“You know where I am if you need me,” he said.
They did know. Except for Papa himself, Drew held the lifelong continuous work record at Pizza Papa, where he’d thrown his first pie (on the floor) at fourteen. He’d been fired twice (both times for Brynn-related issues, as he often reminded the twins) and rehired when Papa Ernie couldn’t make it without him. He now made about thirteen dollars an hour, executive wages for a kid in Ridgeline. Drew loped to the door, late as he so often was, ducking the auburn mop that topped off his six feet under the door frame of the old house.
Merry pulled her brother Adam from the corner of the kitchen, where he was standing gnawing on his thumbnail. “Come on, Ant. Grandma’s coming. We’ll go over and see the Big O. But you have to stop looking so scared. He’s fine. Babies are very resourceful.”
“You mean resilient,” Mallory said with a sigh.
“I know what I meant, word goddess,” Merry protested.
Mallory’s cell toned with two bells. A text. “Dad’s on his way to the hospital, too,” she said. For the first time, she really noticed her other younger brother and how freaked out he still was. “Adam, do you want some fish sticks or something? Owen’s going to be fine, good as new, just like our sister, the genius, just said. Grandma thinks so, too.”
“I know,” said Adam, not appearing convinced.
“Major truth. He’s totally already better than when I came in,” Merry said. “C’mon. How about I make you a grilled cheese all burny like you like, okay?”
“I can’t eat,” Adam said.
“You can’t eat? ” Merry pantomimed a heart attack. “What next? You eat like a marathoner.”
“’Ster,” Adam said, using the baby name he used for both twins—and which they used for each other—“Owen threw up blood.”
Mallory stared at her brother. She’d “seen” someone in her vision-dream trying to help Owen. And she knew Luna was acting weird, just a step above her normal-weird, really—except for the little-kid hair burning.
Why did both dreams make goose bumps stand up on her arms?
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
No more than a week later, Owen was fully back to his usual, comic, voracious elf of a self, laughing hysterically when the twins pretended to bite his nose, pulling himself up on their beds every morning. When Merry and Mally came down for school, Owen would be lying on the kitchen floor, using his feet to stack up the gigantic cardboard blocks he got for Christmas and then kicking them over. And he had his appetite back. He ate Cheerios and cooked peas with both fists and literally drank down as much of Grandma Gwenny’s home-jarred applesauce as he could from his plastic cup.
The crisis was over, and the girls barely had a week to go shopping for the Valentines’ Day dance. The Val Dee was a formal at school that, for some reason, everyone treated as a bigger deal than Homecoming. The twins felt free to enjoy it now. For a few days after the hospital emergency, Owen had been a little quiet and sad, Campbell said, sleeping in Sasha’s arms in the morning instead of running around. The girls usually left early to catch a ride in with Drew, who played pickup basketball before school now that the cross-country season was over, so they rarely crossed paths with Sasha. But now, Owen was all two-toothed grins.
In fact, Campbell thought it was possible that he had simply over-reacted to new teeth.
This Sunday morning, Mallory had even taken off work at their dad’s store so she could buy a dress. She worked every Sunday and had since she was twelve. Meredith could only imagine how much her sister, who was a renowned tightwad, had stashed away. The girls were geared up to head for the mall in Deptford when their mother stopped them and told them to sit down for breakfast first.
Meredith sighed. Her friends and fellow cheerleaders Neely, Kim, and Erika were going to meet them in front of Latte Java in an hour. Now, there would have to be a mass of texting and squiggling schedules.
“I wanted to tell you girls that I have to add just one more sitter,” Campbell told them as they took their coats off and set them on the chair by the front door. “If I take another course next semester, I can probably compress this whole thing to eighteen months.”
“Mom!” Mallory objected. “Five sitters?”
“Grandma Gwenny is, well, elderly, Mallory. And she happens to have a life of her own. Sasha has two jobs and school. So does Mrs. Quinn, Carla. She’s trying to get her RN degree.”
“Why don’t you hire just one person, then?” Mally asked. “Do you think this is good for Owen? He never knows who’s coming over next!”
