by Nancy N. Rue
“I have a feeling the Chinese don’t eat this stuff,” Mama said as she fished for a piece of chicken with her chopsticks. “But isn’t it great?”
“Uh-oh,” Darbie said.
Mama jumped and put her hand on Darbie’s arm. “What is it, honey? You okay?”
“I WAS — until I saw THEM.”
Sophie didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. Just two tables over, the Corn Pops — the rich, popular girls from school — were arguing over who was going to sit where.
B.J., Anne-Stuart, and Julia, the Queen Bees. Each one of them had more bags than Darbie, and their voices grew louder and louder.
“Charming,” Mama said. “Just ignore them, girls.”
Nobody else in the food court was ignoring them. They couldn’t.
B.J. could have been heard inside the movie theater at the other end of the mall. She tossed her buttery-blonde bob at the end of every sentence. Julia sat rooting through a shopping bag, seemingly unaware of the other two Corn Pops as she flicked her long auburn hair out of her eyes. Standing with her arms folded across her chest and a pout on her face was skinny Anne-Stuart, glaring at B.J.
“I totally called this seat first!” B.J. said, with a hair-flip.
“Like you ALWAYS do,” Anne-Stuart flipped back — although her silky white-blonde hair was up in a bun with the ends sticking out perfectly in all the right places.
Here it comes, Sophie thought.
Julia looked up and seared them both with a green-eyed glare. “You two are acting so immature,” she said. “Who CARES where you sit?”
Sophie turned to Fiona and rolled her eyes. She knew that Fiona knew that Julia knew exactly why they cared. Whoever sat at Julia’s right hand was second in command.
Fiona grunted. “Without Willoughby to pick on, they’re fighting for their lives.”
“When is Willoughby ever coming back from holiday, anyway?” Darbie said. She called all vacations “holidays,” which Sophie liked, only she could never remember to say it herself. “We hardly had a chance to get to know her and she was gone.”
“I’m looking forward to getting better acquainted with her,” Mama said. “She seems like a sweetheart. I don’t know how she ever got mixed up with those three.”
“Kitty was a Corn Pop too once,” Fiona said.
Sophie glanced at Darbie and kicked Fiona under the table. Still, she had to wonder how Willoughby was going to feel when she got back and found out about Kitty. Willoughby laughed at the smallest thing and made it funny for everybody else, even if they didn’t get it.
There’s nothing funny about leukemia, Sophie thought.
“Oh, look at this show,” Darbie said.
Sophie looked at the Pops and shared disgusted looks with her fellow Flakes. Three high school boys were loping through the food court, and Julia and B.J. and Anne-Stuart were following their every trying-to-be-macho move with their eyes. Sophie expected B.J. to start drooling any minute.
“Give me a break,” Fiona said. “They’re, like, four years older than us. As if the Pops had a chance.”
“Chance to what?” Mama said. She looked horrified.
“I don’t know,” Fiona said. “THEY don’t even know.”
The boys draped themselves over the McDonald’s counter, obviously unaware that the Corn Pops even existed. Immediately, Julia, Anne-Stuart, and B.J. whirled back to their tables and dug through the purses that exactly matched their outfits. Julia produced a compact and fluffed some blush onto her cheeks. Anne-Stuart slathered on lip gloss, and B.J. went after her eyelashes with a mascara brush.
“Cosmetics?” Darbie said.
“That’s makeup, all right,” Fiona said. “Like it’s really going to get those three boys to look at them.”
“Hello?”
They both looked at Sophie.
“Just because they talk about us behind their backs,” Sophie said, “that doesn’t mean we should talk about them.”
“You’re always so good, Sophie,” Darbie said. “Now of course I feel like a complete bogey.”
“I just want to say this,” Fiona said. “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about them anymore. After all the trouble they got into at the end of last year? They’re gonna keep WAY far away from us.”
