The Year My Sister Got Lucky (10 page)

“I —”

I weigh my options. Going home — not home, but The Monstrosity — seems about as appealing as a foot amputation. It’s too chilly and mosquito-y outside to try hunting for my dad.
I
don’t have Heather and Lucy and Faith knocking down my door asking me to hang out, so …

“Okay,” I answer, my voice tentative.

“Okay,” Emmaline replies, and opens her door.

I tell myself that the chances of Emmaline inviting me in so she can feed me to her dog are slim to none. Still, the drummed-into-my-brain
don’t-go-with-strangers
lesson of my childhood is ringing in my ears. My heart is beating faster than it should be as I cross Emmaline’s threshold.

“What’s your poison?” Emmaline asks, putting down her rolled-up mat.

I stiffen. “Poison?” I echo.

I hear Emmaline’s warm laugh. “I mean what do you like to drink? Does tea sound good?”

“Sure,” I reply uncertainly. Emmaline’s house is smaller than The Monstrosity, but it’s stuffed full of beautiful, strange things. Like, for instance, the — no joke — giant gold
Buddha
in the living room. Multicolored, beaded drapes hang over the windows, and ornate vases overflowing with fresh flowers sit on the tables. The air smells sweet and strong, like incense, and there’s a rock fountain burbling in the entrance hall. I’m in a daze. For one thing, I’m
in Emmaline’s house
— the source of all the mystery. But I can’t even focus on investigating, because there’s so much to take in.

“You can rub his belly,” Emmaline calls from the open kitchen, and I realize I’ve been standing mesmerized in front of the Buddha statue. “For luck,” she adds.

Lord — or Buddha, or whoever — knows I can use a dose of luck today, so I extend my hand and rub the cool belly. A tingle shoots up my arm. I feel like I’m in another time, on another continent. Fir Lake couldn’t be farther away.

“I travel a lot,” Emmaline explains, coming into the living room. She is holding two pale blue mugs that have no handles, and the scent of jasmine tea floats out toward me. My stomach rumbles; I never did finish my lunch earlier today. “Mostly through Asia,” she adds, putting the cups on a small glass table
that is painted with flowers. “And I like to pick up little treasures, so that whenever I’m at home, I feel like the whole world is still with me.” She motions for me to sit in one of the chairs at the table, then hurries back into the kitchen.

I sit, but keep looking around. The house is quiet, so I gather that Emmaline does live alone. But there’s nothing lonely about her home, especially when she turns on the fringed lamps at the entrance to the living room. The light is rosy and soothing. Emmaline sets a plate of cookies down on the table and slides into the seat across from me, her big blue-gray eyes watching me carefully. “Eat, drink, while it’s warm,” she urges.

My throat is so full of questions —
Why do you travel to Asia? What do you do every day?
— that I’m afraid I won’t be able to swallow anything. But soon I’m sipping the hot, fragrant tea with surprising ease and scarfing down the soft chocolate cookies.

“You’re a dancer, right? You and your sister both?” Emmaline speaks up after I’ve eaten for a few minutes, and I choke a little bit on my tea. I wish she would
stop
trying to freak me out. “It’s the way you hold yourselves and walk,” Emmaline explains after I’ve managed to nod and stop coughing. To demonstrate, she stretches out her neck, but I doubt I look that graceful. “Also, when I first met your mom over the summer, she told me that her daughters dance ballet.” Emmaline grins. “I’m a yoga instructor,” she
adds, picking up her tea. “I teach classes in the attic of the town library. Yoga’s a form of dance, don’t you think?”

Oh.
Yoga is super-popular back in the city; Sofia’s mom does it religiously, and there are studios on every corner in the East Village, but I don’t know much about it. Though Emmaline’s teaching yoga explains her green mat, and all the Buddha stuff. “Um, maybe,” I murmur, looking into my tea cup. “You can take yoga classes in Fir Lake?”

Emmaline nods proudly. “That’s why I moved here — to start my own studio. I was living in Japan for a while, and then Thailand, and then San Francisco.” I try to grasp the idea of having so many homes, and my head spins. “Then I just needed some
peace
and some nature, so I read an article about Fir Lake — and up and moved here.”

