Moonpenny Island (11 page)

“You're spying on us!” she calls, shading her eyes.

Thomas squirms, but Flor hangs on. Is Jasper accusing or teasing? Flor can't be sure, and besides, she still feels bad about the other night at the inn. She's pretty sure Jasper doesn't go around revealing
her ABS arm to everybody—why else would she hide it inside those crazy-big clothes? For some reason, she trusted Flor. Who acted like she couldn't wait to get away. Which she couldn't. Only now she feels bad. Only not bad enough to go down there and be nice.

“I have to pee,” she whispers to Thomas.

“Go in the bushes!”

“Maybe you're an animal, but I'm not.”

“My sister has to pee,” he hollers as she drags him away.

E
ven though Mama left in such a sudden way, she somehow managed to stock the freezer full. Container after container of spaghetti sauce, chili, stew, and several trays of frijoles. At dinner that night, Cecilia picks at a salad. She says she's turned vegetarian. Mama would fall into a dead faint, but Dad just drums his fingers on the table. It's not like he's got a big appetite, either. Thomas's hands are sparkling clean as far as his wrists, where the dirt takes over. He picks at a scab on his elbow till Flor yells is he trying to make her barf?

Lita's doctor claims the antibiotics should be working by now, but Mama says when Lita coughs it's like a wolf gets her in its jaws and shakes her head to toe. That makes Flor feels terrible. How can she be thinking only of herself, when her grandmother's so sick? Mama tells her to mind her temper and to be sure Thomas wears clean underwear. She says Cecilia is taking her place, and Flor has to do everything her big sister tells her, does Flor understand? Everything. Flor starts to protest that Cecilia doesn't care if they live or die but Mama just cuts her off. Repeat, Cecilia is the substitute mother, and now please put her on the phone. After Cecilia comes Thomas, who doesn't say a word, just nods and breathes through his mouth. Finally Dad takes the phone. He inhales like he's preparing to run ten miles, or appear before the Supreme Court.

“Hello, Beatriz.” Her whole name, like she's a stranger and they just met. He and the phone disappear upstairs.

By the time he comes back down, it's too late for Sylvie to call. Her aunt and uncle have strict rules. By now it's been . . . can it be? Five full days since they
talked. Sylvie doesn't even know about Mama. She doesn't know Perry rescued Flor from the murderous darkness. She doesn't know Flor met the spy girl.

This brings up the question: what doesn't Flor know about Sylvie?

She runs upstairs. An email, she has to send one. The computer is in her parents' room, where Mama's side of the bed is unnaturally smooth. Her brush lies on the bedside table—she forgot it. Her dark hair tangles with Flor's so you can't tell whose is whose. Dad's pillow is on the floor, like he had a one-man pillow fight, and when she picks it up, she gets a whiff of his nighttime smell, that salt-and-bread smell. It turns her into a little kid again, climbing into their big bed to be safe from demons and kidnappers. Safe—that's how easy it used to be to feel safe.

In the corner, the computer's already shut off. The thing is so old, a person could tragically die in the time it takes to boot up. Not that she really wants to email Sylvie, anyway. Flor needs to talk to her. To hear her best friend's voice, her tenderhearted voice, saying the precise, perfect things to make her feel better. Another idea for how to get sent home from
Ridgewood occurs to her. Sylvie can pretend Flor, her lifelong friend, died. It's practically true.

Flor sits on the bed and attempts to channel Sylvie's brain waves. She leans forward, coaxing them across the mainland, over the lake and inside her skull, but all she gets is quiet. It's so quiet, Flor feels alarmed. Is Sylvie sending her a message of peacefulness? Of calm and serenity? Flor jumps up. Is Sylvie telling Flor to feel those things? Or is Sylvie herself feeling peaceful and contented? Flor swallows. Is it possible Sylvie is not thinking of her at all?

In her own room, Thomas occupies ninety-nine percent of her bed. Flor knows she won't be able to sleep, so she takes out the antediluvian copy of
Anne of Avonlea
Mrs. Defoe gave her. About to begin her first teaching job, Anne Shirley bursts with dreams. She wants to awaken the love of beauty in her island students, to stir their young hearts to great things.

Thomas moans in his sleep. When Flor touches his hair, a smile breaks out. His grown-up bottom teeth are coming in crooked. They lean toward one another like they're engaged in a loving, toothy conversation. Flor closes her book and tries to picture an
eleven-year-old Mrs. Defoe, reading it, dreaming of becoming an inspiring teacher. Even with an imagination as excellent as Flor's, it's a stretch.

Slipping out of bed, she pushes open her window and sticks her head into the chilly night. The lake is inky black, with a thin drizzle of moonlight. Flor listens to it slap against the rocks. Again, again. That lake! It's so wide, so heartless. It separates her from two of the people she loves best in the world.

So what
, says the lake.
Slap. Too bad for you. Slap. What are you gonna do about it? Slap
.

L
ife's a crooked shelf, and things keep rolling off before Flor can catch them. They're out of bread and milk again—who knew they ate and drank so much? Who knew Mama spent half her life going to the store? Flor stops at Two Sisters the next afternoon. The place is empty, except for Queenie, leaning on the counter frowning at her sudoku.

“What's up?” she says to Flor.

“The sun,” says Flor.

Every time, they say this.

“How's your mama doing, hon? And your grandma?”

