by Dalya Moon
Snowy Cove High School
Cousins Forever - Snowy Cove High School - © 2012 Dalya Moon
Lainey Murphy is a good girl who does her homework Friday night. Enter Tick Murphy, the cousin with candy-apple-red hair and an equally loud personality. First, she makes a spectacle of herself in Drama class, then she plays an awful prank on Lainey’s friends. This is her “making an effort” to fit in? What’s next? Burning down the school?
Chapter 1
January 2, 2012
Snowy Cove
My new roommate has candy-apple red hair, and she wants to know if I can keep a secret. A big secret.
I answer, “What is it, Tick?”
Tick. Real name, Patricia, though that doesn't suit her nearly as well. Ticks are blood-sucking insects that carry Lyme disease. Tick Murphy, the person, is not dissimilar, spreading her purple clothing through my closet right now.
“But can you?” she asks. “Can you keep a secret?”
I get off my bed, which, unlike hers, is neatly made. “I've read studies that most girls can't keep a secret longer than forty-eight hours. I won't keep your so-called secret forever, but I can keep it for longer than two days.”
“Never mind,” she says.
I take a seat at my computer, which is now our computer, and turn on the monitor. “Great, now I'm actually curious. Is it about why you guys are actually here?”
In a sing-song voice, she says, “Maybe.”
“Just tell me. You'll feel better after confessing.”
She turns back to my closet, which is now our closet.
“Cuz, what's with all the plain?” she asks. “If I hang my clothes in here, they're gonna get depressed.”
“So don't. Put them in the dresser.” Where I don't have to look at them.
I pull up YouTube and click on Skinny Love, a cover song by a British girl who goes by Birdy. I used to like Lana Del Ray, but now I'm in a Birdy phase, because her music sounds like the song equivalent of crying, but prettier.
I turn up the volume and say to Tick, “Birdy was fourteen when she recorded this. Our age. I wish I could sing, or do something beautiful.”
Tick turns from the closet and looks at me like I'm an idiot. “So the world can tell you you're special? Go ahead, sing. Nobody's stopping you.”
I grab the mouse and stop the song mid-way through. My cousin doesn't deserve to hear the ethereal Skinny Love.
She returns to pulling out my shirts and dresses one by one. “What do you call this color?” she asks, holding my angora sweater away from her body like it's a dirty diaper. “Puce?”
“That is ecru. It's nothing like puce. Puce is a greyish purple.”
Tick hugs the sweater and flops back on Olivia's bed, which is now her bed.
My cousin would be pretty if she didn't dye her light-colored hair that ridiculous red. Is she trying to be a Scene kid? At my school, nobody thinks Scene kids are cool, except other Scene kids, and there aren't that many of them. I don't like how they pretend to be best friends with everyone and make plans with multiple people at the same time, then don't show up for anything.
Still hugging my sweater, she says, “Puce is purple? I hope some of your smartness rubs off on me. We're gonna have so much fun!”
“Going to,” I say. “Not gonna. We're going to have so much—” I wince “—fun.”
Fun? My friends are going to hate her.
We have the same last name, and except for the hair, we look alike. I'm going to be inextricably associated with Tick Murphy and everything she does. Everything.
I turn off the computer monitor, stand at the foot of my bed, and drop on it face-first, like a falling tree.
She says, “This hairy thing smells like a dog's butt.”
I tilt my head to watch her putting on my angora sweater, her elbows poking at it from the inside.
“Why are you guys here?” I ask. “Your mother could have hired someone to help her with housework. That would be easier than moving across the country.”
With the sweater on, she jumps up and struts between our beds like a model on America's Next Top Model—specifically, a model making fun of another model's walk. The sweater actually looks good, toning down her purple leggings and multi-colored socks.
“Is your big secret that you have a boyfriend back in Seattle?” I ask nonchalantly.
She keeps strutting. “Ha-lloo, I'm Lainey Murphy,” she says, impersonating me with a vaguely English accent, even though I'm not English. “My hobbies include studying and making plans to study, and correcting other people's grammar. This sweater is ecru, which is French for poodle-butt.”
