by Isobel Bird
“Actually, you don’t even have to pick me up at the airport.”
Everyone turned to see Grayson Dunning standing in the doorway of the kitchen. “Sorry to sneak up on everyone like this,” he said. “The door was unlocked so I let myself in.”
Aunt Sarah went over and gave him a hug and a kiss. “I thought you weren’t coming in until eight,” she said happily.
“We got an earlier flight,” Mr. Dunning said.
“We?” Annie said hopefully.
“Thanks for leaving me with the bags,” said a voice from the hallway. A moment later Becka’s face appeared. Annie squealed with delight and jumped up. Seconds later the two girls were hugging one another.
“This is so cool,” said Annie. “I had no idea.”
“I didn’t either,” Becka said. “Dad surprised me at the last minute.”
“You’re just in time for dinner,” Annie told her.
“And you’re just in time to go out for dinner,” Aunt Sarah told Mr. Dunning. She turned to the girls. “Don’t wait up,” she said, winking.
“Okay, but don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Meg said sternly. Everyone looked at her and broke out in laughter. “What,” Meg said seriously, “is so funny?”
Mr. Dunning and Aunt Sarah left and the girls returned to their dinner. After making a place for Becka in between Jane and Kate, glasses were filled and plates were piled with food. For the next few minutes the only sounds were those of forks clicking and people asking for things to be passed.
“This is so much better than going to some stupid dance,” said Tara as she slurped a piece of penne into her mouth.
“Tell me about it,” said Jessica. “No having to get all dressed up in a stupid dress and shoes that pinch.”
“No mystery punch and packaged cookies,” added Kate.
“No terrible band playing ‘My Heart Will Go On,’” said Cooper.
“No pink streamers and clouds made out of cotton,” mused Jane.
“No ditzy girls wearing too much hair spray,” Becka said.
“No watching Sherrie act like the queen of the universe,” opined Annie.
“And no stupid boys who can’t kiss,” said Meg decidedly.
Everyone looked at her. “And since when do you know all about kissing?” Annie demanded to know.
Meg blushed. “I don’t know all about it,” she said. “Maybe a little.” She looked at everyone staring at her. “Okay, so Jimmy Poling kissed me after school last week.”
The older girls oohed and aahed, making Meg turn red. “I didn’t say I liked it,” she said huffily.
“We’ll talk later,” Annie told her little sister. “Right now, who wants more penne?”
For the next hour they talked, ate, and laughed, not worrying about how much they ate or how they looked. They talked about bad dates and boyfriends who did stupid things. And when they were done with dinner they piled the dishes in the sink and went into the living room to watch movies.
“This is the coolest Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had,” Kate said as they settled onto the couch and on the floor. “You guys are the best date ever.”
“I agree,” Becka said. “But will you call us tomorrow, or will you be like all the rest of them?”
“Time for pie,” said Annie, coming in with a tray loaded with plates, forks, and a big, cold lemon pie whose meringue covered the top like ocean waves on a windy day.
Once the pie was dished out they started the first movie. When it was over they took a break so people could visit the bathroom and get seconds on pie. While the girls were running around, Cooper stood up, stretched, and said, “I hate to be the one to leave first, but I’ve got to get home.”
“Really?” Kate asked. “You can’t stay?”
“I want to make sure everything is okay,” answered Cooper. She turned to Annie. “But this was really great. It almost makes me want to dump T.J.” She looked thoughtful. “But not quite.”
She waved good-bye to everyone else, turned to Jane and said “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and then left. Ten minutes later she was walking in the door of her own house.
“Hey,” she called out. “I’m home.”
To her surprise she heard her mother call back, “I’m in the living room. Come in here.”
She’s not drunk, Cooper thought excitedly as she took off her coat and went to see her mother.
Mrs. Rivers was sitting in one of the armchairs. She seemed to be completely sober, or at least mostly. She did have a glass in her hand, but it was almost full, and a quick glance at the bottle on the table beside her showed that barely any of it had been drunk. Cooper knew, though, that just because this bottle was full it didn’t mean that there wasn’t an empty bottle—or several—in the kitchen trash can.
“Sit down,” Mrs. Rivers said to her daughter. “I want to talk to you.”
Cooper sat on the couch and looked at her mother. Mrs. Rivers was looking down at the floor. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she looked up, and her face was hard, her eyes angry.
“I got a phone call tonight,” she said in a clipped voice. “From Mrs. McAllister.”
Suddenly Cooper’s elation at finding her mother sober faded. T.J.’s mother had called. Cooper had known that she would keep her promise, but she hadn’t known when it would happen. She sort of wished she’d had some advance warning. But it was too late now.
“Oh,” Cooper said. “What did she want?”
“She asked if I wanted to get together for coffee,” Mrs. Rivers answered. “Sometime during the week.”
“That would be fun,” said Cooper brightly, hoping her enthusiastic response would throw her mother off and prevent the argument Cooper had a feeling was coming.
“I’m sure it would be,” said Mrs. Rivers. “For you. Cooper, I don’t appreciate being made a fool of.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Cooper said truthfully.
