All-Season Edie (15 page)

Through the slats, I see Dexter pop her tea and take a sip and try not to make a face while Mean Megan gets out a paper and pen and starts a list of people to invite.

“We're going to need a budget,” Mean Megan says after a while. By this time she's lying on her stomach on Dexter's bed, sucking her pen. Dexter is lying on her stomach on the bed facing the other way, listening to music on the headphones because Mean Megan says the radio is distracting her.

“For decorations?” Dexter says, really loudly because of the headphones. Mean Megan gives her the kind of look she usually gives me. Dexter quickly takes the headphones off. “What?” she says.

“Are you in grade three? We're not having decorations,” Mean Megan says. “I suppose next you're going to want games. What we need are food and tunes.”

“I wasn't,” Dexter says.

“Games,” Mean Megan says, wrinkling her forehead. “Now that you mention it…”

“I didn't!” Dexter says.

“Games,” Mean Megan says to herself and starts writing again.

The next day, in our after-school car pool, Mean Megan tells Dexter that Dave and Celine have agreed to give her two hundred dollars for the party.

“Don't look so stunned,” Mean Megan adds. “You're going to have to help me choose chips and pop and stuff—whatever you think people will want to eat. I don't know anything about those kinds of crappy foods.”

Mom and I, in the front seat, glance at each other and away, biting the insides of our cheeks. We can tell Mean Megan is very, very happy.

“What date was that again?” Mom says.

Dexter looks like the top of her head is about to blow off, like a volcano. Mom and Dad are laughing at her. She's been talking about nothing but the party for the past week, and they know perfectly well the date is this coming Saturday night, four days away. Now Mom stands with her pen poised over the calendar on the kitchen wall, pretending she doesn't know anything about it, while Dad and I smirk.

“It's Saturday!” Dexter yells. “Don't do that!”

“I'm sorry, sweetie,” Mom says right away. “I know you're excited.”

“I'm not excited!” Dexter yells.

“There's going to be boys,” I whisper to Dad. He makes a face like his eyeballs are about to fall out of their sockets.

“That's disgusting!” he whispers back. I giggle so hard I fall out of my chair.

“Would you all grow up!” Dexter yells.

Fortunately, Mom's not paying too close attention. She's squinting at the calendar and mumbling to herself.

“This Saturday we have a dinner at the Corrigans', ” she says. “I forgot you wouldn't be home. I guess we'll just have to find a babysitter for Edie.”

I groaned. “Not Mrs. Halibut,” I say. “Mrs. Halibut” is our family's secret name for Mrs. Hammett, the old widow who lives down the street, who loves children but has no idea how to care for them. Last time she tried to teach me to crochet and made me drink carrot juice and take cod liver oil. “Can't I stay by myself?”

“During the day, not at night,” Mom says. “When you're twelve.”

Mom phones Grandma, but Grandma has her book club that night and has already started baking for it. Grandma's baking is epic, and once the machinery is in motion it can't easily be halted.

“Why can't I go to the party?” I ask.

“NO!” Dexter says. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”

I've never been to Mean Megan's house and never wanted to go to Dexter and Mean Megan's stupid party. Nevertheless, I enjoy making Dex go off like a firecracker. I say, “I could stay in a whole other room and watch
TV
. I could promise not to come out and bug them. I could take my sleeping bag. I wouldn't be any trouble at all.”

Dad looks at Mom, eyebrows raised, as though to say, Why not?

What Dexter calls me next I'm not allowed to repeat. I don't think Dexter really meant to say it aloud. The word just falls out of her mouth onto the floor and sits there like a little black stone. Even Dexter looks shocked.

The silence that comes next is interesting.

Mom drops us off at Mean Megan's house on the afternoon of the party with a stern warning to both of us to behave and get along.

“I know,” I say.

“This is ridiculous,” Dexter says.

Mom power-locks the car doors.

“Fine!” Dexter says. “I promise or whatever.”

“That's better,” Mom says and unlocks the doors. We spill out. I've brought so much stuff—games and clothes and books and sleeping bag and pillow and blanket—that Dexter has to help me carry it all. She grabs the sleeping bag, which is tightly rolled, and my knapsack with my books, and leaves me to grapple with the odds and ends.

