“I feel like Jack who fell down and broke his crown,” Delaney grumbled, rubbing a spot on her forehead from when she slipped in the bubbles and banged it against a cabinet. “I don’t know why Mom’s sore at us. She wanted to mop the floor anyway.”
We talked about how Lily’s stress had spread to Mom and us and Quincy, and we wondered aloud if it might continue to build upward and outward — just like the bubbles — until it took over the whole town, and Johnson City became a village of cantankerous dunderheads. But even though we were sort of being punished, we were glad to be in our room, the same way Quincy had decided he preferred his kennel on the porch.
After we pushed all the clutter under our beds and into our closet and played a couple of games of Spite and Malice, Lily came upstairs. She was laughing.
“Mom told me about the dishwasher,” she said between giggles.
It was so good to see. She hadn’t cracked up like that in a really long time.
“Is Mom laughing?” I asked.
“Um … not yet.”
She told us that Burton and his mom were coming over to help work on the guest list and that we were allowed to go downstairs again.
I answered the door when Burton and Mrs. Caldwell rang the bell. As usual, he was holding his satchel of papers. She was smiling and holding a white box. “I have a surprise,” she said, walking right past me over to Lily and Mom.
Darby, Delaney, and I all gathered around. I knew they were thinking the same thing — that Mrs. Caldwell had stopped at Forever’s for a pie or some pecan tarts.
She lifted the lid, but all we could see were rows of cards. “Ta-da!” Mrs. Caldwell said, holding one up. “Your invitations are done!”
“But … I thought I would pick them out,” Lily said.
“Mother knew you were busy, so she figured she’d take care of it herself,” Burton said. “Isn’t that thoughtful?”
“You and Burton can go ahead and address them while you work on the guest list tonight, and they’ll be ready to mail tomorrow,” Mrs. Caldwell said. “Aren’t they lovely?” She pulled one out of the box to show us. “There are even a few with special inserts that tell all about the rehearsal dinner.”
“But … why are they that color?” Delaney asked. “I didn’t think wedding invitations came in gray.”
Mrs. Caldwell looked miffed. “They aren’t gray. The color is ‘stardust.’ They are more a silvery hue.”
I squinted at it. “Reminds me of a gravestone,” I said.
“They’re … they’re …” Darby’s voice was all quivery, the way it gets when she’s trying not to laugh. “They’re armadillo-colored!”
Sure enough, she started cracking up. But then, so did Delaney and I.
“Girls! That’s enough,” Mom said. “I think perhaps you better go to your room.”
“But we just got down here,” I said.
“And back up you’ll go, until you learn how to behave.”
“But … but …” I looked at Lily. Her face was bright pink and she was staring at the floor. To her left stood Burton, blowing his nose as usual. And to his left stood Mrs. Caldwell, who was trying hard to not look at me or Darby or Delaney. Instead, she focused on the wall above us. Her mouth was all bunched up like the top of a drawstring bag.
“Go. Up. Now,” Mom said. She wasn’t yelling, but it was almost worse than yelling. It was the quiet voice of someone with a whole lot of yelling trapped inside them.
Without another word, we went upstairs.
“That’s not fair!” I said, slamming the door to the Triangular Office. “We didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not our fault Mrs. Caldwell ordered ugly invitations.”
“Yeah,” Darby said. “And besides, that was supposed to be Lily’s job. No one asked Mrs. Caldwell to butt in.”
Delaney paced back and forth in front of the window. “Lily would never have chosen gray. She would have picked out buttercup yellow or honeysuckle pink — something nice. And did you see the writing? It was so shiny and curly, I couldn’t even read it.”
“Yeah,” Darby and I said at the same time.
Little by little, my anger seemed to dwindle away, like the hot water in Mom’s bathroom shower, until I just felt tired and defeated. So I flopped onto my bed.
Soon, Delaney stopped pacing and Darby stopped scowling at the floor and they toppled onto their beds, too. For a moment, we just lay there and made grumbling sounds. Then Delaney said, “I’m awful tired of being stuck in here.”
