Arcadia's Gift (Arcadia Trilogy)

by Jesi Lea Ryan

  “Do you think you can go scrog somewhere else? I need to get into my locker.”

  Cane gave a Neanderthal-like grunt and Lony stuck her tongue out at me, but they did scoot over. Bryan waited by my side as I swapped my books out. Lony’s eyes did a double take when she noticed the boy was actually with me, but Cane steered her off toward their next class before she could say anything. Thank you, Jock Boy.

  I swung the metal door closed and spun the lock. “Ready?” I asked with a nervous smile.

  “So, you and your sister…you’re twins, right?” Bryan asked as we walked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I almost didn’t notice. You don’t seem much alike.”

  “I know. We’re actually identical, but you’re right…we don’t have a lot in common.”

  “Is she taller than you?”

  “No. Lony just never leaves the house without wearing at least a three-inch heel. She’s kind of a slave to fashion.”

  I looked down at my worn jeans and gray hoodie. And I’m obviously not.

  The halls were beginning to empty out as students made their way into their classrooms.

  “We also have a brother who’s a senior here, Aaron. Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No.” He shook his head, “It’s just me.”

  We stepped into class as the final bell rang. I slid into my desk, but glanced over my shoulder to see where Bryan sat. He gave me a melancholy grin as he rooted in his bag for a pen.

  Ms. Crowell paced a circuit around the room while lecturing about the religious beliefs of ancient Greece. We were reading the Sophocles play Antigone.

  I couldn’t focus on Antigone and her family problems; I had enough of my own. I rested my chin on my fist and pretended to pay attention. I didn’t want to dwell on my home life so my thoughts drifted to Bryan Sullivan. I tried to ignore the fact that he was sitting behind me, one row over, with me in his direct line of sight. I’ve always been a tad bit paranoid of being watched and knowing he was back there had me on edge. Instead, I tried to figure out why he seemed so distressed. Those shadows beneath his eyes were a clear indicator of lack of sleep. Maybe he hated living in Dubuque. I could certainly understand depression at moving to Iowa after living in a big city like Portland. Maybe he got in a fight with his parents and didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe he got in a fight with his girlfriend…or maybe he had to break up with his girlfriend because of the distance, and now his heart was shattered into a million pieces.

  My day dreaming followed this line of thought. Bryan was an attractive guy. Well, okay, he was hot. He didn’t have the traditional super-jock good looks that Cane had, and he didn’t dress like a GQ model like Shawn, but there was definitely a magnetic quality in Bryan that made it hard to look away. If he smiled a little more and got some rest, he could easily be one of the best looking guys in school. It made total sense that a guy like him would have a girlfriend. What would she be like? I couldn’t see him with a popular fashionista like my sister. Bryan had a sense of mystery about him, or maybe it was intelligence. He’d want a girl with those same qualities. An artist maybe?

  Ms. Crowell’s voice wrenched me out of my head suddenly by asking me something. I sat up straight and tried to recall the question. I opened my mouth to speak, but honestly, I had nothing.

  When it became clear to everyone I hadn’t been paying attention, Ms. Crowell scolded, “I’m not sure where you were just now, Miss Day, but I’d appreciate it if you re-joined the class.”

  A few snickers crackled around the room. The teacher strolled down the aisle and called on someone else. I sat up straighter and began taking notes to keep my mind on the lecture.

  By the time the bell rang, I’d successfully put Bryan Sullivan out of my mind. I closed my notebook and gathered my things slowly. My last class of the day was French, located in the classroom just across the hall. I didn’t need to go to my locker, so I waited for everyone else to file out before getting up to leave.

  “Cady,” Bryan’s voice called from behind me. He stood with his backpack slung over his shoulder. “Where are you off to now?”

  “French. Right across the hall. What about you?”

  “Photography,” he answered. Yeah, I figured him for the artsy type. I could totally picture him holed up in a dark room poring over black and white stills of decaying buildings.

