All-Season Edie

All-Season Edie

All-Season
Edie

Annabel Lyon

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Text copyright ©
2008
Annabel Lyon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Lyon, Annabel, 1971-
All-season Edie / written by Annabel Lyon.

ISBN 978-1-55143-713-2

I. Title.

PS8573.Y62A45 2008      jC813'.6      C2007-907447-2

First published in the United States, 2008

Library of Congress Control Number
: 2007942831

Summary
: Edie copes with family tragedy and her “perfect” sister
during one tumultuous year.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover and text design by Teresa Bubela
Cover artwork, lettering and interior illustrations by Alanna Cavanaugh
Author photo by Bryant Ibbetson

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11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1

for Sophie and Caleb

Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone at Orca and especially my wonderful editor, Sarah Harvey. Thanks to my family for giving me such a great childhood to draw from.

Thanks to Bryant, always.

Contents

Fishing with the Fat Boy

A Charm of Powerful Trouble

Stupid Christmas

Dancing with Mean Megan

Dexter in a Whack of Trouble

Sweet Revenge

Fishing with the Fat Boy

A warm car makes a good place to sleep, even when you have to share the back seat with sleeping bags and the big orange cooler, and the kettle is on your lap, and they still make you wear your seat belt. I listen to the raindrops hit the station wagon, landing heavily, like magnets dragged from the gray sky to the metal roof. I watch the water slurp down the windows and listen to the
skreeking
of the windshield wipers. I'm lulled by the rhythm, and I wonder why Mom and Dad find it irritating.

“I TOLD you to get replacements,” Dad says to Mom.

“You did not TELL me,” Mom says to Dad. “Do not raise your voice at me.” I roll my eyes and squint and press my lips together the way Mom does when she's angry. That makes my face feel like a raisin. “EDIE,” Mom shouts into the back seat, and I flinch guiltily even though she can't have seen me pull the raisin face. “Are you all right back there?” I don't answer. I close my eyes quickly and wonder if I should fake a snore. Probably too obvious. “She's asleep,” Mom says to Dad. Ha. Fooled you.

I wait for them to start talking about me, but they start talking about Dexter instead. I'm peeved. Dexter is my sister and the number two most common topic of conversation in my house at the moment. She's thirteen—two years older than me—and for the first time she isn't with us on summer vacation. Instead, she's staying for two weeks with her best friend, Mean Megan. Mean Megan has long black hair and a swimming pool in her backyard, but she doesn't have a cat. She can't sleep over at our house because she's allergic to my cat—ha. Dex has been asking to stay at Mean Megan's house every year for as long as I can remember, but this year our holidays overlapped with the two-week dance camp that Dex and Mean Megan have been going to every year for as long as I can remember. Dad's boss wouldn't let him change his holidays, and Dexter and Mean Megan are ballet fiends.

Two weeks without Dexter: it's a weird thing. “Do you miss your sister yet?” Dad keeps saying, like it's a big joke, but I can tell Mom and Dad are anxious— they keep talking about her, and Mom keeps looking all distracted and calling me Dex by mistake—and it's starting to infect me. I keep thinking things like, If Dexter were here now, what would she be doing? If she were listening to this conversation, how long would it take her to call me a doofus? Sometimes I hear her voice, just as if she's right next to me. “People don't smirk when they're asleep,” she's saying now. “Mom and Dad are just babying you along.” I can practically feel her flicking me in the temple with her fingernail. Infection is the right word. It's like a sickness that makes me act all feverish, not like myself. I'm sure in a day or so I'll settle down and enjoy not having someone pull my hair or make fun of my clothes or act all superior every two minutes.

The number one most common topic of conversation in my house at the moment is Grandpa, who had a small stroke a few days before we were due to leave. When I think about the word “stroke,” I picture a big hand coming down from the sky and stroking Grandpa, as if he were a cat. But the hand didn't know its own strength, and it knocked him to the ground instead, making him bump his head, which was why he had to stay in the hospital overnight. “Grandpa is just fine,” Mom and Dad said at the time, but they also almost cancelled our holidays, so I'm not sure what to believe. At first Dexter was going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa to help out, but her dance camp would have meant too much driving for Grandma, who wanted to stay home and look after supposedly-fine Grandpa. So they worked out a compromise: Dexter would stay with Mean Megan, and Grandma would look after just-fine Grandpa. Instead of going to the Grand Canyon, we would go to one of the Gulf Islands, to a cottage on a lake less than a day's ferry-and-drive away in case we had to go home quickly. “For Dexter's sake,” Mom said, like I hadn't noticed Dad taking his glasses off and rubbing his forehead seventeen times an hour, worrying about his own dad. I'm eleven. I'm not a
child
.

Somehow, after all that, here we are, driving to the lake. I wonder what the chances are of passing a Dairy Queen between here and the cottage. I wonder how long it will take to get from here to the cottage. I wonder where here is. I peek out the window through sly eyelashes, so they won't guess I'm awake. Trees, mountains, rain. Trailers lumber past, followed by big logging trucks and occasionally a sleek white Winnebago with curtains and ladders and fancy yellow stripes. I decide I'm going to live in a Winnebago when I'm older. I start thinking about hot fudge sundaes and lying in bed inside a Winnebago with curtains the color of hot fudge, watching the road and the trees and the mountains melt past as it gets darker and darker. Then I really do fall asleep as we
splosh
and
skreek
and rumble toward our summer holidays.

“Wakey-wakey, Edie,” Mom says.

“No,” I say.

“We're here,” Mom says. “Get out of the car and help carry things to the cottage.”

“Where's Dad?”

“He's phoning Grandpa from the office. Look—” Mom points down the hill and through the trees “—there's the lake.” The air is cool and soft and gray. I extract myself from the car, stretching, and stand beside Mom and look. We are standing in a sloping forest of pine trees; in the distance we can just barely see the lake, like a bowlful of smoke. That's when I first see the fat boy. He's going down the path from the main office past the parking lot to the jetty, and we avoid looking at each other because we're close to the same age. As quickly as he appears, he's gone.

Suddenly everything is very quiet and still, and we can even hear the water lapping at the shore with the sound of a hundred thirsty little tongues. The afternoon sky is darkening, and far away some invisible heartbroken bird is wailing and sobbing and listening to its own echoes before it grieves again. It's like we're standing in a dark misty space between rainstorms. I'll be glad when we're inside with some lights on and the smell of supper cooking on the stove, and later on a warm bed. The bird cries out again, and I shiver.

“Like, creepy,” says Imaginary Dexter, standing beside me and hugging herself. “Let's go inside, quick.”

“Suits me,” I say. Mom asks me who I'm talking to.

The next morning I wake to the sound of birdsong. Not the mournful bird of last night; instead, these are squeaky, squirty little birds who know a sunny day when they see one. And it is a sunny day. Last night's fog has already been seared from the lake, and there are shafts of sunlight tangled in the trees, promising a bright day.