Moonpenny Island

by Tricia Springstubb

  “A clock guy came over from Cleveland every year to inspect it and clean it. My father would go up there with him and watch. From up there, you can see across the lake in every direction.”

  Jocelyn is back. She wiggles onto the bench between them, sticks her feet straight out in front of her. Joe pretends to sandpaper her head. A small brown bird lands on the clock’s hour hand and starts to sing. A big song, for such a pipsqueak bird. Is it a finch?

  “My dad says what’s wrong could be simple as a worn-out spring. Or maybe one of the weights fell off. He says by now, rain and wind have damaged the wood so bad, it’s letting in moisture and causing more damage.”

  “Daddy is super smart,” says Jocelyn, folding her hands in her lap.

  “When the island hit hard times, they quit hiring the clock expert,” Joe goes on. “The clock slowed down and finally stopped. My dad told the village council he’d watched the guy for years, and he knew he could fix it. He practically begged them to give him the chance. But Mayor Pinch? That sack of cow manure said no.”

  “That sack of cow manure!” shouts Jocelyn.

  “But that’s so stupid,” Flor says. “Why wouldn’t they let—”

  “Because.” His voice pitches so low, she has to lean across Jocelyn to hear. “They said they don’t want him climbing up there. They don’t trust . . . He might . . .”

  Flor looks back at the tower. It’s high. Steep, narrow steps or a ladder—however you got up there, you’d need to be careful. Watch your step. Keep your balance. Have all your wits about you. Her bad dream wings over her, plunging her into its shadow.

  “Oh,” she says softly.

  “Hey.” Thomas gets into the act, squeezing his way onto the bench next to Jocelyn, who kicks him. He kicks her back. They’re having a wonderful time. Joe speaks to Flor over their heads.

  “But if I went up there with him, I could, you know. Keep an eye on him. I’ve watched every YouTube ever made on how old clocks work.” He crumples the sandpaper in his fist. “Between him and me, we could get it going. I know we could.”

  “That’d be great. That’d be a service to the whole island.”

  “Right?” He pounds his fist on his knee. “And maybe when people looked up at it, they’d think, Huh. What do you know. Look what those trashy Hawkinses did.”

  “We’re not trashy!” yells Jocelyn.

  “Yes, you are!” yells Thomas.

  They’re off, chasing each other across the grass.

  “Your dad needs to ask again,” Flor says. “He shouldn’t give up. Nobody should, but especially not parents!”

  Joe’s shoulders start to lift, but Flor pushes them back down.

  “You shrug too much.”

  Joe’s eyes go wide. Flor snatches her hands away and hides them behind her back. Like that never happened.

  Except that, all through the afternoon, her hands keep remembering the bony-soft feel of him. Untouching him is impossible. Impossible.

  Covered casseroles and plates of cookies and brownies pile up on their kitchen table, like after a funeral. Platters of fried chicken, bowls of butterscotch pudding, canning jars of pickles and tomatoes and plums. Queenie has organized a rotating list of cooks, and when Dad says it’s not necessary, she says her left foot it isn’t. With all he does for the island, the least they can do is help him and the kids out in their own hour of need!

  Dad tells Flor, Cele, and Thomas that they’re not in need. Have they got that? They’re just fine. But you never insult people who want to help. Remember that, kids.

  How often do we look at something and not really see it?

  Flor has to talk to Mama. Not just for a few minutes, with the rest of the family eavesdropping, but alone. People are acting like you died, she’ll say. They’re treating us like half orphans. When Mama hears that, she’ll get so upset, she’ll get so angry, she’ll jump on the next ferry. And if that doesn’t work, Flor will move on to precious baby Thomas. He’s scooting around the house on his bottom, claiming he forgets how to walk. Also, his bed is full of dog biscuits. Also, Dad promised to take him target shooting. This last isn’t true, but so what.

  And if all that fails, there is Cecilia. She’s sneaking around, Mama. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. That’s how bad things are here. That’s how upside down and inside out, Mama!

  Obviously she can’t say any of this while standing in the kitchen. She’s got to talk to Mama in private, but how? Cecilia never lets her cell phone out of her sight. And Flor doesn’t know anyone . . .

  Wait. Yes she does.