  We both stood there awkwardly for a moment. A couple of students for the next class entered the room and sat down. “Well, I guess we better get going then,” I said.

  When we stepped into the hallway, Bryan stopped me again. “Thank you. For talking to me, I mean.”

  I shrugged. “No problem. It must be hard going to a new school.”

  “Yeah…um…” His voice trailed off and he suddenly had trouble meeting my eyes.

  I waited, not knowing if he just paused, or if he decided to stop talking.

  “What?” I prompted.

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but the bell rang. “I’m going to be late. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Bryan jogged off down the hall and rounded the corner. What a strange guy, I thought.

  “Mademoiselle Day?” Madame Deveraux called to me from the door of her French class. “Entrez vous?”

  I nodded and ducked inside.

  Chapter 3

  The front door was already unlocked when I got home from cross country practice. Our first meet was still two weeks away, but I couldn’t wait. I’ve always been more of a track sprinter than a distance runner, but I’d worked on distance training over the summer and was going to enter some longer races this year.

  Cane lay sprawled out on my living room floor watching baseball highlights on ESPN. He’d kicked his sneakers off, giving me a view of the gaping hole in the toe of his sock. He didn’t turn to look hearing me come in. That wasn’t unusual. For some reason, he had trouble making eye contact with me. Maybe he didn’t think I was cool enough for him or something.

  Lony sat on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table, painting her toenails. I could hear the head-banging wails of what passed for music in Aaron’s world reverberating up from the basement. So much for doing my homework in peace.

  Backpack in hand, I began ascending the stairs to my room. Maybe I could see if Bronwyn wanted go to the public library for a while. With Dad moving, I should get my homework done tonight in case I didn’t feel up to it later in the weekend.

  “Hey, Cady!” Lony called out. “Come ‘ere a sec.”

  I sighed and poked my head into the living room. “What?”

  Lony grinned at me like a Cheshire cat. “Who was that uber-hot emo guy you were with today?”

  “Bryan Sullivan. He’s new.” I tried to turn away, but Lony kept talking.

  “He’s in my chem class, but he doesn’t talk much. Were you like assigned to show him around or something? He’s a junior, right?”

  “I assume so. We have lit together. And I wasn’t giving him a tour of the school. I just walked to class with him.”

  “Do you like him?” Lony teased with a sing-songy tone. Cane cocked his head to listen, as if interested in my answer.

  “Jeez, Lon! I talked to the guy for a total of ten minutes. Don’t you have cheerleading practice or something?” I asked. Changing the subject with Lony is easy if you bring the topic around to her.

  She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Cady, do you live under a rock or something? Tonight is the first football game.” She gestured to Cane wearing his jersey which looked deflated without the hulking pads beneath it. All of the players wore their jerseys to school on game days. “There’s no practice because we cheer tonight.”

  “Oh. Well…break a leg,” I replied and hurried upstairs. I wanted to get out of there before Lony could guilt me into attending the game to watch her jump up and down in her pleated skirt, chanting loosely rhyming lines meant to pump up the crowd.

  I hung my bag on the back of my desk chair. My bedroom was carefully decked out by my mothe
r in every possible shade of pink. I hated it, but there’s no arguing with her when it comes to interior decorating. Mom is a realtor, and a successful one at that. Even though we’ve lived in this house for ten years and have no plans to move anytime soon, my mother insists on keeping the entire house in perfect “open-house” condition at all times. The one exception being Aaron’s room, but as long as he keeps his mess in the basement where she can pretend it doesn’t exist, she leaves him alone about it.

  I never liked the color pink, but somehow as infants it was determined that my color would be pink and Lony’s would be purple. That’s how people kept us straight, I guess. Anyway, the result is that almost every Christmas or birthday gift we have ever received from our extended family had been identical, but in either pink or purple. Like if our Grandma Nora were to get us sweaters, Lony’s would be a soft lavender and mine would be some hideous shade of Pepto-Bismol.

  I pressed the power button on my computer, and it purred to life. While it booted up, I called Bronwyn.

