“Where did you find those shoes? Not in Ridgeline,” said Meredith.
“I got them second-hand online. The lady at the other place I work just got a new laptop, and she lets me use it. She’s really nice and she’s not really that old. She used to garden and do all these things, but she got sick the last few months.”
“That’s too bad,” Mally said. “At least she’s not crabby.”
“No, she’s getting weaker every day,” Sasha said softly. “I don’t think she’ll live very long. It makes me sad.”
“Come down here, you guys!” Campbell yelled.
As each of them descended the stairs, Campbell and Mrs. Vaughn from next door started snapping pictures. There had to be pictures of the twins together, then the twins with Sasha, and then of Mallory and Drew, as well as Neely and Meredith, who were riding to, but not from, the dance with Drew and Mallory. (“I’m staying at Neely’s. Her dad will pick us up at the school, or send the driver,” Merry said.)
After forty or so photos, Drew finally yelled, “Stop! I’m losing sight in my right eye!”
Finally, Campbell took a picture with her telephone and sent it to Tim at the store. He texted back and said, “I HATE WORK MAKING ME MISS THIS. I’LL DROP BY THE DANCE.” Although they loved their dad, both girls devoutly hoped their father, who was best friends with every coach at school, wouldn’t make good on the offer.
Just then Luna made her entrance, in black combat boots and a floor-length lace dress that looked like someone’s hammock.
“Stylin’, Luna,” Drew said.
“This is so juvenile,” she answered. “I wouldn’t go to a Ridgeline High School function willingly if somebody paid me. I can’t believe I even show up there every day.”
“You have all honors classes,” Merry said.
“Not willingly,” Luna said. “Merry, did you know your aura is orange? That’s healing and love. But yours is dark,” she said to Sasha and Mallory. “Troubled.”
“Who decides this?” Mallory asked Luna. “Is there an aura color wheel?”
“Nothing like that. You just know. You know if you know,” Luna said.
“I guess you’d know, with all that sky dancing,” Mallory said.
“If you say one more word about that, I’ll make you have dreams about things that will make your hair stand up like that all the time,” Luna said. Mallory thought, If you only knew....
Then, bright in his new penguin footed pajamas, Owen came running into the room, making noises like a truck. Luna’s whole face changed. “Hi, big guy!” she said, scooping him up. “Wanna party?”
“Luna,” Merry whispered. “Do you know that your mother’s father stands at the end of her bed every night and that he’s pissed? He knows about the stamps she sold before he died when she thought he was in a coma.”
Luna stared hard at Meredith, who was, in fact, telling the truth. Then her face converted to its usual mask of vaguely bored superiority. “Don’t be foolish,” she said.
“Watch out,” Merry warned her. “That noise in the attic isn’t mice. It’s Gramps looking for those stamps.”
Having heard nothing, Campbell hugged the girls and then Sasha. “I wish your mom could be here to see you,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Sasha said. “I got over being a little girl a long time ago. But I sure am glad you let me be part of your family for the night.” She began to wave her hand and held her head back so tears wouldn’t run down. “Look, now what a slob I am. I can’t get all sad at times like these. It doesn’t change anything. My sister’s in college, and I’ll live with her when I get finished.”
Mallory said, “That’s very courageous. I can’t imagine having lost everyone at my age.”
“Not everyone is as lucky as you are, Mallory,” Campbell said. “Not everybody can grow up surrounded by a healthy family. Aunts and uncles. All but one of your grandparents is still alive.” Campbell’s mother had died in an accident when the twins were young, and her father lived in Virginia and Florida. He visited three or four times a year.
“Your mama has been very kind to me,” said Sasha. “I’m very grateful. Y’all can get lonely.”
Drew said, “Let’s get going! Your grandma’s going to be mad. You know how she is about manners.” Grandma Gwenny had offered to cook dinner for the twins and their friends, as much simply to see them in their finery as to save them the cost of a restaurant meal—which, she assured them, would not be half as good as what she would produce. About the only thing that could bring out the vanity in Grandma was her homemade this or her family recipe for that.
