by Clare Hutton
Even fortune-tellers had lost their appeal after a while, though, and Natalia had let her head fall against the padded red-velvet back of the theater seat and closed her eyes, tiredness washing over her. It had been an awfully long day, with a lot of walking and running in it.
She was almost asleep when Ms. Andrews called out, “Can I get the apple trees up here, please?”
She didn’t know the other two apple trees. One was a boy and one a girl and they looked like they were maybe fifth graders, a little younger than Natalia. She grinned at them as they climbed onto the stage beside her. “Hey, fellow trees!”
Onstage, Ms. Andrews was all business. She pointed out where they should stand—by the time the performance came, they would be surrounded by fake trees, but for now it was just the three of them—and handed them yellow foam balls about the size of tennis balls. “We’ll paint these to look like apples before the performance,” she told them.
Zoe and the other main characters were still standing in the center of the stage, and Natalia tossed a ball into Zoe’s face as she walked by, glancing around to make sure Ms. Andrews hadn’t seen. Zoe grimaced at her and threw it back.
“If you’re quite finished, girls,” Ms. Andrews said, and Natalia winced. Oops.
Natalia had almost no lines. The scene was mostly Dorothy and the Scarecrow (it was before they’d found the others) and the First Apple Tree. The girl playing the First Apple Tree had been one who’d auditioned for Dorothy: She’d been okay, Natalia remembered, except that her singing voice wasn’t very good. She already had all her lines memorized and listened intently to everything Ms. Andrews said, nodding at all the stage directions she was given. She would clearly only throw apples when it was called for in the script.
Natalia’s main line was to say, “The nerve!” when the First Apple Tree complained about Dorothy and the Scarecrow trying to pick their apples. Then, when they finally threw their apples, she was supposed to shout, “How dare you!”
It was fun the first time. Natalia and the others stretched their arms out wide, and Zoe and the boy playing the Scarecrow mimed trying to pick apples off their “branches.” There was some back-and-forth between Zoe and the First Apple Tree, and then the First Apple Tree turned to Natalia and said, sounding outraged, “Hungry! Well, how would you like to have someone come along and pick something off of you?”
Natalia drew herself up as tall as she could and looked haughtily down her nose at Zoe. “The nerve!” she said, even more icily than Ms. Andrews had sounded when she asked if she and Zoe were finished fooling around. Zoe’s lips twitched into a smile, and Natalia felt like a silent giggle had passed between them. Something in her relaxed. She didn’t want to be mad at Zoe.
There was some more back-and-forth, a tussle between the Third Apple Tree and the Scarecrow, and all the trees grabbing at Zoe and the Scarecrow to try to keep them from getting away. Then they finally got to throw their apples. Natalia lobbed her best dodgeball throw at her sister. To her delight, she managed to bounce one right off Zoe’s forehead. Then the Scarecrow and Zoe gathered up the “apples” and pretended to bite into them.
They ran through the scene a couple times. The first time, the Third Apple Tree dropped all his apples. The second time, the Scarecrow messed up a couple of his lines.
The stage lights were on, and the warmth made Natalia sleepy. It had been a long, long day.
She imagined the final performance. Their costumes were going to be pretty cool—the biggest costumes in the show, she’d bet, with long outstretched branches and red-painted apples. She’d wave her branches threateningly, so threateningly that maybe the audience would be just the tiniest bit scared for Dorothy …
“Natalia! The nerve!” she heard Ms. Andrews whisper sharply, and she snapped back to reality. She’d missed her cue.
“The nerve!” she said, blushing. Her voice came out more apologetic than haughty that time, but the scene moved on. Natalia still felt hot and uncomfortable, clutching her foam balls. Ms. Andrews definitely still thinks I’m irresponsible, she realized miserably.
She pitched the balls halfheartedly this time, and not one hit Zoe.
After the show, she and Zoe waited outside for their dad to come pick them up. It was dark out, and a chilly breeze lifted their hair and made them huddle into their jackets.
“Are you okay?” Zoe asked. “You seemed really out of it during rehearsal.”
