by Foxglove Lee
“True,” Aunt Libby said when Uncle Flip didn’t finish his sentence. “I just think she needs boundaries as much as any kid her age. You never know what she might run off and do.”
I’m not a kid!
“She’s not a kid,” my uncle said.
Score one for the Flipster!
“Well, that’s exactly my point. She could come home tomorrow with a bun in the oven.”
Yeah, right!
“I don’t think so, hon.” Uncle Flip paused, and that made all the food in my stomach turn in circles. Did he know? Could he tell? If he did, all he said was, “I don’t think we need to worry about that sort of thing with our Bec.”
That’s for sure.
After that, they started talking about mortgage payments and credit card bills. I hovered close to their door a while longer, thinking they might come back to the topic of me or my father, or anything at all interesting. When they didn’t, I sat on the couch and looked at my bedroom door. Everything about it seemed weird, like the door itself was hazy and warped. Had it changed colours in the past half hour? Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me.
I picked up my cross-stitching, which was sitting on the coffee table, and concentrated on pushing the needle through the right hole, pulling the embroidery floss up the canvas, then poking it into the hole on the diagonal. There was something soothing about following guidelines, matching a number to a colour, and stitching the right floss in the right place. This Holly Hobbie pattern was really coming together. I wished I’d brought another one. Maybe if Aunt Libby still wanted to take me into town, we could stop by the craft shop.
Did Tiffany like crafting? God, probably not. She was too cool for old-lady time-wasters like needlework or knitting. If she came along when we went to town and I mentioned the craft shop, she’d probably laugh and dub me Queen of the Nerds.
I was getting ahead of myself assuming that she’d come at all. I’d watched plenty of girls like Tiffany—watched them from afar—and they most definitely did not hang out with dweebs like me.
But a girl could dream…
Chapter 10
“Becca!” Mikey woke me up by jumping on stomach and dropping a newspaper on my face. “Your movie’s at the movies!”
“What the…?” I clawed my way out of paper prison while Mikey jumped onto the coffee table.
“Hey, get down from there,” my uncle scolded him. “It isn’t safe.”
“Rebecca, no more sleeping on the couch,” my aunt said from the kitchen. “You have a perfectly good bed in your room.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say perfectly good,” Uncle Flip reasoned. “Acceptable, maybe. Particularly if you were a logger in the depression era.”
Two days had gone by since I’d set foot in my bedroom, and despite our daily swims in the lake, I was starting to stink enough to put me off myself. In fact, I could almost smell my armpits stronger than the bacon Aunt Libby was frying up.
“Have you ever seen the mattresses their bunks were made of?” my uncle went on.
“Whose bunks?” my aunt asked disinterestedly.
Mikey turned up the radio—Devo was whipping it real good. He started jumping on the couch everywhere my body wasn’t, and sometimes even where it was.
“Ouch! Mikey, get off me!”
“Michael, stop bothering your sister,” Aunt Libby said by rote.
“They were made out of hay, just jammed in a big sack. That’s what you had to sleep on if you were a logger in those days.”
I rolled over on the couch, groaning as I covered my head with the mustard-yellow accent cushion. Too much noise! Too much family!
“How many eggs, Rebecca?”
Five more minutes!
“Make her two,” Uncle Flip said. “She always eats two.”
Ten more minutes!
“Rebecca, would you like a cup of coffee?”
My head perked off the couch, like in cartoons where the blissful creature floats off the floor. “I’m allowed?”
“I don’t think your mother would mind,” Aunt Libby shouted over the music. “Mikey, turn that down. Rebecca, you’ve been such a help these past two days. I’d say you’re more than mature enough for a few sips.”
If my aunt thought I’d earned a reward, heck, I’d claim it. I wasn’t about to tell her I’d only been “such a help” because tidying the cottage kept me away from Yvette. Every time I walked by my room, I was sure I heard noises in there: babbling, singing, spooky sounds like that. Other times, I heard creaking and squeaking, which my mom would have called “the house settling” if we were at home. Maybe it was nothing.
While Uncle Flip fiddled with the French Press, Mikey ran around the room playing He-Man and She-Ra, a game in which he performed the roles of all characters.