“I tried to hire one person. The going rate for one person was twenty dollars an hour!” Campbell said.
“It would be better,” Mallory said, thinking of the vision of the slender hand wiping Owen’s mouth that still gave her the willies for no good reason.
“Would you rather have him in a daycare center?” Campbell said, her hands on her hips.
“At least there wouldn’t be twenty-seven people taking care of him at a daycare center,” Mallory said. She sat down at the table and laid her head on her arms, trying to let her “sight” come forward. But it wouldn’t come. What was bothering her? Why did she have such a big thing on about this? Owen was fine!
“And it’s fine that they’re germ pits, right? At least the one in Kitticoe is. They let the babies sit in playpens all day! It’s my personal feeling that children can’t have too many loving people in their lives,” Campbell said. “Or in their homes. Now, if you want to give up indoor soccer on Saturdays and working with Dad at the store on Sundays, I won’t need Melissa Hardesty. She’s a college student, and her mom is a doctor at the clinic. So I know her. It’s not like I’m inviting everyone off the street to take care of my baby.”
“You didn’t know Sasha!” Meredith objected. “You hired her after, like, a ten-minute interview.”
“I did a background check on her. She’d never even had a speeding ticket!”
“Sasha’s nice though,” Meredith interrupted. “What about Luna?”
Campbell turned back to the pancakes she was about to flip. Seeing their mother cook was always a rare event—rarer since she became a student and had a new baby. So once they got over having to put off leaving, the twins were actually glad to take advantage of homemade brunch.
“Why am I discussing this with you?” their mother asked the stove, clearly not expecting an answer from her daughters. “Luna is a perfectly good girl. She’s unusual. Her mom’s unusual. But Luna’s just trying to find herself. She gets good grades. She’s not a drug addict. If being weird were a crime, you’d be in jail, my darling daughters. You still speak in tongues the way you did when you were five even though you’re fifteen.”
“Mallory does have a point,” Meredith said then. “It’s your life, Mom, but it’s our home. Our privacy.”
Campbell placidly flipped a pancake and just as quickly lost her temper. Campbell’s temper was a family legend. “Why Meredith!” she said. “You’re right. I’d forgotten that your privacy was my top priority! Here I was concentrating on working fifty hours a week and going to school twenty hours a week, raising four kids I hope to at least help put through college and not having had a date with my husband since July! Silly me!”
“She doesn’t mean it that way,” Mallory said. “It’s Owen we’re thinking of. Look what happened!”
“Mallory Arness Brynn,” Campbell said sternly. “I thank heaven that Carla Quinn was here and that she had medical training when Owen got sick! And yes, I know you call her Big Carla behind her back, and she may not have the most sparkling personality in the world. But she’s a hard worker and a good nurse’s aide. You’re just ... spoiled because you’re used to your mom working two weeks and then having ten days off to be your ... servant.” Campbell had formerly worked straight through two weekends and then had ten days off.
“Fine, Mom,” Mallory said. “I apologize.” The twins finished their pancakes in silence.
“Apology accepted,” Camp
bell said finally. “Now, on the red bus, try to make it a point to talk to all the creepy-looking people you see and accept rides home from them.”
“We’re fifteen, Mom, not six,” said Merry.
“Laybite,” Mallory warned her, using the twin word for “stop talking.” Getting their mother angry, especially twice, was never a great idea.
“I forgot. Fifteen-year-old girls are never the objects of assault,” Campbell said. “For real, have a nice day, girls. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“She’s in a fine mood,” said Mally, as they ran for the red bus.
The red bus, which was called ByWay, was a godsend for the twins, who were younger than most of the other people in the sophomore class and, besides Drew and their father, didn’t have many friends with access to cars.
Fortunately, the previous year, the town had gotten a mini-bus system.
Two red buses went out to the four corners of Ridgeline and beyond, to the technical college and the Deptford Mall to the north and out to Kitticoe to the west, where there was a huge bargain store that took up three city blocks. For a dollar, a person could ride around all day, and some of the elderly people in town did just that, making stops at the library and church luncheons and resale shops to their hearts’ delight. Even Grandpa Brynn had to admit that the new money in town had some advantages.