“I’m fine,” Natalia told her. “Just tired.”
“Me, too,” Zoe said. “It was a long rehearsal. I didn’t realize how much dancing I was going to have to do.” There was silence for a moment, Zoe shifting back and forth as if she had something else to say. Finally, she blurted, “I’m sorry I ditched you and didn’t help with dog walking. I didn’t know you were going to be late.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Natalia said. She thought about Zoe saying that she’d promised they’d take care of the dogs without checking with her and Emma, and about how she seemed to think Natalia always needed their help, and she tilted her chin defiantly. “Everything’s totally fine,” she said.
On Friday, Natalia flipped through her math folder, looking for the previous day’s homework. She reached the back of the folder without finding it, and her heart gave a funny, cold-feeling skip. It wasn’t there.
She went through the pages again, more carefully. She’d done the homework, she really had. She’d even looked up examples of how to do the problems on the computer. They hadn’t all made sense to her, but she thought she had probably gotten closer to getting the problems right than she had on most of her recent math assignments. But now she didn’t have the worksheet at all.
Natalia thought hard. She remembered sitting at her desk, finishing her homework. Zoe had been at her desk on the other side of their bedroom, but they hadn’t talked back and forth like they usually did. She wasn’t mad at Zoe, not exactly, but she hadn’t wanted to talk to her, either.
She hadn’t asked Zoe for help.
Natalia had thought about it. There was one question she just couldn’t get. She’d tried to figure it out by looking up videos about how to do similar problems, but they didn’t help. And she knew Zoe understood the math homework.
But then she remembered Zoe saying, That’s a laugh! her face all screwed up with anger, and she couldn’t do it.
But, whether she had gotten that one problem right or not, she had finished the homework.
She had forgotten to put it in her folder. Cold certainty filled her—she could picture the paper, sitting abandoned right in the center of her desk at home—just as Ms. Patel stopped at her desk and held out her hand for Natalia’s homework.
“I’m sorry,” Natalia said softly. “I left my worksheet at home. I did do it.”
Ms. Patel gave her a disappointed look. “Natalia, please stay and see me after class,” she said.
Natalia exchanged a wide-eyed look with Caitlin, her heart sinking.
For the rest of class, she tried to pay total attention to Ms. Patel. Maybe the teacher wouldn’t be mad at her if Natalia was a perfect student for the rest of the period. But she couldn’t concentrate. How much trouble was she in?
When the bell rang, Natalia reluctantly walked up to Ms. Patel’s desk as everyone else left for social studies.
Ms. Patel pointed at the chair next to her desk, waited for Natalia to sit down, and then sat down in the chair behind the desk. Clasping her hands on the desk in front of her, she gave Natalia a long, steady stare.
“I really did do it,” Natalia said nervously.
Ms. Patel sighed. “I’m glad to hear that, Natalia, but this is part of a pattern I’m seeing with you this semester. You’ve been skipping assignments, and when you do them, you don’t seem to understand them. You seem distracted in class. Is something going on?”
Natalia felt herself turning beet-red. “I’m trying,” she said, almost whispering. She could feel her pulse pounding in her throat. “Nothing’s going on. I just need to s
tudy a little more and I’ll get it.”
“Natalia, you need help if you’re going to pass the midterms that are coming up,” Ms. Patel said patiently. “I’m going to get in touch with your parents about setting up some time for tutoring.”
Natalia sat bolt upright. “Please don’t tell my parents,” she said. “I can catch up by myself.”
Ms. Patel smiled. “This isn’t a punishment, Natalia,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with getting help.”
“Sure,” Natalia muttered, slumping down in the chair. She knew her parents weren’t going to think there was anything wrong with getting help, either. But Natalia didn’t want to need help.
The meeting with Ms. Patel hadn’t taken long, and Natalia just had to hurry a little on her way to class. As usual, the halls were full of the babble of voices and the squeak of sneakers on the tile floors. Lockers banged and shrieks of laughter echoed up and down the hall.
Zoe was waiting outside the social studies room, and came over. “Hey,” she said. “What did Ms. Patel want to talk to you about?”
