Moonpenny Island

by Tricia Springstubb

  Usually Cecilia gets a ride to school with Dad, and Flor and Thomas take their bikes. Today Flor says she wants a ride too. It’s too cold, she says. You’d think this would raise eyebrows, since Flor has been known to bike in snowstorms, but Dad just says fine, and Cecilia just says she better be ready on time.

  The fact that Flor has resolved not to let her sister out of her sight does not occur to either of them.

  At school, Joe motions her over.

  “You’re not going to believe it. It’s uncanny.”

  Uncanny. Uncanny?

  He glances around the playground, like strange forces are on the loose. They could get ambushed at any moment.

  “When Defoe called me inside on Friday? She was nice to me.”

  “¡Dios mío!”

  “She asked why I keep throwing rocks at the clock. And then, instead of biting my head off, she actually waited for me to answer. I was so surprised, I told her. And guess what. Uh-oh. Speak of the devil.”

  Mrs. Defoe steps outside. Her brown jacket is buttoned to her chin, but what is this? Around her neck is a yellow scarf. Not brownish yellow, but the pure yellow of buttercups. Knotted under her chin, the scarf reflects upward, just the way the flowers do.

  Joe and Flor gape at each other.

  “Uncanny,” whispers Flor. “Is that what uncanny is?”

  “We had a conversation. I mean, an actual two-way deal. It turns out she hates the clock being broken too. She said this place should be a beacon of knowledge, but it’s giving out inaccurate information. She said getting used to something can be the worst kind of ignorant behavior.” Joe pauses for breath. “She got pretty worked up. It was terrifying, like her body was host to an alien force.”

  They turn to stare at their teacher.

  “She said I was right; she bet my father could fix it. She said she knew he had it in him, and it’s never too late.”

  Flor watches Mrs. Defoe finger her bright scarf. Is it possible? Can their teacher be evolving?

  “She said some more stuff,” Joe goes on. “About how every day is a new day . . .”

  “With no mistakes in it yet,” finishes Flor.

  Joe’s eyes widen. “How’d you know?”

  “It’s from a book we both love.”

  “What? You and her?”

  Flor shrugs.

  Joe laughs.

  The very second school is over, Flor races out the door. She’s waiting when Cecilia comes out, dragging her feet in their high-heel boots.

  “Let’s walk home together,” Flor says. “We haven’t done that all year!”

  “All right,” says her big sister.

  “Why not? We can—Wait. Did you say all right?”

  Cecilia rolls her eyes. She pulls out her lip gloss and coats her beautiful lips.

  “Unless you want to go home with your friend.”

  She points the lip-gloss tube. Jasper stands beside the lilac bush. Not in it. Beside it. She waves. Joe, his brothers, and his sister stream by, and Joe stops to do fist bumps. Which Jasper has no idea how to do, so he teaches her.

  “I can’t go with her.” To her own surprise, Flor’s disappointed. “I have to watch Thomas.” And you, she does not say.

  “I’ll watch him,” says Cecilia.

  “You will?”

  “What else have I got to do?” she snaps. “Name one thing!”

  It’ll be a long afternoon trying to stick to her. And if she’s watching Thomas, she can’t go anywhere. She can’t do anything stupid or dangerous with him at her high heels.

  So Flor and Jasper walk to the Red Robin Inn, which is more or less deserted. All the birders are gone by now. The two of them prowl around, peeking in the different rooms, trying out the beds, looking through a pair of binoculars someone left behind. Jasper makes them cocoa in the microwave. Dr. Fife’s still out in the field, though not for long. The sun sets earlier and earlier, shrinking the afternoons.

  They take their cocoa out on the porch and sit in the rockers. Jasper’s got a new book, photos from the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin made some of his most important discoveries.

  “See these giant tortoises? They can live to be two hundred years old. Darwin rode on one’s back and clocked its speed at approximately—”

  Flor interrupts, pointing to a photo of a bird that resembles a Moonpenny Island cormorant, only with wings so small they’re like feathered flaps. It is, Jasper the Endless Explainer explains, the flightless cormorant, a species endemic to the Galápagos, meaning it exists nowhere else. Its ancestors could fly, but once they arrived on their island, they had no predators. They no longer needed to make quick getaways, so little by little, over generations, their wings shrank.