I sit up and put my hands on my hips in what I hope is an authoritative pose. “Very funny. Now take my sweater off.”
“Make me.” Her mouth is straight, and I can't tell if she's joking or actually trying to pick a fight.
I wish Olivia were still here, and not just because she'd team up with me against the new intruder. There's been a hole in this house since Olivia left for college in the fall, and that hole became the vacuum that sucked in my cousin Tick and Aunt Trudy.
“Come on, wrestle me for the sweater,” Tick says. “Let's see how tough you are.”
“Hang it back up when you're done,” I say, because that's what Olivia would say.
The thought of Olivia makes my throat tight.
My father calls up the stairs, “Dinner! Girls!”
“Dinner!” Tick squeals.
“We'd better go right away. Dad gets mad if we make everyone wait.”
“Okay. Hey, later tonight, do you wanna do the cinnamon challenge?”
“The what?”
“You'll see,” she says as she runs out of our room, toward the stairs. She jumps on the bannister and rides her way to the bottom, her moist palms squeaking on the waxed wood the whole way.
“That's not allowed,” I say, taking the stairs like a sane person.
She's already at the table when I walk into the dining room. Mom's bringing the food in now, and Aunt Trudy is in her newly-claimed spot, at the end of the dining room table. She has a tray on her lap and her big, white leg cast juts out underneath.
I sniff the air for clues. I think I smell gravy. Please, please don't let it be gravy and Yorkshire puddings and the whole big Sunday dinner. My stomach roars in anticipation of the feasting, so I drink a filled-to-the-brim glass of ice water as quickly as I can. Please, at least let the potatoes be plain boiled ones, not buttery and mashed.
Mom comes in with the second trip's yield of food, beaming over her special green Martha Stewart bowl, her treasured mashed potato bowl.
My heart sinks. I'll never fit into the Tatiana dress.
“Uh-oh,” Tick says. Something pink is dribbled all down the front of her sweater. Correction: down the front of my sweater.
“Baby, be more careful,” Aunt Trudy says from her seat. “Go put that in the washing machine right away, before the cranberry juice sets in.”
“No!” I say. “Don't. It's dry-clean-only.”
Tick's mouth drops open in a silent what?
Aunt Trudy scowls at me, her full lips all scrunched together. “Dry-clean-only? Are you freaking kidding me? You're fourteen. What are you doing buying dry-clean-only sweaters? That'll cost your parents four, five dollars every time you get it cleaned.”
My mother takes her seat next to my father. Her mouth seals tight with everything she won't say, and she stares down at the place settings.
When nobody responds to Aunt Trudy, she squawks at my mother, “Janice, are you freaking kidding me? You let your daughter buy dry-clean-only sweaters? She must be getting too much al
lowance.”
“It's not my fault,” Tick says, mashing at the sweater with a napkin, successfully enlarging the red blotch. “The juice wasn't very cold, so when I went to drink it, I couldn't feel it on my lips.”
Aunt Trudy whacks one of the drinking glasses with her fingernail. “These glasses are awfully thin. We're used to our sturdy tumblers at home.” She lets out a big, noisy sigh. “A person can only take so many disruptions to regular life.”
Tick demonstrate what went wrong with the too-warm cranberry juice, spilling even more down the front of my sweater.
“Stupid!” I yell.
My father smacks his hand against the table once. “Enough! No name calling.” He gives me a stern look that makes me feel guilty, like I'm actually the one to blame, and not my cousin.
“Let's try to enjoy dinner,” Mom says. We bow our heads and my father says Grace.
The whole time we give thanks, I'm thinking some very unkind thoughts about my cousin.
When we start to eat, my mother says, “I've got some stain remover. Patricia, dear, why don't you take off the sweater and set it aside, and I'll take care of it after dinner.”
“Potatoes look good,” Dad says cheerfully as he grabs the green bowl. “One scoop or two?” he asks me.
