Mirror, The (22 page)

Katie brought a hand to her mouth.

"Needless to say, they treated me like a medical freak. They tested me for all sorts of things and took a bunch of tissue samples. They did that for more than a year in exchange for paying all of our medical bills, but they never found anything useful."

"Oh, Mike. I don't know what to say."

"You don't need to say anything. You don't need to
do
anything, except maybe treat me like any other guy."

Katie grinned.

"Are you sure that's really what you want?"

"Yeah, I'm sure …"

Mike laughed.

"OK. You got me."

Mike smiled, shook his head, and then gazed at Katie with soft brown eyes that had their own disarming qualities. He reached across the table and put a hand on her cheek.

"Don't ever change," he said.

"I don't plan to."

"I mean it. Don't ever change. You're the best medicine I've ever had."

Katie smiled sweetly and wallowed in the moment. She couldn't remember a better twenty-minute work break. She started to speak when Ginny, James, Randy, and Greg busted into the staff lounge and turned the accessible, quiet, and usually private place into something that was still accessible, not so quiet, and not even remotely private.

"I do hope we're not interrupting anything," Ginny said in a Scarlett O'Hara voice.

Ginny grinned at her twin.

"You didn't interrupt a thing," Katie said. "We were just leaving."

"That's good. The cantaloupes are getting kind of mushy. Dave wants you to bring out some fresh ones. I told him that you two were good at fresh and mushy stuff."

Katie shot her twin a glance that could melt lead. Mike and the others laughed.

"We're on it," Katie said. "Let's go, Mike."

Katie got out of her chair and started toward the door but didn't get far. She took two steps before running into Ginny's outstretched arm.

"This isn't a toll road, Gin. I have to get back to work."

Ginny smiled mischievously.

"I'll let you pass, as soon as I learn whether you told Mike about Saturday night."

"What's Saturday night?" Mike asked.

"So you didn't say
anything
?"

"I didn't get to it yet," Katie said.

"That's all right," Ginny said. "I'll tell him now."

Ginny turned to face Mike.

"We're having an apartment-warming party Saturday, after everyone gets off work. It will be just a quiet little affair for us poor, unwashed courtesy clerks – and Karen and Janet. Will you come?"

Mike looked at Katie, laughed, and shook his head in amusement. He was clearly warming to the theory that Ginny and Katie had been separated at birth.

"You're shaking your head, Mike," Ginny said. "People don't shake their head to say yes. Perhaps I should lock my sister in her room until you provide the correct response."

Mike blushed and squirmed like a person who didn't like to be put on the spot. He glanced at Katie, who beamed, and then at his male peers, who grinned and stared from the safety of the doorway. When he returned to Ginny, he did so with a smile and a nod.

"Yeah, I'll come. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

CHAPTER 37: GINNY

Friday, June 5, 1964

Ginny pulled the tab off a can of root beer, examined it for a moment, and slid it on a finger. She held it up to the kitchen light and then turned to face her sister, who seemed engrossed in a newspaper article about malaria in central Africa.

"What do you think, Katie?"

"What do I think of what?"

"What do you think of pull tabs as rings?" Ginny asked.

"I think your idle mind is the devil's workshop."

Ginny smiled.

"You have no imagination," Ginny said. "I think they have serious potential. They look nice, don't cost a lot, and could double as weapons. Remember that on your next date."

Katie lifted her eyes from the paper, which she had spread across the table. She had opened every part of the paper except the sports section and the wedding announcements.

"Are you going out with Saint Steven tonight?" Katie asked.

Ginny shook her head.

"He's preparing for his finals this weekend. I'll be lucky if I see him before graduation."

"That's too bad," Katie said matter-of-factly. She returned to the paper.

Ginny pulled the ring off her finger and placed it on the table.

"When is Mike coming for you?"

"He should be here in a few minutes."

"What movie are you going to?"

"I think
From Russia with Love
. I didn't ask."

"You two aren't getting serious, are you?"

Katie lifted her eyes again.