  “Wait. Wait a minute. They gave up flying?”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s completely birdbrained. Who’d give up being able to fly?”

  “The flightless cormorant, that’s who. It’s perfectly adapted to its environment.”

  “But . . .”

  “People think that evolution is all about getting stronger and bigger and faster. But no. Species evolve according to what they need. Not everyone needs to be big and powerful.”

  Flor speeds up her rocking chair, like that will make her brain work better.

  “You can ask my father. Some of his favorite trilobites evolved to be blind.”

  Flor stops rocking so abruptly she almost dislocates her head. “Now you’re trying to trick me,” she says.

  “Why would I do that?”

  Flor stares at the empty road. Flossie Magruder trots out of the woods to sit in the middle of it and bite her fleas, serious work that commands every ounce of her attention.

  “You wouldn’t,” says Flor. “So you better explain.”

  “It’s simple. The ocean was getting crowded. There were more and more creatures who could swim fast, which meant increasing competition for food. Also, many more predators.”

  Jasper pauses significantly. Predators. She and Flor are united in antipredatorism.

  “Meanwhile, the bottom of the ocean floor had plenty of food. It had plenty of soft mud to burrow in and rocks to hide under. So some trilobites returned there. It was so dark that little by little, their eyes narrowed to slits, and then . . .”

  “Eek!” Flor covers her own eyes to protect them. “I don’t want to hear it! It’s like a horror movie!”

  “Not really. Their going back was better for everybody. Everybody got what they needed.”

  To live forever in the dark? Who could possibly need that? Parting her fingers, Flor watches Flossie flop over in the road and roll on her back, paws tucked up, her yellow eyes nothing but slits. Slits of bliss.

  Jasper is still talking. Her mother and her team have made a big discovery. They found a new species of toxodon, with bigger teeth and a heavier snout. The toxodontidae world is going wild. They may even name the species after her.

  Flor tries to be polite. How cool, she says, but inside she’s angry. Jasper’s mother chose an extinct, big-snouted creature over her! And now she’s famous! Is this fair? Is this justice? Meanwhile, sweet Dr. Fife is stuck with trilobites who evolved backward.

  As if on cue, he putters around the bend in his golf cart. Flossie gives him the skunk eye, and he carefully tootles around her. He swings into the driveway, just missing the porch, and clambers out. He’s had another glorious day, little animalcules! His eyes twinkle. His socks droop. His white beard has grown so long, he could definitely pass for Santa, if he gained a hundred pounds. When he goes inside, he leaves a little shimmer of joy behind him on the porch.

  “Your father’s the happiest adult I ever met.”

  “I know. It gets on my nerves sometimes.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t mind some happy parents, myself.”

  They rock in their chairs. The day’s light is dwindling fast.

  “He loves what he does,” Jasper says. “Every day, he loves it. He’s not in it for the fame. Darwin
didn’t do it alone, you know. You rarely hear about the other scientists who contributed to his theories, but he couldn’t have done it without them. What Father finds out on Moonpenny could help unlock new secrets about the origins of species. That’s enough for him, I guess.” Her deep laugh. “The trilobite’s his hero! Try and get more humble than that.”

  Flor thinks of her own father. Him and his unmappable ways of the heart. Out in the road, Flossie Magruder quits scratching. Her ears go on high alert. Two seconds later, Perry Pinch’s pickup zooms around the curve. Going way too fast. Way too fast! Middle of the road. Spitting gravel. Flossie freezes. Flor and Jasper leap from their rockers.

  “Flossie!” they scream as one. “Look out!”

  The old cat levitates, all four paws in the air. A blood-chilling yowl, a streak of fur hurtling into the ditch at the side of the road. A dust cloud where the truck was.

  “Did he hit her?” Flor whispers.

  They stare at the ditch. Be alive, be alive! One beat. Two. Three. Cautiously, a pair of mangy triangles rises over the edge. With a cry from the underworld, that cat vanishes among the trees. Yes! High fives! Flor and Jasper collapse into their rockers, panting with relief.