“You're sure Megan's parents will be there?” Mom says.

“Hi, kids!” a voice calls out. We look up and see Celine leaning out an upstairs window. She's got long black hair and she's really pretty. Mean Megan has told Dexter that she and her mom share each other's clothes. “I'll be down in a minute!” she calls.

“See you at eleven am,” Mom says sweetly to us. Dexter and I will sleep over at Mean Megan's after the party so we can help Mean Megan clean up. That is Dexter's argument for letting us stay over, though I overheard Mean Megan telling Dexter that Dave and Celine have a cleaning lady because they say housework numbs the soul. Cleaning up will be her problem, not ours.

“Fancy,” I say, meaning the house. I stand beside Dexter on the front step, waiting for Mean Megan to come to the door. I can see Dexter is dying to tell me to shut up, but she remembers her promise to Mom, who is, not incidentally, still sitting in the idling car with the window rolled down, waiting to see us safely into the house. Finally we hear footsteps, and then Mean Megan opens the door.

“Hey,” Dexter says.

“Hey,” Mean Megan says.

“I brought Junior Scrabble and Rex the Raccoon,” I say.

Mom backs out of the driveway, waves and drives away.

“Shut up,” Dexter says.

“Hey, Edie,” Mean Megan says. Ever since Dexter and Mom and Dad came home the night of Grandpa's funeral and found us dancing like a pair of crazy people, Mean Megan has been nice to me. Well, nicer, anyway. It's extremely weird and unnatural, and I keep waiting for it to end. Dexter's waiting for it to end too. That I know for sure.

“Okay, kids?” All of a sudden, Celine appears in the hallway with her car keys in her hand, out of breath and not really looking at us. “Running late, babe,” she says to Mean Megan. “I promised your dad I'd pick him up from the tennis club. You'll be okay on your own, right?”

“Of course,” Mean Megan says.

“Don't wait up,” Celine says, and then she's gone. I know this is not what my mom had in mind, and I feel a little guilty. But then Mean Megan offers to give me a tour of the house, which makes me bounce in my shoes. Dexter rolls her eyes. Mean Megan's house was built by an architect hired by Dave and Celine when Mean Megan was a toddler. It has a lot of skylights and brick and wood floors and is open-plan, which means not a lot of inside walls and not a lot of privacy. You can sit in the study and talk to someone in the kitchen, forty feet away, while in between someone else sits in the sunken living area watching the world's biggest
TV
. There's a pool in the backyard and an actual cabana with a white sofa and some rattan furniture and a mini-bar where you can sit with a cold drink in summer and feel like a movie star. Mean Megan's room, upstairs, has a
TV
and a stereo and its own bathroom and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling and a bed about the size of a farmer's field with black linens Mean Megan chose herself. Black! Also, she has an aquarium containing an electric blue fish with impossibly elegant, draping fins. It's some kind of fighting fish that can't share its tank with any other fish because it will have to kill them. The fish is named Sklar.

“Sklar,” Dexter says, tapping the tank with her finger. The fish barely moves, just ripples his fins slightly, disdainfully.

“We're going to be kind of busy,” Mean Megan says to me. “Think you can look after yourself for a while?”

“Can I watch
TV
?” I say.

Mean Megan takes me into the enormous living room and shows me how to work the three clickers for the world's biggest
TV
. I squirrel myself down into the sofa cushions. Soon I'm clicking away with a big jerk of the hand every time I want to change the channel.

“You don't have to press so hard, stupid,” Dexter says, but Mean Megan says actually that one has been a little sticky lately and has been giving everyone trouble.

“You are way too nice to my sister,” Dexter says so I will hear. I'm used to it.

“Forget her,” Mean Megan says. “We have to clean up and get the snacks out and organize the
CDS
and skim the pool and get dressed.”

It's four fifteen; the party starts at seven. “Let's get dressed first,” Dexter says.

Mean Megan gives her a look. They go outside to skim the pool. Unable to resist, I trail after them.

“I didn't bring my bathing suit,” Dexter says.

