by Nancy Rue
Lily looked back at the window. The two faces were still there, still deformed, still hideous. But as Lily watched, she realized there was something not quite human about those faces. She grabbed for the flashlight and swung the beam right at the window.
The faces didn’t move. They only shone. As if they were made of plastic. Because they were made of plastic. Lily dropped the flashlight.
“They’re gonna get us!” Zooey was still screaming. “Somebody, help us! They’re gonna get us!”
Lily wasn’t so sure she was wrong, and when the bed started to move under them, Lily grabbed onto Zooey and began to scream with her.
But it was only Kresha, wriggling out from under the bed. Then she grabbed the flashlight and stomped toward the window.
“Kresha, get back!” Lily screamed.
But Kresha went straight to the window, flashed the light into the glass once more, reached down, and opened the window.
Seven
now even Suzy started to scream. Lily grabbed both Suzy and Zooey and held them against her as she shrieked at Kresha, “Don’t! You’ll get us all killed!”
That brought a fresh set of terrified cries from the closet. But none of that stopped Kresha. Tossing her almost-blonde hair away from her face, she thrust both lanky arms out the window and grabbed and pulled. In came the upper bodies of two creatures, each wearing a plastic Halloween mask.
Flashes of things she’d seen on TV went through Lily’s head, and she came to life.
“Bop ’em, Kresha!” she cried. “Bop ’em with the flashlight!”
Letting go of Zooey and Suzy, she leaped from the bed to the floor to help. But as she tried to snatch the flashlight out of Kresha’s hand, Kresha grabbed her wrist and said, “No, Lee-Lee! These my brodders!”
The screaming stopped. From the bed, Zooey said in a shaky voice, “Brodders? What’s a brodder?”
“Your brothers?”
Reni emerged from the closet to stare at the two culprits like Lily and the rest of them were doing. Kresha snatched the masks from their faces to reveal two very young, very sheepish-looking boys and then went into a long stream of Croatian that had her eyes flashing and their heads hanging.
“Well, are they stayin’?” Reni said.
“No!” Kresha said fiercely.
“Then could you shove them back out and close that window?” Reni said. “It’s freezin’ in here!”
Lily realized for the first time that she was starting to shiver, and Suzy’s lips looked absolutely blue. Kresha nodded and gave her two brothers a push. With a yelp they were gone, and she slammed the window shut behind them, just in time for the bedroom door to open. Suzy’s mother put her head in, eyes sprung wide.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Suzy said in a hurried voice. “It was just Kresha’s brothers teasing us.”
“I so sorry,” Kresha said. She went to Mrs. Wheeler and put her arms around her. Kresha was always hugging people.
Mrs. Wheeler wasn’t always hugging people, but she seemed reassured and finally left the room.
“No more screaming, though, girls,” she said.
Lily figured there wasn’t much screaming in the Wheeler house. Suzy barely talked most of the time, much less shrieked her lungs out the way they’d been doing.
As soon as Mrs. Wheeler was safely down the hall, everybody piled back onto the bed. This time Kresha was the center of attention.
“How old are your brothers?” Zooey said. Her face was still bright red from howling.
“Julius, he ten. Blage, he only nine year old.”
“What are they doing out running around at this time of night?” Lily said. “My mother would kill Joe if he did something like that.”
“My mama, she vork in the night,” Kresha said.
“Oh, yeah, you told us that,” Reni said. She gave Zooey a hard look just in case she decided to launch into another frozen pizza monologue.
“Vhen I there,” Kresha said, “I make them stay in the house. Vhen I not—” She sighed. “They not.”
“Huh?” Zooey said.
But Lily understood. “Boys can be such brats,” she said. “But they still shouldn’t be going around scaring people to death. What if one of us had a heart attack?”
“Didn’t you learn what to do in your class today?” Reni said.
Lily felt the blotches coming on. “We didn’t get to that part,” she said.
“They no hurt nobody,” Kresha said. “They scare us. That’s nothing. They no run with the . . . How you say? The gangs.”
“Yeah, I guess it could be worse,” Reni said.
“But tell them to stay away from us,” Lily said.
Only now was her heart starting to slow down. Saving people’s lives she could handle. But being scared half to death by two little hoodlums? That was something else.
Even though the Girlz stayed awake late that night, Lily still went to church the next day. The rule in the Robbins house was if you had a sleepover on Saturday night, you still had to go to church on Sunday morning, and you had to stay awake when you were there. Lily was a little worried about nodding off during the sermon, but it turned out to be one of those times when the pastor seemed to be talking just to her.
“Most of us, if we’d been put in prison unfairly the way Joseph was by the pharaoh, would go sulk in a corner until our term was up,” Pastor said. “But not Joseph! He took advantage of every opportunity he had in there and told the other prisoners what their dreams meant. In today’s terms we call that blooming where you are planted.”
The memory of Missy calling Lily a big sunflower flickered through Lily’s head, but only for a minute. She was listening to what the pastor said next.
