Brilliant Hues

by Naomi Kinsman

  “The girls are getting together tomorrow after camp,” I told him. “To talk about Margo. And I still don’t know what to do.”

  “Sleep on it,” Grant said. “When the right moment comes, I think you’ll know exactly what to say.”

  Hopefully, he was right.

  Chapter 13

  What Happens After You Die?

  The kids wiggled excitedly on the carpet, their faces eager, as Pippa sat in the teacher chair. I loved watching Pips talk to the kids, loved watching them listen. I could have missed all this, but I was still here. I knew I was grinning like a crazy person.

  “Who can tell me what a picture book is?” Pippa asked.

  Hands shot up all across the room. Even Jake raised his hand. Pippa called on him.

  “It’s a book your mom or dad read to you before bed.” Jake said. “With pictures.”

  A chorus of voices shouted out, adding to Jake’s answer.

  “I read picture books all day.”

  “I can read them by myself.”

  “My sister reads them to me.”

  “How many of you read picture books before bed?” Pippa asked, and just as they all opened their mouths to shout, she reminded them, “Raise your hands.”

  The air filled with raised hands.

  Pippa pointed to me. “Sadie has some picture books you might recognize.”

  I held up Where the Wild Things Are, Caps for Sale, Are You My Mother, and Knuffle Bunny, and showed a few pages of each.

  Pippa continued. “Picture books can have detailed pictures, or very simple pictures, but usually they combine words and pictures on each page. And picture books tell a story.”

  I joined Pippa at the front of the room as she continued, “We want you to pick a question that doesn’t have an easy answer, like ‘Why is the Sky Blue,’ and write a story that answers the question. And for the next few days, we’ll work on making it into a picture book.”

  “How many pages?” Fritz asked.

  “As many as you want,” I said. “We’ll work on this project for the rest of the week, and on Friday, Jess will bind your books in her bookmaking machine so they look official.”

  “What kind of question?” Jake asked.

  “Something hard to answer, like why do birds sing, or why do leopards have spots?” I answered.

  “Or what happens after you die?” Charlotte asked.

  I choked a little before I could answer, “Yes, or what happens after you die.”

  “What do you think happens?” Fritz asked.

  My mouth went dry. Pips only shrugged, offering no help. Jess had left to prepare a snack, so I couldn’t pass the question off to her.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Miss Sadie, what do you think?” asked Fritz.

  I cleared my throat. I knew the answer I was supposed to give, but it sounded too light with Charlotte watching my every move with her piercing blue eyes. She didn’t want a vague, “You go to heaven.” She wanted a real answer, one that helped her understand. I’d let her down yesterday, and I didn’t want to do it again.

  “It’s a difficult question, Fritz,” I finally said. “And I don’t know exactly how it feels or what it looks like. No one does.”

  Charlotte didn’t take her eyes off me, giving me no easy out. I glanced at Pippa again, but she watched me, waiting for an answer like everyone else. This wasn’t the same as Jess asking me to be open if the kids asked about art and connecting with God. How had I been appointed the keeper of life’s deepest truths? But as I remembered the conversation we’d had with Jess, I thought about my paintings, and I realized maybe I could answer, in my own way.

  “I can’t really picture heaven in my imagination,” I said, finally. “But here’s what I do know. Whenever I feel God come close to me, here, in my life on earth, the air becomes alive around me, the way it feels on a windy day when you can feel the air moving, but it isn’t cold, it’s warm with golden light. I think heaven will be like that, only better,

  because God will be near us all the time. Usually when God comes close to me, it’s when I’m outside, or doing something I truly enjoy, like drawing, so that makes me think we won’t just sit around in heaven. I think God will keep us busy doing the things we love. Other people have different ideas about heaven, and that’s totally okay, too. We can’t really know, not until we get there.”

  I stepped back, and thankfully, Pippa took the hint and switched back into teacher mode. “Why don’t you turn to someone sitting close to you and tell them what you think heaven is like.”

  After they all shared their ideas, Pippa called, “Beetle!”

  “Face,” they all said.

  The wacky faces never got old. Jess must have taught the kids this trick to make herself smile when the kids were spiraling out of control. It’s hard to be upset when little kids make antennae fingers at you.

  “So, remember,” Pips said. “You can write your picture book about any question. If you want to write about heaven, you can, or you can write about any other hard-to-answer question.”

  The kids hurried back to their tables and started drawing right away. I circled the room. We had an excellent variety of stories starting. Fritz had titled his first page, “Why Superheroes Wear Capes,” and had begun with a picture of a superhero in a dressing room trying on different clothes. Isabel had begun by drawing a rose.

  “What are you going to write about, Isabel?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

  She still hadn’t spoken in class.

  She clamped her hand around my arm to pull me close, and whispered, “I’m writing about why roses grow in clumps instead of all by themselves.”

  Amazing.

  After studying what she’d drawn so far, I said, “I love the texture on your rose petals. They look like alligator scales.”

  Her eyes lit up. “My favorite book is about an alligator. My mom used to read it to me.”

  She slipped back into silent mode, but I knew this tiny conversation was still a victory. Had she finally spoken to me because I’d braved telling the class what I really thought?

