Arcadia's Gift (Arcadia Trilogy) (3 page)

“Do you like him?” Lony teased with a sing-songy tone. Cane cocked his head to listen, as if interested in my answer.

“Jeez, Lon! I talked to the guy for a total of ten minutes. Don’t you have cheerleading practice or something?” I asked. Changing the subject with Lony is easy if you bring the topic around to her.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Cady, do you live under a rock or something? Tonight is the first football game.” She gestured to Cane wearing his jersey which looked deflated without the hulking pads beneath it. All of the players wore their jerseys to school on game days. “There’s no practice because we cheer tonight.”

“Oh. Well…break a leg,” I replied and hurried upstairs. I wanted to get out of there before Lony could guilt me into attending the game to watch her jump up and down in her pleated skirt, chanting loosely rhyming lines meant to pump up the crowd.

I hung my bag on the back of my desk chair. My bedroom was carefully decked out by my mother in every possible shade of pink. I hated it, but there’s no arguing with her when it comes to interior decorating. Mom is a realtor, and a successful one at that. Even though we’ve lived in this house for ten years and have no plans to move anytime soon, my mother insists on keeping the entire house in perfect “open-house” condition at all times. The one exception being Aaron’s room, but as long as he keeps his mess in the basement where she can pretend it doesn’t exist, she leaves him alone about it.

I never liked the color pink, but somehow as infants it was determined that my color would be pink and Lony’s would be purple. That’s how people kept us straight, I guess. Anyway, the result is that almost every Christmas or birthday gift we have ever received from our extended family had been identical, but in either pink or purple. Like if our Grandma Nora were to get us sweaters, Lony’s would be a soft lavender and mine would be some hideous shade of Pepto-Bismol.

I pressed the power button on my computer, and it purred to life. While it booted up, I called Bronwyn.

“Hey, I’m going to do the loser thing and spend my Friday night at the library. Wanna come?”

“Just a sec, I have to go to my office,” she said. I heard her walk the phone into her pantry and shut the door. She had a little stool in there where she could talk in semi-privacy. Her parents didn’t believe children should be allowed phones in their bedrooms.

“The library actually sounds like more fun than what I have planned,” she said softly. “My parents are making me go to a lock-in at the church.” Bronwyn’s father was the minister the New Life Bible Church, and her mother served as the church secretary.

“Aren’t lock-ins for like middle school kids?”

“Yeah. It’s going to be me and a bunch of sixth graders. Mother says I have to go to set a good example.” Her mocking tone was the extent of her rebelliousness.

While they’d always been very hospitable toward me, the Perkins’ tended to hold Bronwyn’s reins pretty tightly. She wasn’t allowed much of a social life outside of school and church functions. They wouldn’t even let her stay overnight at my house because I have a brother under the same roof. Apparently, Pastor Tom thinks Aaron is some sort of teenage Casanova with designs on seducing my friends while they sleep.

“Maybe we can do something Sunday after church?” she suggested.

“I probably shouldn’t plan anything. I don’t know how I’ll feel with my dad leaving and all.”

“Sorry for my comment at lunch.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m just really on edge about the whole separation thing right now. God, my eyes are tearing up just thinking about it!” I rubbed my face with the hood of my sweatshirt. I sniffed loudly into the phone. “Sorry…”

“I know. How are Lony and Aaron taking it?”

“Well, you know how Aaron is. I tried to talk to him a couple of days ago, and he just shrugged and returned to his underground lair.”

“I don’t know why boys always think they have to be so stoic.”

“I know, right? And Lony…she’s convinced that our parents are going to get back together and refuses to take any of it seriously.”

“Do you think they will…get back together?”

“I don’t know. Doubt it. With both of them running their own businesses, they never see each other. I have a feeling this ‘trial separation’ is really the first step in the divorce.”

“Unfortunately, it usually is. Darn! I just heard the garage door, so Father’s home. I better run. If you need to talk this weekend, give me a call.”

“I will.”

After we hung up, I took a few minutes to check my email and my Facebook account. I find it hilarious that Lony has 847 friends on her Facebook, and I have thirty-two. Well, at least I actually know and talk to all of mine. I answered a few messages and poked around online a bit, but when I heard my mother come home, I logged off.

“You don’t need to order pizza,” my mother was saying to Aaron when I entered the kitchen. “There’s leftover casserole in the fridge. Heat that up.”

Aaron shuffled out of the room in his stocking feet, muttering under his breath. Mom had kicked off her pumps and stood on one leg, massaging the ball of her foot.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, walking to the fridge to get a Diet Pepsi. “Busy day?”

“Oh, aren’t they all? I just stopped to get the car-charger for my Blackberry. I have two houses to show in Asbury, and then I’m going straight to the football game to see Lony cheer. Do you have plans tonight?”

Mom slipped her shoes back on and opened the junk drawer. She extracted a tangle of chargers for various electronics and began to un-weave the one she needed from the mass.

“No plans. Just homework.”

She leveled her gazed on me. “Cady, you do realize you are the only teen in the Tri-State area who voluntarily does homework on a Friday night, right?”

“I have to get it done tonight, so I can help Dad move tomorrow.”

“Oh, no you’re not! Your father and I talked about it, and we don’t want you kids in the middle of this. We want you all to go find stuff to do with your friends tomorrow and stay away from here. He has enough people to help him.”

“But, Mom,” I reasoned, standing with my hand on my hip, “We’re already in the middle of this. I can’t let Dad do this alone.”

Mom let out an audible sigh and rubbed her temple. “Arcadia Marie, don’t argue with me. Think of your dad. This is going to be hard enough on him, he doesn’t need an audience.”

