by Cotterill
I crawl over to him and say, “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with Dr. Death!” and Olly says angrily, “Leave it, Darby, I’m not playing anymore.”
I sit quietly while he rubs his head. “Can we play again when you feel better?” I ask.
“No.” He scowls. “What a day.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so I don’t say anything. It’s one of those phrases where you’re not sure if the other person needs an answer.
Olly sits up, still with his hand clutched to his head. “Why are girls so weird, Darby?” he groans.
“I’m not weird,” I say.
He gives me a sort of grin. “I didn’t mean you. You’re not weird. Loopy, but not weird.”
I grin back at him. Loopy is fine. Loopy means head in the clouds, like you’re not really paying attention. And that’s definitely what I am.
“You never know what they’re thinking,” Olly complains. “Girls. They spend so much time on hair and makeup when they look fine without it. But they don’t like it if you tell them that. And they do all this whispering and giggling and inviting you to join in, and then they get annoyed when you say the wrong thing. Why don’t they just tell you what you’re supposed to say?”
I shrug. “I dunno.”
“I never get it right,” Olly says, shaking his head. “If there’s a girl I like, she never likes me back.”
He sounds bitter, and his mouth is all screwed up like he’s just tasted a lemon.
“But they won’t ask you out if they like you, oh no. You’re supposed to guess. And get laughed at if you’re wrong. It’s like some massive game where no one tells you the rules.”
I look at him, surprised, because this is how I see the whole world, really. As a big game with confusing rules. “You should make your own rules,” I say.
Olly gives a sort of laugh. “I wish,” he says. “That’s not how it works. Maybe I should become a hermit.”
I laugh. “You can’t be a hermit. You’re a human.”
He rolls his eyes. “Do you even know what a hermit is?”
“Yeah,” I say, though I’m not actually sure.
“A hermit,” says Olly, “is someone who lives on his own. Outside of society.”
“Oh,” I say. That isn’t what I thought it was. “I don’t want to live on my own.”
“You don’t have to, Darby,” Olly says. “You’ll probably never live on your own.”
I smile. “Good. I don’t want to be lonely. And I don’t want you to be lonely, Olly. You can come and live with me.”
He smiles now. “Thanks, Darby. Never turn into one of those girls, okay? The ones who laugh in your face.”
“I promise,” I say.
Neither of us says anything for a bit. I start thinking about chocolate, which is what often happens. “I can’t wait till it’s the chocolate hunt,” I say.
“You and your chocolate hunt,” he says.
“I like the pink ones best.”
“Darby, under the foil, it’s all the same chocolate.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say.
“It is!”
“It isn’t!”
He stares at me, shaking his head. “I bet if they were all unwrapped, you couldn’t tell which was which just by eating them.”
“I could,” I say indignantly.
“You so couldn’t.”
“I so could!”
“Fine.” Olly crawls to the edge of the fort. “I’m going to test you.”
“What?” But he’s gone. I wait. What does he mean, he’s going to test me?
Olly is back within a minute, holding a bag I recognize very well. I gasp. “You can’t take that! It’s for the hunt!”
“Oh, come on,” Olly says. “Mom’s got loads of them. She won’t notice if one’s missing.”
“We shouldn’t take it. I’m not supposed to take snacks without asking.”
“You didn’t take it. I did,” Olly points out.
“But …”
He opens the bag, and a deliciously tempting scent of chocolate wafts over to me. I loooove chocolate. So much.
Olly says to me, “Close your eyes. We have to do this scientifically.” He sounds like a teacher.
I close my eyes. I hear him unwrapping the chocolates, and I breathe in the lovely smell.
“Right,” says Olly, “keep your eyes closed. No cheating. Give me your hand.” He puts a round chocolate in my hand. “Put it in your mouth before it melts.”
I do. The chocolate slides across my tongue. Mmmm.
“What color was the wrapper?” he asks.
I open my eyes and smile at him. “Pink.”
