by Foxglove Lee
Every bite I took, I wondered if Tiffany was listening to me chew. I wondered if I was annoying her, the way Mikey annoyed me when he slurped the milk from the bottom of his cereal bowl. Or did she like my mouth enough to cherish every sound it made?
It was hard to pay attention to the movie when all I could think about was the girl beside me. She budged her legs a touch and her knee bumped mine. She left it there, and I was sure I could feel her heat through my overalls. I could barely swallow. The scent of lilies lingered all around us. I could only hope I didn’t smell bad, considering I hadn’t taken a proper shower since the end of June. Did I smell like the lake, or was the Pert Plus doing an okay job of covering it up?
While Judd Nelson provoked Emilio Estevez on screen, Tiffany’s head landed like a blonde cloud on my shoulder. My whole body went stiff. What was she expecting me to do? Should I put my arm around her? All the popcorn in my stomach seemed like it was bouncing around in there, trying to jump back into my throat. I picked a gummy thumb out of the bag wedged in my overalls and sucked its minty greenness until the popcorn settled down.
When I didn’t make a move, Tiffany lifted her head from my shoulder and grabbed a handful of popcorn. I could feel her looking at me. Her gaze made me want to scratch myself all over. I stared at the screen so hard my eyes unfocused. Everything was a blur until her hand found the opening at the side of my overalls.
I jerked up straight in my velvet seat. The springs squeaked so loudly a girl with a high ponytail turned around with eyes wide as saucers. Tiffany’s hand didn’t budge. It rested on my thigh, her hot palm on my bare skin, and just sat there for ages. She kept on grabbing for popcorn with her other hand, completely ignoring the one inside my pants.
After a while, her fingers started moving across the fine hair on my thigh. I didn’t shave there. Her hand was so warm, so soft against my skin that my body went crazy on the inside. I felt a storm inside of me—lightning in my head and thunder everywhere else. My heart thumped so loudly it was all I could hear.
I don’t know what made me turn to her in that moment. I could only describe it as a magnetic pull. My lips met hers and my soul left my body.
Did I kiss her or did she kiss me? I couldn’t say, even though I was watching the whole time, floating above the scene while our tongues writhed slowly, one against the other. The entire time we kissed, I clung to my popcorn bucket like it could protect me from some unknown threat. I didn’t feel silly about it, though I probably should have.
We kissed forever. My whole body was a heartbeat, just a thick pulse raging under my skin. She was slow about it. No rush, no hurry. No concern that anyone might see. Her hand stayed on my thigh, her fingers brushing my skin. How was she so good at this? Maybe I didn’t want to know.
When we finally came out of our lip-lock, Molly Ringwald was giving Ally Sheedy a makeover in the school bathroom. The movie was almost over. I binged on popcorn and bigfoot gummies.
“I never liked that part at the end,” Tiffany said as the credits rolled and the lights came up. “The part where Molly Ringwald makes Allison all Pretty in Pink or whatever, makes her into something she’s not. Allison’s my favourite because she’s unique, and Molly Ringwald has to go making her into one more beauty queen clone so Emilio Estevez will go out with her. Barf-o-rama, right?”
“Totally,” I said. “That’s the only thing I hate about this movie. It’s, like, saying there’s this one right way to be if you want to be happy.”
“Yeah, just like how we’re constantly being fed this message that if you want to be full and fulfilled as a woman, you have to fall in love with some dude and get married and have a bunch of babies and whatever. Like, gag me with a spoon!”
“I know!” It was like Tiffany was inside my brain, speaking all the truths I thought but never said. “Like how every Disney movie ends with the pretty-pretty princess marrying her Prince Charming and living happily ever after. It’s so stupid. Even when I was, like, four years old I already knew that’s not how the world worked.”
A slow smile bled across Tiffany’s swollen lips. They were still swollen from kissing. “I think we have a lot in common, you and me.”
“I think so too.”
Even though the lights had gone up, I leaned in to kiss Tiffany. Everyone else had left the theatre anyway, so it’s not like we would get caught. At least, that’s what I thought.
Just as my lips brushed Tiffany’s, a voice with a tinge of a French accent said, “Get out.”
Tiffany jerked away, glaring at the woman behind me. “Say what?”
“I need to clean the theatre. You need to leave now.”
The voice made me cringe, and I knew exactly why: it was Yvette’s, the voice I heard in my head whenever my doll spoke to me. A flash crossed the planes of my mind, and I saw the girl from the tearoom, the one who’d seated us and then disappeared.
Every muscle in my body strained against it, but I forced myself to turn and look at the woman who’d spoken with Yvette’s accent.
“Oh,” I said, pulling the bag of candy out of my overalls. I stood, still clutching the bucket of popcorn. “I’m sorry. We’re on our way. Sorry. Thanks.”
The woman looked nothing like Yvette. She was old, for starters, and her hair was ratty brown with haphazard streaks of grey. Her body was large and she panted just standing still. There was a big wart on the end of her nose, like a Halloween costume of a witch. Tiffany and I slipped out the other side of the aisle, because there was no way we could squeeze by her in that little tiny row.