Darby pointed out that we probably wouldn’t have any fun downstairs either, since Burton and his mom were visiting and everyone seemed mad at us. Besides, they were just making a guest list and addressing those ugly, cement-colored invitations. It wasn’t like we were missing any fun.
I started thinking about the guest list and something kept bugging me. “Lily better invite Alex,” I said.
“We’ve known Alex so long, it’s like he’s part of the family. He deserves to come,” Darby said.
“But he said he’d only come over if Lily invited him,” Delaney said. “That probably means the wedding, too.”
I sat up. “Then we just have to make sure he gets an invitation.”
Darby sat up. “Yeah. Then maybe when he gets it, he’ll realize she still cares.”
Delaney stood and started bouncing on her toes. “And then Alex will beg her not to marry Burton!”
“We have to do this. It’s altogether fitting and proper that we should do it,” I said, borrowing a little from Abraham Lincoln. “For Lily. For the family. For … the sake of love itself. We shall not let it perish from the earth!”
Darby leaped to her feet and started clapping. Delaney cheered. It was the best and most important speech I’d ever given.
Well, so far anyway.
First off, I want to say that what happened was not my fault. Dawn says it was, and Darby can’t remember. But it’s not. I will tell you all the facts, just the facts, and nothing but the facts, and you’ll see for yourself.
The plan was to make sure Alex received one of those invitations. But we couldn’t just steal one and send it. We had to be certain Lily wasn’t already planning to ask him. Because if he got two invitations, he’d know for sure that something weird was up. So we decided to eavesdrop.
Now, my sisters and I have gotten really good at eavesdropping over the years. We have all kinds of methods. We know everything about this old house, including places to hide, vents that carry the sounds of voices up to the attic, and cracks that let you hear or watch things. And we’re trying to go high-tech, too. Last fall, we pooled our allowance and bought things like walkie-talkies and binoculars. We also got a little recording device we saw advertised in the back of a comic book. We tied it to Quincy’s collar and let him wander around. We were hoping to overhear Mom discussing our Christmas gifts, but instead, we got a half hour of Quincy snoring. We’re still working out the kinks in that system.
I’m slightly taller and a whole lot faster than the others, so they usually designate me for peeking in windows or for things that require a quick getaway. But it’s hard for me to keep still, especially for a long time. So for this mission, someone else was chosen.
“Leave it to me,” Dawn said, choosing herself. Something she likes to do — a lot.
From the shadowy spot on the stairwell, Dawn managed to hide long enough to overhear a few things. She found out that Mom and Mrs. Caldwell were going to start addressing cards to family, friends, and other obvious people at the dining room table while Lily and Burton sat on the porch swing and finalized the overall guest list. She also saw Mrs. Caldwell push Quincy away with her foot when she thought no one was looking.
“I almost tackled her,” Dawn grumbled when she came back with her report. “But for the good of the mission, I stopped myself.”
We decided to eavesdrop on Lily and Burton to see if Alex’s name came up. I opened our attic window, which was right over the porch, but all we could hear was some garbled mu
rmuring. Because there was a little roof over the porch, it got in the way of us hearing them.
Now here’s the strange thing about Darby. She is the shyest of all of us. She hates talking to people outside of family and once paid Dawn ten dollars to pretend to be her when she had to give an oral report about Presidents’ Day to her class. When we were really little, she used to turn completely around in group pictures, because she’s camera shy, too. That’s why we have so many photos of her backside in between me and Dawn grinning. She faces the front now, but she usually looks down at her shoes.
Anyway, even though she’s shy around people, she’s also the most courageous one of us in every other way. She isn’t afraid of Mom’s bathroom ghost, she doesn’t run from bugs or rodents or snakes, and if someone dares her to do something, she’ll almost always do it. So we weren’t surprised when she turned around from the window and said, “I should climb out there.”
“I don’t know …” I said.