Olly’s eyes narrow as he looks back at me in the flashlight. “Yes …” he says. “Hmm. Okay, next one.”
I close my eyes and hold out my hand. Another chocolate. Yum. “Blue,” I say.
“You’re cheating,” says Olly.
“I’m not!” I say.
“Then you’re just making lucky guesses,” he says. “Close your eyes again.” This time he shuffles around so that he’s unwrapping the chocolate away from me.
“Yum,” I say, biting down through the softness. “Pink again.”
“Ha!” Olly says, triumphant. “Wrong! That one was gold!” He shows me the wrapper.
“I meant gold!” I say. “Try me again.”
By the time the bag is empty, I have guessed right more times than wrong.
“How are you doing it?” Olly asks.
“I told you, they taste different,” I say, though I am feeling a bit weird in my tummy now. I think maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all of them.
He looks impressed. “I didn’t think you could do it.”
I grin. I love it when people say that.
… a long time ago, Mom took me to a talk at the museum. It was by a man who knew lots and lots of stuff about beetles and other insects. He showed us photos of enormous butterflies and tiny ants. And he had brought along some real, live insects too, that we could hold after the talk. I held a stick insect and a stag beetle. And then I reached out for the big, furry tarantula.
The beetle man looked at me and cocked his head to one side. He said, “Are you sure? This spider is very friendly, but she doesn’t like sharp movements. If you jerk your hands, she’ll be frightened. And then she might bite you. You have to keep your hands very still.”
Mom said, “Darby, you don’t have to hold the spider.” Mom was pale and wobbly.
I said, “I want to,” and I held out my hands.
Carefully, the beetle man put the tarantula into my hands, and I stayed very calm. The beetle man nodded, and then he started telling me all about tarantulas and how they’re not as scary as people think, and how it’s like holding a big hamster, really.
I could hear whispers. Some of the other children looked frightened. But I thought the spider was interesting, not scary. It was kind of tickly actually.
When I gave the spider back, the beetle man asked if anyone else would like a turn. And everyone else said no thank you. I was the only one brave enough.
On the way home, Mom said to me, “I can’t believe you did that, Darby. I’d never have guessed you would.”
I like surprising people.
Chapter 17
I was cheating in the chocolate game, of course. I opened my eyes just a tiny bit to see the color of the foil. Sometimes I couldn’t see clearly; sometimes my eyes weren’t quite sure of the color, since the light wasn’t good. But I was definitely cheating.
I’m not telling Olly, though.
We took all the cushions off the sofas and put them on the floor under the fort and lay down on them. I am feeling a bit sick from all the chocolate, and also sleepy. Sleeping in wardrobes is not very good for you. And Olly can sleep anywhere, since he stays up so late playing video games. So it’s not long before we are both asleep.
That’s where Mom finds us later. She smiles at me, but her face is all creased, like a screwed-up piece of paper. “Hi, Darb
y,” she says gently.
I am warm and sleepy and fuzzy. “Hi, Mom.” I give her a hug.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
Olly is snoring next to me. Mom beckons me out from under the sheets. “Guess what?” she whispers. “I thought we might order pizza. What do you think?”
I think, I love pizza. Not as much as chocolate, but it’s close.
Mom and I order pizza on the old-fashioned phone, the one that only needs a phone line, not electricity. We order four cheese, meat feast, buffalo chicken, and vegetable (for Lissa). Mom adds on a couple more for Juris and Monica because they’ve all been working as hard as they can today and haven’t had time to eat. And then we add garlic bread and Diet Coke. Mom looks a bit pale when she hears the total cost, but she reads out her credit card number anyway.
When the pizzas arrive, Kaydee and Lissa come downstairs. They’ve done another makeover on each other with hairstyles too. Olly sees them and sighs. I remember what he said earlier about girls looking fine without makeup, but I think they both look amazing.
“Wow,” says Mom. “You two are so good at this. Can you do Darby too?”
I feel like a light switches on inside me. “Oh, YES,” I say. “Yes, do me, do me!”