  She finds Jasper sitting on the porch of the Red Robin Inn, her nose in a book. When she looks up, she’s so startled to see Flor, the book slips from her hand and slides onto the floor. Flor picks it up. A biography of Charles Darwin.

  “You really love this guy, don’t you?”

  “Guess what. He almost didn’t become a scientist. His father made him go to medical school. But that was back before they invented anesthesia, and the first time he saw an operation, with buckets of blood and the patient shrieking, Darwin ran out and fainted. Then his father tried to force him to be a minister, but he wasn’t any good at that either.”

  “Parents!”

  “Thank goodness he followed his true heart.” Jasper tugs the hem of her giant sweatshirt and gives a shy smile. “You came here.”

  She looks so pleased. Flor swallows.

  “I wanted to . . . Can I ask you a favor? Can I borrow your cell phone?”

  “Oh. Sure.” Jasper stands up too quickly. “It’s upstairs.”

  Flor follows her up. The room is even more of a catastrophe than last time she was here. The rocks have taken over. They have conquered. It is the Land of Rocks.

  “You probably want privacy,” says Jasper, handing her the cell phone. “I’ll wait downstairs.”

  Flor dials Lita’s number. It rings and rings till the message comes on. Of course she won’t pick up, Flor realizes too late. Lita won’t recognize the number, and she only answers people she knows.

  “It’s me!” she squeaks after the beep. “It’s Flor. I—”

  “Flor!”

  Her name! Her name pronounced the proper way. For a split second, Flor thinks Mama picked up, but no, it’s one of the aunts, she’s can’t tell which, they all sound alike. She sinks into a chair and a rock jabs her butt.

  “Hi, Titi. Is Mama there?”

  “No, mija. Not right now. How are you all doing? Are you all right?”

  Flor can tell she’s picturing them in their island hut, chomping on bones, wild dogs roaming the streets. The aunts love the city, bustling in and out of each other’s houses, babysitting each other’s kids so often the baby cousins hardly know which one’s their real mother.

  “We’re okay. We’re just fine.” Wait! This isn’t what she planned to say. She’s supposed to be making Mama come home!

  “You’re eating? That papa of yours knows nada about food.”

  “He’s taking good care of us.” Flor can’t help it—she can’t let Titi badmouth Dad or the island. She has to defend them. Yanking the rock out from under her, she tosses it on the floor. “And just so you know, precious baby Thomas is fine. Don’t bother to ask.”

  “¡Mija! Are you being fresh with me?”

  She sounds so much like Mama. Tears spurt into Flor’s eyes. Who knew it could feel this good to be scolded?

  “It’s hard, I know,” says Titi Whoever. “Flor. Florita! All of us are praying.”

  After they hang up, Flor goes slowly back down the stairs to the lobby. Jasper and Charles Darwin sit in an armchair printed with fat, cheery robins.

  “What did she say?” Jasper asks.

  “What?”

  “You called your mother, didn’t you?”

  Suddenly Flor can’t trust her voice. She nods.

  “I would too.” Jasper’s face softens. “If I thought I could get her to come back, I’d call my mother every single day.”

  J
asper never lies. She’s just speaking the truth. But somehow she’s struck on the very thing that cracks Flor open. Flor presses her eyes with the heels of her hands, which make a terrible dam. The tears spill over. Flor hates to cry in front of other people, because they always try to make her stop. They always tell her There there, it’ll be okay, and pat her and hand her tissues for her runny nose. Even Sylvie was like that. Especially Sylvie, with her crazy-tender heart. Sylvie would make Flor feel bad about crying, because it got her so upset.

  But Jasper just sits there, hugging Charles Darwin. It’s not that her green eyes look unkind, or like she doesn’t care, but she seems to understand some things you just have to cry over, cry and cry till your insides are scoured out.

  “Charles Darwin’s mother died when he was eight,” Jasper says after a while.

  That’s so sad Flor cries a little more, but then she’s done. Then she sits in another armchair, this one upholstered with bright red cardinals, while Jasper tells Charles Darwin stories. When he was little, he loved beetles. He used to collect them, and once, when he had a beetle in either hand and found a third one, he picked it up and put it in his mouth. It spurted beetle juice! There really is such a thing.