“I mean having you tell this woman that I have some kind of . . . problem—or whatever it is you told her.”
“I didn’t—” Cooper began to say.
“Of course you did!” Mrs. Rivers shouted. “You told her something. Why else would she call after all this time? You should have heard her voice, Cooper. She felt sorry for me. She pitied me. I could hear it in every word she said.” She stared at her daughter, her mouth twitching. “Do you have any idea how that feels?”
Cooper didn’t respond. She looked away from her mother, trying to decide what she should say.
“Do you?” Mrs. Rivers shouted again.
Cooper looked up. Her mother was clutching her glass. Whatever was in it had spilled over onto the wooden floor of the room, where it made a tiny puddle by her foot. More of the drink stained the fabric of the armchair, and Cooper saw drops of it on the ring that circled her mother’s finger.
“No,” Cooper said. “I don’t know how that feels.” She waited until her mother began to look as if she’d won the fight, then added, “But I do know how it feels to watch somebody I care about turn into somebody I can’t even stand to look at.”
She stood up and started to leave the room, but stopped when she heard her mother say, in the coldest voice Cooper had ever heard her use, “How dare you.”
Cooper turned around. Her mother was standing up, facing her. Her arms were stiff at her sides, her fingers curled into her palms.
“How dare you say something like that to me,” Mrs. Rivers said. “You have no idea what I’m going through. None at all.”
“Maybe I don’t,” said Cooper. “But there are people who do.”
Her mother gave a strangled laugh. “Who?” she said. “People like Mrs. McAllister?”
“Yes,” Cooper replied. “People like her. She’s a nice lady. She just wants to be your friend.”
Mrs. Rivers shook her head. “I don’t need friends,” she said. “I don’t need people feeling sorry for me. And I certainly don’t need you thinking you know what’s best for me. So I’d appre
ciate it if you’d get out of my life. You and your father both, although he’s already done that, hasn’t he?”
Cooper bit her lip. There were so many things she wanted to say to her mother at that moment, and none of them were nice. She could feel the rage and anger radiating from her mother like heat from a stove. It nauseated her and it made her want to cry. She couldn’t be around it, so she turned and left the room. Grabbing her coat, she ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
She stormed over to her car and got in. Then she sat there. While she’d made a dramatic exit, the problem was that she had no idea where she was going. She didn’t want to return to Annie’s house. She didn’t want to go see T.J. She didn’t know what she wanted. She just didn’t want to be around her mother, not when she was acting so cruel and saying such terrible things.
But how many times did you say things like that to her? she asked herself. How many times did you get angry and say things you didn’t really mean?
She thought about the question. If she was honest about it, she had to admit that she’d done it many times. Their relationship had always been tempestuous, and more than once Cooper had slammed a door or told her mother she never wanted to see her again. She thought about the time when she was thirteen and they’d fought over some stupid thing. Cooper couldn’t even remember what it was. But she remembered telling her mother she hated her and her mother saying, “I’m sure you do, but you only get one mother in life and I’m it.”
She leaned her head against the steering wheel. She was running away from the problem, and she hated doing that. She was walking out because things were hard, and her usual methods of dealing with things when they were hard were to either run away or bulldoze through whatever was causing the problem. But she’d learned that those two approaches weren’t the only ones—and were seldom even the best ones.
“You need to go back in there,” she told herself. “You need to do what she did to you when you were thirteen.”
She looked at the door. It was weird how a house could look so normal from the outside—just four walls and a roof—but how inside it could be filled with so much danger. Just thinking about walking through the door made her feel sick to her stomach. But the idea of running away made her feel just as sick.
She got out, shut the car door, and walked back to the house. This time when she went inside she marched straight into the living room. Her mother was once again seated in the chair. Her glass was filled again, and Cooper noticed that the level in the bottle had decreased dramatically.
“Did you come back to tell me something else?” Mrs. Rivers asked, not looking up at her daughter.
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I came back to tell you that you’re probably only going to get one daughter in this life, and I’m it. So as long as we’re stuck with each other, you’re going to listen to what I have to say.” She kept talking, afraid that if she stopped she would lose her nerve or her mother would start talking and interrupt her. “You’re right that I don’t know what you’re going through. But you don’t know what I’m going through, either. I talked to Mrs. McAllister because I thought maybe she could help. I didn’t know who else to go to. I’m sorry if that made you feel embarrassed. But you have to talk to somebody, because I can’t watch you do what you’re doing. You’re scaring me.”
She stopped talking and watched her mother’s face. There was no expression on it. She just looked into the glass in her hand. She didn’t hear a word of what I said, Cooper thought unhappily. She had made her grand speech and her mother wasn’t even responding. Cooper wanted to disappear. Having her mother not say anything at all was far worse than having her yell. At least then I’d know she heard me, she thought.
“That’s it,” Cooper said finally. “I’m going to bed.” She turned to leave.
“I’m scared, too.”
She turned around at the sound of her mother speaking. Tears were falling from her mother’s eyes, rolling slowly down her cheeks and falling into her glass.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” said Mrs. Rivers. Her shoulders shook as she began to cry harder, and she put her hands up to cover her face, in the process knocking her glass to the floor.