“You’re right!” Merry almost shouted. It was a relief to break the moment, which was stretched thin as elastic wrap.
Slipping Campbell’s opera cape around her shoulders, Drew told Mally, “Your coach awaits!”
Drew’s Toyota, the Green Beast, still kicking at 185,000 miles, had once been silver but now was painted perhaps the ugliest color anyone had ever seen on anything that wasn’t in a test tube or a horror movie. But Drew treated it with pride and care—and more than once, it had been a welcome sight for the twins in one of their life-and-death spots when there seemed to be no hope left.
It all seems so long ago, thought Mallory.
The night was glorious. The stars were out, and although she could see her breath, it wasn’t frigid. They sang with the radio all the way to Bell Fields, where Grandma and Grandpa Brynn owned a spacious ranch, not at all like the deluxe mansion-ettes that multiplied in size the farther up and out you went into the concentric half-moons of the more upscale Haven Hills. One was Neely’s house on Pinnacle Way, sprawling like a cream-colored castle at the very top, overlooking the whole town and the hills that surrounded it.
It was for the acre of land that their grandparents bought the new house. Their old house, where Mally and Merry lived, with four bedrooms and two-and-a-half stories, was just too much for them. They’d sold it to Tim after he and Campbell had the twins.
The twins knew they could count on their grandfather to point out at least three times that everything except the shrimp and the flour came from his and Grandma’s own gardens—yep, they would practically be self-sustaining if they had a cow. (“And a pipeline to Alaska,” Mallory sometimes whispered when Grandpa Brynn got all wound up.) He did, but tonight it was comforting instead of annoying.
Whenever they were around Grandma, Mallory got nostalgic. She thought about things she never thought about otherwise.
Grandpa and Grandma were getting older.
Mally and Merry might go to different colleges, although that was basically unthinkable.
Owen would soon be talking in sentences. Adam was already as tall as his sisters.
As Grandma brought out strawberry shortcake, she leaned over and whispered to Mallory, “Hush now. Every girl feels that way. Like your mom says, it’s just biology. By the way, will you tell your mother I’m not about to keel over? I don’t know what her problem is. Actually, I do know what her problem is. Campbell’s always had a mind of her own. I think she’s afraid I’ll alphabetize the canned goods. I can watch Owen every day for a year or more if need be. Tell her to forget about adding that Melissa Hardesty.”
“Melissa Hardesty isn’t just one sitter too many. It’s all of them,” Mally said.
Grandma went on, “Tell you the truth, I have to agree, Mallory, and I’m not one to put an honest person down. I don’t like a whole bunch of people taking care of my grandson, especially now that he’s feeling a little poorly. I’m not that cool with it.”
“You’re not that cool with it?” Mally asked, trying not to laugh.
“No. Plus, I’m a lot cheaper. I’ll do it for nothing. I swear Campbell treats me like an old woman. Dr. Hardesty is my doctor, and I happen to know that Melissa Hardesty smokes—and not just cigarettes. Wacky tobaccy too.”
“Grandma!” Mallory said, losing the battle to keep her laughter inside.
“You didn’t think our generation knew abo
ut anything but elderberry wine, huh?” Grandma put her hands on her hips and mimed holding a long cigarette holder and pushing an invisible hat brim down over her eyes.
“That’s not it. But I’ll tell Mom. I’m relieved. Merry will be, too. It’s not just everyone prying into our lives. It’s Owen. Like you said.” Mallory followed her grandmother into the kitchen, carrying some of the serving plates. “I don’t want so many strangers around him either.”
“Exactly,” Grandma Gwenny said. “Someone who smokes has heavy metal residue in their hair and clothing even if they don’t do it around the child. Bad enough Carla Quinn does. I know she doesn’t smoke. But her friends do and that’s all over her. I’m not saying she’s a bad person.”
“But she’s weird,” Merry said. “She started crying over someone named Ellie when Owen first got sick.”
“Oh, mercy. That was such a sad thing.”