So after dinner, Kaydee brings down her hair stuff and her makeup kit (which is huge) and Lissa’s makeup kit (which is even huger) and she sits me on the kitchen chair, and she and Lissa look at my face in a considering way. Then they get started.
First they wipe stuff all over my face with a cotton ball, and then they wipe other stuff all over it. And then the foundation goes on. Then I have to close my eyes while they apply eye shadow. Then they do powder, and some of it goes up my nose and makes me sneeze. Then there’s eyeliner, and mascara, and blush, and lip liner and lipstick.
And all the time they are talking.
“My mom taught me how to do makeup when I was nine,” Lissa says.
“Really?” Kaydee sounds impressed. “Wow. My mom doesn’t know one end of a mascara from the other.”
“Mom said it was important to know how to do it,” Lissa says. “She wears it all the time. That man used to have a go at her about it.”
“He was no good for her,” Kaydee says, screwing the top back on the foundation. “She’s better off without him. So are you.”
“Yeah,” Lissa says. “Totally.”
Kaydee says, “She should have chucked him out years ago. Not waited for the police to get him.”
I have not really been listening, but now I am. “The police?” I say.
Kaydee glances at Lissa. “My dad’s in prison,” says Lissa.
I am completely shocked. “Prison?” I say. “Why?”
“Drugs,” says Lissa.
“Oh,” I say. “Drugs.” I don’t know much about drugs, except they are bad.
“He was dealing,” Lissa continues. “He was bound to get caught in the end. Mom kept telling him to stop. He kept promising to go straight and get a real job. But then he’d go back to dealing.”
I’m a bit lost again. “Dealing” is what you do with cards, like when you play Snap. I don’t think this can be the same kind of dealing.
“Do you miss him?” Kaydee asks.
Lissa shrugs. “Not really. I used to go and visit him. But it was horrible. Really scary. So I left and said I wouldn’t go anymore. Mom doesn’t go either now. Says he’s a waste of space.”
So Lissa doesn’t have a dad. Or not a good one anyway. “You should get a stepdad,” I tell her. “Like we have.”
She laughs, and for a moment, I am surprised because I don’t think I’ve actually heard her laugh before. It’s quite a nice sound. “Yeah, right,” she says. “’Cause it’s that easy.”
“Your mom should go on the Internet,” I say. “On a dating site.”
“Darby!” Kaydee sounds scandalized. “How do you know about dating sites?”
How old does she think I am? “Everyone knows about dating sites,” I say.
Kaydee and Lissa look at each other and laugh. “What’s a dating site, Darby?” Kaydee asks me.
I know she knows what one is. She’s trying to trick me. “Aha,” I say, wagging my finger at her. “You can’t catch me that way.”
Lissa laughs again. “Would you go on a dating site one day?” she asks me.
“No way!” I say. “They’re full of creeps and strangers.”
For some reason, this makes them both laugh even more.
“Mom says a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet,” Kaydee reminds me, grinning.
“Mom,” I say, putting my hands on my hips, “is a very trusting person.”
Lissa is laughing so hard that tears are coming out of her eyes and making black smudgy marks at the corners. “Your sister is so funny,” she gasps to Kaydee.
I feel about ten inches taller. Maybe Lissa isn’t so bad after all.
Chapter 18
They do my hair after they finish my makeup, putting little braids at the sides and pinning them back. “You look really cute,” Lissa tells me.
Kaydee says, “I’m going to get a mirror,” and runs out of the room.
There’s a bang from across the hall, and Dad comes clomping into the house in his work boots. “Dad!” I call. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning; he’s been so busy with the storm damage and trying to look after the farm.
He comes to the kitchen doorway and sees me sitting on the chair, and his eyebrows move right up his forehead like they’re trying to climb into his hair. “Darby?!” he says, as though he’s not sure it’s me.
I get off my chair and stand in front of it, one hand on my hip, like a model. I toss my head so that my hair swishes. “What do you think?” And then I do a sort of twirl.
