Threading the Needle (2 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: Threading the Needle
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“It's not that bad, Mommy. I hardly itch at all.”
“There. You see? She hardly itches at all.” He smiled at Tessa and ruffled her hair. “That's my big girl.”
Later that day, Mr. Kover sat Tessa and Madelyn down on the front porch steps and took their picture. The girls wore matching blue pedal pushers and white midriff blouses. Each had one arm slung over the shoulders of the other. Tessa tucked her free hand firmly under her thigh to stop herself from scratching her legs and grinned as wide and bright as sunshine in August.
Madelyn enjoyed playing at the Kovers' as much as Tessa enjoyed playing at her house, though for different reasons.
Madelyn thought of the Kovers as a “regular family” and envied their “regular family” lifestyle, which included game nights, annual camping trips to the North Woods of Maine, and home-cooked sit-down dinners served at six on the dot.
Madelyn was especially fond of Mrs. Kover. Being naturally maternal, Sarah Kover fussed over Madelyn as if she'd been her own, urging her to finish her milk and wear warm sweaters, and avoid crossing her eyes; French braiding her hair, and even sewing the matching pedal pushers and blouses Madelyn and Tessa wore in the photograph. Mrs. Kover was the only adult who seemed to have any influence over Madelyn, though the girl's willingness to be influenced had its limits.
Madelyn went to the Kovers' nearly every day after school and quickly learned that if she passed through the Kover kitchen around 5:45 P.M. and commented about how good everything smelled, she would be invited to stay and eat. However, in recent months, Madelyn began to notice that her dangled hints for dinner invitations often went unheeded. When she rang the Kovers' door as usual on a Saturday morning in late January she was met not by Tessa but by Mrs. Kover.
“You're up bright and early, Madelyn. But I'm afraid Tessa isn't home. She went to Jillian Eversoll's for a sleepover last night.”
Jillian Eversoll? Why would Tessa want to stay overnight with her? Jillian had small, piggy eyes, and just the week before, she'd tattled on Madelyn for passing notes to Tessa during English class.
“Oh. Will you tell Tessa that I dropped by?” She turned from the door to face the snow-drifted street and the prospect of a whole day with no one but Grandma Edna for company.
“Why don't you come inside for a minute, Madelyn? I just took a loaf of banana bread out of the oven. Would you like some?”
Mrs. Kover made hot chocolate and set a cup in front of Madelyn along with a plate of warm banana bread spread with melting butter that dripped onto the girl's fingers, then sat across from her at the table with her own cup of cocoa.
Sarah Kover was blond and had a warm, motherly smile. Madelyn thought she looked a little like the actress who played Samantha Stephens on
Bewitched
.
“So, Madelyn, how is school?” Mrs. Kover blew on her cocoa to cool it.
Madelyn shrugged. “Okay.”
“Do you like Mrs. Bridges? You know, she was my teacher when I went to Edison. She's been teaching math for about as long as I can remember.”
“I don't think she likes me very much.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She called Grandma in for a conference last month to talk about my grades. They aren't very good. Grandma was mad. She said that Mrs. Bridges said that I'm not living up to my potential and that that's just another way of saying I'm lazy.”
Mrs. Kover pressed her lips together, as if keeping them closed required some effort. “I'm sure Mrs. Bridges didn't mean it like that. I think that was just her way of saying that, with a little more effort, your grades will improve. You're a smart girl, Madelyn. I'm sure Mrs. Bridges was just trying to encourage you.”
“That's not the way Grandma saw it.”
Mrs. Kover wrapped her hands around her cup and frowned, resting both elbows on the table, which was something Grandma Edna had told Madelyn that ladies didn't do. Madelyn mentally chalked up one more thing on her growing list of things Edna was wrong about and propped her own elbows up on the kitchen table.
“No. Well . . . sometimes older people don't always . . .”
Mrs. Kover faltered, sighed, and changed the subject. In the entire time Madelyn had known her, she never heard Mrs. Kover say anything bad about anyone else.
“Give yourself a little time, Madelyn. Things will get easier.”
Madelyn licked some butter from her fingertips and nodded, not because she thought Mrs. Kover was right but because she liked her.
“What about friends? Have you made any new friends this year?”
“Tessa's my friend.”
Mrs. Kover smiled, keeping her teeth hidden under the tight bow of her lips. “I know. But there are a lot of other nice little girls in your class, you know. Besides Jillian, there's Allison Treash, Lisa Sweeney”—she ticked the list off on her fingers—“Mary Louise Newton. Oh, a lot of girls.”
Madelyn shook her head stubbornly. “Tessa is my friend,” she repeated.
“Madelyn, have you ever heard the phrase ‘putting all your eggs in one basket'?”
Madelyn had, but didn't say so. She didn't like the direction the conversation was heading.
“I'm worried that's what you're doing with Tessa,” Mrs. Kover said gently. “Tessa has always had a lot of friends. And that's best, I think. When you concentrate all your attention and affection on just one person, you run the risk of . . .”
Madelyn kept her expression blank, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Kover.
“I just think it would be a good idea if you spent at least some of your time with someone other than Tessa. Do you see what I mean?”
Madelyn didn't, not because she couldn't but because she didn't care to. She liked her eggs where they were, thank you.
Tessa is my friend,
she thought.
Anybody who doesn't like it . . .