  Charlotte smiled at me when I walked over to check on her.

  “I didn’t want to ask Cici about heaven,” she said. “Because I don’t want her to think too much about that. I want her to stay here with me.”

  Her words tugged at my heart, but I knew she didn’t want sympathy. She wanted to speak her mind and be heard.

  I took a closer look at her drawing, which showed a winged creature working at a blue workbench, shaping something with a small hammer. “So what are you drawing?”

  “An ice city,” Charlotte said. “I asked Cici why she thinks every snowflake is a different shape. And she said it’s because there’s a city of ice fairies who chip each one, and because they’re artists, they never want to do the same thing twice.”

  “How does Cici tell you all these things?” I asked, truly wanting to know.

  “She’s not as far away as you think,” Charlotte said, touching her heart. “She’s right in here. Not like Jesus, different than that. But she’s paying attention to what I do and she can tell me things.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s going to love your book, Charlotte. I can already tell.”

  Jess checked in now and again, but had to keep returning to the kitchen. Apparently her cake was prep-heavy. We let the kids draw until the end of the hour and sent them off to centers.

  “Did you see Fritz’s cape story?” Pippa asked. “After he goes to the Super-hero mall and tries on super hats and super shoes and super shorts, he decides he needs something even better. And that’s when he finds a cape.”

  “I love it,” I said. “I’m so glad we’re doing picture books. And by the way, thanks for your help on the heaven question.”

  “What?” Pippa asked. “Your answer was amazing.”

  “What would you have said?” I asked.

  “Probably something like you see a light and then go to heaven, where
no one cries or gets hurt. That’s what I’ve learned in Sunday school. But I liked your answer. And I liked that you told them you don’t know. I don’t think adults tell kids that very often.”

  “We’re not adults, Pips.”

  “No, but we’re ancient to these kids.”

  I laughed, feeling like a door had opened between us. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard for me to talk to Pips about God in person.

  With a start, I remembered I hadn’t told her yet. “Isabel talked to me, Pips.”

  Pippa’s mouth dropped open. “No way.”

  “She told me she was writing about why roses grow in clumps.”

  “See? Good thing I didn’t jump in and rescue you, then. Wow. Jess will be so amazed.”

  Grant opened the door and poked his head in. “Ready, girls? We’re off to Juliet’s house.”

  We followed him out to the Hummer, and this time the parking lot, fortunately, was camera-crew free.

  Chapter 14

  The Plan

  Bri tossed a pillow at Juliet, missing her by miles. “No one wants tea sandwiches, Juliet. Starving. For Brownies!”

  Juliet passed the pillow to Pippa. “You’re the pitcher. Make sure you hit her in the nose. I made you a three-course snack, Bri. The least you can do is enjoy it.”

  Bri caught the pillow inches in front of her face. “Okay, okay. Tea sandwiches it is.”

  Juliet laid out a white tablecloth on the carpet and gave us each a white plastic plate, the fancy kind that looks like china until you pick it up. She had plastic champagne flutes, and she passed around sparking apple cider.

  “I’ll be right back with the first course,” she said. “Cheers.”

  “Brownies!” Bri whined.

  “Be nice, Bri,” Alice said. “She worked hard.”

  Juliet brought back a three-tiered plate piled with tea sandwiches. She set it in the middle of the circle and pointed out the different flavors as she explained. “I made cucumber and cream cheese, rosemary chicken salad, peanut butter Doritos — in honor of Sadie and Pippa—pesto, brie, and tomato, and smoked gouda, turkey, and dill pickle. The dill pickles are for you, Bri.”

  “What’s for me?” Alice asked, pretending to pout.

  “The next course,” Juliet said. “You’ll see.”

  We dug in, and even Bri got over her brownie fixation as she crunched into the dill pickle sandwiches.

  “We think we have a plan,” Alice told Pippa and me.

  Not what I wanted to hear.

  “What?” Pips asked.

  “Margo has no ideas. Her teammates never agree on anything. The only thing they’ve decided is to use black fabric and to ring their eyes with eyeliner so they look tough,” Alice said.

  “So, Margo will just lose on her own?” I asked hopefully.

  “We don’t have to count on it,” Bri said. “Since Margo has already started snooping around, trying to swipe our designs, we’ll just make it easy for her to cheat. Each designer has their own room where the other designers aren’t supposed to go. While we work, we’re totally isolated. If we leave the door unlocked, and maybe drop a few hints about being away for awhile, and rig up a video camera so we make sure to catch her, we’ve got her.”

  “You want her to cheat?” I asked.

  “If she copies Bri’s idea, probably the two of them will tie,” Juliet said. “The other designer YaoYao is good, but she isn’t as good as Bri. If Bri and Margo tie, we’ll force Margo to forfeit the win and give it to Bri.”

  “Or else we’ll show the video of her cheating,” Alice added.

  “So by tempting Margo to cheat, you’re basically making sure Bri will win?”

  “Perfect, isn’t it?” Juliet asked.

  I exchanged a look with Pippa, who now picked at her sandwich nervously. Didn’t they realize they were planning to cheat in order to catch a cheater? Pips knew. I could see the worry clearly on her face. Maybe she’d thought more about what I’d said about blackmail after all.

