Green (2 page)

Thirteen years old
, I thought.
I wish Gigi were here
. Tears welled up again. My grandmother on my father's side had always promised my thirteenth birthday would be special
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in ways I couldn't imagine. The last thing I could have imagined was that she wouldn't be here to see it.

The gaping void that was missing Gigi opened wide inside my chest. She'd been gone over a year, and I still couldn't believe she had died, without any warning, without even saying good-bye. My father was killed in an accident before I was two, and Grandma Green had filled in for his side of the family with so much love and attention it was as if she had taken his place. I'd adored her. I still did.

The tears I'd held back all day spilled at last.

Grandma Green had shortened her name to G.G. when I started talking. G.G. eventually became Gigi and stuck. She was the type of grandmother who thought oatmeal cookies were as healthy as the cereal, who let a disaster-prone kid paint pictures in her carpeted living room, and who considered the contents of her walk-in closet one big dress-up wardrobe for her "favorite" (only) grandchild. She collected buttons and pins shaped like clovers in every shade of green, and she wore green most days too. My stays at her house were both frequent and never long enough, always ending with kisses, hugs, and promises of more mischief the next time we got together.

How could a heart so big just give out?

Wiping my tears with both hands, I looked down at my wet palms. A perfect linear scar marked the left one. A week after Gigi's death, my mom and I had gone to her

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memorial service, then driven home alone for a dinner I couldn't eat. I'd helped wash up, though, and when I dried the knife Mom had used to cut the tomatoes, I accidentally put the sharp edge down instead of up, slicing straight through the dish towel and into my hand. Eight stitches later, Mom was asking the nurse if I needed counseling. She thought I might have cut myself on purpose, but I hadn't; I was just clumsy and sad and not paying attention. I didn't mind the scar, though. It reminded me of Gigi.

Pushing off from the sink, I shuffled down the hall to my bedroom, glad my mom wasn't there to see me crying again. She had never been as fond of Gigi as I was. The knife incident hadn't helped, and when it turned out Gigi hadn't left me any money for college, Mom had turned downright hostile.

"What was the woman thinking?" she'd griped. "She always had plenty of money, so where did it all go? And how does
anyone
her age die without a will?"

It burned my mother up, not getting help with my education when she had such a hard time saving on her salary. But Mom never knew where Gigi's money had come from or even how much she'd really had. Having divorced my father nearly as quickly as she'd married him, she was out of the loop on that stuff.

"I'll tell you this, though," Mom said the day she'd learned no college fund would be coming. "Your grandmother and her son were two of a kind: selfish, impractical dreamers!"

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Which was why we didn't talk about Gigi anymore--or about my father either.

My bedroom was at the back of the house, out of view from the street and absolutely silent. My pajamas lay the way I'd left them that morning, tossed across my rumpled quilt. The usual assortment of shoes and dirty laundry cluttered the hardwood floor. Passing my desk, I walked into the attached bathroom--the best thing about that house--to take a shower.

Cool water sluiced through my hair and washed away my last tears. Wrapping myself in a towel, I plopped down at my desk and switched on the computer.

No mail--1:03 p.m.

Four and a half more hours until Mom came home and my birthday finally started. I wondered what Kendall would wear to dinner. She always dressed cuter than I did.

I could text her
, I thought, reaching for my cell.
But she's probably already with Lola
.

The last thing I needed was Lola saying I couldn't dress myself. I'd just have to figure out my birthday look on my own.

At least I had plenty of time.

I opened my closet. I owned more jeans and tops than dresses, and hardly any dressy shoes. Peering all the way into the back, hunting for the heels I'd worn at Christmas, I spotted my tap shoes. They looked like pumps with

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ankle straps, and I'd loved wearing them for PE at my old school, even though learning shuffle-ball-change had taken me all semester. Dusting them off, I strapped them onto my bare feet--the way the cool girls had worn theirs. If not for the silver taps on their soles, they could have passed for regular shoes.

Unless I tried to walk somewhere
. I took a few loud practice steps on my hardwood floor.