“You know about Ellie?”
“Well, yes, it happened just a couple of years ago, and she hasn’t been right since. She used to go to our church, but she’s part of this sort of Catholic cult now founded by a priest who left the church because it wasn’t strict enough.”
“Who’s Ellie?”
“This isn’t the time or the place,” Grandma said. She seemed to have come back from someplace far off and noticed that the voices around the table were growing quiet as, one by one, the other kids started listening in on her conversation with Mallory. “The important thing is that I love my Owen, and I likely won’t get to know him as well as I know you.” Mallory’s eyes suddenly glittered with unspilt tears. “Oh, Mallory. You act so much like the hard one. Your sister cries at the drop of a hat, and you put on a big act like you’re so past all that.”
“I can’t imagine Owen not knowing you.”
“Okay, I’ll live to be a hundred. That suit you? I’ll be an old pest and tell everyone what to do.”
“Thanks Grandma,” Mallory said. Gwenny put her arms around Mallory and had a flash in her own mind of Mallory’s children—of what a strong woman and a good mother she would be. Mally added, “I love you.”
“You aren’t so bad yourself,” said Grandma Gwenny.
After dinner, Mallory was afraid her stomach would protrude visibly, making all those beautiful shiny little fish scales stand on end like quills—while she was trying to dance and remember to press down on the ball of her foot and then step. Fortunately, the mermaid-glisteny dress had a little welcome stretch in it.
“I feel like I gained ten pounds,” said Sasha, feeling the strain in her tight-waisted gown.
“I wonder why Brynn’s grandparents don’t weigh two hundred pounds each with all that homemade pie and bread and stuff,” Drew added, as Sasha left. They all watched the ritual of Sawyer helping Sasha, who’d in fact eaten only about three bites of her dinner, into the front of his car. Even with the passenger seat canted far back, Sasha’s dress still stuck up in front of her face like a huge, diaphanous umbrella opened wide. They were both laughing, though, so Sawyer obviously didn’t mind. He was driving a Ford Explorer. All the richies had gas guzzlers.
In the Green Beast, Drew thought, Sasha would have had to sit in the trunk and dangle her feet.
“Grandma is always doing something, going a hundred miles an hour,” Merry said. “She’s always bringing meals to what she calls old people, even though she’s like seventy-five.”
“She’s seventy-seven,” Mally said.
“She looks ten years younger than that at least,” said Drew. “Did she have a face lift?” Drew stopped to let Neely get into the car.
“Who got a face lift?” Neely asked.
“My grandmother,” Merry said. “Except she didn’t.”
“Maybe she had, like, face work?” Neely continued. “Injectible wrinkle remover? My mom had it and she’s not even forty.”
“Crack me up,” Merry said. “My grandmother would be as likely to climb Mount ... Wait! Drew! There he is!”
They had just turned off Cambridge onto School Street when Merry saw the boy in the brown leather jacket walking along the side of the road. He was headed toward the school.
They passed him so quickly that when Merry turned to look back, the boy had vanished in the dark winter shadows.
“Neely, that was the new guy. He’s the one! I told you! He’s got blond hair cut like the guys in Grease? And he wears this old bomber jacket?”
“I missed him,” Neely said. “I was lining my lips, which is hard in this car, I might add.”
“Drewsky, do you know who I mean? Is he a senior?” Merry asked then.
“I don’t know every senior guy, but I’d know if there was somebody new,” Drew said.
“Weird,” Merry said with a sigh. “Oh well.”
They pulled up to school just as the Winter Princess, Angela DiJordano, was getting out of the car with her mom and dad. A surprise choice: Because she was in a wheelchair from an accident, Angela was one of those lucky picks—a girl who was both a sort of hero and one of those types who would look drab in the movie until she whipped off her glasses and morphed into a beauty. She couldn’t feel anything below her thighs due to a spinal injury from falling when a dock collapsed at Sugar Moon Lake when she was nine or ten.
Merry said, “I wish I had slowed down to say hi to that guy.”