“Jeeze,” I said. “Did you give this kid a coffee before I woke up?”
My uncle laughed. “No, that’s the folly of youth you’re seeing right there.”
“Where’s your youthful folly, Rebecca?” My aunt slid crispy bacon on to a paper towel. “Sixteen years old! You should be full of life.”
“Not before ten in the morning,” I grumbled. Rolling off the couch, I made my way to the bathroom. There was a sign on the door, which said “What Am I Doin’?” and had been there for as long as I could remember. It had a dial on it, which you could spin to settle on any of the following items:
-Powderin’ my nose
-Clippin’ my toenails
-Stinkin’ up the joint
-Washin’ my feet
-None of yer business
Nobody ever changed the position of the dial—it was eternally set at “Washin’ my feet”—but I read the sign every time I went in. Maybe that’s because it always took a while to work up the courage to cross that threshold. It wasn’t the prettiest-smelling room in the house at the best of times.
When I came out of the bathroom, Uncle Flip had poured hot water into the coffee press and was pushing slowly down on the knob. My family wasn’t big on coffee, so we didn’t have a home brewer. It did seem a little odd that they were making coffee for someone who, technically, wasn’t even allowed to drink it, but I wasn’t going to question my treat.
On my way to the table, I stepped on the paper I’d thrown off my face earlier. When I bent to pick it up, Mikey howled, “Ewww! You smell like Grandma Warren.”
A rush of heat spread across my cheeks, and I instinctively looked up at my aunt and uncle.
“You have been wearing that top for a few days now,” my aunt agreed.
My uncle shook his head and teased me. “She says she’s no Leafs fan, but she won’t take off their T-shirt, even in the off-season.”
“Sorry,” I said, looking down at my legs. They were getting stupendously hairy. “I’ll change.”
“No, no.” Aunt Libby started slapping fried eggs down on orange plates. “Eat your breakfast, honey. We’re just teasing.”
I plopped down into my seat at the table, and got a vigorous whiff of myself. “Maybe I should change now.”
“We’ll take some soap down to the lake after breakfast,” Aunt Libby said as Uncle Flip tossed buttered toast on our plates.
When I grabbed for my fork, I realized I still had the paper in hand. “Hey, where did this come from?” The cottage country paper was only published once a week, and in our alcove of the lake, you could only get it from the box outside the Jones’s store. “Did you go to the store without me?”
“It wasn’t open,” Mikey said.
Uncle Flip poured out three cups of coffee. “We didn’t want to wake you, and Mikey was a little nutty this morning.”
When my uncle sat my coffee down in front of me, I took a big sip before he’d even had a chance to pour me some milk. “Mmm! That hit the spot.”
Smashing his toast points into the yolks of his two eggs sunny side up, Mikey asked, “Did you see your movie?”
“Oh, that’s right.” Aunt Libby sat down, and now everyone was at the table. “Th
e Breakfast Club—it’s playing at the theatre in town this weekend. I thought you might like to go.”
My heart fluttered for such a long time I wondered if I was having a heart attack. We were going to town? To the movies? I could ask Tiffany. Did she like The Breakfast Club as much as I did? Oh, of course she did. Everyone loved that movie.
“So, you want to go?” Aunt Libby asked.
“Can I invite someone?” I barked back, way louder than I’d intended.
My aunt laughed. “I told you before that you could. Or has that one sip of coffee destroyed your memory centre?”
I did feel a little weird, but I couldn’t tell if it was the coffee or the thought of spending a day with Tiffany. Maybe it was a combination of the two. After one and a half cups of coffee, I was so nuts I didn’t think twice about hopping into my bedroom and grabbing a change of underwear to put on after swimming. I even laid out all the clothes I’d brought on my perfectly made bed, and picked out the ideal one for asking Tiffany to the movies.
We bathed in our swimsuits, and me in my T-shirt as well. That probably wasn’t the best way to get clean, but no one in my family was getting naked in public. Anyway, it was probably against the law. In the cool lake water, I scrubbed my skin with Ivory soap and then washed my hair with Pert Plus. When I’d rinsed, I started all over again.