  It’s a good story. Flor asks Jasper to please tell her another one.

  Chapter Nineteen

  That night Flor stays up late, struggling to write her report. She flips through the worn book, read by armies of kids before her. Let it be recorded that not everybody adored Anne Shirley. In the margin beside the part where Anne gives a dreamy speech about how heavenly September is, someone wrote PUT A SOCK IN IT. (Anne does talk a lot.) Near the end, where Gilbert, who’s always been just a friend, gazes into Anne’s eyes, and her heart flutters and a veil or something falls away and oh, perhaps, perhaps—KILL ME NOW, it says in black ink.

  Flor pages ahead to one of her favorite parts, where Anne says that what she wants most of all is to add beauty to life. She loves this world so much, and she wants her students to feel the same way. To be happy and curious, and to take joy in all the boundless, bottomless richness of life.

  Wait. What is this? Beside that part it says, in a strangely familiar handwriting, HERMOSA. Beautiful.

  Flor’s pen smears. Her fingers cramp. Confused, she lays her cheek on her paper, just for a tiny second.

  Something hits her window. For a groggy moment she thinks it’s Joe, throwing rocks, mistaking her for a frozen fossil clock. But when she looks out, she sees something flapping big wings. Very big wings. Stumbling down the stairs, Flor unlocks the front door. Cecilia flies in, bringing with her the cold, hard smells of water and night. Her look is meant to kill.

  “Who locked the door?”

  “You snuck out?”

  “Ssh!”

  Flor follows her into her room, where Cecilia shuts the door behind them. Her bedcovers are bunched into a Cecilia-sized shape. Flor gapes as her sister sits down on her fake self.

  “It says something on your cheek,” Cecilia says. “It says something backward.” Her black hair is in a tangle, and a scratch glows on her cheek. Like someone who’s hacked her way home through a wilderness, that’s how she looks. Cecilia flops onto her back. Smells of earth and dark cling to her. Her eyes close, and she lies as still as a marble statue atop a grave. Oh, no. No! Here they come again, those bony, icy fingers at the base of Flor’s neck. That putrid breath on her cheek. Flor grabs her sister’s ankles and squeezes as hard as she can.

  “Stop!” Cecilia sits up. “Are you trying to amputate my feet?”

  “Where did you go?” Flor flings herself down on the bed. “You have to tell me.”

  “You’re not going to snitch on me?” Cecilia looks at her.

  “Don’t insult me!”

  “Promise.”

  “I’m sick of promises! I detest promises! Okay, I promise.” Flor draws a breath. “Cele, this isn’t how you are.”

  Cecilia is quiet for a long while, like she’s trying to decide if what Flor just said is true or not. Flor breathes in the room’s complicated smell of nail polish, soap, and pencils sharp as weapons. Above them, the butt crack is lost in shadow. Flor runs out of patience.

  “You wouldn’t do this if Mama was here. You like her being gone.”

  “That ink seeped into your brain. You’ve got brain poisoning.”

  “You’re a traitor. You’re taking advantage of Dad.”

  “He deserves it.”

  “You’re on her side!”

  “It doesn’t matter whose side we’re on, Flor! Don’t you get that?” Cele looks thin around the edges, like a dwindling bar of soap. “How about tomorrow, I’ll give you a manicure. And a pedicure. You can choose any polish you want.”

  “No bribing! I already promised not to tell.”

  And she won’t. She’ll lie or steal or do whatever Cecilia wants, to keep her from leaving too. Flor can’t spare another person. She tries to touch her sister, but Cecilia picks up her brush and drags it through her tangled hair.

  “Oh my God, I’m so tired.” She looks it. Not just tired tired, but tired of keeping up her complicated secret life. She pulls the brush through Flor’s hair, a quick, Mama-like stroke that makes Flor catch her breath.

  Oh, no. The dream. She had it again last night! She forgot, but now it comes back to her. Up on the ledge, unable to see—but last night was even scarier. The dark was gritty, like smoke or saltwater, and she had to hold her breath, because if she breathed it in, something bad would happen.

  Something very bad.

  Cecilia keeps on brushing Flor’s hair, gently now. Flor listens, holding her breath.