Sophie did give the Pops once last look though. Even without the makeup, they looked so much older than they had two months ago. Sophie didn’t know exactly what it was, but it wasn’t the kind of older she wanted to be.
Seven
Mama and Aunt Emily took Sophie, Fiona, and Darbie on several day-trips — to Norfolk to see the botanical gardens, to Charlottesville for a tour of Jefferson’s Monticello, and back to Virginia Beach. That took Sophie’s mind off Kitty during the day, but it was still hard when she was in bed at night, watching the shadows on her ceiling. She couldn’t help wondering what it was like for Kitty in that hospital room, chasing shadows of her own. Even for Sophie it was impossible to imagine.
So when Fiona begged for Sophie and Darbie to spend the night at her house one Thursday, Sophie practically held her breath for the whole hour it took for Aunt Emily finally to make the decision to let Darbie go. She just made Sophie and Fiona promise they wouldn’t talk about Kitty’s sickness or rehearse for their film.
“What ARE we gonna talk about then?” Fiona said to Sophie before Darbie arrived.
They were sitting in the breakfast nook eating some kind of dip Genevieve had whipped up and served with little triangles of toasted pita bread. Genevieve called it hummus. Sophie didn’t ask her what was in it. It tasted really good and she didn’t want to ruin it by finding out it was made from something gross.
“I mean, that’s what the Corn Flakes DO,” Fiona went on. “We make films and we help each other with problems.”
Dr. Bunting hurried into the kitchen, and Genevieve slid a zip-up lunch bag toward her on the counter.
“Tell them about camp,” Dr. Bunting said.
“Mom, I’m not going to tell them about camp because I’m not going,” Fiona said. She finalized that by stuffing an entire pita triangle into her mouth.
Fiona’s mother barely glanced at her as she adjusted her collar. “You go every year, Fiona.”
“Not this year,” Fiona said with her mouth full.
“You should have told your father that before he wrote the check.”
Fiona dunked another piece of pita into the hummus like she was trying to smother it.
“Nobody asked me,” she said.
Dr. Bunting finally looked at her. “I thought you loved that place. All the horses and tennis courts and sailboats — it’s better than Disney World.”
“I just can’t be gone for three weeks this summer,” Fiona said.
Sophie’s hand froze halfway to the dip bowl. Three weeks?Three weeks without Fiona — right NOW?
“What, Fiona?” Dr. Bunting said. “Do you have some agenda we don’t know about?”
“You don’t know anything about what I do.” Fiona muttered it so low her mom didn’t appear to hear it. Her mother flung the lunch bag over her shoulder by the strap and glanced at her watch.
“Your father already paid the tuition and it’s nonrefund-able,” she said, halfway out the back door. “You’ll be fine. Nice to see you, Sophie.”
Sophie could only stare at Fiona.
“I’m not going,” Fiona said. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
She dropped the piece of pita into the hummus and scraped her chair away from the table. She was out of the kitchen in three steps, but not before Sophie saw tears filming her gray eyes.
Fiona never cried.
Several seconds later, Sophie heard Fiona’s bedroom door slam way down in the west wing of the house.
“Should I go after her?” Sophie said to Genevieve.
Genevieve slid into the chair Fiona had just vacated and tucked her feet onto its edge.
“I’d give her a few minutes,” Genevieve said. “She’s ha
d a couple of meltdowns since Kitty got sick. She always seems to want to calm down by herself.” She smiled a little. “I don’t know if she’d actually leave a mark on anybody, but I wouldn’t chance it.”
“Fiona has meltdowns?” Sophie said. She could feel her eyes widening. “I’m her best, best friend, and I never saw one.”
Genevieve toyed with her thick braid. “I have a feeling it’s because you three aren’t allowed to talk about Kitty when you’re together, so it gets all bottled up inside. Plus you can’t work on your movie, so there goes that outlet. I’m not questioning Darbie’s aunt. I can just see that it’s hard for you and Fiona.”
Sophie put her hands behind her head and pulled her hair into three sections.
