by Alex Flinn
The Dickinsons thought they were better than Spider’s family because they’d lived here for generations. After all, they had their family name on a street and more than a few tombstones in the local cemetery. In Harmon’s eyes, that made them special.
In Spider’s eyes too. She’d love to live here year-round and never have to leave. Love to die here too and be buried in the peaceful little cemetery with its crumbling tombstones that went back to the Revolutionary War.
“So that was the meet-cute?” Spider said, following Meredith into the house.
“What?” Meredith said.
“The meet-cute,” Spider said. “In romantic movies, the main couple should meet in some adorable way, like getting stuck in an elevator, or the guy’s a cop and pulls the woman over, or they’re shopping for pajamas, and one only wants the top while the other wants the bottoms.” This last was from a 1938 movie, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, which Spider had watched as part of an online film course she took. She was proud to know such an obscure reference.
“Oh, I don’t watch movies like that.” Then, maybe realizing she sounded completely condescending, Meredith added, “I mean, I don’t ever get a chance to watch movies. I study too much.”
A humblebrag. She thought Spider was lazy. “I don’t watch movies for entertainment,” Spider replied, loftily.
“Right, you want to study screenwriting.” Meredith smiled. “Are you applying to film schools in New York, or do you want to go to California?”
Spider pressed her lips together. “Not sure yet. But I took an online course last year through Columbia. There’s all these free online college courses you can take.”
“That sounds cool. I wish I had time for that, but I’m . . .” She stopped.
“Too busy studying for school,” Spider finished for her.
“Right.” Meredith sighed. “Hey, maybe we can watch some movies while I’m here. You said you have some?”
“Yeah.” Spider knew Meredith didn’t mean it. She was just being nice, and it would be forgotten. Spider could be nice too. “Let’s do that.”
Just then, Britta appeared at the landing. “Is it safe to come out?” she whispered.
“Oh, wow!” Meredith said. “We forgot you in the excitement.”
Spider hadn’t forgotten. She was enjoying the quiet. Now, it was over.
“Yep, all taken care of,” Meredith said. “I have saved us all.”
“Sorry I wasn’t more helpful,” Britta said.
“We didn’t expect you to be,” Spider said, then regretted it.
“It’s fine,” Meredith said. “More people would have scared him. It.”
“Well, thank you for being so brave.” Britta giggled.
Spider started to say that they hadn’t really been brave, but she stopped herself. “So brave!” she echoed, and was rewarded when Meredith laughed.
“Meredith was flirting with that boy,” Kate issued from her room.
Ruthie’s bedroom door squeaked, and she stepped out. Once she, too, had ascertained that the coast was clear, she said, “All right. To the store!”
“To the store!” Britta echoed.
“Wait—all of us?” Spider looked at Britta. She’d missed the memo on the group shopping expedition. Cooking lessons from Britta were bad enough. “We’re all going?”
“Certainly,” Ruthie said. “You didn’t think I was going to do all the shopping, did you?”
Had Spider taken the time to consider it, she probably would have thought exactly that. After all, Ruthie had always done that when the family came while Spider read at the lake. Still, Spider said, “I’m guessing no?”
“No.” Ruthie smiled when she said it, but her eyes said she meant business.
“So we all have to go?” Spider glanced at Britta again. “Together, in the same car?”
“We only have one car, silly.” Ruthie clapped her hands. “Let’s go.”
They did, Britta gushing about how it sounded “so fun” to shop and cook together. “I can’t wait to make my grandmother’s arroz con pollo for you guys—oh!” Britta jerked down several steps, then collapsed at the bottom. “My ankle!”
All turned. Britta was sitting, clutching her foot. At first, Spider thought maybe she was faking. Her siblings were huge fakers. But then, she saw the tears in Britta’s eyes and was ashamed of herself. She hated when people thought she was faking.
“Oh!” she moaned. “I twisted it.”
“My goodness!” Ruthie rushed down to Britta faster than Spider would have thought an old lady could run. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“No, I . . .” Britta tried to stand up. “I think I can—ouch!” She winced as her ankle collapsed under her.
“Let me help you.” Meredith offered her a hand.
“It’s okay. Oh, I’m such a dork.” Britta pulled herself up on the banister, her face screwed up. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” But she sat down again.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Ruthie cooed. “Perhaps you should lie down.”
“But I wanted to do my part.” Britta tried, again, to stand. She succeeded this time, but she put no weight on the foot. She glanced at Spider. “I don’t want people to judge me.”
That was when Spider realized that Britta not going was almost as good as not having to go herself. “Oh, poor Britta! Ruthie’s right. You shouldn’t go!”
Ruthie was looking at her weird, but Spider went on. “Did you make a list of ingredients we need, before the bat?”
“Actually, I worked on my list upstairs.” Britta reached into her pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “This should be enough for three recipes. I tried to organize it with all the veggies in one place, then all the dairy, and so on.”
Spider examined the list. Britta’s handwriting was super neat, unlike her own cramped penmanship. The list was neat and had what looked like ingredients for a whole chicken, a stir-fry, and a pasta dish. She had to admit she was a little impressed.
“I can give you money too,” Britta said.