For younger high school kids, who wanted to grab a ride to the multiplex cinema or the mall without the indignity of having their father hug them when they got out of the car, it was pretty terrific as well. The only thing the red bus didn’t have was a back seat or a trunk, so Mally and Merry had rolled their mother’s tiny Green-Shop reusable grocery bags into their purses for the bargains they intended to find.
As they rode, Mallory glanced up at Crying Woman Ridge, the place David Jellico had fallen to his death two years ago after the twins “saw” the cemetery up there where he buried the animals he killed—where Mallory dreamed that a girl would lie next. It was also where the Brynns’ old family cabin camp was, where all the Brynn aunts and uncles and cousins gathered for two weeks every July. Up there, except for the evergreens, all the trees had the appearance of the block prints children make by dipping raw potatoes in paint—stark, still, branches against hills like a brown series of lower-case letter m’s. Looking down was depressing. Just in time for Christmas, the snow had melted into pools of gray slop.
“I’m hopeless,” Meredith said suddenly.
“I agree,” Mally teased her.
“No, I mean I am without hope. I’ve flirted with Sam Lido and Carter Roskov until I’m limp and they just pat me on the head. All Sam can see is Allie, and Carter’s either gay or dating a college girl.”
“I know it’s bizarre to you, Meredith, but there are straight guys on Earth who don’t immediately want to fall at your feet,” her twin said.
“Since when?” Merry asked honestly. “We’re shopping for a formal for you. What’s that about? A year ago, you wouldn’t wear a dress, and nobody wanted you to!”
“I don’t want to buy one, actually,” Mallory said. “But I don’t feel right borrowing one. It’s Drew’s last school dance except prom. And I’ll probably need one for next year.”
“Aren’t you going to be true to him when he’s in college?”
“Please,” Mallory laughed. “He’s going to be in Arizona! And Drew just wants me because of the convenience factor.”
“You don’t believe that,” Merry said. “You really care.”
“Yeah, I really do. I really do. But long-distance stuff, it never works out. I don’t want to get hurt,” Mallory said in a rare burst of vulnerability. “Plus, at his school, they probably have pretty, older girls there stacked up like firewood. There’re about twenty pretty girls in Ridgeline—and I’m not one of them.”
In fact, neither Mallory or Meredith was pretty, but both had the kind of strong features—thick, shiny black hair, high cheekbones, and lips red as plush—that would one day make them beautiful women. If anyone had asked about the Brynn twins, people would describe their small, straight-backed bodies, always in motion, alike as little mustangs, their freckles and their rainwater gray eyes. Because all twins are “cute,” people called them that.
“Come on. He’s loved you since you were ten. But I have to admit that it’s a weird thought to kiss somebody you used to eat sand with in the sand box,” Merry said to her sister. “I thought you were destined to marry the boy next door, like in the old movies.”
“No, I’m definitely in the open options program next year,” Mally said. “So the dress will come in handy.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe not. But I don’t want him to be the one who breaks up with me,” Mally said. “Let me think about now.”
In the now, Mally was suffering about the dent that a dress would make in the money she’d hoarded for years, working Sundays with her dad. Merry was borrowing a dress from Neely Chaplin, her friend who, if not rich, was the closest thing Ridgeline had to rich. She lived in Haven Hills, a mushrooming development that was formerly a huge old farm and was now filled with gigantic new mansions and a golf course. The designer clothes Neely had came from real designers, although Neely’s mother CeCe got a break on them since she owned a boutique hat, handbag, and jewelry design business that had some pretty upscale clients. Neely and Merry were going with their cheerleading gang—all of them joined at the hip in boyfriend-less-ness (“And we’re the most popular sophomores!” Merry lamented. “How can this be real life?”). Despite this, borrowing instead of buying new was a sign of near-psychotic thrift for Merry, who could not keep twenty-four dollars in her pocket for more than twenty-four hours. But why spend good money, Merry reasoned aloud, on old worn-out guys like Will Brent?