  “He could’ve killed her!”

  “Killed her and not even know!”

  “Not even care!”

  “He’s the most reckless boy I’ve ever observed.”

  Anger shoves relief out of the way. Flor jumps back up and punches the air around.

  “I wish a predator would devour him! I wish he’d go extinct! I wish—”

  “Who was with him?”

  Flor freezes midpunch.

  “Nobody. Who’d be brainless enough to ride with Perry Pinch?”

  Jasper stares. Her mouth goes small as a nickel. “Right next to him.” Her voice is hushed, as if Flor’s the one who nearly became roadkill. “You didn’t see?”

  Flor saw. Of course she did! She throws herself down in the rocker, flings her hands over her eyes, only it’s no use. Maybe some creatures can choose to go blind, but not Flor.

  “It was your sister, wasn’t it? Is she in love with him?”

  They were arguing. The heat in their faces, the pent-up anger in their bodies. Arguing, just like Mama and Dad.

  Flor leaps back up. Thomas! Cecilia is supposed to be watching him! Did she leave him on his own? Has she gone that brainless? Flor runs down the steps.

  “Flor, wait! I’ll get Father to drive you.”

  Within moments he’s outside, shrugging on his jacket, revving up the cart, following her directions without a single question. When they jolt to a stop at Flor’s, she jumps out. Waving over her shoulder, she sees them looking back with twin faces of concern. If she had time, she’d run back and hug them both.

  “Call if you need us!”

  “Thomas?” She bangs open the front door. “Thomas? Where are you?”

  No reply.

  He’s not a hiding kind of boy. Call his name, and he’s there. Flor’s brain, rattling around from Dr. Fife’s driving, grows still. She walks from room to room, just in case, looking under beds and behind closet doors. In Cecilia’s room she takes the time to knock everything off the desk.

  Where? Moonpenny is suddenly big. Enormous. Flor has her bike out, ready to start searching, when she gets another idea. Back inside, she dials Cecilia’s cell. Amazingly, her sister answers. Flor can’t speak.

  “Flor? Dad?” Cecilia’s anxious. “Hello?”

  “Where are you?” Flor manages to croak. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m at the library.”

  “No, you’re not! You liar! You left him! He’s gone! He could be drowned, he could be stuffing things up his nose and suffocating. He—”

  “Thomas, you mean? He’s right here. I took him to after-school arts and crafts.”

  “What?”

  A pause.

  “Hi, Flor,” says Thomas. “I made you a thing.”

  “Now do you believe me, you insane person?” says Cecilia, and hangs up.

  Your brother almost ran over Flossie Magruder.

  Flor hits SEND fast, before she can change her mind.

  Then waits. Sylvie has to answer. She can’t ignore feline-icide, not tenderhearted Sylvie, who rescues worms from puddles and weeps over squished squirrels.

  Cecilia and Thomas come home, and Thomas gives Flor a mess of glued-together Popsicle sticks. Cecilia’s eyes are red and puffy. She feels sick. She has a headache and a stomachache, and from the chilly look she throws Flor, you’d think it was all Flor’s fault.

  So she didn’t leave him alone. But she left him, all right. There’s no trusting her, not at all. Her sister is a complete stranger. Who knows what she’ll do next?

  Flor keeps checking the computer. But the rest of the night goes by and . . . nothing.

  Just before Dad says to turn it off for the night, Flor checks one last time. And there it is. In purple font.

  “I have to tell you a secret.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The next afternoon, Cecilia comes straight home, goes to her room, and locks the door. When Flor puts her ear to it, she hears brokenhearted music. She hears crying. Not really. She feels crying, right through the sturdy door Dad hung to give Cecilia her privacy.

  Flor leans against the wall. She has the phone. She’s guarding it, knowing Sylvie will call. All day she’s tried to think what the secret could be, and she can’t. Because transparent as just-washed glass—that’s how the two of them are.

  The phone rings!

  But it’s Jasper, who’s never called Flor before. Over the phone, her voice sounds even deeper than in person. She’s calling to say they have set their departure date. One week from today.