“You want me to braid it for you?” Genevieve said.
“Are you serious?” Sophie said.
“Sure,” she answered. “You have great hair.” Genevieve went into the small bathroom around the corner and came out with a comb and a ponytail holder. She pulled up a chair behind Sophie and started in.
“It does kind of feel like we’re, like, stuck,” Sophie said.
“You don’t do meltdowns, do you?” Genevieve said. “I don’t either.”
“Nuh-uh. I mostly get into a daydream so I don’t have to think about it. Only — that’s not working so good lately.”
“It’s tough to dream your way out of something like this.”
Sophie could feel the comb making even panels of hair, and Genevieve pulling them tight in a way that felt firm and neat.
“I could always do it before, no matter what was wrong,” Sophie said.
“It’s scary when it doesn’t work, isn’t it?”
“You think?” Sophie picked up the ponytail holder from the table and stretched it in and out with her fingers. “I promised Dr. Peter I would imagine Jesus every day, but I’m scared to do that too. I know that’s lame, but — ”
“It doesn’t sound lame at all. He might end up telling you something you don’t want to hear.”
“That’s totally it!” Sophie said. “Because then I’d have to do whatever he showed me to do, and if it’s something like — well, I don’t know — like, if it’s hard, I don’t know if I can do it. Dr. Peter said it might actually hurt.”
Genevieve was quiet for a moment. Sophie could feel her getting farther down the braid.
Now she probably thinks I’m a loser, Sophie thought. There probably isn’t anything she thinks is too hard. She tamed Izzy and Rory, didn’t she? They’re in bed this very minute.
“Remember my telling you about my grandmother?” Genevieve said.
“Hello? We made our whole film script about her!”
“You might want to put this in then.” Genevieve held her hand out for the ponytail holder and snapped it into place. Sophie got up on her knees in her chair to face her.
Genevieve looked over Sophie’s head as if she were seeing her old grandmother right there in the air. “Every time I had a problem I didn’t think I could face, she’d say” — Genevieve shifted into a French accent — “ ‘Gennie, as long as you do what God tells you to do in love, it won’t be impossible. It might be difficult, but it won’t be impossible.’ ”
Genevieve pulled her eyes back to Sophie with the memory still shining in them. “She said it in French, of course. It loses something in the translation — it was so beautiful. Anyway — she was right. It’s gotten me through some really tough times.”
Sophie stroked her new braid. “I didn’t think anything was hard for you.”
Genevieve grinned. “That’s FUNNY. Everybody gets something that’s too hard for them. Otherwise, why would we need God?”
“Oh,” Sophie said.
The doorbell rang, and Sophie heard Fiona’s bare feet slapping on the ceramic tile.
“That’s probably Darbie,” Sophie said.
“Let the games begin,” Genevieve said. “I’ll bring you guys some smoothies.”
Sophie went for the door, and then she stopped. “I like talking to you,” she said.
Genevieve nodded the way one grown-up nodded to another.
“I totally feel the same way,” she said.
Sophie, Darbie, and Fiona managed to find things to do — like painting designs on each other’s toenails and drinking smoothies with Genevieve and braiding each other’s hair. Darbie’s was too short for a French braid, so they put hers in tiny ones all over her head. The effect was good for fifteen minutes of giggling. There was no evidence of Fiona’s meltdown.
But when Sophie woke up in the middle of the night, Fiona wasn’t laughing. She was sobbing into her pillow.
Sophie sat straight up in bed, heartbeat throbbing in her neck. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Fiona?”
“I don’t want to go, Soph,” she said in a broken voice. “I don’t want to go to camp.”
Sophie scooted closer so she wouldn’t wake up Darbie, who was conked out on the other side of her in Fiona’s king-size bed.
“Is camp heinous?” Sophie said.
“No. I just can’t leave you — and Darbie — and Kitty. You guys need me. I’m the one who makes you see that Kitty’s gonna be okay. Without me, you’ll believe every worst-case scenario my mother tells you.”