“Later’s fine, dear,” Ruthie said. “Can I get you an ice pack?”
“That would be sooooo nice,” Britta said in a gushy voice that made Spider forget her moment of admiration. Britta started to pull herself up the stairs.
“Can I help you?” Spider asked, because Ruthie was looking at her like she should.
“Oh, it’s fine.” Britta heaved herself up the stairs, using the banister for balance. She reminded Spider of herself. Stairs were always hard because of the pressure on her joints.
Meredith and Ruthie went to get ice while Spider wandered off in search of Kate. She still suspected Britta might be faking. Still, those tears were pretty convincing. She couldn’t be that good an actress.
16
Britta
NEVER LET IT be said that Britta Rodriguez wasn’t a good actress. If the judges at the District 8 Thespian conference had seen her powerful performance as Teen Girl Injured on Staircase, she’d have won Critic’s Choice. Now that everyone had scattered, she strode into the bedroom, flopped onto the bed, and propped her uninjured foot on the pillow, ready to writhe in pain when anyone came to check on her.
She couldn’t say why she’d faked it. Yes, she could. Because of Spider. When she’d been up in her room, making the list, she’d been excited about cooking together. It seemed like such a sisterly thing to do, and she’d wanted to show off her skills to the other girls. But she’d caught the look of dread on Spider’s face when Ruthie had said they were all going together. The way she’d kept looking at Britta and asking if all of them had to go, Together, in the same car? She didn’t know what Spider’s problem with her was, but she didn’t want to deal with it. She’d come here to relax, impossible with that girl hating on her.
There was a light knock on the already open door. Kate stepped in.
“Heard you were under the weather.” Her voice was soft. She held up an ice pack with pictures of yellow ducks on a blue background. “Ruthie said to bring y
ou this.”
Britta searched her face for signs of skepticism, but found none. “Oh, thanks.” She straightened up, wincing as she did. “Thought Meredith would bring it.”
“She had to finish her shopping list, and Spider’s hip hurt, and Ruthie’s old, so there’s just me.” She smiled. She had possibly the most beautiful teeth Britta had ever seen.
“You’re in a good mood,” Britta said.
“Well, I’m not in a bad one anymore,” Kate said. “I have decided it’s best to concentrate on the task at hand.”
Britta wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but she nodded. “Good idea. When I’m upset, I tend to get a little flighty, and then I get in trouble. I guess you probably know that’s a problem of mine.” Kate had, after all, heard the whole saga of Rick’s car, because Britta had been so stupidly loud on the bus. “Well, that and being too talkative.”
Kate winced. “I’m sorry I got so mad about that. I’m usually nicer.”
“We all have those days,” Britta said.
“I have the opposite problem. When something’s bothering me, I can’t let go of it. It shakes me awake in the morning and whispers in my ear at night.”
“Oh.” Britta nestled the ice pack under her ankle. Britta knew Kate had been awake late last night, early this morning too. Britta wanted to ask what was wrong, but she was sure Kate wouldn’t like her asking. “Do you ever jog?” she asked instead.
“What?”
“Jog? Exercise? Running real fast gets your mind off everything. It’s pretty out here. We should go later.” Too late, she realized she was supposed to be grievously injured. Britta saw Kate’s eyes flicker to the ice pack. “I mean, when my ankle’s better.”
“That’s a good idea.” She gave a short, forced smile, then started to leave. “But first, I’m off to see a man about a chicken. That’s what my father says—except he says it about a horse.”
Britta laughed. “My dad says that too.” She adjusted the ice pack. “See, that’s something we have in common.”
After Kate left, Britta listened to the noises downstairs. Spider and Ruthie argued about who would drive. Finally, the door shut. Britta waited until she heard the car’s engine turn over and wheels rolling down the road. Then she got up.
Alone now, she wasn’t sure what to do. She decided to explore. The bedrooms were off-limits, of course. She headed downstairs.
Ruthie had given them a perfunctory tour when they’d arrived, but now, Britta really took everything in. One of the end tables was a trunk, which she opened to reveal board games: Life, Monopoly, and Pictionary boxes held together with yellowing tape. There was a drawer filled with magazines and, on one table, a well-used book called Guide to Adirondack Trails. The family had obviously hiked a lot, and there were notes like “Nice view!” or “Trailhead is eight miles down a dirt road—don’t give up!” and speckles of dirt and maybe ice cream on the pages. The photo albums held years of photos of the same family, wearing similar clothes, with lakes or mountains in the background. Sometimes, they showed off a fish, sometimes not. Sometimes Spider was with them, at first as a cute, if awkward, little girl in an assortment of Disney princess attire, later dressed in black, a sullen expression on her face. But half the time, she was missing. Britta wondered why.
Finally, Britta got bored. It had been almost an hour since they left. They’d be back soon.
Just as she started upstairs, she noticed two big, brown scrapbooks on a bookshelf near the stairs. Both were bulging with photos and clippings. She turned and slid them out, holding them shut to keep the contents from falling out.
The first was labeled “Ruth, Theater.” The second, “Summer Stock, 1961–1964.” Ruthie’s. She pulled them out.