“Why would anyone
want
to move here?” I ask Emmaline truthfully, thinking of how painful it was to tear away from the city. “There’s nothing to do!”

“There’s yoga,” Emmaline points out, a smile playing on her lips.

“I should tell my sister about that,” I say. “She’d be good at yoga, I bet. She’s good at
everything.
” Is it my voice that’s bitter, or the tea, now that I’m down to the dregs? I can’t tell.

Emmaline tilts her head to one side. “You know, Katie, I’m an only child. Well, not a child — I’m twenty-six. But I’ve always wondered what it would be
like to have a sibling — especially a sister. Someone to tell my secrets to.”

Thinking of Michaela and the three girls at lunch today, I reply carefully. “My sister and I are best friends. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Emmaline echoes, and laughs fully this time. “Well, that still sounds pretty good to me.” It’s when she says this and her eyes darken, that I think the word
lonely,
like I did my first night in Fir Lake. Again, I get the sense that Emmaline is one of those tragically beautiful heroines I like to read about, and I wonder about her love life.

Suddenly, I remember Sullivan helping me to my feet, and Anders in the cafeteria, and I blush. I want to ask Emmaline questions about boys, about love — for some reason, I sense she’d
know
about that stuff — but that seems more like something you’d ask a friend. So, after thanking Emmaline for the tea and cookies, I pick up my tote bag and walk to the front door. Emmaline waves to me from her porch as I cross over to The Monstrosity.

“Don’t worry, Katie,” she calls through the coming twilight. “Your luck will change.”

When I get inside The Monstrosity, though, I see Emmaline is wrong, because a message from Trini is waiting on my cell phone:

I’m in! I’m a snowflake! TEFW!

Too Excited For Words.

Woo-freaking-hoo.

I want to be happy for my friend. I do. But at the same time I want to kick something.

Much later that night, when Michaela comes to get me from the attic so we can stargaze, she doesn’t say anything about the yearbook meeting or the fact that she stayed in town afterward to have pizza with Heather and Lucy. (When Michaela called to say she wouldn’t be home for dinner, Mom said, “No problem!” into the phone; if I tried the same thing, Mom would lock me in a dungeon). And I don’t ask my sister any questions.

When we’re outside and sitting on a blanket and looking at the sky, I do tell Michaela about
The Nutcracker
text, and how mad and sad and pleased for Trini it made me. And Michaela, her eyes following the stars, tells me it was normal for me to feel that way, and now we’ll have a real reason to go into the city to see
The Nutcracker
in December. Which is the perfect thing to say.

Finally, wrapping my sweater tight around myself, I ask Michaela about her evening — it’s still nuts to me that she didn’t spend it at home.

“Did you go cow-tipping?” I ask, only half teasing. I’ve read about cow-tipping; bored-out-of-their-minds country kids literally push over sleeping cows late at night.

“
No!
” Michaela laughs. “The yearbook meeting was cool, and then we went to Pammy’s. There were a lot of other kids from school there.”

“Cool,” I say, using her word. I have the feeling that my sister and I are performing a dance, but I’m a few important steps behind. It’s like I’m missing my cue to twirl onto the stage, or stumbling into a fall. My knee hurts at the thought.

“How about you?” Michaela asks, leaning back on her elbows and sucking in a deep breath of air. “Did you do anything after school?”

I think of my surreal afternoon tea with Emmaline, and I don’t
mean
to keep it secret from Michaela, but I decide not to mention it just now. So I shrug and say, “Homework,” which is the first time I’ve ever really lied to my sister. Immediately, guilt washes over me, and it feels as powerful and immense as all those stars.

Here’s something I’ve learned during my eleven years as a student: You can taste Fridays. They taste like recklessness and freedom and the coming weekend. There’s relief in the air, but also a tingle of who-knows-what’s-to-come. Back in the city, Fridays tasted like smoky hot dogs slathered with mustard from Sunday street fairs, and fresh Jamba Juices after extended Saturday ballet classes, and stale sticks of chewing gum on long subway rides, when the train was running on its slower weekend schedule.