 
Madelyn was annoyed with Tessa and wondered why she hadn't waited for her. Maybe she had a lot of homework and wanted to get started on it early. Madelyn knew how Tessa was about things like that. She'd rather eat a bug than miss turning in a homework assignment. Yes, that probably explained it. She decided to forgive Tessa. Madelyn could never stay mad at her for long.
It started to snow. Madelyn hoped it would snow hard enough so school would be canceled the next day. Then she and Tessa could go sledding or, better yet, stay inside and play with the dollhouse.
By this time, the once-empty dollhouse, in true Victorian style, was fairly bursting with furnishings. But every few weeks, Madelyn would add something new to the décor. When she did, she always showed Tessa first.
Today it was a new mirror for the parlor she'd made from an old gold compact. Madelyn had unscrewed the bottom half of the compact, removed the hinges, reglued the loose rhinestones around the edge, and polished them with rubbing alcohol to make them shine. Though a bit gaudy, the refurbished mirror was the perfect size to hang on the wall behind the miniature sofa she'd found and recovered in red velvet the previous fall. Madelyn couldn't wait to show it to Tessa.
She turned the corner onto Oak Leaf Lane, running the last three blocks to Tessa's house, holding the paper bag with the mirror inside in her left hand and her book bag in her right, the sound of her footsteps muffled by the snow.
Coming closer, she saw a boy in a blue snow parka—or rather, the back of him—leaning up against the white clapboard wall of Tessa's house with his head bent down, his feet spread shoulder-width apart. Between those feet, Madelyn saw another pair of feet, clad in red snow boots.
Ben Nickles had Tessa pinned to the wall!
She ran faster, her heart racing and her breath coming in short gasps. Leaving the sidewalk and running across the yard, she saw that Ben had his lips pressed against Tessa's. Tessa turned her head to the left, but Ben moved with her, pushing his face up close to hers. Madelyn saw the pink tip of his tongue snaking into Tessa's mouth before he shifted his weight and moved his hand down to the front of Tessa's coat and clawed at the front of her jacket.
Madelyn let out a yowl as she closed in on them, swinging her book bag over her head like a lariat. Ben lifted his head and turned around just in time to get hit square in the jaw with the full force of Madelyn's bag. The blow knocked him off his feet and backward into the snow.
“What the heck!” Ben yelled as he grabbed his jaw and glared at Madelyn. “What did you do that for?”
Tessa gasped and knelt next to Ben in the snow. “Are you all right? Let me see.”
Ben grimaced and then wiggled his jaw back and forth. “I'm okay. I wasn't expecting it. That's all.”
Still kneeling, Tessa looked up at Madelyn with blazing eyes. “What was that about? Are you crazy or something?”
Ben, rubbing his jaw, let out a short, mirthless laugh, as if indicating that the answer to her question should be obvious.
“I was trying to save you,” Madelyn said. “He was
attacking
you!”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “He was
kissing
me!”
Ben looked up at Madelyn and smirked. “What's the matter, Maddie? Jealous? Of me kissing Tessa? Or of Tessa kissing me?”
Tessa's cheeks turned red. Ben laughed. Madelyn didn't understand his joke, only that she was the butt of it. She hated for people to call her Maddie. She waited for Tessa to come to her defense by saying something cutting to Ben, but she didn't. Instead Tessa helped him get to his feet.
“Madelyn, you've got to quit following me around like this, okay?”
“I wasn't following you around,” she said. “I was waiting for you. So we could walk home from school together. We
always
walk home together.”
Tessa let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I know. Look. That was all right when we were little, but we're going to be thirteen next month. We're too old for that now.”
Madelyn frowned, puckering her forehead as she held up the brown paper bag. “But I brought something to show you. Something new. For the dollhouse. Do you want to come over and see it?”
“The dollhouse!” Ben guffawed. Tessa looked at him. Her cheeks flamed an even brighter shade of red.
“I told you,” Tessa said in a voice that was nearly a hiss. “We're too old for that stuff now. I can't spend all my time hanging out with just you. You've got to quit waiting around for me after school every day and you've got to quit coming over to my house every afternoon. People will think we're weird or something.”
Madelyn squared her shoulders. “Well, I don't care what people think. You're my friend.” She hefted her book bag onto her shoulder and glowered at Ben. “Nobody had better say anything bad about you in front of me!”
Tessa threw back her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and let out an exasperated growl.
“Not me, Madelyn! You!
You're
the one everybody is calling weird, and they're right. You are! You follow me around like a stray puppy. You eat dinner at my house practically every night of the week. My father says we ought to start charging you room and board! My family can't do anything without you butting into it. You still play with dolls. And you steal clothes from the charity bags people leave on their porches! It's practically the same as digging through their trash.
“You're weird, Madelyn! You are. You always have been. Don't you get it? You're embarrassing me!”
Madelyn blinked her big brown eyes. “But . . . you're my friend.”
Tessa glanced at Ben, who raised his eyebrows into a question, before turning back to Madelyn. She swallowed hard and then, without looking Madelyn in the face, shook her head firmly.
“When you moved in with your grandmother, my mother said I
had
to ask you over to play. She said I had to be nice to you because you were an orphan and nobody wanted you. She made me be friends with you, so I was. But,” she said softly, looking up at Madelyn with a pained expression, “I don't want to be your friend. Not anymore.”

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