“I know it’s not for you, and shopping without buying must be like being allergic to cocoa and locked in a chocolate factory. But I’m actually glad you’re with me,” Mallory said. “I have no idea what looks good on me. I have no idea what looks good, period.”
“The same sister who used to make puking noises whenever I got dressed up?” asked Merry, who never even went for a jog without lip-gloss and mascara. “You bought all those clothes last spring.”
“Not dance clothes,” Mally said briefly. Mallory’s last shopping spree had been with her now-vanished friend Eden. “I humble myself to you, the patron saint of malls.”
At that moment, Neely, Kim, and Erika came running up to greet them.
“Mallory’s buying a dress for the formal,” Merry said, in case anyone missed it.
“Mal, you could have used one of mine,” Neely said.
“I think it’s time for me to step into semi-demi adulthood,” Mally said. “Kicking and screaming. At least, I have Wonder Shopper here to be my coach.”
Kim was also shopping for a dress but wanted to go to the Little Luxie boutique instead of Hardwicke’s. Neely wanted a questionnaire book and the notes for Romeo and Juliet, and Erika had serious skincare shopping to do. Mallory was silently grateful that no one but her sister would see her trying to get something to look sexy on a body that was basically shaped like a very tall and slender fire hydrant or a very short lamp post.
The dress the twins found did the trick.
It was black and hung straight to a few inches above Mallory’s knees. It was spangled in a way that looked lush instead of trashy— flexible and free, almost like something from nature. It showed off her strong shoulders instead of her nearly nonexistent boobs. The girls each had one pearl earring they could make into a pair (each twin had three piercings in her ears, the first one made at birth so their parents could tell one from the other). Then Merry insisted that her twin buy silver pumps with three-inch heels.
“It’s a dance!” Mallory complained, after she got the pumps on her feet. They fit, but she had to grasp the row of chair backs in La Bou and struggle to a mirror. “The specific purpose is to dance. If I try to dance in these, I’ll end up with a broken
ankle.”
“You’re such a deef,” Merry said. “You have a week to practice. Lean on the balls of the foot. Yes. That’s right. Push down and step. Push down and step....”
“Wow, Mallory! You look like a runway picture,” said a soft, sweetly accented voice, and both girls looked up to see Babysitter Number Two, Sasha Avery. “Is Owen okay? You never called me the other night, Miss Merry. I had to call your mom!”
“I’m sorry, Sasha,” Merry said. “We were so freaked out that night.”
“Never mind,” Sasha said. “Those are truly fabulous shoes, I have to admit. And not too matchy-matchy with the dress you had on.”
“Oh thanks! Oh help! Yikes! I’m so bad at this. I thought I could get out of here without anyone seeing me,” Mallory told her. “I feel like a complete idiot, and these things already kill my calves.”
“Heels take getting used to,” Sasha said. “At my old job ... at my old school, girls wore them all the time with everything. Even jeans. You got so used to it, it was like wearing flip-flops for me. Now I’ve gotta find something that will work with the kind of dress we wore in Dallas, as in with two crinolines and a corset.”
“What’s a crinoline?” Merry asked.
“It’s a big puffy skirt that goes under your dress. Yeah, I know, right, it is kind of dumb,” she held up her hand to wave off a protest. “But it gets you noticed. It’s a big gigantic slip, so the dress stands out like a Cinderella dress. Like in the Civil War? Girls didn’t wear those little shift thingies down there, though I have to get one. They are really cute! Then again, my big rear end would be a liability. Doesn’t show under a puffy skirt. When you had to go to a dance or a cotillion ...”
“What’s a cotillion?” Merry asked.
“Well, they’re parties that parents had for girls my age to present them to, you know, society. To present them to the right kind of boys,” Sasha said. “Whatever that is. I had friends who had them, and I went. But my parents weren’t really in that social class. Cute guys though. Stuck up but real cute.”
Watch for Me by Moonlight Page 3