In Fir Lake, my first Friday as a freshman tastes like the buttered popcorn Heather, Lucy, and Faith bring over to Michaela and me at lunchtime, with Heather asking, “Do you guys want to come to the movies with us later?” (Michaela politely declines, probably because I kick her shin beneath the table), like the cloying cotton-candy perfume Heidi Rebecca
sprays on her wrists during Horticulture, telling me she has a date with a “cutie from the tennis team” tonight, and like the mint chocolate chip ice-cream cones Michaela and I treat ourselves to on our walk home from school (Michaela’s idea even though we both know ice cream isn’t the best snack for dancers).

“We made it,” I sigh, my mouth full, as Michaela and I pass by Hemming’s Goods. Mrs. Hemming spots us through the window and waves enthusiastically. The store is filled to bursting with people stocking up on beer and paper plates and sunscreen. “Saturday’s gonna be a real September scorcher so spend it outside!” Mr. Rhodes told us in homeroom. I thought of the deer in our garden and the hornet’s nest outside my window. I’m not too fond of
outside
.

“You seriously thought we might not survive our first week?” Michaela asks with a smile in her voice, adjusting the straps on her new blue bookbag. She purchased it yesterday at The Climber’s Peak, on an after-school saunter through town with Heather. Michaela invited me along — “They have some adorable parkas there, Katie!” she insisted — but I went home and did French homework instead. As a result, I’m now officially the only girl at Fir Lake High School who carries a Capezio tote bag.

“After that horrible Monday, I did wonder,” I tell my sister as we head up the starting-to-be-familiar dirt road.

Truth be told, it was after Monday that the week
picked up a little. Michaela and I walked home together every afternoon except for yesterday, and our small, two-person table was still our lunchtime refuge (even if Heather and the twins did swing by every so often). We ate dinner with our parents and did our homework in our bedrooms like good girls until Mom and Dad went to bed. Then we snuck downstairs and outside, huddling in our sweaters and counting the stars.

Thanks to Michaela, I also stopped being late to homeroom, because she suggested that we lay out our clothes the night before. With Mr. Rhodes off my case, I’d sit at my desk, wishing I’d gotten more sleep, while Sullivan and Rebecca talked over my head. Mr. Rhodes made announcements about after-school activities, like student government, the Camping Club (yikes), and cheerleading, and kids signed up for stuff like crazy — Heidi Rebecca went in for cheerleading, and Flannel Autumn dove straight for the Camping Club sheet — but I held off. I know that once I start ballet classes again, I’ll be swamped after school.

Actually, Mabel Thorpe’s classes commence this coming Monday and, at the thought, I feel a flutter of excitement in my belly.

“You and your overdramatics,” Michaela teases me, patiently licking at her cone. I’m jealous of how carefully and neatly my sister eats ice cream, as carefully as she dances, forming a little whorl that lasts for as long as she likes. By comparison, I’m a mess; my
scoop is melting down the sides of the cone, my fingers are sticky with chocolate chips, and I’ve already swallowed half of it.

“I’m just psyched it’s the weekend,” I say, crunching on my cone as we near Emmaline’s house. I’m about to tell Michaela that I’m hoping the two of us can catch up on our stretching when I notice that Emmaline’s red car is in her driveway. I haven’t chatted with our neighbor since our strange afternoon tea, though most nights, when I’m up at insane hours, I see that her bedroom light is on, and sometimes I’ll catch her pacing. But now, Emmaline is sitting on the steps of her porch, with her forehead in one hand.

And I think she’s crying.

I grab hold of Michaela’s arm, just as my sister reaches for me. We glance at each other, alarmed, and then I look back at Emmaline. It’s unmistakable; her slender shoulders shudder and she lets out small sniffling sounds. She’s wearing her yoga clothes, and her skin is all splotchy. My mind reels with the possibilities. Did something bad happen in yoga class? Did her Buddha tip over and break? Or is it something worse — is she longing for, say, her perished love?

“Maybe we should ask her what’s wrong,” Michaela whispers, lowering her cone as we continue to stare at Emmaline from a distance.

I shake my head. “I’m sure she wants her privacy,” I whisper back. In our apartment building in the city, Michaela and I once ran into our upstairs neighbor — whose name we never knew — sobbing in the elevator. She didn’t say anything to us, and we didn’t say anything to her, and we rode down to the lobby with her sobbing all the way. “It’s only polite,” I add as we walk into The Monstrosity.