Natalia glanced at her. Zoe’s face was friendly and open; it wasn’t like she had any mean motive for asking about this. But Zoe had been doing great lately: being Dorothy, having an easy time at school. Me? Not so much.
She kept her voice as casual and happy as Zoe’s was. “Ms. Patel? Nothing much. She just wanted to know when the Wizard of Oz performance is.”
Natalia was lying, but she didn’t care. The last thing she wanted was for her sister to know she was in trouble.
“Come on, Jasper! Come on!” That afternoon, Emma ran down past the side of the house, racing toward the bay. Jasper ran at her heels, barking ecstatically.
“We’ll catch them, Daisy!” Natalia shouted. Daisy’s short legs were moving so fast they were almost a blur. Natalia felt like she was pumping her own legs just as fast, but neither of them was a match for Emma and Jasper. Far behind, Zoe and Bandit sauntered along, displaying no intention of trying to catch up. A volley of barks from the house let them know Ruby, annoyed at being left alone, had seen them.
The run was just what Natalia needed. The wind blowing off the bay into her face as she ran seemed to blow away her worries from the afternoon. Maybe Ms. Patel would call and maybe she wouldn’t, but there was nothing Natalia could do about it now.
She and Daisy finally caught up with Emma and Jasper down on the beach below Seaview House. Emma was sitting near the water, building a sand castle, while Jasper was sniffing at seaweed washed up by the water’s edge.
“You are ridiculously fast,” Natalia said, flopping down on the sand next to Emma and trying to catch her breath. “Must be all those sports you do.”
“Mmm,” Emma hummed in agreement as she scooped an opening in the front of her castle. “The suicide drills they make us do in soccer, mostly. You know, where we’re running back and forth, farther and farther each time.”
“Ugh,” Natalia said. “I’d rather be slow.” She began to dig a moat around Emma’s castle. The sand was cold and grainy between her fingers, but it was easy to dig.
After a little while, Zoe strolled up, Bandit tagging along behind her. She squatted down beside them, careful not to let her clothes touch the sand. “Cool castle,” she said, cocking her head to one side to get a good look at it. After a moment, she took a handful of dry white sand and dribbled it over the top. “There,” she said, satisfied. “That makes a nice contrast.”
Bandit sat down next to Natalia, then collapsed onto her, his head in her lap. “Hey, boy,” she said, twining her fingers through his thick, curly fur. His eyebrows shifted as he gazed up at her, making him look thoughtful. Affection rose up inside Natalia, and she bent down to kiss Bandit on the head. “You’re such a good dog,” she told him. “I’m going to miss you. I’ll miss your naughty sister, too.”
“I can’t believe the wedding’s tomorrow,” Emma said. “They put it together so fast. It’s at four, right?”
“Yeah, but Mom told me they want us there first thing in the morning,” Natalia said. “Apparently, Rachel and her mom and Mike’s mom and all the other women in the wedding have to spend the whole day getting, like, their nails and hair done, and Mike and the other guys have to spend the whole day picking up people at the airport. And with the house so full, they want somebody keeping the dogs out of trouble.”
Weddings actually sound pretty fun, Natalia thought. She’d never really been into hair and nails, but it might be cool to spend a whole day being fussed over.
Zoe and Emma were both staring at her.
“What?” said Natalia, kissing Bandit on the head again. “Haven’t you ever seen a girl and a dog in love before?”
“Nat, when were you going to tell us you’d promised we’d be here all day tomorrow?” Zoe said sharply.
“Um.” Natalia twisted her fingers gently in Bandit’s fur. She had forgotten—she’d meant to talk to them the day of the first rehearsal—but she hadn’t thought it would be a problem. Zoe and Emma liked playing with the dogs as much as she did.
“Honestly!” Zoe stood up. “You can’t just make plans for all three of us without checking with us first. You keep doing this!”
“Sorry,” Natalia said. She bent forward over Bandit again, so that her hair was half covering her face.