One, I think. Or zero. “Two,” I say.
* * *
By the time dinner was over, I had four scoops of mashed potatoes, though the last serving was more of a half-scoop.
My belly is gurgling now, and I can't believe I'm hungry again, but maybe I'll have great dreams about eating mashed potatoes. One time I dreamed I was on a roller coaster made of candy.
Dreaming, of eating candy or otherwise, has been delayed tonight.
We're supposed to be in bed, sleeping, but Tick wants to do this cinnamon challenge thing, where you have to eat a tablespoon full of cinnamon.
She lifts up the pillow on her bed and pulls out my mother's jar of ground cinnamon and a spoon. “You go first.”
“No. We'll get in trouble.”
“For eating ten cents' worth of spice? Come on.” She scoops some cinnamon onto the spoon and hands it to me.
“That's too much. I saw on the internet that some kids choked on the cinnamon dust. If that doesn't kill me, my dad will.”
She taps off half of the powder and sits on my bed next to me. “Here. Just try a little bit. It's fun, I swear. Come on. Don't you wanna have any fun at all?”
I suppose if I just eat it, we can go to bed. This can be our first official bonding experience, and maybe she'll listen to me more after this. “Fine,” I say, and I take the spoon and stick it in my mouth.
I wait for my saliva to melt into the cinnamon so I can swallow it, but it burns, all the way from my tongue to my sinuses. My eyes water, and suddenly I'm spewing it out in great clouds, spitting and coughing, all over my bed and my pajama pants.
Tick laughs at me. “That was only half a spoon, so that doesn't even count. That was nothing.”
I wipe at my mouth and gag, dangerously close to vomiting. “My nose hurts. Is my nose bleeding?”
“Just a bit.” She dusts the cinnamon off me, onto the floor.
I grab some Kleenex from next to my bed and hold the tissues to my nose, catching the blood droplets before they fall on anything. I want water, but I can't leave my room with my nose bloody, coughing out cinnamon.
Another cloud of the spice puffs out across my lap, from her mouth this time.
She coughs and laughs. “Can't. Swallow. I'm as weaksauce as you.”
Someone taps at the closed bedroom door. My father says, “Everything under control in there?”
Tick jumps off my bed and huddles under her own covers.
“We're good, Dad,” I say, feeling rotten about lying. “Just going to sleep now.”
He says, “Might be challenging with that light on.”
I grab another Kleenex and double-tap the base of my lamp to turn it off. “Thanks Dad! Good night!”
“Good night, Uncle Jim!”
After the floor squeaks, and I'm sure my father's gone, I say, very quietly, “That's the last time I'm doing something stupid with you. I hope you enjoyed it.”
She giggles quietly.
My nose has stopped bleeding, and I tuck the tissues in the pocket of my jeans rather than leave them out. My throat is sore, and there's cinnamon stuck between my teeth, still burning my gums. I'd better not get canker sores from this. I hate canker sores, technically aphthous ulcers, and I get them from eating too many sour candies, or from walnuts.
Outside the frosty window, it's snowing again—big, fluffy flakes—and I'm not looking forward to walking to school tomorrow. The dark winter mornings always bite a little deeper when you're tired.
“Lainey?”
“Go to sleep,” I say, then I feel bad for being gruff. “What?”
“Do you think I should try and go by Patricia? Or Trish? Or Patty? No, not Patty. Trixie? Isha?”
“All of the above. Now go to sleep.”
She doesn't respond. I lie there, unable to sleep as I imagine her in the bed next to mine, her feelings hurt by her only ally in a new town.
“Tick, I'm sorry.” I roll onto my back and stare at the shadows on the ceiling, and for a moment, I'm envious of her. Moving to a new school and getting a fresh start would be fun. You could be a whole new person, mysterious and interesting.
I say, into the darkness, “There's a Tricia in the tenth grade, and you wouldn't want to be associated with her. She's lactose intolerant and farts a lot.”
“Oh. Any other ideas?”