“Why?” Mally demanded. “Just being cute doesn’t make you a good person.”
“I still would have liked to meet him and talk to him. There’s something about him.”
Drew said, “I’m so going to stop on a dark street so you can talk to some random hitchhiking killer. I can feel your dad’s hands tightening around my windpipe.”
The huge glass wall that formed the foyer had been decorated with mermaids and whales and starfish for an under-the-sea theme. Inside, hanging from the middle of the gym, where there normally would be a glass disco ball, was a red paper Chinese dragon at least ten feet long with streams of green and blue tulle radiating out from it likes waves. Twinkle lights swayed among the faux waves.
“How is that symbolic of sea life?” Mallory asked her twin, as Neely lined up with Pearson Ainsworth, who was assigned to escort her as one of the Winter Princesses on Angela’s court.
Merry, who had gone so far as decorating the gym to snag a last-minute date, said, “You never know what’s down there. It was cheap and it looks good.”
Everyone began to applaud as the girls were presented.
“It’s so unreal that I’m not even on the Rose Court,” said Meredith. “Next year I’ll be over the hill.”
“Yep, I can already see fine lines,” Drew said. “Silken Smooth can reduce the appearance of fine lines in just six weeks of continuous use, although side effects can include nausea, dizziness, seizures, muscle weakness, and a kind of liver tremor resulting in death.”
“Shut up,” Meredith told him.
Angela’s parents were crying, and her little sisters were jumping up and down. A photographer from the Ridgeline Reporter snapped pictures as Angela beamed and twirled around with her real-life boyfriend, Danny Sutton.
The first song began to play, and Mallory was grateful, despite all her push-down-and-step practice, that Drew was tall enough to basically move her around like a life-sized chess piece. Gradually, Neely slipped into Pearson’s arms with what looked like something other than an obligation. Kim and Allie and the others were gossiping happily at one of the net-draped tables.
The disc jockey played three slow songs in a row and, thankfully for the girls and guys who were there single, finally spun some old ’90s music.
Mallory glanced around the gym. She had learned to put faith in her funny feelings.
Merry’s posse was all present and accounted for, but where was Merry?
“Do you see my sister?” Mallory asked Drew.
“She has to be in the bathroom. We’ve been here a full half hour. I’m surprised she lasted this long.”
“But she would never go to the bathroom wit
hout her gang of peeps,” Mallory said. “They can’t respirate alone.”
“That’s true enough. But look, Mallory, you’re not your sister’s keeper, and this is a dance, not the treacherous mountain path with a killer on the loose.” Drew made claw motions with both hands and then slipped them back around Mally’s waist. “She’s a big girl. You’re acting like your mother.”
He figured that would shut her up.
He was right.
SNOWFLAKES AND MOONLIGHT
Through the glass wall of the atrium outside the gym—where Merry wandered alone, suddenly desperately thirsty for water—she could see the full moon embraced by clouds.
The sign on the concession stand said “Back in Five,” which she knew meant back in fifteen or worse. Carefully holding back the tendrils that cascaded from her intentionally messy updo and opening her mouth wide to avoid ruining her elaborately lacquered mouth, she leaned over the water fountain just next to the door.
When Merry looked up, his face was a few inches from hers, watching her from outside.
Although normally Merry would have jumped a foot and run back into the gym screeching, for the sake of drama if nothing else, instead, she gave the boy a shy wave. His blond hair looked soft and clean in the moonlight, and his eyes shined with something forlorn but kind.
There’s no reason to be afraid, Merry thought.
As if her legs had minds of their own, she moved toward the door to the foyer, which had been locked from the inside.
Then she stopped.
Her friend Kim’s older brother had been as handsome as a model but was a hollow-hearted monster who might have killed dozens of girls if the twins hadn’t risked their own lives to stop him. This boy was even more beautiful.
What if he pulled her out into the night and left her torn up and trampled in a ditch?
Meredith knew he wouldn’t. She opened the door.
Watch for Me by Moonlight Page 5