  “The forecast is for the weather to turn much colder. Father says work conditions will be too difficult.”

  Flor pictures their attic room. That wild sea of rocks and maps, filmy dust and dirty dishes, specimens in every stage of discovery. Dr. Fife at his worktable, tap tap tapping with his little troll hammer. Jasper in her crazy-big clothes, the president of the Charles Darwin Fan Club.

  You’d think you’d get used to having people leave you. Instead, it only gets harder and harder. Flor slides down the wall and sits on the floor.

  “Flor?”

  “I . . . I have to hang up. I’m expecting a really important phone call.”

  This is so rude. Beyond rude. What is wrong with her mouth?

  “Oh,” says Jasper. “All right.”

  A predator, that’s what Flor feels like, big and bad. Suddenly she’s boiling over with anger. It’s like she gets mad at herself on behalf of Jasper, which makes zero sense.

  “Jasper, by every rule of friendship, you have the right to be furious at me!”

  A pause.

  “I guess I never learned those rules,” says Jasper.

  “You need to! You definitely need to learn them!”

  “All right! Okay!”

  They hang up. Did they just have a fight? Decide to be friends? How can things get so complicated with a person who only ever speaks the truth?

  The phone rings again.

  “I’m sorry,” she begins.

  “Flor!”

  “Mama. Oh, Mama.”

  “Titi Aurora told me you called.”

  Flor goes into her room and shuts the door. She wants Mama all to herself.

  Tonight, no shouting aunts or laughing cousins in the background. No music or TV. Just Mama, her voice clear and familiar as if she’s standing in her spot beside the sink, her paring knife flashing like she’s slicing up light itself.

  Mama asks about school, and Flor tells her that today Mrs. Defoe wore a pink blouse. Mama laughs. She wants to know how it’s going without Sylvie, and Flor tells her terrible. Then she says she met a girl who’s in love with Charles Darwin, who was in love with islands and spurting beetles and birds who can’t fly. She explains that species evolve depending on what they need, so some
of Darwin’s finches had fat beaks, but on other islands they had long beaks. Mama says that’s interesting, tell her more. Flor tells her it’s not about becoming the biggest or smartest. Dr. Fife says every creature is important. Everyone needs something and everyone has something to give. Just like Dad says about the island.

  Mama says, “Oh, Flor.” And goes quiet for a while.

  It’s the longest they’ve talked since Mama left, and it’s all about Flor. Not Cecilia, not Thomas, just her. It’s nice. It’s so nice. It’s as nice as when Mama was here, almost.

  At last Mama says she’s had time to think. To really think.

  “I’ll be home this weekend,” she says.

  For good? The words scald Flor’s tongue. They explode in her mouth. But she’s too chickenhearted to let them out.

  “Good,” she whispers.

  Mama doesn’t ask to talk to anyone else. It’s like Flor was enough. After they say good-bye, Flor pulls on her jacket and, phone in hand, goes outside. The stars are pinwheels. It’s like the quarry, only spread across the sky, light blazing, shining out from so far away, so long ago, from stars that may no longer exist. Things that are here but aren’t.

  The phone comes alive in her hand.

  “Sylvie!” This time it’s really her. “I’m sorry! My mother called and . . .”

  “It’s okay. Only I can’t talk long.”

  Flor’s nervous legs want to pace, but a few feet from the house, the connection dies.

  “I’m wearing my wild horses T-shirt,” Sylvie says.

  “Me too!”

  “My aunt actually threw it away, but I rescued it.”

  “We need to get new ones.”

  “Flor.” Sylvie’s voice breaks. “Is Flossie okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s probably got nine hundred lives left. At least.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I know.”

  “I never told you what happened,” Sylvie says. “Why I came here.”

  But she did tell. This can’t be the secret.

  “Your parents think our school isn’t good enough, that’s why.”

  “I only told you part, Flor.”

  The connection dies, and Flor scuttles back toward the house in time to hear Sylvie say, “. . . the rest. You know what Daddy says now? He wants me to be an engineer! Actually, he says I will be an engineer! Even though I still hate math. Hate it! I decided I’m going to be a sculptor.”