I go over the pros and cons of various different names for several minutes.
The whole house is silent, with everyone settled in and sleeping. Even my father, who stays up late, has been quiet for a bit. Aunt Trudy will probably wake everyone up in a few hours, when she smashes her way to the downstairs bathroom in her rented wheelchair.
My cousin's breathing has changed. I tap once on the brass base of my bedside lamp and it casts a warm glow over the room. Her eyes are closed and her face is soft with sleep. We're the same age, fourteen, but she looks younger than me now.
I'd rather have my sister back in the bed next to mine, but at least Tick is family. I could love her. Maybe I already do; maybe it's automatic for family. I love my sister, my mom and dad, and all my grandparents, and the great-grandparents who are still alive. I loved our bunny Cedrick, until he escaped his cage, and he wasn't even a human.
My cousin's annoying, but I still love her, especially when she's asleep like this.
Tick stops breathing for a second, than makes a SNORK noise and rolls onto her side. Her mouth opens and a thin strand of drool spiders down from her lips.
I double-tap the lamp to turn it off.
What will my friends think? Briana may not even notice an extra Murphy hanging around, but Genna ... Genna's not going to be pleased.
Chapter 2
I wake up to Tick dancing around the room in her nightshirt, yelling, “Snow day! Snow day! Woohoo, no school! Let's go sledding!”
I sit up and look out the window, expecting much more snow than what I find. “This is nothing,” I say. “They don't cancel school unless it's a full-scale blizzard. You're not in Seattle anymore.”
“Oh.” She sits down at the computer and flicks on the monitor.
“You can't do that,” I say.
“I wanna check the weather back home, for fun. Maybe it snowed there too.”
“We're not allowed to use the computer in the morning. Dad says. Turn it off and get ready for school.”
“But I have to do something while you're in the shower.” She turns and smiles sweetly. “Besides rummaging through your side of the closet.”
My alarm clock starts beeping, so I get out of bed and turn it off carefully. It's very old, from before clock radios had digital faces. The numbers are on thin plates that rotate around a rod and flip down when the minute changes. It makes a very quiet CLA
CK noise if you put your ear right up to it.
I grab my towel from the hook over the heating vent and stand by the bedroom door. “If Dad sees you on the computer, you have to tell him I said you weren't allowed.”
She ignores me. I close the bedroom door behind me, so my father won't see.
In the bathroom, the tub is lined with all the new shampoos and lotions my cousin brought with her. There must be nine different things, including a shampoo that seems to be for use on horses.
There's a new toothpaste on the counter. It's cinnamon. The thought of cinnamon makes me queasy.
I have my shower—a short one so there's hot water for everyone else. I'm still towelling off when my cousin barges in and strips off her nightshirt and underwear.
“You're not shy,” I say as I wrap my towel around myself.
Tick pushes back her shoulders and stares at her naked torso in the mirror. Great. Now I've seen her boobs and that image will be stuck in my head. Shoot me now.
“I'm so glad we have our own girls' bathroom,” she says as she turns on the shower and starts adjusting the water temperature. “My mother is disgusting. She left out hair wax strips once. Like, these gooey strips of fabric with her ripped-out curly hairs in it. Blah!”
I try not to visualize this while I finger-comb out my damp hair.
* * *
We get to school early, and I bring Tick to meet my friends in the library. They're at our favorite table, which is the round one under the skylight.
Briana looks up from her book, waves hello, and goes back to reading. I can see she's only twenty-five or so pages from the end, so I know not to expect conversation from Briana the Bookworm.
Genna, however, stands and sticks her arm out confidently to shake Tick's hand. Genna's appraising gaze travels up then down, from the unnaturally-red hair and thick eyeliner to the purple dress, stopping at the black-and-white-striped leggings.
The striped leggings had been, until this morning, stuffed at the back of my closet with the rest of my witch Halloween costume. My cousin dug them out while I was in the shower and I didn't even realize the ugly things were mine until breakfast, when her mother made a comment, and by then it was too late.