  “Hey, I’m going to do the loser thing and spend my Friday night at the library. Wanna come?”

  “Just a sec, I have to go to my office,” she said. I heard her walk the phone into her pantry and shut the door. She had a little stool in there where she could talk in semi-privacy. Her parents didn’t believe children should be allowed phones in their bedrooms.

  “The library actually sounds like more fun than what I have planned,” she said softly. “My parents are making me go to a lock-in at the church.” Bronwyn’s father was the minister the New Life Bible Church, and her mother served as the church secretary.

  “Aren’t lock-ins for like middle school kids?”

  “Yeah. It’s going to be me and a bunch of sixth graders. Mother says I have to go to set a good example.” Her mocking tone was the extent of her rebelliousness.

  While they’d always been very hospitable toward me, the Perkins’ tended to hold Bronwyn’s reins pretty tightly. She wasn’t allowed much of a social life outside of school and church functions. They wouldn’t even let her stay overnight at my house because I have a brother under the same roof. Apparently, Pastor Tom thinks Aaron is some sort of teenage Casanova with designs on seducing my friends while they sleep.

  “Maybe we can do something Sunday after church?” she suggested.

  “I probably shouldn’t plan anything. I don’t know how I’ll feel with my dad leaving and all.”

  “Sorry for my comment at lunch.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m just really on edge about the whole separation thing right now. God, my eyes are tearing up just thinking about it!” I rubbed my face with the hood of my sweatshirt. I sniffed loudly into the phone. “Sorry…”

  “I know. How are Lony and Aaron taking it?”

  “Well, you know how Aaron is. I tried to talk to him a couple of days ago, and he just shrugged and returned to his underground lair.”

  “I don’t know why boys always think they have to be so stoic.”

  “I know, right? And Lony…she’s convinced that our parents are going to get back together and refuses to take any of it seriously.”

  “Do you think they will…get back together?”

  “I don’t know. Doubt it. With both of them running their own businesses, they never see each other. I have a feeling this ‘trial separation’ is really the first step in the divorce.”

  “Unfortunately, it usually is. Darn! I just heard the garage door, so Father’s home. I better run. If you need to talk this weekend, give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  After we hung up, I took a few minutes to check my email and my Facebook account. I find it hilarious that Lony has 847 friends on her Facebook, and I have thirty-two. Well, at least I actually know and talk to all of mine. I answered a few messages and poked around online a bit, but when I heard my mother come home, I logged off.

  “You don’t need to order pizza,” my mother was saying to Aaron when I entered the kitchen. “There’s leftover casserole in the fridge. Heat that up.”

  Aaron shuffled out of the room in his stocking feet, muttering under his breath. Mom had kicked off her pumps and stood on one leg, massaging the ball of her foot.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, walking to the fridge to get a Diet Pepsi. “Busy day?”

  “Oh, aren’t they all? I just stopped to get the car-charger for my Blackberry. I have two houses to show in Asbury, and then I’m going straight to the football game to see Lony cheer. Do you have plans tonight?”

  Mom slipped her shoes back on and opened the junk drawer. She extracted a tangle of chargers for various electronics and began to un-weave the one she needed from the mass.

  “No plans. Just homework.”

  She leveled her gazed on me. “Cady, you do realize you are the only teen in the Tri-State area who voluntarily does homework on a Friday night, right?”

  “I have to get it done tonight, so I can help Dad move tomorrow.”

  “Oh, no you’re not! Your father and I talked about it, and we don’t want you kids in the middle of this. We want you all to go find stuff to do with your friends tomorrow and stay away from here. He has enough people to help him.”

  “But, Mom,” I reasoned, standing with my hand on my hip, “We’re already in the middle of this. I can’t let Dad do this alone.”

  Mom let out an audible sigh and rubbed her temple. “Arcadia Marie, don’t argue with me. Think of your dad. This is going to be hard enough on him, he doesn’t need an audience.”