“It’ll be fine,” Darby said. “Y’all can keep hold of my feet while I get out on the roof. I’ll be able to hear them from there.”
It took a few minutes for her to convince us. Finally, we agreed, mainly because we were running out of time, and it was our only option. But we insisted that she wear a bicycle helmet.
Darby changed into long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, because the porch roof was hot and rough. Then she put her knee pads on over her pants and strapped on her helmet. “Let me climb partway out, and then you grab hold of my legs. Once you have a good grip on me, I’ll stretch out farther.”
As soon as she climbed out the window, Dawn grabbed hold of her left leg, and I grabbed hold of her right. Darby waited a few seconds and then inched forward, little by little, until she was flat on her stomach.
She glanced back at us. Her face was bright pink, but she had a big gleamy smile on her face. “This is great!” she whisper-shouted.
I just nodded back at her. At that point, Dawn and I only had ahold of her ankles, and I was concentrating too hard on what I was doing to talk back to her. Dawn also didn’t say anything.
After a while, I started to get tired. Dawn must have, too, because she whispered, “How much longer?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
My hands were getting sweaty and I was afraid I might lose my grip.
“Hurry up!” I hissed out the window, but my words seemed to get lost in the breeze. I wasn’t sure if Darby heard them.
We continued like that for a while longer, with me trying not to think about itchy spots on my body or all the jitters trapped inside me. Of course, when you try hard to not think about things, you only think about them more.
Then we heard a noise behind us. The tapping of toenails on our wooden floor, followed by low doggie whines.
“Quincy is up here,” I whispered.
“I know,” said Dawn. “Just ignore him. Poor thing’s probably tired of being mistreated by that woman.”
I could ignore Quincy, but I was worried that he wouldn’t ignore us. Sure enough, a moment later, I could feel a cold wet nose on my calf.
“Eeep!” I started. “Go away, Quincy!” But he wouldn’t. He just whimpered a little and looked at me with those sad brown eyes. “Git!”
“Ignore him,” Dawn commanded without looking at me or him. I could see little glistens of sweat on her forehead and upper lip. She was having a hard time holding on to Darby, too.
I tried to ignore him. I really did. And this next part is not my fault.
What happened was, I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything but my grip on Darby. I tried to forget the itches and that heebie-jeebie, ants-in-the-pants feeling I had. And then Quincy licked me right on the ticklish part of my leg, behind my knee.
I opened my eyes, shouted something like “Yah!” and let go of Darby’s foot. I didn’t mean to — it just happened. I saw her foot disappear out the window, and Darby slid sideways, toward the left. Dawn shouted, “Hey!” and her body started to get pulled through the window.
It all happened so fast, I didn’t know how to react. I just sort of screamed, and my arms kept flailing around. I couldn’t grab Darby’s foot again because it was now too far away. Meanwhile, Quincy kept jumping and turning in circles, thinking I was playing with him.
“Help!” Dawn said as her feet started coming off the floor.
I went to grab her but tripped over Quincy and ended up falling into her instead. That’s when she let go of Darby.
We heard a long scraping sound followed by a whoosh and someone screaming.
“Oh no!” Dawn cried.
Both of us ran downstairs as fast as we could, Quincy following right behind because he still thought it was part of a game. The whole time, Dawn and I were making little wailing sounds and pushing each other out of the way. I thought for sure we’d just killed our sister.
The first thing I saw when I made it to the porch was Mrs. Caldwell. She was trotting around in little circles, saying “Oh my!” and making the same flapping motions with her arms that I’d been making upstairs. Lily and Mom were at the porch railing, looking down. I raced to their side and saw Darby lying on top of our big althea bush, which was now crushed all to pieces. Leaves and flowers were scattered everywhere, which was probably why Burton was sneezing in the far corner of the porch.
“Don’t move!” Mom was saying to Darby.
“But it prickles!” Darby said.
I’d never been so happy to hear her talk in all my life.