“That’s not good for the environment, you know.”
I squinted at the familiar voice, but shampoo suds stung my eyes. Oh no… it couldn’t be…
“Pardon me?” I heard my aunt say.
I dunked my head underwater and came up just in time to hear Tiffany saying, “You’re not supposed to wash in the lake. Those detergents are bad for the ecosystem.”
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as they say.” My aunt was sitting close to shore, razing my sopping Leafs T-shirt against my grandmother’s old washboard. She stopped for a moment, held it up to her nose, then sprinkled my shirt with more Tide crystals. “Those environmentalists go a bit too far, if you ask me.”
“They don’t go far enough!” Tiffany stood on a rock near the shoreline. She had on a denim jacket over a short white dress and leggings. “My biology teacher taught us about phosphates in detergents, and how they totally warp freshwater lakes like this one.”
“It’s only a little soap.” My aunt wasn’t even looking at Tiffany. She just shook her head, like she was talking to a child. “A little soap never hurt anybody.”
I realized that Tiffany hadn’t noticed me. Maybe I could swim away and hide in the next alcove, pretend I’d never think of washing my hair in the lake. But I wouldn’t be able to hide that I was my aunt’s niece for long—especially if the three of us went in to town together on Saturday.
Popping out of the water, which came just past my waist where I was standing, I called out, “Hi, Tiffany!”
Caffeine pumped through my veins. When our eyes met, she looked at me for a long moment, almost like she was trying to place me. God, did she not remember who I was? Talk about humiliating!
“You shouldn’t wash in the lake,” Tiffany said, though her voice sounded softer and more delicate than when she’d lectured my aunt. “It’s bad for the environment.”
“But we don’t have a bath!” Mikey hollered before diving off my uncle’s shoulders.
I felt my cheeks glowing red, and I splashed them with cool water. The water wouldn’t qualify as warm until mid-August, and I could feel my nipples straining with the cold. It embarrassed me, even though it happened to everyone, and I crossed my arms over my chest.
Tiffany looked straight at me. “You don’t have a bathtub?”
I shook my head. “Or a shower.”
“If we didn’t bathe in the lake,” my aunt said, “we wouldn’t bathe at all.”
“I guess you don’t have a washing machine, either,” Tiffany said, pointing the toe of her canvas shoe at the top my aunt was washing.
“This is the way it was done long before you came into being,” my aunt said. She’d been dismissive before. Now she was notably huffy.
“Yeah,” Tiffany said. “That’s why the planet’s in such rough shape now. Nobody’s been taking care of it.”
This was not pretty. I had to put a stop to the impending knockdown.
“Do you want to go to the movies on Saturday?”
A smile bloomed across Tiffany’s lips while my aunt’s eyes blazed. “This is the girl you wanted to bring?”
“We’re going to town,” I said, ignoring my aunt. “My aunt said I could bring a friend, and…”
I wasn’t quite sure how to finish that sentence, so I didn’t. All the coffee I’d drunk at breakfast zipped through my colon. I clenched my butt cheeks as I waited for her answer. Please say yes! Please say yes!
“And who, pray tell, is this young lady?” my aunt asked, furrowing her brow.
I wasn’t totally sure if Aunt Libby was talking to me or to her, so I said, “Tiffany is the Jones’s granddaughter. She’s helping them run the store.”
“Well, then, I’m sure your grandparents will be needing you on Saturday,” my aunt said. “Wouldn’t want to steal you away, love.”
“It should be fine,” Tiffany said. She wasn’t looking at my aunt. She was looking at me. “I’ll have to ask, but I’m sure it’s okay.”
“Awesome.”
Kicking off her canvas shoes and hiking up her skirt, Tiffany waded into the lake. Her leggings sucked up water like a sponge as she walked past my aunt. Detergent bubbles clung to the fabric, but she didn’t say anything about it. When she got close to me, she asked, “What’s playing at the movies?
“The Breakfast Club,” I blurted. I’d meant to act a little more suave, but I was just so excited that she wanted to come. “Have you seen it already? I have, but it’s one of my favourites.”
