her the glass. It was a good thing Nora couldn’t go to the dance—she looked terrible. Straggly hair hung on either side of her pale face, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  Nobody would have asked her to dance, looking the way she did.

  “Do you feel better?” Sophie asked.

  “Do I look as if I feel better?” Nora put the glass on her bedside table and slid back under the covers. It gave Sophie the chance to look around.

  Through the beaded closet door she saw Nora’s shoes lined up in a perfect row on the floor. Her cheerleading pompoms were pinned to the bulletin board over her desk, next to a cluster of photographs.

  When Sophie tiptoed over to see who they were, she saw the flyer Nora had pinned there with two bright pink tacks. WOODSIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL BATTLE OF THE BANDS, it read.

  The date was today. On it, someone had written, “See you there.”

  “Ian Forbes is going to be there, and so’s Alicia Brooks.” Nora had sat up again. “She hates me because I got on the junior varsity squad last year and she didn’t. She’ll do anything to attract a boy she knows I like.”

  “Was Ian the one who called?” Sophie said.

  “The one you almost gave a heart attack to because you yelled at him, you mean.”

  “He sounded nice,” Sophie said. “He’ll know Alicia doesn’t really like him.”

  “That’s not the way it works. Boys never know anything.”

  Sophie hoped that Nora’s eyes looked as watery as they did because she was sick and not because she was going to cry. It took a lot to make Nora cry.

  “You’re such an idiot,” Nora said, to Sophie’s great relief. “Go get me some ginger ale.”

  The phone was ringing when Sophie got downstairs.

  She picked it up and said, “Hello?”

  “Hello?” It was a familiar but raspy voice. “Is Nora there?”

  “Ian?” Sophie said. “Is that you?”

  Ian moaned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sick.”

  “You are?” Sophie said. “That’s wonderful!”

  Ian moaned again.

  “I mean, that’s terrible.” She was already moving quickly toward the stairs. “Hold on. I’ll get Nora.”

  “That’s okay. Just tell her—”

  “Tell her yourself!” Sophie cried as she ran down the upstairs hall. “She’s right here!” She pressed the phone against her stomach and took the attic stairs two at a time. “Nora!” she said in a loud whisper. “Ian’s on the phone!”

  “He is?” Nora’s wan face peered out from under the blankets. “I can’t talk now.”

  “You have to!” Sophie thrust the phone into Nora’s hand. “He’s sick, too!”

  It was better than any pill. Nora sat up, brushed her straggly hair out of her face, and took the phone.

  “Ian?” she said. She mouthed “Get out!” impatiently at Sophie as she waved for her to leave. “Poor you…” Nora crooned.

  Sophie went contentedly down the stairs. Nora could shriek and laugh with her friends all she wanted. None of them would be willing to put up with Nora’s bad moods the way Sophie did.

  Friends might come and go, but you could never get rid of your sister. There was probably a nicer way to put it, but Sophie liked the thought just as it was.

  For better or for worse, being a sister was a permanent position.

  “Maybe you should sleep in my room tonight,” Sophie said. Her moth
er had sent her up to see if Nora wanted anything for dinner. She didn’t. “You’ll be closer to the bathroom.”

  It was very gratifying when Nora agreed.

  With one hand on Sophie’s shoulder and the other holding her comforter tightly around her neck, Nora staggered down the stairs behind her. “Does Mom know you’re doing that?” she said, glancing at the different-colored panels on the closet door. She stumbled across the room and crawled gratefully under the blankets on her old bed without waiting for an answer.

  “I painted it that way to see what it would look like,” Sophie said. She put Nora’s glass on the bedside table. “I may do it all one color instead.”

  “I like it,” Nora mumbled.

  “I can paint your door if you want.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  That was the last word she heard from Nora until the middle of the night. Sophie woke up to the sound of Nora complaining. “You’re snoring, Sophie! Roll over on your side,” which Sophie obligingly did.

  It felt so much like old times, she fell back to sleep at once.

  TEN

  It was Sophie’s birthday. And a Saturday birthday, at that. The best kind.

  The first thing she did when she woke up was lie very still and run a mental check of her body to see if she felt any different now that she was ten. Feet … knees … arms … stomach … face. Nope, they all felt the same.

  Next, she sat up. It felt a little strange not to have Nora there on her birthday morning. When they were little, whoever woke up first would wake the other one up. For the last few years, though, Nora had been sleeping late. If Sophie dared wake her up, she got mad.

  It was kind of nice having no one there to yell at her. There was a small box at the end of her bed. What could it be? Sophie thought happily as she scrambled to pick it up. She hadn’t asked for anything, so it could be, well, anything! Something wonderful that she never even knew she wanted but would make her the happiest girl in the world when she got it.

  Sophie was very glad to realize that even though she was ten, she wasn’t too mature to get excited.

  The box made a soft rattling noise when she shook it. Sophie always shook her presents before she unwrapped them. Sometimes she guessed what was inside.

  Not this time. When Sophie couldn’t bear the suspense for another minute, she tore the paper off. It was a box of crayons.