  I gritted my teeth to keep from talking back. There was no use in arguing with her when she made her mind up about something. I poured my soda into a glass of ice.

  “Maybe you and Lony should go shopping tomorrow,” she suggested. “It’ll be good for you to spend some time together.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was spend the day at the mall with Lony, but just then Lony flitted into the kitchen, so again, I held my tongue.

  “Hey, Mamasita!” Lony said, giving our mother a peck on the cheek. “Still coming to the game tonight?”

  “Of course, hun, but I’ll have to meet you there. Got an appointment right now. See you later!”

  Mom waved good-bye and ran out the door with her charger in hand.

  “Are you coming to the game tonight?” Lony asked, grabbing two sodas out of the fridge.

  “I didn’t plan on it. I have some homework to do,” I answered, sipping on my drink.

  “Only you would do homework on a Friday night,” Lony complained, stalking back to the living room.

  I went to my bedroom and spread my textbooks across the bed. I took studying very seriously, but then, I had to. I wasn’t one of those naturally gifted people who absorb knowledge without trying. I make good grades, but I need to work very hard to do it. College was still two years away, but I really wanted to get accepted to a school out of state. I had been thinking about someplace in New England, but recently, California sounded good, too. Really, I just wanted to get out of Iowa. Dubuque’s not so bad, but I didn’t want to spend my whole life here, either. I reached for my French book and set to work.

  The sky turned a bruised purple outside my window. I’d finished my French and history and was working on trigonometry when my dad poked his head in my bedroom door.

  “Hey, Bug,” he greeted. His work clothes were a bit dusty from hanging around job sites all day, and his eyes looked tired. My dad is a general contractor who builds homes and small commercial buildings. He’d been sleeping in the guest room ever since the big announcement was made. Not the most comfortable bed in the house.

  “Hi, Dad. What’s up?” I asked, trying to act casual, but not quite succeeding with the knot in my throat.

  “Just got home and it looks like everyone is gone except you and me.”

  “Yeah, Lony is cheering at the game tonight. Mom went to see her. I don’t know where Aaron ran off to. I heard his truck leave about an hour ago.”

  My dad leaned against the door fr
ame. He was still a handsome man, even if his waist was a little thicker and his hair a little thinner. His almond-colored eyes were exactly like mine.

  “It’s Friday night. Are you just going to do homework?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged, closing my book. “Do you have something else in mind?”

  “How would you like to go to a movie with your old man? We can see anything you want as long as it’s not a tear-jerker.”

  “I’d love to.” I’d always been a daddy’s girl.

  Chapter 4

  My mother got her way, and Saturday morning found me packed into the car with Lony and on our way to the mall. The official orders from both of our parents were to stay gone all day, but Dad said I could stop by his new place Sunday afternoon to help him settle in.

  It’s not like I hated my sister or anything…we just had nothing to talk about. It’s not like when we were little and inseparable. Then, she’d been my best friend, more than that even. We finished each other’s sentences and spoke in a secret language all our own. When our parents finally moved us into separate bedrooms at seven years old, it was six months before I stopped sneaking into Lony’s bed after our parents went to sleep.

  High school ruined everything. The summer before freshman year, puberty struck with a vengeance. We each gained five inches of height and added the perfect curves to compliment our slender frames. Lony loved her new body. She relished in the attention it brought her from boys at the public swimming pool. She would parade back and forth in front of the concession stand in her striped bikini, giving coy glances to the boys as she passed. I was slower to accept the changes. I’d always been more athletic than Lony, competing in cross country and track at school and gymnastics on the weekends at a local club. But the growth spurt had knocked me off my rhythm. That summer I spent almost every day at the YMCA reacquainting myself with my body and its limits. While I was too bulky to stay competitive in gymnastics, I was running sprints like Hermes. By the time school started, I was in great physical condition, ready to compete for a shot on the Varsity track team. Lony was ready to compete in a whole different way…she wanted the title of Most Popular Girl in School, and was willing to step on anyone to get it.