Aurora drags us into the sewing room/study.
“What happened to your face?” Nora asks. She’s sneering when she says it, too.
See, here’s the thing about Nora. She’s sort of like Jimmy Collins. They make other people want to hurt them.
It’s like this. Nora and Jimmy think people are mean, and it’s because they think that way that other people act mean around them. Jimmy knows he’s doing it, and he likes making people act mean and stupid. Nora has no idea, but other people don’t know that. They just think she thinks she’s better than them, but she doesn’t. She’s just seen the worst in people so many times she assumes she’ll see it again. And nobody likes to be thought of at their worst.
Aurora grabs a big hunk of Nora’s hair and twists it until Nora crumples down on her knees.
“You’re not going to say anything about this to anyone. Are you, Eleanor?” Aurora whispers.
She looks at Nora with so much hate I can’t stand it. It’s like Nora is to blame for what happened tonight because she’s sneering at Aurora just like all those girls at Harvard would sneer, but Nora isn’t to blame for any of it. And Nora knows it, so she just sneers even more at Aurora and stares at Aurora’s black eye like she’s trash because she has a black eye. But Aurora isn’t trash, and that’s why she has a black eye to begin with, and I wish I could explain this to both of them, but neither of them would believe it because they both think the opposite is true.
I put my hand on top of Aurora’s to get her to loosen her grip on Nora as I try to wiggle between my two sisters.
“Nora’s not going to say anything,” I tell Aurora. “Let go. I swear she won’t say anything.”
“She better not, the little snitch,” Aurora says. I get myself between them.
“She won’t tell,” I promise. “You should put some ice on your eye, Aurora,” I say, and I hustle Nora to the stairs.
Nora feels like dandelion fluff in my arms, she’s so light.
“Everyone hates me,” she whispers as we tiptoe up the stairs.
We get into our room and I climb into bed without even taking off my clothes first.
“I don’t hate you. I love you,” I tell her.
She doesn’t say she loves me back, but it’s okay. Nora never says she loves me, because she can’t say it to anyone, or else it’s like saying it to no one. She’s got to save it all up and only give it away once or it’s not special. Maybe she’ll finally say it to me when I’m eighty and about to die. But I know she loves me anyway. Nora loves me even though she wishes she didn’t.
When I wake up the next morning, Nora’s gone.
I know something’s wrong right away. Little things are missing, like Nora’s favorite book and the drops she has to put in her ears so she doesn’t get any more ear infections. Geronimo sits in the middle of her bed, blinking at me. Almost like he’s sad.
I go downstairs without even trying to sing Led Zeppelin to get into the bathroom, and I ask Mom where Nora is.
“She hasn’t come down yet,” Mom says, and that’s when I get really nervous.
“She’s not upstairs,” I tell Mom, but she doesn’t look worried. “Mom. She’s not in her bed, and her favorite stuff is gone,” I say louder.
Mom sighs and turns to face me. “What do you want me to do, Annie?”
I stand there for a second, because the last time Mom really looked at me was way back when I asked her why she didn’t put me in ballet. When I don’t have anything to say, Mom goes back to microwaving a bowl of oatmeal for me.
That’s when I realize that no one is going to do anything. Nora ran away from home and no one cares.
I eat my oatmeal and wait for Mom to go to church for choir practice before I make a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Nora and me. She’ll be hungry when I find her, probably. I remember an old thermos in an old lunch box and pour milk into it, put everything into a backpack, and head out into the woods.
It’s spring, but it’s still not all that warm yet, so I wear JP’s old jean jacket over my T-shirt that says VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS. I love this T-shirt because it’s supersoft, but I hate it, too, because the word lovers on it always seems so corny to me, and there’s a silhouette of a boy and a girl kissing silk-screened onto it, so I never wear it to school. Plus, I’ve never been to Virginia, so I hardly ever wear it even if it does feel just right when I put it on, but I need to be comfortable if I’m going to find Nora and convince her to come back, and this T-shirt hugs close and fits great under a jean jacket.
