Natalia Takes the Lead

by Clare Hutton

  Emma nodded, feeling anticipation begin to spread through her. She would have fun. The plane’s wheels hit the runway with a bump, and she realized that the whole golden, glorious week with the family was spread out before her, about to begin.

  By the time their rental car pulled into the drive at Natalia and Zoe’s house, Emma was vibrating with excitement. Through the window, she saw Zoe and Natalia running down the steps from the wide porch, their family’s old sheepdog, Riley, ambling slowly after them. As the car came to a stop, Natalia was already pulling at the handle of the back door.

  “Girls! Careful!” Emma’s mom scolded, but Emma yanked her seat belt off and tumbled out into the sunshine and her cousin’s tight hug.

  “You’re here! You’re here!” Natalia shouted. Her hair was dripping wet—she’d already been swimming today, clearly—and she smelled like sunscreen and ocean water. She had pulled a T-shirt and shorts on over her wet bathing suit, and they were damp and cool.

  Zoe crossed the lawn and hugged Emma, too, softer and quieter, but with an identical smile of welcome. “I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Natalia’s been driving me nuts. At last I have someone normal around.”

  “Hey!” Natalia fake-punched her sister in the arm, pretending to pout. “I’m the most normal person you know. And Emma is mine.”

  “Whatever.” Zoe rolled her eyes, but she squeezed Emma’s hand.

  Emma smiled at both of them, taking in the changes since she’d last seen them in December. Zoe had cut her dark hair into a sleek bob, but Emma had seen that when they’d Skyped. The summer sun had brought out Natalia’s freckles, and her bathing suit showed through her shirt in damp pink patches. Zoe was cool and clean in a white T-shirt and mint-green shorts, looking as crisp as if they had just come out of her drawer.

  The twins were identical, but hardly anyone ever mixed them up. Natalia’s long hair flew everywhere, whipping across her face, part of it yanked back into a careless ponytail. Zoe’s swung neatly to just below her chin. Natalia’s eyes sparkled and her mouth was never still—she was always laughing loudly or talking as fast as she thought, words spilling from her lips. Zoe was more reserved, quieter. Her smiles were just as warm, but smaller, and she kept a lot of her thoughts private. When Natalia was talking, Zoe was sketching and drawing instead, or watching everyone with an amused expression on her face.

  When they were all together, Emma liked to think of herself as the balance between her cousins. She was quieter and less reckless than Natalia, but less watchful and reserved than Zoe.

  Natalia grabbed her arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go down to the beach. I’ve got a plan.”

  “It’s a very wet plan,” Zoe said, a smile lurking at the corners of her mouth.

  Riley finally made it across the lawn and sniffed at Emma’s fingers before licking them. She petted him. “Good boy, good boy,” she said. “Did you miss me?”

  “Riley can help with the plan,” said Natalia as she tugged Emma away from the car.

  “Hang on, girls,” said Emma’s mom. She hugged Natalia and Zoe hello. “Emma has to go say hi to her grandmother and everybody before she can do anything else.”

  “Plus, the cookout is the first thing on my list,” Emma said brightly. Even though she was dying to know what Natalia’s plan was, she was starving.

  “Oh, you and your lists,” Natalia said, and sighed.

  “I like the lists,” Zoe said. “It’s very orderly. Very Emma.”

  The cookout was just as Emma had pictured it. Grandma Stephenson and Emma’s aunts and uncles fussed over her, talking about how they couldn’t believe she and Zoe and Natalia had all graduated from fifth grade and were ready to move on to middle school. To them, it seemed like the girls had been babies just a few days ago.

  Abuelita hugged and kissed her and told her how beautiful she was and how much she had grown, before loading Emma’s plate with homemade tamales. Abuelita had grown up in Mexico, and she always said traditional dishes from there were the best.

  “Try a brownie,” Natalia said, handing her a plate.

  “Huh,” said Emma, poking at it. There were weird purplish bumps sticking out of the top.

  “You look so suspicious,” Zoe said. “I promise it’s good. We added dried blueberries and butterscotch chips this time.”

  “Interesting,” Emma said. That explained the purple bumps, anyway. She took a cautious bite. “Good,” she said, chewing. She wasn’t entirely sure about the blueberries, but they weren’t terrible.

  Aunt Alison called Zoe and Natalia away to help in the kitchen for a moment, and Emma took her loaded plate and sat next to her grandmother. Grandma Stephenson seemed thinner and smaller than she had at Christmas, but her blue eyes were as sharp as ever.

  “Hello, Granddaughter,” Grandma Stephenson said, solemnly, looking her over.

  “Hello, Grandmother,” Emma answered, in the same formal voice. They grinned at each other, and Emma felt something relax inside herself—Grandma hadn’t changed, not really.