“Okay.” Flor sidles down the aisle. Two aisles, that's the whole store, and a cooler. It's Friday, and Island Air doesn't deliver till tomorrow, so all that's left is skim milk.

“She say when she's coming back?”

“Not for sure.”

Flor sets the bread and milk jug on the counter. But Queenie doesn't ring them up. Instead she pushes her puzzle aside and shakes her head.

“I remember when my sister left. The first year, I wanted to murder her. I couldn't believe she'd do that to me.”

Queenie's sister, Duchess, married the guy from the mainland who installed their new cooler. They live in Cleveland now, though they visit every summer.

“She and I promised each other we'd run this store together till we were little old biddies. We'd have us twin rockers, right there by the postcards. But she up and fell for that devil of a man. I'll tell you, Flor. She wrenched the heart right out of me.”

“You can't map the ways of the heart,” Flor hears herself say, and Queenie rears back.

“Out of the mouths of babes! It's a good thing you understand that, hon.” Her expression goes
solemn. “I mean, considering.”

“Considering what?”

Queenie goes from solemn to sad. She starts to bag the groceries.

“When you catch a firefly in a jar, you let it go or you keep it. Now which do you think is the better course of action?”

Even the highest-quality grown-ups can ask questions that really . . . why are they wasting everyone's time? But Flor likes Queenie, so she says, “I always let them go.”

“Of course you do, hon. And know what? I let Duchess go, and now her and me are back closer than ever.” She presses her hands together. “It's different, being separated.” She peels them apart. “But love can stretch just as far as you want.” She stretches them wide. “Just as far as far as you need it to.” Stretches them wider yet.

Flor nods, because she is polite, but that's enough of this strange pantomiming. She reaches for her money, but Queenie refuses to take it. Instead she tucks a couple of packages of Thomas's favorite rainbow-sprinkle doughnuts in the bag and pats Flor's head.

“People have been leaving home as far back as Adam and Eve,” she calls as Flor heads out the door.

Back home, when Flor gives Thomas one of the doughnuts, he tears off a piece and offers it to the air around his knees.

“Sit,” her brother commands. “Good boy.”

“Now what?”

“Paw?” Her brother holds out his hand. His eyebrows disappear up under his hair, and his face floods with delight. “Good boy!”

He's so convincing, Flor almost sees the dog.

He's out the door and into the field, throwing sticks and yelling “Fetch!” It's his own fault they can't have a real dog. Dad would let them in a minute. But when Thomas was three, he pushed gerbil food so far up his nose he had to be life-flighted to the mainland. Thomas enjoyed that helicopter ride so much, Mama's afraid he'd do it again. No more nostril-sized kibble or pellets in this house. No more pets. You'd think the coast was clear, now that he's six, but Mama always says that when it comes to Thomas, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. She
babies that boy—Dad is right. How has she managed to stay away from him this long?

Flor's knees go wishy-washy. Looking down, she realizes she's standing on the spot Mama's feet have worn in the floor in front of the sink. She's fitted her own feet exactly into it.

When did her feet get so big? Another mystery.

Yet another one, though by now it's so normal it might not fit the mystery category: where is Cecilia?

Flor plucks a yellow leaf off the geranium on the windowsill. Whenever she calls Sylvie, she gets the message. She's sent three emails with suggestions, some excellent and some desperate, for ways to get sent home, and Sylvie hasn't replied to a single one.

Another yellow leaf. This plant is dying! No one has watered it since Mama left. Flor sets it in the sink, gently runs the tap over it. She swears she hears that geranium murmur,
You saved me
. It must be terrible to be a house plant. Like being in a zoo. Only a flower pot instead of a cage.

Sylvie won't rebel. Flor knows it. Sylvie doesn't have it in her. She's too soft, too gentle. Always, always, Flor has loved this in her friend, but now?
Now it feels like a betrayal.

The phone rings. Flor grabs it and stares at the number.

“It's you!” she cries.

“It's you!” Sylvie echoes.

“Are you okay? When I tried to channel your brain waves, I got dead air.”

“I'm sorry, Flor! It's been cra-cra-craaaazy around here. Saturday I went to this big sleepover party, and then Sunday I was a zombie but my aunt insisted that . . .”

“Wait. You went to a sleepover party?” This is another thing they know about, from TV and movies, but have never experienced for real. “Was it . . . was it fun?”

“Sort of. I was so nervous, I was afraid I'd throw up. I had these babyish polka-dot PJs my mother bought, and everyone else had band T-shirts. Un, again. But then we made these Shrinky Dink necklaces, not the kind where the pieces are already cut out but the kind where you make your own? Everybody liked mine.”

This is probably Sylvie-speak for “Everyone went
wildly insane for mine.”

“They asked me if I'd make some for them too.”

“Wow.” The faucet is dripping. Flor gives it a shove.

“I saved the best one for you, Flor.”

And then Sylvie tells how they all wore their necklaces to school on Monday, and Mr. Darby, the art teacher, who all the girls think is dreamy, said way cool, and this one girl Blake, who has purple streaks in her hair, not to mention two holes in each ear, said Sylvie was a genius designer, and it just so happened they were starting a clay unit that day, and now Mr. Darby is forcing her to join the art club.

The faucet won't stop dripping. Poking her finger in and out of it, Flor listens. Now and then she gets in an umm, but it's not like Sylvie needs her to say anything.

“Mr. Darby says I have a real feel for three dimensions. And Flor, I know what he means. It's like, reading and math—they just lie there smacked down flat on the page. You know?”