I gritted my teeth to keep from talking back. There was no use in arguing with her when she made her mind up about something. I poured my soda into a glass of ice.

“Maybe you and Lony should go shopping tomorrow,” she suggested. “It’ll be good for you to spend some time together.”

The last thing I wanted to do was spend the day at the mall with Lony, but just then Lony flitted into the kitchen, so again, I held my tongue.

“Hey, Mamasita!” Lony said, giving our mother a peck on the cheek. “Still coming to the game tonight?”

“Of course, hun, but I’ll have to meet you there. Got an appointment right now. See you later!”

Mom waved good-bye and ran out the door with her charger in hand.

“Are you coming to the game tonight?” Lony asked, grabbing two sodas out of the fridge.

“I didn’t plan on it. I have some homework to do,” I answered, sipping on my drink.

“Only you would do homework on a Friday night,” Lony complained, stalking back to the living room.

I went to my bedroom and spread my textbooks across the bed. I took studying very seriously, but then, I had to. I wasn’t one of those naturally gifted people who absorb knowledge without trying. I make good grades, but I need to work very hard to do it. College was still two years away, but I really wanted to get accepted to a school out of state. I had been thinking about someplace in New England, but recently, California sounded good, too. Really, I just wanted to get out of Iowa. Dubuque’s not so bad, but I didn’t want to spend my whole life here, either. I reached for my French book and set to work.

The sky turned a bruised purple outside my window. I’d finished my French and history and was working on trigonometry when my dad poked his head in my bedroom door.

“Hey, Bug,” he greeted. His work clothes were a bit dusty from hanging around job sites all day, and his eyes looked tired. My dad is a general contractor who builds homes and small commercial buildings. He’d been sleeping in the guest room ever since the big announcement was made. Not the most comfortable bed in the house.

“Hi, Dad. What’s up?” I asked, trying to act casual, but not quite succeeding with the knot in my throat.

“Just got home and it looks like everyone is gone except you and me.”

“Yeah, Lony is cheering at the game tonight. Mom went to see her. I don’t know where Aaron ran off to. I heard his truck leave about an hour ago.”

My dad leaned against the door frame. He was still a handsome man, even if his waist was a little thicker and his hair a little thinner. His almond-colored eyes were exactly like mine.

“It’s Friday night. Are you just going to do homework?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, closing my book. “Do you have something else in mind?”

“How would you like to go to a movie with your old man? We can see anything you want as long as it’s not a tear-jerker.”

“I’d love to.” I’d always been a daddy’s girl.

My mother got her way, and Saturday morning found me packed into the car with Lony and on our way to the mall. The official orders from both of our parents were to stay gone all day, but Dad said I could stop by his new place Sunday afternoon to help him settle in.

It’s not like I hated my sister or anything…we just had nothing to talk about. It’s not like when we were little and inseparable. Then, she’d been my best friend, more than that even. We finished each other’s sentences and spoke in a secret language all our own. When our parents finally moved us into separate bedrooms at seven years old, it was six months before I stopped sneaking into Lony’s bed after our parents went to sleep.

High school ruined everything. The summer before freshman year, puberty struck with a vengeance. We each gained five inches of height and added the perfect curves to compliment our slender frames. Lony loved her new body. She relished in the attention it brought her from boys at the public swimming pool. She would parade back and forth in front of the concession stand in her striped bikini, giving coy glances to the boys as she passed. I was slower to accept the changes. I’d always been more athletic than Lony, competing in cross country and track at school and gymnastics on the weekends at a local club. But the growth spurt had knocked me off my rhythm. That summer I spent almost every day at the YMCA reacquainting myself with my body and its limits. While I was too bulky to stay competitive in gymnastics, I was running sprints like Hermes. By the time school started, I was in great physical condition, ready to compete for a shot on the Varsity track team. Lony was ready to compete in a whole different way…she wanted the title of Most Popular Girl in School, and was willing to step on anyone to get it.

Since we had an entire Saturday to kill and the Dubuque mall was pathetically inadequate, Lony crossed the bridge spanning the Mississippi River into Wisconsin, heading toward Madison. Three hours later, I sat outside a dressing room reading a comic book on my e-reader while my sister modeled a seemingly endless series of homecoming dresses for me.

“You really should go to the dance. I mean, it’s Homecoming. Isn’t that like a right of passage or something?” She’d been badgering me the entire ride up to Madison about my lack of interest in school activities.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” she rattled on. “I know like five guys who would take you if you wanted to go. If you were desperate, you could even ask Shawn. Not very romantic, but at least he can dance. What do you think of this one?”

My sister stood before me in a rose-tinted halter dress with a dangerously low neckline.

“I think you’d never get out of the house in it,” I muttered.

Her face fell into a pout. “You’re right. Too bad, though. I look hot.”

Lony slipped back into the dressing room to wriggle into something else. A moment later she was back out in a silvery-blue number, twirling in the three-way mirror.

“What about that emo guy?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You know…that guy you were walking with yesterday…Byron?”

“Bryan,” I sighed. “What about him?”

Lony planted her fists on her hips and gave me an exasperated look. “Aren’t you paying attention? You should ask him to Homecoming! I bet he looks good dressed up. Just don’t let him wear all black, it’s depressing.”

“No, Lon,” I said, slipping my e-reader back in my bag. “I don’t want to go. I dance like an idiot, I hate the music they play, and there are no boys in school that I’m even remotely interested in.” My stomach ached with hunger, so I decided to move Lony along. “Maybe we should hit the food court. I’m starving.”

“Fine,” she replied, even though clearly she was not. She gave the dress one last twirl. “But what do you think about this one?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of plain. I like it, but it’s not really your style.”