I’m surprised to see Mom in the kitchen, talking on the phone. She’s been home late the past couple of nights, since it’s a bit of a drive from the campus. “And you can install it in one day?” Mom is asking, twirling the phone cord around one finger while, with the other hand, she scribbles something down on a notepad. “Tomorrow sounds perfect,” she adds as Michaela and I dump our bags on the floor. When Mom hangs up, I start to ask her who she was talking to but I’m interrupted by two things: Dad yelling, “Irina! I need your help!” from his study, and a loud, tinny version of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” coming from Michaela’s bookbag.

“I told him not to write with that injured hand,” Mom mutters, charging out of the kitchen as Michaela kneels down and unzips her bag.

“Sorry about the song!” my sister tells me, laughing, as she retrieves her cell. “Heather downloaded it for me in homeroom today.” I make a face.

“Heather!” Michaela exclaims, pressing her cell to her ear as she stands up. “I can barely hear you. Are you guys at the movie theater?” I wonder if there’s a spoonful of envy in Michaela’s tone. I can hear Heather’s voice on the other end, even though I can’t make out her words.

I bite my bottom lip. I didn’t even know Michaela and Heather had each other’s numbers. I certainly don’t have the number, or e-mail, of anyone in school.

“Uh-huh, I remember,” Michaela is saying into the phone while I shift from one foot to the other in my satin ankle boots. In social studies today, Autumn Hawthorne stared at them as if they were made of moon rock. “Yeah, that would be terrific,” Michaela adds. “Let me just ask Katie. Hold on, babe?”

Babe?

Michaela covers the mouthpiece of her cell. “Heather’s inviting us to the docks of Fir Lake tomorrow afternoon,” my sister gushes, her eyes bright. She’s like a social firefly, lighting up at the mere thought of weekend activities. “A bunch of kids from school go there to dive and picnic and take boats out. It’s a tradition for the last warm weekend of the year.”

“Is it as super-important as Homecoming?” I mutter. Water sports don’t exactly equal fun for me. Especially since neither Michaela nor I can swim.

“Katie, don’t be a party pooper,” Michaela chides
me as if she is actually a person who uses the phrase
party pooper
.

“Okay, I’ll go,” I whisper. Michaela flashes me the thumbs-up sign and returns to Heather.

“We’re all set,” Michaela reports cheerfully as I wander out into the living room. I’m hoping to head up to the attic and IM with Trini, but something my sister says in the kitchen makes me pause.

“Stop it, Heather!” my sister squeals in a most un-Michaela-like manner. “He does
not
like me!”

My cheeks grow warm. He
who
? Michaela hasn’t mentioned one single boy to me this week, other than Cecil Billings, her socially inept lab partner in Physics who kept sneezing on her notebook. And I doubt she’s talking about him.

I had to have misheard my sister just now, because if she thought someone in Fir Lake had a crush on her, she’d definitely tell me.

“I’m glad we painted our nails last night,” Michaela announces as we bump along the road toward the lake, sunshine and the scent of pine trees spilling into the car. Mom is at the wheel, and she’s humming along to the Russian CD that’s playing.

I look down at my flip-flops; my nails are a dark scarlet, and Michaela has painted hers in a vivid pink. Michaela and I are experts at do-it-yourself manipedis; back in the city, in between dance classes, we spent our weekends sprawled across our bedroom floor
with bottles of polish remover and cotton balls. But we’ve never done our nails in preparation for a lakeside jaunt.

“They complement what we’re wearing, right?” Michaela adds, pulling down the strap of her blue Tigers tank top. Beneath it she has on a fuchsia bikini. I realize that my sister seems almost nervous. Since when she has cared so much about outfits?

“I guess,” I say. I’m wearing my navy-blue boy-short tankini under a black cotton dress, but I’m planning to keep the dress on. It’s definitely hot enough out for swimwear; the air feels as if it’s been toasted. Still, I’m in no mood for Heather and the other girls to see me in something so revealing. My boobs feel unwieldy even in regular clothes, forget a tankini.