"We're just friends, Gin. I told you that yesterday," Katie said somewhat defensively. "I like Mike. I like him a lot, but I'm not going to break my promise. We're just going to be friends."

"OK. OK. I'm only checking. Don't get your panties in a wad."

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Katie said.

"No," Ginny said. She smiled mischievously. "
I'll
get it. I have a responsibility as your sister to screen your dates."

Ginny laughed when she saw Katie shake her head and return to the paper. She got up from the kitchen table and walked through the apartment to the front door, where she fully expected to meet Mike Hayes and give him a bad time before he whisked Katie away to
Russia
. When she opened the door, however, she found someone smaller, shorter, and decidedly more feminine.

"Hi, Cindy."

"Hi," Cindy Jorgenson said. "My mom sent me over to give you these."

"What are they?"

"Cookies."

Cindy held out heaven in a box.

"Do you want us to buy them? If you do, we will."

"No. Just take them. My mom already bought them."

Ginny took the box and gazed at her neighbor and future grandmother. Wearing a crisp white blouse, a pleated green skirt, and a merit-badge sash, Cindy looked like a Girl Scout fit for the cover of a teen magazine or even the canvas of a Norman Rockwell painting.

"Thanks," Ginny said.

Ginny tilted the box, saw the words "chocolate" and "mint" on the label, and smiled. She loved this girl already.

"Are you busy right now?"

"No," Cindy said. "I just got done eating dinner."

"Do you want to come in and visit for a while? Katie's here too."

"OK."

"Come on in then. Katie's in the kitchen."

Ginny held the door open and stepped aside as the fourteen-year-old entered the apartment and made her way through a residence she knew well. When Ginny, trailing a few steps behind, reached the kitchen, she glanced at Katie and saw that she had figured out that the doorbell ringer was not a handsome grocery boy with a bouquet of flowers.

Katie stood near the table with her hand on a chair she had pushed in. She had already reassembled Friday's
Seattle Sun
and put it in an out-of-the-way place on the counter.

"Hi, Cindy," Katie said.

"Hi."

"Cindy brought us dessert," Ginny said.

"I heard," Katie said. "I see she brought our favorite too."

Katie glanced at the girl.

"We just bought a case of root beer. Would you like one?"

Cindy nodded.

"OK. Let me get it," Katie said. "Take a seat."

Ginny pulled out a chair at the dining table and seated the guest. When Katie returned with an opened can of pop, Ginny sat in her own chair and took another look at the girl next door.

"I like your uniform," she said. "I used to wear one of those."

"Me too," Katie said. "Have you been out selling cookies today?"

"No," Cindy said. "We stopped selling a month ago. We're delivering now."

"Do we owe you any money for these?"

Cindy shook her head.

"Virginia already paid for them," Ginny said.

"That was nice of her," Katie said. She returned to her chair and sat down. "It was nice of you to bring them over. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Cindy said. She turned a pleasant shade of pink.

Ginny laughed to herself as she thought of all the times she had seen Cindy Smith blush. Her paternal grandmother turned red over everything from compliments about her cooking to explicit lyrics. Some things, apparently, didn't change.

"What are your folks up to?" Katie asked. "I haven't seen them in a while."

"My dad's watching TV now. My mom's staying out of his way. He gets kind of cranky when he watches the news."

Katie smiled.

"What about Joanie and Rick?"

"Joanie is helping my mom bake cookies. Ricky went on a date."

"He went on a date? Isn't he only sixteen?" Katie asked.

Cindy nodded.

"He just got his driver's license. He's taking Carol to a movie."

"Who's Carol?"

"A girl," Cindy said.

Ginny laughed.

"Are they going to
From Russia with Love
?" Katie asked.

"No. I don't think so. I think he's taking her to the drive-in."

Ginny bit her lip. Grandma Cindy was the gift that kept giving.

"That's too bad. I could have said hi. I'm going to the Phoenician tonight with a friend."

A car horn sounded.

"In fact that's him now," Katie said.

Katie got up, grabbed a sweater off the back of her chair, and threw it on.