Zoe sighed. “I promised I would help make props for The Wizard of Oz tomorrow morning. It’ll be fun to make something again, after all this acting. And I don’t want Ms. Andrews thinking I’m irresponsible.”
“Irresponsible like me, you mean?” Natalia snapped.
Zoe glared at her. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “But maybe I should have. You keep making promises for us and expecting us to keep them. Maybe you should just promise things you can do.”
“Fine.” Natalia crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t need your help, anyway. I can take care of the dogs in the morning by myself.”
“I was supposed to do study group with Caitlin and all those people,” Emma said, her forehead creased with worry. “We’ll be done way before the wedding. But I guess I could skip it if you need help in the morning.”
Natalia shook her head, pushing her hair out of her face. “Don’t worry about it,” she told Emma, not looking at her sister. “You’re right, it’s my responsibility.”
Emma looked dubious. “Are you sure?”
“Totally sure,” Natalia told her. She took one of Bandit’s ears in each hand and made them wiggle, smiling at Emma as if she were completely confident. “How much trouble could two sweet little dogs be?”
Okay, I think I’m ready. Natalia patted the tote bag she carried as she turned the corner toward Seaview House. The whole B and B was going to be in an uproar that day, and she had brought everything she could think of to keep the dogs happy and busy: chew toys, treats, a dog brush, and a ball.
When she got to the front door of Seaview House, two women and a man, their arms full of white flowers, were ahead of her.
“Get the door for us, will you, sweetie?” one of the women asked. She and the man were holding a huge arrangement of white flowers between them. Sprays of lilies, huge puffy hydrangeas, and other flowers Natalia couldn’t identify stuck out so widely that it was clearly going to barely fit through the door. The other woman held a box full of bouquets, the largest just of white roses, the others white mixed with pink and yellow. The flowers smelled heavenly.
“They’re so pretty!” Natalia said enthusiastically as she held the door for them.
Inside, breakfast was still going on. Since the wedding party and most of the guests had arrived the night before, the dining room was more crowded than it had ever been previously. A waft of delightful food smells hit Natalia as soon as she walked in. There was a clatter of silverware and glasses and the noises of happy people talking. Natalia’s mom and Aunt Amy were hurrying back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, carrying platters and bowls of food. Grandma Stephenson, Natalia knew, would be in the kitchen
with Uncle Brian, chopping and stirring.
Natalia’s mom saw her in the doorway and came over, putting a platter of cinnamon buns down on the side table on her way.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “You all set for today? Where are the others?”
“Sure,” Natalia said, patting her tote bag. “I’ve got my trusty dog-watching supplies in here. Emma will be back soon and Zoe’s outside.” It’s not really a lie because “soon” could just mean before the wedding, and Zoe is outside of Seaview House … Oh, forget it, it is a lie, Natalia thought, with a pang of guilt. She didn’t want her mom to know she hadn’t asked Zoe and Emma before she said they’d be here all day, and she didn’t want them to get in trouble for not helping, either. She could just imagine how irresponsible Zoe would think she was then. A lie that protects someone else is okay, isn’t it? Even if you’re protecting yourself, too?
“Okay,” her mom said. There was a clatter as someone dropped a fork, and she glanced toward the tables, distracted. “Ruby and Bandit are out on the screened porch. The other dogs are in their owners’ rooms, but please take them outside and give them a good walk now and again before the wedding. Their owners should be back around dinnertime and will take over then.” She started to go into the kitchen and then turned back to Natalia again, remembering something. “Oh, and Rachel wanted to talk to you as soon as possible. She’s in the dining room.”
Rachel was sitting at one of the larger blue-painted tables with what looked like her family and her bridesmaids—the mom Natalia had seen before, a big man with gray hair who must be her dad, a teenage girl who looked like a younger version of Rachel, and two other women about Rachel’s age.
“Hi, Rachel,” Natalia said, walking up to them. “Are you excited?”
Rachel didn’t look like she was getting married in a few hours. She was in ratty jeans and a buttoned shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a frizzy ponytail on the top of her head. But, when she looked up at Natalia, she looked incredibly happy.