  “Maybe we should just let Margo lose on her own, like Sadie said,” Pippa finally said.

  “You can’t just wait for everything to work out on its own,” Alice said. “Sometimes you have to take things into your own hands.”

  “I’m just not sure cheating is the right — ”

  Alice made an exasperated sound. “What? I suppose you two think we should just pray about it?”

  Pips flinched at the sarcasm in Alice’s voice. Grant was wrong. The moment had come and I had absolutely no idea what to say. The silence crackled with tension.

  Finally, Pips sighed. “What do you want Sadie and me to do?”

  Bri clapped her hands and made a little squeal of happiness. “I knew you’d come through. Come to the show. Snap some photos. Document the moment of misery for Margo, and maybe we’ll send her an album. You know, so she doesn’t forget that cheating doesn’t pay.”

  The matching triumphant expressions on my friends’ faces made the tea sandwiches gurgle in my stomach. I couldn’t look at Pips, not now.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, hurrying out of the room and down the stairs.

  As I headed for the back door, wanting some air, I passed the living room where Grant sat, watching something on his iPad. I heard a familiar voice.

  “The device tests for a genetic strain of cancer,” the man said.

  I moved closer to see if it really was Tyler on screen.

  Grant glanced up, saw me, and motioned to the space on the couch next to him. “Tyler gave the interview, and your Dad passed the footage on to me …”

  The reporter who’d grilled Tyler on the church steps steepled her fingers. “You’re working with a mediator in order to secure your patent, is that right?”

  Tyler sat straight and still, his expression mild. “Yes. Karl and I have a difference of opinion on how the device, which is now in preliminary stages, should be tailored. He feels we should test adults, to prescreen for the possibility of the gene in their children. In his opinion, when a mother and father have a high likelihood of passing on the gene, families should adopt or not have children at all instead of subjecting a child to the possibility of this cancer. I had always planned to test children. Studies have begun to show that proactive use of hormones at an early age can effectively ‘shut off’ the gene, stopping the cancer.”

  I leaned forward, my interest peaked, as the reporter asked the question I wanted to know. “Why don’t doctors treat all children with the potential gene?”

  “Cost, mostly,” Tyler answered. “And the hormones aren’t harmless. Like any other treatment, complications are possible.”

  The reporter frowned. “And why can’t the device do both? Test both adults and children? Leave it up to the individual and their doctor how they want to proceed?”

  “Exactly!” I felt like shouting. Tyler didn’t miss a beat. “As in all medical research, there are limits of time and money. The simpler test is whether a child has the gene. If we tailor the device in this way, it could be ready to use next year. Testing two adults and understanding the probability of the gene showing up in their children is more difficult, and would take a much longer process to get right. Starting with the simpler test is more scientifically sound.”

  “And quicker,” the reporter said. “I’m sure you’d like the device ready as soon as possible. Is it true that you have twin girls, one with this very cancer and one without?”

  Tyler held the reporter’s eyes. “Yes.”

  “So this test could save your daughter’s life, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said.

  No. Please God, don’t let Charlotte get sick.

  Somehow I hadn’t put together the fact that Cici’s cancer was genetic, and that as her twin, Charlotte, would be at high risk, too. I’d been too focused on Charlotte’s sadness about her sister. My queasiness was back. I hurried out to the back steps, put my head between my knees and breathed deep.

  A few minutes later, Grant came out to join
me.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  I managed a weak smile. “Too many tea sandwiches.”

  “I hear the girls have already finished course two — sushi — and are on to the brownies. Are they really as good as everyone says?”

  “Delicious. But I couldn’t eat one now to save my life.”

  “After you left, Tyler told the reporter that he’s pausing the mediation process until Cici is finished with her treatment. It sounds like there have been complications.”

  I hugged my knees to my chest. “But she’ll be all right, won’t she?”

  Grant stared at his shoes. “I don’t know, Sadie.”

  No one I’d known had ever had cancer, and even though I didn’t actually know Cici, I felt like I did. And knowing that Charlotte could get sick too made me want to run and scream and smash fragile things on the ground. I almost wished Karl would show up again, so I could do a little shouting myself. How could he keep Tyler from finishing the device, just because he was afraid that kids would be born with the cancer gene?

  This test could save Charlotte’s life. If Karl had his way, kids like Charlotte and Cici, kids who might possibly get sick, would never have the chance to be born at all. The thought made me cold and empty. Sickness was horrible, especially in someone you loved. After watching Mom collapse many times, I knew, firsthand. Still, would it be better to not have the chance to love someone just because they might eventually die and leave you? The argument didn’t make sense.

  “Can we go home?” I asked Grant.

  “Sure, if you’re ready,” Grant said.

  “I should go say goodbye to the girls.” I pushed past the coldness, an echo of the hollowed-out feeling I’d battled all spring, and went upstairs to Juliet’s room.

  “You missed the sushi, Sades,” Juliet said.

  “I’m sorry, Juliet.” I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m not feeling well and Grant is taking me home. But I’ll be there on Friday for your show, Bri, okay?”