Eventually, they decided she didn’t have any broken bones and they could help her up. As I started to tromp down the porch steps to help, Mom whirled on me and said, “Stay back! You three have done enough!” Her eyes were like the rockets’ red glare.
I sat on the porch swing and watched as Lily and Mom gently pulled Darby to her feet. Mrs. Caldwell stood by the railing and pretended to help by saying things like “Easy now. Watch her head.” Burton just kept sneezing.
While I sat there, I saw a paper on the seat next to me. The guest list! Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, I picked it up and checked the names. Alex wasn’t on there.
Dawn was peering around the frame of the front door.
“Is Darby still alive?” she asked.
I nodded.
Dawn’s head disappeared as soon as Mom, Lily, and Darby started coming up the steps. I set down the list and stood up. Darby was covered in leaves, flower petals, and tiny twigs, and she was hiccupping loudly. She also had a funny smile on her face. For a while, they made her move her arms and legs this way and that and peered into her eyes to make sure she was truly all right. Since Burton couldn’t stop sneezing, Mrs. Caldwell took him home.
As soon as their car pulled away, Mom said, “What on earth did you girls think you were doing?”
I didn’t know what to say, and Dawn was still off somewhere — she often hides and tries to pretend she had no part in things.
“Hic! It was a dare,” Darby said. “I bet them — hic! — that I could do that.”
“Why, Darby?” Lily asked. “You could have broken your neck.”
Darby shrugged. For some strange reason, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
Mom ordered us to go find Dawn and head up to our room until she said we could leave. She needed to take headache medicine and figure out what to do with us.
“I’ve never been so disappointed in you girls in my life,” she said.
It always makes us feel bad when she says that.
Dawn was already in our room when we got up there. We apologized to Darby and said we were glad she hadn’t died. Then we bickered for a while about whose fault it was, until Darby said it didn’t matter and that it was kind of fun anyway.
“Well, it was all for nothing,” I grumbled. “Lily isn’t inviting Alex, so we’re back to square one.”
“No, we aren’t, because look what I managed to get,” Dawn said with a sly smile. She reached underneath her pillow and pulled ou
t an invitation. “Now we can invite him.”
I guess in hindsight it was a little thickheaded to eavesdrop that way, but tumbling off the roof was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. I can still remember lying there and listening as Lily and Burton suggested names and wrote them down — Burton pausing now and then to blow his nose. That part wasn’t all that thrilling. But the next thing I knew, everything went herky-jerky, topsy-turvy, and soon I was flying through the air. Time seemed to stop and there was total silence. Just me and the breeze. Then I landed on the bush and heard Burton scream.
I keep trying to come up with a way to do it again. But I’ll probably have to wait until the bush gets bushy once more, or I might break a bone.
Anyway, other than a slight rash on my arms, legs, and back of my neck, and a case of hiccups that took an hour to go away, I wasn’t hurt. Mom sure was angry, though. She made me come downstairs while she called Dad to tell on me. After saying, “It’s not funny!” over and over into the phone, she passed it to me. Dad told me to stop with all the hair-raising adventures before I put me or the rest of the family in the hospital. He said next time I wanted to go thrill-seeking, to let him know so he could find someplace with a safety net. I headed back upstairs wondering where Dad would find a net, and what sorts of daredevil stunts I could do to land in one. It sure sounded better than a prickly bush.
When I got back to the Triangular Office, Dawn had already filled out the invitation for Alex in her neat cursive writing. She had made sure to nab a copy with the extra insert invite to the rehearsal dinner, so we checked that it was in there, along with the RSVP card and envelope, before we sealed it shut. “See?” I said as I put a stamp in the upper corner. “This was all worth it.”
The next day, we put Operation Post Office in motion. This plan required no derring-do or antics. Basically, we went downstairs and told Mom how extra sorry we were for the commotion. Mom looked as if she didn’t believe us, but when we offered to do extra cleanup chores as penance, she took us up on it.
Revenge of the Flower Girls Page 6