  Emma told Grandma Stephenson about how the school year had been (she and her best friend, Amelia, had both been forwards on the school soccer team, and they’d won most of their games) and about her plans for the rest of the summer (camp, mostly, and she had a long summer reading list for starting sixth grade). Grandma had taught English at the high school in town for forty years, and she had a lot of opinions on the books Emma was supposed to read: “Oh, The Giver, that’s a classic” or “I think you’ll like Because of Winn-Dixie; it’s got a dog in it.”

  It was all really normal, and Emma felt the little anxious tightness in her stomach—the worry that Grandma Stephenson would have changed since her fall—relax. Despite the heavy gold-topped cane hooked over the arm of her chair, she was still Grandma.

  The conversation paused. “Um, Grandma?” Emma began awkwardly. “Are you feeling okay? Since you had to move in here?” She poked hard with her fork at Aunt Bonnie’s potato salad, not looking at Grandma, in case she was upset.

  Grandma Stephenson laughed a little, and Emma looked up. “I don’t think had to is quite the right phrase. I’m glad to spend time with Alison and her family. Although it is a little crowded.” She took a sip of her lemonade. “And Abuelita was wonderful about looking after me while I was recovering. If she wasn’t a registered nurse, I probably would have had to stay in the hospital a lot longer than I did. I’d probably still be there, doing physical therapy and fighting with my doctor.”

  “But don’t you miss Seaview House?” Emma asked, and then blushed. Of course Grandma did, and it wasn’t fair to bring it up, not when she wasn’t well enough to live alone anymore. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that—well, you grew up there, and so did your parents, and I always loved the house so much. And I liked the garden especially.”

  Emma thought back to last summer. Set in terraces going down the hill down to the beach, the garden at Seaview House was filled with sweet-smelling flowers: trailing honeysuckle and wisteria on one level, roses on another, bright yellow black-eyed Susan on another. Standing on the lawn of the house, all you could see were flowers, all the way down to the bay.

  “The garden, of course. I always loved it, too,” Grandma Stephenson said, looking a little dreamy. “I was married in the garden, you know. We set up an arch on the path along the lawn, and were married under it. It was a sunny, hot day, and all the roses were in bloom. The scent was everywhere.”

  Emma could picture it, because she’d been at Seaview House on hot summer days when the smell of roses hung, heavy and sweet, all through the air. It made you sleepy, until the cool salt breeze came off the bay and woke you up. The rose-and-sea scent made everything seem about twice as romantic as it was in real life.

  “What’s going to happen to the house?” she asked suddenly. She hadn’t really thought about it—she’d just thought about Grandma not being in the house anymore. Her uncles and aunts had their own houses, and she couldn’t imagine them le
aving and moving into the huge, rambling house on the top of the hill. But it couldn’t just sit empty forever, either. Was Grandma really okay with not going back? “Are you going to sell it?”

  That terrible, tight, almost-crying feeling was in Emma’s throat again, but she blinked back her tears. It wouldn’t be fair for her to cry, not when it was Grandma who might be losing her house. “It’s just hard to think of it not being ours anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t like things changing.”

  Grandma gave her a long look, her blue eyes sharp, and then patted Emma’s hand. “Not all changes are for the worse, you know,” she said.

  “I know,” Emma agreed, and said the next bit in a singsong reciting voice: “The important thing is that we’re all together now.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Grandma said. “Just look at us all.”

  Emma looked around. Her dad and the uncles had all congregated by the grill and were talking as smoke rose in lazy spirals toward the blue sky. Mateo and Tomás ran across the lawn, screaming with excitement, as Riley determinedly followed along behind, panting. Abuelita and Aunt Bonnie were sharing a plate of cookies at the picnic table, their heads bent together in conversation. Natalia came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of ribs—“Watch it!” Zoe said behind her, her hands full of plates—piled so high they wobbled and almost fell. From the kitchen, Aunt Alison said something Emma couldn’t hear and laughed.

  “We’re all still here, whatever house we’re in,” Grandma said firmly. “I’ll always love Seaview House, but family is what matters.”

  “I guess so,” Emma said, looking down at her hands as she fiddled with her food. She couldn’t help feeling as if she was losing something important. Seaview House was almost like family—it had held her mother’s family, the Stephensons, for generations. It was their past—and her past, too. She couldn’t imagine it not being part of her future.

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  Cover art by Helen Huang, © 2018 American Girl

  Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll

  Illustrations by Helen Huang

  © 2018 American Girl. All rights reserved. All American Girl marks are trademarks of American Girl. Used under license by Scholastic Inc.

  First printing, 2018

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-11503-1

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