You’ve got to be wearing just the right things if you’re going to be going through the whole woods to rescue your sister.
I start on our usual paths. There are places we like to go and play, like the Witch Cottage, which is really just a tumbledown old house that was made of the same stones the fences are made out of and has probably been here since there were witches running around here after the Salem witch trials. There’s no roof or anything, just stone on top of stone to show you where the rooms used to be and piles and piles of dead leaves from years before. Nora’s not at the Witch Cottage, so I go on to the Prudential Tree.
The Prudential Tree doesn’t have a name on any of the maps, but it has a name with all us kids. It’s this old, gnarly pine tree that sticks out over the edge of a cliff. It’s huge. I mean, enormous.
The Prue Tree is so wide around the bottom that all eight of my siblings and I can barely hold hands around it. It’s so tall that if you climb up even three-quarters of the way, you can see all twenty-six miles into Boston and it’s like you’re looking directly into the windows of the Prudential Building. That’s why we named it the Prue Tree.
It’s the best. I’ve only climbed it once, though, on account of the fact that I pretty much fell out of it and would have died if it hadn’t been for Fay.
I was staring at Boston and it looked like a city in one of those snow globes, but without the snow. It was like I could reach out and grab the shining glass and steel and turn it around in my hands.
And then the wind blew and the Prue Tree started swaying back and forth and Patrick (my sister Evangeline’s boyfriend, who’s been around so long I can’t really remember a time without him) started yelling for everyone to look out and, before I knew it, I was falling.
I whooshed past Patrick, and I saw the panic on his face as he tried to grab me, but it was Fay, who was a few branches below him, who managed to get a hand around me, and she saved me. She grabbed me wicked hard, and the branches whipped her and me like crazy as we both fell, but she didn’t let go. JP grabbed her as she went by and managed to stop both of us.
I’ve never been allowed back up since, because everyone says I’m so skinny the wind can just blow me out like a kite and it isn’t safe.
But I go there to find Nora.
She’s been here. I can see where she sat with her back against the tree and where she scuffed her feet and drew little circles in the ground with a stick because she was bored. And I know it was Nora, because no one knows about the Prue Tree but us Bianchis. And Patrick, but he’s one of us anyways now, even if he and Evie aren’t quite married yet.
There’s no trail. I mean, not that I could spot a trail or anything. I’m practically through to the other side of the forest at this point, so I decide to stop and eat a sandwich. I drink all the milk, too, because it’s going warm anyways.
When I’m done with my lunch, I decide to go around the outside of the woods on the nice side of town by the country club to try and see if Nora left the woods or if she stayed inside. I end up at the beautiful house that’s all wood and glass.
When I break through the whip-green branches, I see a sailboat on blocks in the backyard. The boat is raw wooden planks and pegs, handmade, and it’s not that big. The hull is up on sawhorses, but I know whose boat this is just from the look of the build. I know a Jordan Dolan project when I see one.
There are no big leaves on the trees yet to hide me, so as soon as I see Jordan and his
father, they see me.
“Annie?” Jordan says, like he can’t believe I’m here.
I have to come out of the woods and into their yard, but I don’t want to.
This is Jordan’s house. This house, out of every house, is his. And it makes me feel bad. I always knew Jordan and I were different, but knowing he lives here is worse somehow. He’s even farther away from me than Kristin Gates, and I’d always hoped maybe he was closer.
I’m barely out of the woods and he runs to meet me. He’s excited. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward his boat.
“I’ve wanted to ask you to come and see my boat forever now,” he says, and his voice cracks, going up and down all crazy when he says forever. He’s breathless and his cheeks are pink. “What are you doing here?”
I smile and stand in front of his boat. “It’s beautiful,” I say, because it is. It curves and bends and flows, and I can tell just by looking at it that it floats. I turn to Jordan. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever built.”