Sophie squeezed Fiona’s hand. “I promise I won’t.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping Darbie. “And you don’t have to worry about her. Aunt Emily probably won’t even let her near your mom.”
“Pinky promise?” Fiona said.
She crooked her little finger, and Sophie hooked hers with it.
“I take the solemn oath of the Corn Flakes,” she said.
Fiona sighed, and in another minute she was asleep. Sophie closed her eyes. All she could see was Kitty, who had nobody to link pinkies with.
Fiona left for camp the following Monday. Sophie guessed that all the meltdowns in the world weren’t going to change the Buntings’ minds. With Fiona gone — and Maggie, and Kitty, and Willoughby gone too — Darbie and Sophie clung together. They sat glumly at each other’s houses, staring at movies they’d already seen and lying on blankets in their backyards, flipping aimlessly through books and turning down every offer Aunt Emily made for yet another day-trip. Sophie was pretty sure she would have offered to fly them to Hawaii if the idea appealed to them.
It didn’t.
By the Wednesday after Fiona left, Aunt Emily insisted that Darbie go to Richmond with her for the day.
“She thinks Darbie needs a change of scene,” Mama told Sophie the night before.
“I think she needs to talk about Kitty,” Sophie said. “Like we do here. It’s scarier when you don’t talk about it. Everything gets all weird in your mind.”
Daddy muted the baseball game on the TV.
Uh-oh, Sophie thought. This is serious.
“That makes good sense, Soph,” he said. “When did you get to be so smart?”
Even that coming from her father didn’t do much to cheer Sophie up. She didn’t feel smart. She just felt lonely — lonelier than she had in a whole year.
Eight
Sophie was so desperate the next morning that she decided to clean up her room. She was hanging up the dress she’d worn to church two Sundays before when she felt something crinkle in the pocket. She knew before she pulled it out that it was the piece of paper from Dr. Peter’s lily pad with the verse for a Bible story written on it.
She felt a guilty pang.
I promised him, she thought. Dr. Peter will be coming back and I haven’t done anything I told him I’d do.
So she pulled out her Bible and settled herself on the floor, where the sun made a square on the rug, and leaned against her bed facing the window. “Luke 5:1 – 11,” the paper read. She thumbed through the thin, tissue-like pages.
There was Dr. Peter’s handwriting in front of her, almost like he himself was waiting. No way was she going to disappoint him. He had taught the Girls Group to read the Scripture as if they were actually in each story. So
phie skimmed through the verses and decided that she needed to imagine herself as Simon Peter, even though she was a girl. She knew it wouldn’t work if she didn’t jump right in the middle of things.
Puffing her chest out to get the feel of big fisherman’s muscles, she read out loud.
“ ‘One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of’ — some huge word — ‘with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore.’ ”
This is where I come in, Sophie thought. She drew in a breath and could almost smell the fish-scents, just like at Virginia Beach when they went to get crabs at the fish market. She tried to see herself as Simon, pulling his wet fishing nets from the water to help Jesus. In her mind, Sophie/Simon let the boat drift away from shore.
“ ‘Then he’ — Jesus — ‘sat down and taught the people from the boat.’ ”
Sophie squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Sophie/Simon’s heart would be beating really fast, and his hands would get sweaty — right there next to the real-live Jesus.
“ ‘When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” ’ ”
Simon/Sophie wanted to roll his eyes, but he couldn’t — not in front of this man. He had a feeling you just didn’t do that. Sophie read Simon’s answer to Jesus out loud: “ ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.’ ”
And then his heart almost stopped and something took over his words as if it were somebody else talking. “But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
Sophie was almost sweating herself as she imagined Simon nodding to the other fishermen. They probably grumbled that they’d been fishing all day without catching anything — that it would take a miracle. Or a new career. Sophie answered them herself. “Get over yourselves. He said do it — so do it.”
She continued to read the Bible. “ ‘When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.’ ”