To take my mind off my body, I glance out the window. We’re driving through an entirely new part of Fir Lake, one that exists on the opposite end of town. Here, there are no sidewalks and no street names, and the houses — huge, mansion-like, pearly white — hide in the hills. Groves of trees cast dappled shadows on the quiet road, and over the music, I can hear the gentle
lap-lap
sound of the lake nearby. Straight ahead of us rises a frighteningly craggy mountain, and Michaela nudges me and murmurs that it’s the famous Mount Elephant.

“It does look like a beast,” I say, eyeing it cautiously.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to try and climb it?” Michaela asks breathlessly. “Imagine getting to the very top, and seeing all of Fir Lake spread out beneath you….”

“That does sound cool,” Mom chimes in, grinning at Michaela in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, when you have a death wish,” I add under my breath.

“Make a left up here, Mom,” Michaela instructs, slipping on her sunglasses. Once again, I’m impressed by at my sister’s uncanny sense of direction. She’s probably one of those people you could plop down in the middle of the woods and she’d find her way home.

As quickly as Mount Elephant vanishes, a gleaming sapphire slice of Fir Lake comes into view. On its shore is a makeshift beach, with grass instead of sand, where girls in sun hats are spreading towels and opening coolers. Naked babies toddle into the water on their chubby legs, and kids cannonball off the splintering wooden docks, sending up great splashes. Farther out on the water, where the lake meets the forest, a group of laughing boys are bobbing, and there are small white dots that must be boats. It’s all incredibly inviting, like an ad for the perfect vacation spot — until I remember that we
live
here. This realization would probably make another person happy. But I feel sort of deflated.

Before Mom can pull into the parking lot that runs parallel to the beach, Michaela leans forward
and kisses her on the cheek. “Right here’s great,” my sister says in a rush, snatching up her bookbag from the floor of the SUV. “And don’t worry about picking us up — Katie and I will get a ride back with Heather.”

I wonder where the fire is as Michaela hustles me out of the car, and Mom drives off.

“I need to get my license,” Michaela sighs. “No more of this Mom-dropping-us-off stuff, you know?”

A-
ha.
From this safe distance, none of the kids lolling on the beach could spot us getting out of Mom’s car. I don’t see what the big deal is, though. In the city, none of our friends had licenses, and everyone envied those lucky few whose parents had cars. Plus, I’m surprised that Michaela would care about parental embarrassment, considering she and Mom are BFF.

“Michaela! Over here!”

Heather, Lucy, and Faith are waving to us from their spot by the lake. The three girls are stretched out on a plaid picnic blanket, and lit by the sun, they look like angels. Especially Heather, whose slim figure is clad in an ivory-white bikini. Lucy’s dark waves are hidden beneath a straw sun hat, and she and Faith are wearing identical yellow polka-dot bikinis, just like in that old song. Frisbees and footballs sail over their heads, and kids I recognize from Fir Lake High run circles around them. But the girls seem to be untouchable, protected by an invisible shield.

When we reach the three of them, Heather jumps up to hug Michaela tight. “You look beauti
ful!” Heather exclaims. The girls’ blanket is littered with bottles of sunscreen, dog-eared
Cosmopolitan
s, and packs of cigarettes, leaving very little space for two additional bodies. And Faith and Lucy, who blow kisses up to me and Michaela, aren’t doing anything to clean up. But Michaela simply sheds her tank and shorts, and eases down onto the blanket beside Heather. I’m a little shocked to realize, as I observe my graceful sister, that in her bandeau bikini, with her hair rippling down her back, she looks as pretty and carefree and nature-loving as the girls who surround her.

She fits in.

“Katie — undress, sit down, relax!” Michaela says, shooting me a big smile, and the three other girls turn to me. It’s this sudden attention that makes me feel even more awkward in my black dress and sunglasses — as if I’m a big dark splotch in the middle of this gloriously sunny day. I don’t disrobe, but I do wriggle into a spot at the very edge of the blanket, the grass prickling the backs of my knees. Heather begins passing around a white paper bag bursting with fresh strawberries, Lucy puts in her iPod earbuds, and Faith lights a cigarette (I wonder how Mom would react if she knew Michaela’s new friends smoke).