“Well …” says Dad. The lines across his forehead vanish completely and the corners of his blue eyes crinkle as he smiles at me. He rubs his nose with a grubby finger. “Well … I think you look like a princess.”
I beam at him. Behind him, Kaydee says, “’Scuse me! Mirror coming through!”
I have to look very hard at my reflection because it doesn’t look anything like me. My eyes are lined in dark brown and covered in the same kind of glittery eye shadow that Lissa and Kaydee were wearing yesterday. My eyelashes look a lot longer and darker than usual, and Kaydee used some kind of clamp thing to make them curl upward. Even though I’ve had to put my glasses back on, you can still see the effect.
I look beautiful.
I want to look like this every day.
“You like it?” Kaydee asks, smiling.
“I love it,” I say. “Thank you.”
Kaydee and Lissa nod at each other.
“Good work, girls,” says Dad. He heads to the cabinet in the corner of the room and rummages around. He pulls out a small plastic thing and pops out two pills. Dad gets stress headaches. It’s not very surprising that he has one today.
“Lissa,” says Kaydee, “you should draw Darby.”
Draw me? What does she mean?
“Lissa does the most amazing portraits,” Kaydee explains.
Lissa looks embarrassed. “Oh, stop it.”
“I’m serious! Draw her. Go on. She’d love it. I’ll get you some paper.”
Lissa hesitates. I like the idea of someone drawing a picture of me, especially looking like this. “Please,” I say.
She gives a shrug. “All right. But don’t expect … I mean, I’ll do the best I can.”
I nod. Of course. To be honest, anything she can draw will be about a billion times better than anything I could draw. Drawing is not something I can do.
… coming home from school with a painting I’d done. I was really proud of it. It was a rainbow over meadows, and I’d done some sheep in the fields too. “Darby, that’s wonderful,” Mom said, giving me a hug. “I love it. We’ll put it up on the fridge.”
And then Kaydee came in from her school, holding a plastic art folder, and she said, “They let me bring this home now it�
��s been graded.” And she took it out … and it was this amazing, detailed pattern in black, white, and blue, filling the whole page. It must have taken hours and hours.
Mom was speechless for a moment. And then she said, “Kaydee, that’s absolutely incredible. Goodness, you clever thing.”
And all the happiness that had filled me up like a balloon came kind of leaking out. Because it was so, so much better than mine, and even though Kaydee is four years older, I knew that I would never, ever be able to do anything as good as that.
So later, when no one else was around, I took down my picture, tore it up, and hid it at the bottom of the garbage. And when Mom asked me if I knew what had happened to it, I pretended I didn’t.
Kaydee gets Lissa a pencil, an eraser, and a large piece of paper, and she starts to draw me. I hear Mom and Dad talking quietly in the hallway and I really want to call out to Mom. I want her to see how I look. But Lissa is concentrating, so I know I should wait until she’s finished.
I am quite good at sitting still. A song by the Beatles starts playing through my head. It’s about a girl named Lucy and she’s got diamonds in the sky. I like the words in the song because they make pictures in my mind. They sing about tangerine trees, and that makes me think of orange trees (not trees with oranges on but trees that are actually orange) and rivers of peanut butter and grass made of licorice. And I wonder what the girl named Lucy looks like. Maybe she looks a bit like me, now that I am all made up and beautiful. I would like diamonds. I would like a necklace of diamonds, and a bracelet and earrings to match. And a hair clip of diamonds too.
“Darby, stop moving,” Kaydee says, and I blink.
“I wasn’t,” I say.
“Yes, you were. Stop looking up at the ceiling and talking to yourself.”
I frown.
Lissa says, “Don’t worry, you’re fine.”
“See?” I stick out my tongue at Kaydee.
Lissa laughs. “Don’t do that, though. Princesses definitely don’t stick their tongues out.”
She looks totally different this evening, and I don’t mean because of the makeover. It’s like all the spiky parts have been rubbed away. She looks softer, gentler, friendlier.