On the last day at my old school, we'd tapped at assembly. I was in the chorus line, which meant I'd lurked in the back and tried not to mess up a few simple steps while the good dancers tapped up a storm. We had all worn the same outfit, though. Dropping the towel, I took that out too: a red-and-white-striped vest top and sequin-spangled blue satin shorts. Those shorts were the sparkliest things I had ever owned, and I kind of loved them. Pulling them on, I added the vest and tapped around my room like a maniac, not caring that I was doing all the steps wrong, just wanting to make some noise in that silent house. I tapped over to my desk and tried to watch myself in the mirror above it, but I couldn't see my feet, only my tangled wet hair and a pale bobbing face turning slowly pink.

I could wear makeup tonight!
I thought, stopping dead.

My mom didn't like me to wear more than lip gloss. But I was thirteen now.

And she wasn't home.

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Grabbing what makeup I owned from the bathroom, I tapped back over to my desk. My reading light and the big mirror there made a sort of vanity. I lined everything up in a row and started with foundation, but the base made my pale skin look pasty against my nearly black hair. I counteracted that by piling on pink blush. Breaking out the liquid eyeliner, I tried painting thin lines against my lashes. That brush was tricky, though, and before I got both sides even, I looked like Cleopatra. With a sunburn. I was headed to the bathroom to wash my face when the doorbell rang.

Kendall!
I thought, whirling around. My tap shoes clattered crazily as I ran through the house. I threw the front door open, but nobody was there, only the Douglases' Great Dane doing doughnuts through Ms. Clark's sprinkler. That was when I noticed the package lying beneath our mailbox, a brown-paper-wrapped package addressed to Lilybet Green.

I had no clue who that box was from. Looking back, I definitely could have devoted more thought to waiting for Mom to get home. But it was my birthday. And I started ripping.

Ka-boom!

Sparkling ... Twinkling ...

Black.

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Chapter 2

I woke up flat on my back on our front porch, surrounded by worried neighbors. For a moment I blinked up into their freaked-out faces and wondered what they were doing there.

Then I remembered.

"Ohhh," I groaned. "My head!"

I reached to touch the spot that had thunked against the boards, but Mrs. Douglas grabbed my wrist, stopping my hand.

"Lily!" she cried. "Thank God! Don't move." Her twin toddler boys peered at me from around her back. "I've

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called nine-one-one, and your mother. Lie still until they get here."

"My mother?" I repeated, confused. An odor like gunpowder mixed with scorched feathers filled my nose, and my voice sounded oddly dull, as if I were hearing myself through a wall. "She's at work."

"Don't try to think, hon--you probably have a concussion. Harley!" Her crazy Great Dane had loped into our yard, barking his head off. "Harley, shut up! I swear to Pete!"

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Mr. Lopez asked, waving gnarled knuckles before my eyes at a speed that made my head ache.

"Um, maybe if you could hold them still ..."

"The paramedics will do that, Al," Mrs. Karas said. She had the same china blue eyes as Kendall, although those were hard to focus on too. "What in the world happened, Lily? It sounded like something exploded."

I turned my head side to side on the boards. Our living room window was a spiderweb of cracks; a chunk of glass near its center was missing. The only traces of the mysterious package were some shredded scraps of brown paper.

"It was just a little ... a ... um," I fumbled. I had forgotten the word for
box
.

"Here, Lily, you dropped this." Mrs. Douglas pressed something warm into my hand, letting go of my wrist so I

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could raise it to my face. I blinked, then closed my eyes and squeezed them hard. The item I was holding was ... not possible.

But when I dared to open my eyes again, there it was, clutched so hard my knuckles were white.

Gigi's key!
I thought, stunned.

All my life, my grandmother had worn the same necklace, an ornate gold key on an intricately woven chain. The key looked old-fashioned, like something that might have opened a long-ago mansion, but three sparkling emeralds along its shaft suggested it had never been used in a door. I'd been fascinated by it since I was a baby, latching on with a chubby fist anytime Gigi bent near.