Tiffany shrugged. “It’s okay.” She turned slightly and watched my brother crawl up Uncle Flip’s back and then dive off his shoulders. “I used to do that with my dad when we lived in Saudi. It’s the only thing I remember about that entire year.”
“Saudi… Arabia?” I asked.
With a nod, she said, “That was after Texas, but before… oh, what was next? Actually, I think we moved back to Texas after Saudi, but just for a couple months.”
“Wow.” I tried to imagine blonde-haired, blue-eyed Tiffany in the desert. “Did you have to wear a veil? What was it like?”
She shrugged again, like it wasn’t really worth thinking about. “I don’t know. We lived on a compound. I just remember swimming all the time, with my dad.”
“In the desert?” my aunt butted in, her eyes squinted meanly.
“No.” Tiffany laughed. “In a pool.”
Mikey giggle gleefully and splashed Uncle Flip with water. My uncle chased him around, though the motion was strained because the lake bottom was muddy and it held you in place.
“I’d better get back to the store,” Tiffany said to me. “I’ll let you know about Saturday.”
She held her skirt above the waist at the back, and when she turned I couldn’t help staring at the bright pink panties glowing through her wet white leggings. Her butt clenched as she fought her way through the hefty hands of the lake. It was a sight to see.
Maybe my aunt caught me staring, because Tiffany was barely out of earshot when she said, “The nerve of that girl.”
Ripped from my fantasy world, I looked at my aunt like she’d just thrown ninja stars at my head. “What do you mean?”
“Telling us not to wash in the lake. Obviously nobody ever taught her to respect her elders.”
“But you didn’t know it was bad for the environment,” I reasoned. “It’s not rude if she’s teaching you something new.”
“Hogwash.” My aunt shook her head. “Seems strange. The Joneses are lovely people. You’d think the apple wouldn’t fall far from the tree.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to my aunt, so I hopped out deeper, until my feet didn’t touch the lake floor. As I treaded
water, I watched Mikey and a couple of his friends diving off my uncle’s shoulders. It struck me that I’d totally missed the point of what Tiffany had been trying to tell me. She was telling me about her father, about swimming with her father. I’d dwelled on the where rather than the who.
Swimming closer to my aunt, I said, “Tiffany was born in Edmonton.”
My aunt was obviously no fan of Tiffany’s, but I had no one else to talk to, and I desperately wanted to tell someone everything I knew about her. “She told me when I was talking about the Oilers. Then she moved to Texas, then Saudi Arabia. She’s lived a lot of places, huh?”
My aunt raised an eyebrow. “If you can believe a single word out of that girl’s mouth.”
Another ninja star, another stab in the eye. I could feel the pain of it this time. It was real. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“People who claim these extraordinary lives are usually stretching the truth.”
My stomach knotted—a lovely complement to the stabbing pain in my eye. I think what bothered me the most was the possibility that my aunt could be right.
Crawling like a lizard in the shallow water, I envisioned myself storming away yet again. My skin pricked with caffeine, sunlight, and rage. But what would my aunt and uncle say behind my back if I took off? Something about hormones or typical teenaged girls? I wasn’t hormonal and I definitely wasn’t a typical teenager, so I let my anger propel me through the water.
“Don’t swim out too far!” my aunt called after me, but with the amount of caffeine and excitement coursing through my veins, she couldn’t have stopped me if she’d tried.
Chapter 11
Every time I opened the door to my bedroom, I was sure I’d find the place in disarray, but nothing was ever askew in the slightest. Not one single item.
As I fell asleep each night, I even went so far as to tell Yvette about Tiffany. Maybe I was secretly trying to get Yvette riled up. Maybe I figured if she became furious enough, she’d do something really fierce. But no. Nothing.
Friday night, as we all roasted marshmallows around fire pit out back, I gazed at the outline of Yvette’s curly hair in my bedroom window. She was just a doll, just painted porcelain and a dress. Realistically, there wasn’t much difference between Yvette and a teapot, or a dinner plate. She was just a thing. There was nothing unusual about her, nothing evil. How easily I’d led myself to believe she was more than what she was, though maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I’d spoken to her like a person for the past three years because I didn’t have anyone else to talk to, not because she was a sentient being.