“Let’s all be more like Joseph. If we’re stuck someplace where we don’t want to be, like maybe in a job or a certain tough situation like Joseph was, and we can’t get out of it, we ought to ask God to help us find a way to bloom there if we can’t be transplanted. What are the opportunities to learn or to minister in this place where you don’t want to be? Did it ever occur to you that God has you there for a reason?”
Like my body class? Lily thought.
And she thought about it all afternoon while she was reading up on sprains and snakebites in her first aid books and practicing doing more splints on China until his arms and legs and even his stub tail had pencils tied onto them with hair ribbons.
If I can’t be in a real class, she thought, maybe God’s telling me He wants me in this class to help people. Then she snorted out loud. Help them what? Draw a picture of their insides?
But she set down her first aid book and picked up the stuff Missy had given them to take home to prepare for next week.
After adding “pimples” and “body odor” to the puberty list, Missy had told them cheerfully, “There are plenty of ways to help yourself get through all this so much more easily. Next week we’re going to talk about a healthy diet.”
At the time, Natalie had grumbled, and Lily had told herself firmly that she wouldn’t be back next week. But now she opened one of the pamphlets and looked at the MyPlate diagram that was printed there.
“Wow,” she whispered as she pored over it. “Half of every meal is supposed to be fruits and veggies? There’s no way we do that around here!”
That was when the idea struck her that helping should begin, of course, at home. She started her campaign right away.
I think God must be really proud of me now, she thought as she drew a large version of the MyPlate diagram on some white paper Mom always kept for her girls to make game banners on. Lily posted it on the refrigerator before supper and announced that starting tomorrow, all five of them ought to follow it.
Joe immediately wrinkled up his nose. “And what kind of milk? I hate thin milk!”
“Milk products,” Lily said. “Yogurt, cheese—”
“Ice cream?” Joe said.
Lily shook her head. “That’s way sweet. You aren’t supposed to have very many sweets.”
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“So where do Froot Loops fit in?” Art said.
“They don’t,” Lily said. “You need to eat something healthier for breakfast. So should Joe. Something instead of Pop-Tarts. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
But Art didn’t answer. He was busy writing Froot Loops in the bread group, while Joe added Cheetos to the milk group.
“Where does Mountain Dew go?” Joe said.
“That’s a fruit,” Art said.
Lily sighed loudly. She was going to have to try an awful lot harder, but she knew it was going to be worth it. She might not save lives, but she could change some! Her imagination went to work. Who knew whose life she might change if she could get them on a better diet and a regular fitness program?
She’d start with the Girlz, of course, but she could help anybody. Maybe even the next person she talked to!
The doorbell rang and Dad called out from his study, “Is that the phone?”
“I’ll get it,” Lily said and went back into her dreams as she walked toward the door.
Yep, it could be the very next person I talk to. It could even be whoever’s at the door. She swung it open, and there stood Shad Shifferdecker.
Well, she thought quickly, maybe not.
“Oh,” Shad said. “Do you live here?”
“No, we just keep her around here to answer the door for us,” Art said as he passed through the foyer behind Lily.
“Yes, I live here,” Lily said, rolling her eyes.
“Oh,” Shad said again.
Lily h ad n ever s een t he b oy s peechless b efore. Usually smart comments ran out of his mouth like saliva. Right now he was just clutching a cardboard box and staring at her. Finally, she said, “So, what do you want, Shad?”
“Oh,” he said for the third time. “I’m sellin’ these.” He nodded down at the box.
“What are they?” Lily said.
“Solid milk chocolate,” Shad said. His voice sounded automatic, not like the one he used at school. He was still talking out of the side of his mouth the way he always did, but it was like he was saying a speech he had learned. Only he was forgetting most of it.
“I’m sellin’ ’em for my karate group,” he went on. “Three bucks a bar. The world’s finest chocolate. Or something like that.”
Lily watched him carefully as he talked. He sure was a skinny, scrawny kid. She’d never really noticed that before. He wasn’t wearing his usual baggy pants and huge T-shirt, so she could see how thin he really was. He didn’t look all that healthy. . .
This is it, Lily, she told herself. You have to be willing to help anybody. If you found Shad lying by the side of the road, would you just leave him there, or would you save his life? Not that I would know how to save his life. Not yet anyway. But I can do this.
“Chocolate isn’t good for you,” she said. “It’s not on MyPlate, for one thing, and it has caffeine and a whole bunch of sugar, which you don’t need and which can actually hurt you.”
“Look, I don’t care what’s on your plate,” Shad said. His beady little eyes gleamed, and he was already starting to sound more like his school self. “I just gotta sell these candy bars.”
“We won’t be eating any around here anymore,” Lily said. “I just started my family on a new eating program today. ”
“Forget it,” Shad said. “You’re too weird.”
And he took his box of candy bars back down the front walk, but Lily wasn’t discouraged. After all, it was Shad Shifferdecker.
That night Lily focused her attention on the Girlz, and by the time they met in the clubhouse after school the next day, Lily had a fitness plan drawn up for each of the members. After she had handed them out and the Girlz were reading them, Lily quietly took the brownies Suzy had brought that were left over from the party and slid them under the MyPlate poster she’d drawn up especially for the clubhouse wall.