Mean Megan takes what looks like a bright blue fishing net at the end of an impossibly long pole and starts dragging it across the surface of the water, skimming up dead leaves and the occasional bug. “After it gets dark, we can turn the underwater lights on,” Mean Megan says. “Nobody's bringing their bathing suit. I only asked Dave to fill it because it looks cool.”

“I want to help,” I say, mesmerized by the big skimmer.

“Go away!” Dexter says.

“No, that's okay,” Mean Megan says. “We've got lots to do. And I have a special surprise for Edie, later.”

We spend the next hour getting the house ready: setting up the fridge, arguing about the order of the
CDS
in the pre-programmable
CD
player, putting chips in bowls and veggies-and-dip on plates. While I vacuum the entrance hall, Mean Megan and Dexter take all my stuff out of the living room and put it somewhere else. Then Mean Megan orders me and Dexter to go watch
TV
for a few minutes because she's busy doing something secret with a salad bowl and a piece of paper and a pair of scissors and a pen. She won't let us help or even watch. “You'll see,” she says mysteriously.

When Mean Megan is done, Dexter shows her the brownies Mom baked for the party, and I wonder if Mean Megan will say anything about her complexion. But Mean Megan only says “Cool” and shows us what Celine bought for a special treat: wasabi peas. I try one and my eyes instantly water. “Pain,” I say. “Pain, pain.” I start to cough.

Mean Megan, who can't seem to take her eyes off the glossy brownies, says they're an acquired taste, and for a while she, personally, was addicted to them.

I give Dexter a private look, and Dexter, remembering another promise she made Mom, takes me to show me where the bathroom is. When we get back to the kitchen, Megan is snacking in a vague, distracted way from the bag of wasabi peas, but I see that one of the brownies is gone, and there's a smear of chocolate on the corner of her lip.

“You have chocolate,” Dexter says, gesturing at her own mouth, and Mean Megan wipes her lip hard with her thumb without meeting Dexter's eye. Dexter keeps her face carefully neutral. “Is it time to get dressed?” she asks, as though that's what they were talking about all along.

I see this is how, for all their arguments, Dexter and Mean Megan stay friends.

In Mean Megan's room, they spend another hour trying on Mean Megan's clothes, and some of Celine's for good measure. Mean Megan's clothes are more mature than Dexter's—“mature” is Mom's word for it—which means shorter and tighter, with no pink or purple, and nothing that says “angel” on it anywhere. In the end, Mean Megan settles on a white shirt, sleeveless gray sweater, black mini-skirt, knee-high black boots and a lot of silver jewelry. Her hair is in a high ponytail. Dexter chooses a sparkly black dress of Celine's, with straps like a bathing suit, crossed at the back. Dexter asks Mean Megan if Celine knows they're borrowing it, and Mean Megan says not exactly, but since it doesn't fit Celine anymore she can't see why she would mind. I know this reasoning isn't entirely sound, but Dexter's infatuation with the dress and herself in the dress overrides good sense, and she allows herself to be persuaded, especially when Mean Megan loans her a pair of black heels that are Mean Megan's own, and surely, therefore, okay.

They go into the bathroom while I try to get Sklar to look at me. After a long time they come out.

“You're wearing makeup,” I say. “Mom's going to kill you.”

Dexter and Mean Megan exchange a look I should have paid more attention to. I'll remember it later and kick myself.

“You get your surprise now,” Mean Megan says to me. “Ready?”

We all go outside to the pool deck, Dexter tripping uncertainly in her heels. I laugh and clap my hands when I see the transformed cabana. While I was vacuuming, Dexter and Mean Megan arranged all my books and stuff inside, as well as my sleeping bag, and even added a big bottle of pop and a plate of food.

“Like it?” Mean Megan asks.

Something in her voice makes me stop laughing. Mean Megan, who's drawn dramatic black lines with Celine's eyeliner to lengthen her eyes and make the rest of her face a shade paler, looks at that moment about a thousand times witchier than she did at Halloween. She gives me a shove so that I stumble into the cabana, closes the door fast and locks it. Immediately I start banging on the door from the inside.

“All right?” I hear Mean Megan ask Dexter.

“Fine,” Dexter's voice says, and I know my sister is rejoicing because the niceness has ended and Mean Megan is once again on her side.