He looks down. “I had so much trouble with the keel,” he tells me. He’s still holding my hand, so he guides me under the sawhorses so I can see what he means. “I couldn’t get it plumb.”
I start to laugh because of our pendulum project. We just couldn’t get it plumb, which was hilarious for five seconds because I said we should just paint it purple, but then it turned into a giant pain that I never figured out, but Jordan did because he always figures everything out.
“It looks plumb now,” I say. I glance at Jordan out of the corner of my eye. “And you didn’t even have to paint it.”
Jordan and I laugh because we both know exactly what we’re talking about.
“Jordan’s worked very hard on this,” his dad says. He’s standing outside because he’s too big to fit underneath.
Jordan and I come out from under the boat. His dad looks at our hands because we’re still holding them. My cheeks get hot and I twist my hand out of Jordan’s.
Nobody says anything for a while, and I know how much Jordan hates that. It’s not that Jordan doesn’t like to talk, it’s that he never knows what to say when he thinks other people won’t understand him. Now that I see him with his dad, I get why he’s like that, but I still don’t know what to do. Normally, I’d do the talking for Jordan, but I don’t know how to do that with his dad here.
“You’re Annie, right?” his father asks.
I nod.
“You’re growing up,” he says.
“I turned eleven,” I say.
“Do you live on this side of town?”
“No,” I say. “I live on Snow Lane.”
“That’s a long walk,” Mr. Dolan says.
I nod again.
Jordan shifts from foot to foot. It’s what he does instead of bouncing his leg when he’s standing up and not sitting down. I hate it when Jordan’s uncomfortable.
“I gotta go,” I say. I start backing toward the woods.
“Why?” Jordan asks.
“I gotta find my sister,” I say.
Jordan frowns. He comes forward and takes my arm so I can’t melt away into the trees. His eyes drop and he looks at my T-shirt, and I can tell he likes it because he stares at the silk screen on my chest for a really long time. He moves closer to me.
“Which sister?” he asks. There’s sun on his hair, and he has to tilt his chin down to look me in the eye. When did Jordan Dolan get taller than me?
“The closest one. Eleanor.” I stop and shift my backpack, but really I shrug his hand off. Not because I want to, but because his dad keeps staring at us. He doesn’t like that Jordan’s touching me.
“What happened?” Jordan asks.
I look at his dad, who’s watching us carefully. I can’t tell Jordan the truth. I know what his dad will think of my family because Nora ran away.
“I’ll tell you Monday,” I say, and I run. I stop just before the tree line and turn. “I love your boat,” I shout. Then I’m gone.
I don’t find Nora. She doesn’t come home that night. It takes until Sunday night for my parents to start worrying, even though I’ve been sick to my stomach about her for over a day now.
And when they start asking about where she might have gone, it’s not like it is in the movies. It’s not like they tear out their hair and yell at the police with tears in their eyes. At this point, I’m surprised they even called the police. Our family looks normal and nice enough on the outside, and we all try hard to keep it that way. Having the police at your house definitely doesn’t look nice.
My parents look tired and they shrug a lot and they ask Officer Langmeyer, “Where could she possibly go besides a friend’s house?” like it’s no big deal.
But Nora doesn’t have any friends. And she isn’t at anybody’s house.
Chapter Eleven
Monday morning, and Mom makes me go to school.
I feel naked sitting on the bus without Nora. Kristin Gates comes and sits next to me as soon as she gets on the bus.
“Is Nora sick?” she asks, worried.
I shake my head, because my heart’s pounding and I think I might barf.
“Where is she?” Kristin asks.
I shrug. “We don’t know,” I say.
I tell Kristin about my parents finally calling the police last night and how we haven’t heard anything from them yet. Kristin holds my hand when we walk into school, and it helps a lot.
“Don’t worry, Annie. Nora’s smart. She’s going to be okay until they find her,” Kristin says.