My heart was racing when Aunt Libby waved us over. She’d been waiting for us in the lobby, and I wondered for how long. Had she been spying on us? No, my aunt would never do a thing like that. Would she?
“How was the show?” Aunt Libby asked, plunging her hand into the popcorn bucket.
“Good,” Tiffany said, and looked at me with a smile that gave everything away. “Great.”
“Would I have liked it?”
Tiffany glanced at me. “It’s not really a movie for old people.”
Aunt Libby’s eyes shot wide open, and I groaned. Maybe Tiffany didn’t realize how mean she sounded at times. She probably didn’t intend to insult people. I could tell that she had a good heart, even if she didn’t know how to express it.
On the drive home, Tiffany and I both sat in the back seat, she on one side, me on the other, our shopping bags between us. My aunt was quiet, but she played her own radio station, at least until the news came on. Then she switched channels.
“I like your aunt,” Tiffany said, loud enough that Aunt Libby could hear. “She’s cool.”
“I like her, too.”
And that’s all any of us said until we pulled up to cottage to find the whole place on fire.
Chapter 13
“Becca! Becca!” Mikey ran up to the station wagon and banged on the window with the flat of his hand. “Your room burned down!”
I rubbed my face before looking past him. It must have been a trick of the eye, because the cottage wasn’t on fire. I was sure I’d seen flames as we were driving up.
Rolling down her window, Aunt Libby asked, “What are you talking about, Mikey?”
“Becca’s room was on fire,” he said, straight-faced. Mikey wouldn’t have played a trick like that, not on us. “We were roasting marshmallows and we looked through Becca’s window and it was like big flames.”
“God in Heaven!” Aunt Libby threw open the car door and raced to Uncle Flip, who was running across the front lawn. “Are you all right?”
I rolled down my window and watched them like a movie. Nothing felt real.
“I put it out, don’t worry.” Uncle Flip’s white undershirt was streaked black. Same with his skin. “It was the damnedest thing, Lib. At first I thought it was just the reflection of our campfire in the window, but then I realized her window was open and we were seeing right inside.”
“Goodness gracious.” Aunt Libby hugged my uncle around his nec
k, a damsel in distress. It wasn’t at all like her to cling to him that way. “Clarence, you must have been scared out of your skull!”
“I didn’t have time to be scared,” Uncle Flip said, a little proudly. “I grabbed the water pail beside the fire pit and I tossed it at her window. The screen caught most of it, so I raced around the side door…”
“And I did too!” Mikey cried. He was pulling at the hem of my aunt’s shirt, jumping up and down.
“Yeah, sorry,” Uncle Flip said to my aunt. “I didn’t realize he was behind me.”
“Dangerous, Mikey.”
“But I helped!” my brother whined.
Tiffany leaned across our shopping bags and took hold of my hand. Her touch nearly gave me a heart attack. I’d forgotten she was still in the car.
“Yeah, so we filled the water pail and everything else we could find, and tossed the water into Becca’s room. It was the damnedest thing, Lib—only the furniture was on fire… and all the furniture was on fire: the low dresser, the high dresser, the headboard, the mattress. And the second we threw water on it, poof, it went out.”
“And it was only Rebecca’s room that burned,” Mikey added. “Mine didn’t burn at all.”
“Yeah, it’s really weird.” My uncle took my aunt’s hand while I pulled mine from Tiffany’s. “Come on. You’ve got to see this.”
I opened the car door in a daze and stumbled across the front lawn with Tiffany hot on my heels. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted her to go away. I felt ashamed of something, but I didn’t know what. Something private or personal, something that was just mine.
Uncle Flip led us into the cottage. Everything looked cheery as usual, but it reeked like burning hair. I covered my nose and breathed through my mouth, but I could taste the smell.
“I started moving the charred furniture out back,” my uncle said. “No telling if there was any fire left inside that wood. But look at this, Lib. Look at the floor.”
I stood at the door to my bedroom, feeling like I was in another world as my aunt and uncle assessed the damage. My bed was black from head to foot, and so was the low dresser where I’d unpacked all my clothes. The high dresser, the one where Yvette had sat since I was thirteen years old, was no longer standing upright by the window.
“The dresser was burned to a crisp,” my uncle said. “But look: not a trace on the floor. The curtains are gone, but look at the paint on the walls. No black, no bubbling, nothing. What do you make of that?”
Aunt Libby shook her head. Her jaw swung open, but she didn’t say a word.
“What about the doll that was there?” I asked. Tiffany placed both hands on my shoulders, but I pulled away. When I stepped inside my bedroom, a strange feeling came over me. I was itchy inside my skin, but nowhere that I could scratch. My head was spinning. It was like being in the Twilight Zone.
My uncle glanced in my direction. “What’s that, Bec?”
“There was a doll on my dresser, the doll you gave me when I was thirteen. Remember?”
Uncle Flip looked at my aunt, and then back at me. “Was it sitting there, Bec? I didn’t see it.”
“She, not it,” Yvette’s voice said, and so close I heard it right inside my ear.
I spun around, and Tiffany jumped back with a perplexed fear in her eyes. “What? What’d I do?”