"Like that, do you?" she'd always said with a twinkle in her wide-set eyes. "Well, of course you do! And someday it will be yours, Lilybet. You'll wear the key, I promise." But after Gigi died, we couldn't find her necklace. The key had just disappeared.

Until now.

Part of my staggered brain understood that the necklace must have been inside the exploding box. But how? And why? It didn't make any sense.

"Whoa, dude! What
was
that?" a new voice asked. I glanced up to see Byron Berry join the circle of faces above me. "Cherry bomb? M-eighty?
Dude
, it was awesome! Where did you get it?"

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Byron was the cutest boy in our neighborhood and, as far as I knew, all of the adjoining ones. He was older than me, tougher than me, and orders of magnitude cooler. I'd had a hopeless crush on him from the day I'd moved in.

This was not the first impression I'd dreamed of making.

"I have to go," I blurted out, struggling to sit up.

The porch whirled dizzily.

"You need to lie still for the ambulance," Mrs. Douglas said, trying gently to press me back down. "We don't know if you're hurt yet."

"I'm fine." I wasn't at all sure about that, but the ringing in my ears was clearing, and sitting upright had swept away some of the gunpowder smell. "I really have to go."

"I don't think it's a good idea--" Mrs. Karas began, but Mr. Lopez cut her off.

"Ladies, she has to use the facilities. When you've got to go, you've got to go. Right, Lily?"

Byron grinned. I felt my face heat up. But even having Byron Berry think I had bladder issues was preferable to having him see me laid out like this.

"That's right, Mr. Lopez." Somehow I got to my feet, my taps clattering on the boards. That was when I remembered what I was wearing. And my damp, unbrushed hair. And the makeup.
Oh, please, no, the makeup!

"Lily!" Mrs. Douglas's footsteps lagged behind mine

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as I turned and dashed through our open front door and down the hall to my bedroom, locking the door behind me.

"Lily!" she called again, jiggling the knob. "You should
not
be running! The ambulance is coming."

"I'll be out in a second. I just have to ..." What? Think? Wash my face? Die of embarrassment? Kicking off my tap shoes, I ran into the bathroom.

The sight that greeted me in the mirror took my breath away. The source of that scorched feathers smell was now appallingly clear. Long clumps of once-glossy hair stuck out forlornly between patches singed back to my scalp. Black residue from the blast clung to the edges of my face, making the center part extra pale. And then there was the eyeliner.

I looked like a goth struck by lightning.

Tears flowed down my cheeks, leaving black tracks. I have freakishly wide-set eyes and a pointy chin. I'm far too odd-looking to be vain, but my hair was my one good feature, shiny and thick all the way down my back. Now half of it was stubble and the rest would have to be cut. Choking back a sob, I reached for a washcloth and realized Gigi's key was still clutched in my hand.

I stopped crying instantly, examining the key in the bathroom light and trying to make sense of its sudden appearance. I had no idea where it had come from, but Gigi

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had always meant for me to have it, and now, somehow, I did. With shaking hands, I slipped its chain over my head.

The key hung low on my chest, where my cleavage would have been if I'd had any. Staring into the mirror, I vowed to never take it off. Then I grabbed the soap and scrubbed my face. Surprisingly, considering the state of my hair, my skin wasn't damaged at all. But I didn't have time to ponder that. If someone forced me to go to the hospital, I didn't intend to make the trip in sequined tap-dancing shorts. Hurrying into my bedroom, I dashed toward my closet and froze.

There was a little man standing on my bed.

Eighteen inches tall at most, he wore a black pilgrim hat, a green coat with silver buttons, tight black britches, and black boots with buckles, all of which looked as if they had just come through a freak rainstorm. Hanging down over his crossed arms was a wiry beard, a wild mess of blond whiskers with the merest hint of green, as if he'd been swimming in chlorine all summer. His eyes were green as well. They pinned mine so intently I couldn't look away.

"Oh no," I moaned. "I
do
have a concussion."

The little man huffed with amusement, his arms rising on his round belly. "I've been called a few things in my day, but never a concussion."