When we get to Mrs. Weiss’s class, Jordan smiles when he sees me, and then he really sees me, and his smile disappears. He turns around to talk to me as I sit down behind him.
“You didn’t find Nora, did you?” he asks.
I shake my head and press my lips together so I don’t cry. Jordan starts breathing hard, and his face is clammed up.
“I’ll help you look for her after school today in the woods,” he says.
I nod so he’ll turn around and stop looking at me like that, because I don’t think I can handle Jordan looking at me and thinking whatever it is he’s thinking, which could be anything, really, because I can’t tell when his face is all clammed up.
He turns around, but he reaches back with one of his hands under the desk and finds my leg. Jordan squeezes my calf, and I feel myself start to calm down.
I don’t talk all day in school, and that’s definitely a first. It’s not like I decide not to talk, it’s just I can’t seem to keep my brain in the same place as my body. At lunch Samantha Schnabel asks what’s wrong with me, and Kristin makes up some excuse without telling anyone about my sister, because without me even saying anything she knows I don’t want anyone else to know.
Jordan walks with Kristin and me to every class, and I think he’s supposed to have baseball practice after school, but he meets me at the line for the bus anyways. He comes and stands in my line, and then I realize that he’s planning on coming home with me.
“We should start on your side of town,” I say, panicking.
Jordan frowns. “Why?”
“Because I’ve checked my side over and over. And I know she’s been as far as the Prue Tree, which is nearly to your side of town,” I say, coming up with an excuse as fast as I can.
“Okay,” Jordan says, and he takes my hand and leads me two lines over to his bus line.
If the other kids weren’t staring before when they saw Jordan take my hand, they’re definitely staring now. Especially the kids who wait in Jordan’s bus line.
The girls dress like Kristin and the boys dress like Jordan does, and they all already have a tan because they went someplace tropical with their parents for Easter break, like Jordan did. Every year he goes to the Bahamas with his parents in the spring, and every year he comes back with a tan. None of the kids on the country club side of town have a watch tan line like Jordan, but that’s because he’s the only kid in the whole school who got a TAG Heuer for his eleventh birthday.
&nb
sp; The longer we stand here, the littler I feel. My white Chucks are a mess at this point. I wear boy Levi’s, because my brother’s clothes are the only ones that are long enough for my legs and narrow enough for my hips. I’m wearing a Raiders of the Lost Ark T-shirt that’s a size too small, and a red bandanna for a belt.
Jordan feels me shrinking, but he doesn’t know why, thank Christ (ten Hail Marys).
“We’re going to find her,” he whispers close to my ear. He takes my hand again and I feel a little bit bigger.
When we get to Jordan’s house, he lets us in with his own key and then he runs to a beeping box on the wall and punches in a bunch of numbers. He’s a latchkey kid like Kristin. I stay in the entryway because I’m pretty sure my destroyed Chucks are going to leave dirty prints across the spotless floor. Plus, I can hardly see straight with all the light.
There are windows on the walls, windows on the ceiling, and walls that are windows, and everything else in between seems to be made of glass or thick beams of wood. The rooms are huge. It’s like every room is a frame for a photo waiting to happen, and beyond every window is the green forest.
“You live in a museum,” I say, but not in a bad way, because it makes sense. Jordan’s never had anything but beautiful stuff. No wonder everything he does is so … beautiful.
“Why are you standing in the doorway?” he asks.
“’Cause I’m scared to get anything dirty,” I say, like it’s obvious.
Jordan rolls his eyes and comes to take my hand and bring me into the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“I’m always hungry,” I tell him.
“Okay, but my mom’s a snob. She doesn’t buy chips or cakes from the grocery store,” he warns.
“Neither does my mom,” I say. Then I grin. “But it’s because we can’t afford them, not because we’re snobby.”
He laughs and takes berries and cheese out of the fridge. I eat the cheese, but the berries I leave alone, and of course Jordan notices.
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