She started to look through one, the summer stock one, then thought better of it. She put the “Ruth, Theater” one back on the shelf but took the other with her, so she’d remember to ask Ruthie about it later.
She went upstairs, weighted down under the giant scrapbook. It would be pretty ironic if she actually fell down the stairs under its weight. Was that irony? Meredith would know.
Finally, she reached her bed. The ice pack had melted slightly, but still she nestled it against her ankle and lay down.
17
Kate
KATE DIDN’T REALLY understand why they all had to shop together, but she was glad of it. There was something so relaxing about the neat, colorful displays of apples, strawberries, and string beans that made her forget home, forget her parents, almost forget Colin’s fading voice.
Before she left, she had stuck her phone into her nightstand drawer. Then, she ran outside before she could change her mind.
Kate glanced around at the piles of cucumbers and summer squash, rows of moist lettuce. “Nice.”
“What is?” That was Meredith, and Kate realized it had been a dumb thing to say. It was just a supermarket, probably a shabbier-than-average one at that. She couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t spent a lot of time marketing. But this one looked small and unimpressive, one that would serve a community that was underpopulated most of the year.
But she improvised. She wasn’t an extemporaneous speaker for nothing.
“I mean, it’s so quiet. The supermarkets at home are always crowded.”
“Tourists usually come on weekends,” Ruthie said, clearly putting herself in another category. “We’ll have the lake to ourselves too.”
The produce section was by the cash registers, divided by a display of bouncy balls and a pyramid of canned pineapple with a sign that said “Taste of the Tropics.” A little boy was playing with a red bouncy ball he’d pulled from the larger display.
“Stop that, Ray-Ray!” the cashier, a girl around Kate’s age, said.
“We’ll only get a few vegetables here,” Ruthie said. “There’s a farmers market Thursday at the church, so we can get more then.” She checked Britta’s list and grabbed onions and two peppers. Kate was happy she didn’t have to cook but worried that Britta would set a high bar.
Ruthie gestured for them to move on. Kate started to, noticing that the little boy had taken the ball out anyway and was bounding around the checkout area, bouncing it.
“Ray-Ray, cut that out!” the cashier said.
“No!” Ray-Ray bounced the ball off a display of newspapers. Kate wondered if there was anything in the newspapers about Daddy. Unlikely. They lived in a small town, even if it was a suburb of Atlanta. No one would have heard of it here, much less care about some small-time public servant. Her life seemed so big to her, yet it was insignificant to others. Everyone’s life was like that, when you thought about it.
Beside her, Meredith was saying something. She didn’t respond, and Meredith waved her hand before Kate’s eyes.
“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Grab the green beans.”
“Sure.” Kate didn’t know anything about cooking green beans. She hoped Meredith did.
“Do you know how to . . . ?” Meredith stopped, possibly seeing from Kate’s expression that, no, she didn’t. She tossed the bag into the cart. “I’ll teach you. Come on.”
They squeezed past an elderly couple, who were choosing a watermelon.
“Put that ball away!” the cashier said to the little boy. “We can’t afford it.” Kate knew there was nothing about her father in those papers, not here. But he was in the papers at home. That was how Colin knew about it. All her friends knew.
“Come on, Kate.” Meredith was gesturing her up the aisle to the salad dressings. Poor Meredith, having to lead her around like she was some feebleminded old aunt. Still, Kate felt drawn to the New York Times. She walked over toward it, gesturing to Meredith that she would be a second. She pulled out the paper and started to look.
“Are you going to buy that?” the young cashier asked. “The paper is for paying customers only.”
Well. Kate could certainly afford a newspaper, so far, but something about the cashier’s voice made her throw it back
like a guilty child. “Sorry.”
But she stood there a minute more, staring at the cover.
Boom! A ball hit her in the head.
“Oh!” She whirled. “Excuse me!”
“Sorry!” The little boy breathed deeply. “Sorry, lady.”
“It’s fine.” She looked at the cashier. “It’s fine.”
“Ray-Ray, put that back!” the girl said again.
Kate started to follow Meredith. She wondered if they could be friends. It hadn’t escaped her attention that, out of all the missed calls on her phone, none had been from her friends. She was an outcast, a pariah. They’d probably only liked her because she was pretty and her father was a councilman. They were rooting for her to fail. Now, she had. She’d made up with Britta. Would Meredith like her?
Not if she kept acting like an idiot.
Meredith had disappeared up the aisle of spices and condiments. Kate looked for her.
Suddenly, there was a sound. Not exactly a crash, but a thud, a series of thuds, and something wet and squishy hit Kate’s bare leg.
She turned around. The pineapple pyramid, or at least a large part of it, was on the floor with cans of pineapple rolling in every direction. Some of the cans had bounced and burst. That was apparently what had hit Kate’s leg.
She heard a small voice yelling, “Sorry! Sorry!”
“Ray-Ray, I am going to get in trouble!” The cashier ran toward the rolling cans and started picking them up, attempting simultaneously to do that, keep an eye on the register, watch the little boy, whose ball had hit the display, and warn Kate of the rolling cans. “PUT THAT BALL DOWN RIGHT NOW! Watch out for the cans! Hold on, I’ll be right there!”