  “In poems and stories, when a lowly caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly, it’s this wonderful transformation. But what if the butterfly wishes it could go back to being a nice, plain caterpillar? What if it doesn’t want to fly? Maybe it liked living on the safe ground better. But too late. You can’t go back in the cocoon once you wrecked it getting out.”

  Flor’s still holding her breath. Cecilia’s voice is so quiet, it’s like Flor’s eavesdropping. Eavesdropping on a demented person. What is Cecilia talking about?

  “It doesn’t matter how scared or sad you are, it’s over.”

  Not breathing is hard. Harder and harder. Your lungs on fire, your head about to explode.

  “Your old life’s over,” says Cecilia. “You’ve got to fly.”

  Flor’s jaw unhinges. She gasps. Spittle kablooeys.

  “Oh my God.” Cecilia pulls the covers over her head. “You need to go away now. You need to go away this second.”

  Flor staggers out into the hallway. Her ignorant father and innocent brother are sound asleep. Her sister’s like a sleepwalker, wandering in the dangerous dark, talking crazy nonsense. Flor’s the only one in this house who’s wide-awake. Who senses the danger they’re in. She knows things she doesn’t want to and doesn’t know things she needs to. She is the keeper of knowing and unknowing, and how did that ever happen?

  “Your old life’s over,” Cele said. But that can’t be. Your life is always your life, now and forever. Cecilia’s still her sister. Nothing can ever change that.

  In her room she takes out the fossil Sylvie found and the one from Dr. Fife. Fossils used to be for wishing, but wishing hasn’t done any good. Yet the fossils still feel powerful. These two were here long before humans, and they’re still here, stubborn as she is. They’re trying to give Flor a message. Give her courage.

  She pushes up her window so the lake, the cruel and powerful lake, can be her witness. Carefully she sets the two fossils side by side on the sill.

  “Sylvie left,” she whispers. “Mama left. But not Cele. As long as I live and breathe, not her.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Rain again. Mrs. Defoe gives Flor a C minus on her book report and writes SEE ME AFTER SCHOOL in red.

  At indoor recess, Mary Long corners Flor and describes how she was up all night coughing and wheezing. Her mother played cards over at Betty
Magruder’s house and must’ve brought home some of Flossie’s cat dander. Mary is allergic to everything in the universe, and if there is another universe, she’s allergic to everything there too. She’s just getting warmed up, describing what happens if she eats raspberries, when Jocelyn grabs Flor’s hand.

  “Come with me!” She drags Flor across the gym, past the ladies in embarrassing workout clothes doing embarrassing Jazzercise—the school gym is also the island rec center—and over into the equipment closet, where Joe is unpacking boxes of new jump ropes. Jocelyn gets busy hooking a neon-pink one through the belt loop of his jeans.

  “Guess what,” he says. “My father’s going to ask the village council about the clock.”

  “Really? That’s good! That’s so good.”

  “He’s sure they’ll say no.” Joe’s shoulders begin to rise, but a look from Flor freezes him midshrug. “At least he said he’d try. That’s something, right?”

  “If only he had somebody to stand up for him,” says Flor. “You know, vouch for him. Besides you, I mean.”

  “Defoe would be the one,” says Joe. “Considering she’s in charge of the school and even grown men are scared of her. But forget that. That’s never happening.”

  “Giddyup, Powder-Pink Cloud!” Jocelyn shakes the jump-rope reins. “Fly me up to the sparkle sky!”

  Joe gallops around the equipment closet. He tosses his head and paws the floor with his high-tops. Jocelyn’s in heaven. Sparkle-sky heaven. Joe’s long, thick curls glint in the overhead light, toss like a dark mane. The most surprising boy on the island. The hypothesis is supported.

  Mrs. Defoe’s personal dictionary does not include the word sympathy. After school, she tells Flor she knows things are difficult at home. She’s sorry about that. That lasts half a second, and then she’s laying into Flor, saying her report was unworthy of her. Did Flor actually read the book? Does Flor know the difference between three hundred and six hundred words? Why is this section smeared? If there’s one thing Mrs. Defoe won’t abide, it’s a promising student wasting her talents. She won’t abide it any day, and twice on Sunday!