Cooper went to her mother. She knelt down, not caring that the contents of the glass were soaking the knees of her jeans. She took her mother’s hands, pulling them away from her face. Mrs. Rivers looked away, as if looking at Cooper was more than she could bear.
“It’s okay,” said Cooper. “It will be okay.” I don’t know how, she told herself as she watched her mother cry and felt the roles they’d played all their lives reversing, but it will be okay.
CHAPTER 9
“You guys have the strangest friends,” said Becka as she and Annie made their way to the park the next day. She and her father were staying until the weekend, and Annie’s aunt had given Annie permission to miss a day of school so that she and Becka could spend some time together. Annie had told Becka about Mallory and asked her to help take some things to the girl.
“I don’t know if she’ll even accept this stuff,” Annie said as she and Becka walked through the park. “She’s so defensive. It’s probably best if we just leave it inside with a note. That way she doesn’t have to act all grateful or anything.”
Becka was carrying two shopping bags filled with leftovers that Annie had prepared. In addition to the food from the party, she had made some lasagna and some cookies. She’d also bought some canned stuff at the supermarket and added it to the bags along with a can opener. While Becka carried the food, Annie was carrying bags filled with clothes that she’d culled from her closet. She’d also found an old sleeping bag, which she was now carrying under her arm as she and Becka walked toward Mallory’s hiding place.
The park was slightly more populated than it had been the last time the girls had come through, mostly with kids who should have been in school but weren’t. The area around the fountain was busy with skateboarders, who were using its smooth sides to practice sliding their boards along the rim. They mostly ignored Annie and Becka after giving them perfunctory glances to ensure that the girls weren’t there to tell them to stop what they were doing.
“Hey, you got any smokes?”
Annie and Becka stopped and looked to see who had called to them. A guy was sitting on the edge of the fountain, looking at them. He seemed to be a little older than they were. His brown hair was cut very short, and he had a handsome face with oddly light blue eyes. He was dressed in an old leather jacket, jeans, and black motorcycle boots. When they looked at him he smiled crookedly. “Got any smokes?” he repeated.
Annie shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “We don’t smoke.”
“You’re smart,” the guy said. “It’s a bad habit.”
Annie and Becka started to walk away but the guy called out to them again. “Going camping?”
Becka turned her head. “We’re launching an expedition to find Atlantis,” she said, feigning seriousness. “We hear the entrance is around here somewhere.”
“Becka,” Annie said under her breath. “Come on.”
“He’s just flirting,” Becka said back. “Have a little fun. Besides, he’s sort of cute.”
Annie rolled her eyes, but she also gave her friend a small smile. She was enjoying being with Becka, and one of the things she liked most was her friend’s sense of adventure. What’s the harm in doing a little flirting? she asked herself.
The guy had come over to where the girls were standing. He walked in an easygoing way, as if he had all the time in the world and nowhere in particular to go. When he stopped he stood with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, leaning his weight on one leg so that he looked like he was waiting casually for a bus to come along.
“An expedition, huh?” he said, nodding.
“That’s right,” Becka replied. “You can’t be too prepared, you know.”
The guy laughed. “I hear you,” he said. “But I’d be careful around here if I were you.
I hear a lot of runaway kids hang out in this place.”
“Really?” Becka said, as if the information truly shocked her. “I had no idea.”
The guy nodded. “That’s the word on the street,” he said, as if imparting very valuable information to them for free.
“And just what are you doing here?” Becka asked him.
The guy shrugged. “You know,” he said. “Just hanging out. Hoping some pretty girls might have a cigarette I could bum.”
“I see,” Becka said. “Well, no cigarettes here. But maybe something better will come along.”
She picked up her bags and nodded at Annie. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got some exploring to do.”
Annie followed as Becka looked at the guy, said, “See you later,” and continued walking.
“I hope so,” the guy called after them. “And remember what I said; be careful.”
“I can’t believe you talked to him like that,” Annie said as she and Becka made their way around the side of the fountain and headed for the trees beyond it.
“He’s just a guy,” Becka replied. “Guys are easy to talk to. You just have to think of them as big, stupid dogs who want you to like them. Then it’s easy.”
“With me it’s more like I’m afraid they’re going to bite me,” Annie said. “I’ve never been very good at the whole talking-to-guys thing.”
“We’ll work on that when we’re living together,” Becka told her. It was the first time either of them had mentioned the impending merging of their families since Becka’s arrival.
“Still no word from your dad about where, huh?” Annie asked. They had reached the path and Annie stopped, looking around to make sure no one was watching them. Then she stepped through the branches of the trees with Becka following behind her.
“Not a thing,” said Becka. “I tried to harass him into talking about it on the plane ride here, but he pretended to be really into the in-flight magazine and just grunted at me.”
“I guess we’ll find out when we find out,” remarked Annie. “But it would be nice to know.”
They walked in silence until they reached the clearing. Becka whistled when she saw the fake temple, then whistled again for a different reason when they stepped inside it and she saw the mess. “She lives in this?” she asked Annie.