"It was nice seeing you, Cindy. Tell your mom thanks for the cookies. We'll talk more the next time you're over. OK?"

"OK."

Katie smiled smugly at Ginny.

"Don't wait up."

Ginny laughed.

"Why should I? You're just seeing a 'friend.' Remember?"

Katie stuck out her tongue and left the kitchen. Seconds later she shut the front door of the apartment and then a door that was presumably attached to Mike Hayes' 1958 Impala.

"Is she going out with her boyfriend?" Cindy asked.

"She says he's just a friend, but I'm not so sure. There's really no such thing as a boy who's just a 'friend,'" Ginny said as she made quotation marks with her fingers.

Cindy beamed.

"You like that, huh?"

Cindy nodded.

Ginny warmed at the sight of the girl. She tried to remember what it was like when
she
was fourteen. It seemed like an eternity ago even though it was just five years past.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Ginny asked.

"No," Cindy said a little too quickly.

"Do you like any boy?"

Cindy blushed.

"I like one boy."

"Just one?"

The pink turned to red.

"Just one."

"I'm sorry for teasing. A pretty girl like you should have at least ten boyfriends," Ginny said. She smiled and looked at Cindy more thoughtfully. "One is all right too. What's his name?"

"Bobby."

"Does Bobby go to your school?"

Cindy nodded.

"He's in my math class."

"Does he like you?"

"I'm not sure. He looks at me all the time and smiles a lot, but he never talks to me."

"Maybe he's just shy. Have you told him that you like him?"

"No."

"That's the problem. You have to tell him that you like him and do it as quickly as possible before he runs off with some girl named Bubbles or Amber – or
Wendy
."

Cindy laughed.

"We don't have any Bubbles or Ambers in our class."

"What about Wendy?"

"There's one in the school."

"There you go. Just keep Bobby from Wendy and you'll be set for the summer."

Cindy frowned.

"There's one problem," Cindy said.

"What's that?"

"School gets out next week. I won't see Bobby again until next fall. He lives in Madison Park. That's four miles away."

Ginny sighed. She could relate. She remembered falling hard for a classmate days before her freshman year had ended. By the time school had reopened in September, Brandon Barnes had moved with his family to Tulsa.

As she took a moment to think of sage advice, Ginny pondered the beauty and the irony of the moment. She had not so long ago been asked to provide guidance on boys to her baby sister. Now here she was providing it to her future grandmother. Ginny had finally gotten her heart-to-heart with a teen named Cindy.

"What about boys around here?" Ginny asked. "Are there any boys in the neighborhood you might like?"

Cindy shook her head.

"Are there any boys who like
you
?"

Cindy started to shake her head again but stopped. Then she sank in her chair a bit and turned red once more.

"That doesn't quite look like a no."

"It's not."

"I don't understand," Ginny said. "Is there or is there not a boy who likes you?"

Cindy smiled sheepishly and sat up in her chair.

"There is. There's a boy I met at church camp who likes me."

"There is?"

Cindy nodded.

"When's church camp?" Ginny asked.

"It depends. There's one in October and one in March and a big one in July. That's like a real camp. I go there for three weeks."

"Do you think this boy will be there?"

"I think so. He usually goes to all of them."

"Is he nice?" Ginny asked.

Cindy nodded again.

"Is he nice-looking?"

Cindy squirmed in her chair.

"Uh-huh."

"Then I think you should think about that boy and give Bobby a rest for the summer. What's the boy's name?"

Ginny took a sip of her root beer.

"Frank Smith," Cindy said.

Ginny spit out her root beer.

"I'm sorry," Ginny said. "Did I get any on you?"

Cindy looked at her blouse.

"No. I don't think so."

Ginny grabbed a paper napkin from a metal rack. When she finished wiping up the mess on the table and the mess on her arm, she turned to face her visitor.

"Did you say the boy's name was Frank Smith?"

"Yeah. I think his real name is Francis, but no one calls him that."

Ginny smiled and shook her head.

"Is something wrong?" Cindy asked.

Ginny laughed.

"No. I think something is right. Cindy, I want you to listen to me."