I think we should take down that Beauty and the Beast poster and put it there, Lily thought. But she could do that later. She turned to the Girlz.
“Well,” she said, “does everyone understand her fitness plan?”
Suzy giggled and put her hands in her lap. “It’s fine,” she said.
Kresha looked up from her paper and gave a brilliant smile. “Is okay, Lee-Lee.”
“Did you actually understand it?” Reni said to her.
Kresha shook her head, but she was still smiling.
“I’ll explain it to you,” Lily said.
But just then there was a frail little whimper from Zooey.
“What’s wrong?” Reni said.
Zooey pointed to her paper. Her round blue eyes were filling up.
“What?” Reni said. She never did have too much patience with Zooey.
“This is all I get to eat?” Zooey said. “I’ll starve to death!”
“No, you won’t, Zooey,” Lily said. “It’s a two-thousand-calorie-a-day diet. That’s enough for anyone.”
“You put her on a diet?” Reni said.
“Well, yeah,” Lily said quietly.
“What did you do that for? Look at that! You hurt her feelings!”
Zooey was crying for real now, nose dripping, eyes already red and swelling. Kresha put an arm around her, and Zooey looked up at Lily.
“Do you think I’m fat, Lily?” she said.
“No!” Lily said. Overweight was the term she would have used, but the pitiful look on Zooey’s face, and the angry one on Reni’s, were enough to get her searching for another one.
“You’re just not as . . . as healthy as you could be, Zooey,” Lily said. “Don’t you want to feel energetic and full of life?”
Zooey stopped crying and thought about that. “I thought I already did,” she said.
“Just try it for one day and see what happens,” Lily said. “Now, if everybody will look at the exercise section of their fitness plans . . .”
Suzy turned dutifully to hers, and Kresha did what Suzy did. Zooey sniffed and muttered, “I still say I’m going to starve to death.” Reni just sniffed.
“You all have different things to do at home,” Lily said, “but I thought it would be fun if we all did our jogging together.”
Zooey’s eyes bulged. “We’re going to jog?”
“Don’t worry about it, Zooey,” Reni said. “None of us is gonna leave you behind.”
But she looked doubtfully at Lily. Their eyes met and locked the way they had so many times, but this time Lily didn’t feel a friendly spark from Reni. Her eyes were cold, and they clearly said, “I don’t like what you did.”
Lily sighed as she followed them all to the door for their jog. She’d been sighing a lot lately, but what else could she do when nobody else really understood the big picture? It was kind of lonely being the only one who did.
“Okay,” Lily called out to the Girlz when she got outside, “follow me. We’re going to go around the block. Just one time today.”
She turned and took off at a nice trot down the sidewalk.
“You can run up there if you want to,” Reni said, “but there’s nothin’ but ice on that sidewalk. I’m runnin’ down here.”
She jumped off the curb, splashing Kresha’s dirty white tennis shoes with slush.
“Hey!” Kresha cried.
She stomped down and set up another splash of slush that hit Reni in the side of the leg.
“Cut it out, you two!” Lily said. “We’re supposed to be jogging, not messing around.”
“I didn’t see that on my ‘fitness plan,’” Reni said. She was extending her neck, pulling her chin in, ready to say something Lily probably wouldn’t want to hear.
“See what?” Lily said.
“That we aren’t allowed to have any fun anymore.”
Lily tossed her head as she rounded the corner. Be that way, Reni, she thought. But you’re gonna thank me for this someday.
But that thought was snuffed out the minute she finished the turn. Suddenly there were three figures in front of her, all i
n ski masks and all with their hands stuck out in front of them as if they were about to attack.
“Eeee-yaaa!” one of them screamed. Then all three of them came straight for Lily.
Eight
For a second, Lily froze. These three guys, wearing ski masks over their faces, were running straight at her! She couldn’t even scream the words she was shouting in her head: They’re going to do something awful to me! If I don’t stop them, they’re going to do something awful.
“No!”
The word burst from her like a cork from a bottle, and it seemed to surprise them as much as it surprised her. Without even stopping to think about it, all three of them turned on the slippery sidewalk and ran in the other direction, slipping and sliding against one another like a flock of ducklings.
At first, Lily just stood there. Why are they running away? she thought. Just because I yelled no? My brothers never do that!
And then it came into her mind as clearly as a photograph. Brothers. Wearing Halloween masks. Just trying to scare their sister and a bunch of her friends.
Reni caught up to her then, breathing like a little locomotive.
“Who was that?” she said.
“Kresha’s brothers again. And some other kid,” Lily said. “Come on! Let’s get ’em!”
“Those little brats!” Reni cried, and she took off ahead of Lily at a mad gallop.
Kresha rounded the corner just then and grabbed at Lily’s scarf just as she was taking off after Reni.
“May I can stop now, Lee-Lee?” she said. “I am so tire—”
Lily didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Come on! It’s your brothers again. We’re gonna catch ’em! And this time we’re not letting ’em go!”
She grabbed Kresha by the sleeve and started to run again. They’d taken two steps when they heard a thin cry from behind them.