“Did you say something just now?” I asked, even though I knew she hadn’t.
She shook her head. “I didn’t even breathe.”
“Good.” Yvette’s voice rang like a gong inside my skull. “Stupid girl. I hope you stop breathing altogether.”
I swallowed hard, pushing past Tiffany as my aunt and uncle started moving my low dresser. I turned around just in time to see the wood come apart. It was black as coal, and when my Aunt pulled on the bronze hardware, it came off in her hands.
“I wonder if her clothes burned too,” my aunt said as she pawed at the top drawer, where I kept my socks and underwear.
“It must have done,” my uncle said. “Just look at the state of this wood.”
I grabbed Tiffany by the wrist, straining to look over her shoulder as the front of my drawer came right off and hissed against the floor. Everything inside was black. When my aunt scooped it up in her hands, it looked like nothing, nothing but burnt blackness.
“My clothes are gone?”
Aunt Libby gazed balefully across the room. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
I never thought I was attached to my clothes until they were gone. All I had left was a pair of overalls and a tank top. And one pair of underwear! “My bathing suit…”
“It’s on the line,” Uncle Flip said, like that was some consolation.
A streak of rage shot through me, and out of nowhere I was screaming at them, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Woop-dee-fricken-doo! I have a bathing suit. I have nothing to wear to bed, but that’s okay because I have nowhere to sleep anyway. My fricken bed burnt down, but at least I can go to the lake. Why don’t I just go sleep with the fishes? Nobody would miss me anyway.”
Everybody looked at me, stunned by my outburst. They couldn’t possibly have been more surprised than I was. The concern in their eyes was so humiliating I ran out of the cottage and raced around back until I just about smashed right into my dresser. The tall one.
Twigs snapped behind me, and I knew who it would be before turning.
“I would miss you,” Tiffany said. Her white dress shone like silver against the summer moon. “If you want, I can lend you some clothes.”
“Thanks.”
Tiffany and I didn’t exactly have the same taste in fashion, but I didn’t want to be rude.
“And I’m sure my grandparents would be okay with it if you wanted to stay with us for a while. I have the whole upstairs to myself, you know.”
Her voice sounded far away. I knew what she was saying and I knew I should be pleased, but all I really wanted was open the dresser drawers. And, for some reason, I couldn’t do that with Tiffany watching.
“I should stay with my family,” I said. When her expression fell, I wavered. “Just for tonight. Ask your grandparents if it’s okay that I come, and then tell me tomorrow, okay?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“You should probably go home now,” I told her. “Your grandma and grandpa will get worried.”
“Oh, they’re probably asleep already.” Tiffany’s voice sounded eager, almost to the point of desperation. “Early to bed, early to rise. You know what old people are like.”
I wanted her to stay with me, right by my side, but instead of telling her that, I said, “What if they’re waiting up to make sure you get in safely? You should go. My aunt can drive you, if you want.”
For a long moment, Tiffany didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. After a while, her shoulders fell and I knew I’d hurt her, right to the core, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can walk back. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” I traced the front of the dresser with just my fingertips. “See ya.”
She didn’t walk away. Staring at me, she asked, “Where are you gonna sleep? I’ve seen your bed.”
I nodded toward the tepee, which was just visible in the waning moonlight. “My brother and I used to sleep there all the time. Sometimes we all do, all together.”
Tiffany wrinkled up her nose. “That’s weird.”
“No it isn’t,” I said, suppressing a new streak of anger. “It isn’t weird. It’s nice. We all have our sleeping bags and we go to bed when the fire’s down to its embers. It’s like being a kid, being cared for.”
She stood staring at me for what felt like forever. I wanted her to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. It wasn’t until my family emerged from the cottage that she said a quick, “K, bye,” and slipped into the night.
“There’s our girl!” Uncle Flip called out, excessively cheery, like he thought he could change my mood just by talking that way.
“Where did Tiffany go?” my aunt asked.
“Home.”
“Alone?” Aunt Libby tsked and hugged a sleeping bag to her chest. “Oh, that’s dangerous. Next time I’ll drive her.”
“We thought it would be a good night to camp out.” Uncle Flip had my sleeping bag as well as his own. “The cottage seems in good shape, but we’re not going to take any chances.”
Mikey and I set up for the night, which was hot but not too hot, while Uncle Flip and Aunt Libby pulled the crumbling, blackened furniture from my room. My brother and I wanted to help, but they wouldn’t let us. They said it was too dangerous, and it was their job to keep us safe.
I stared into the embers in the fire pit while Aunt Libby picked out a nightgown for me to sleep in. It was miles too big, and I wished with all my heart that I’d gone with Tiffany. But every time I thought about sharing her clothes or sleeping at the Jones’s cottage, my stomach tied in knots.
Yvette’s voice lived at the back of my mind now, and it kept repeating the ice-cold phrase, “Don’t… you… dare.”
I shivered when I heard it, because it wasn’t just an echo in my head. It was a real thing, a living thing. Everything else in my room had been burned by fire, but not Yvette. She was around here somewhere. I could feel it in my bones.
When all the furniture had been moved out of my room, Aunt Libby and Uncle Flip washed the charcoal from their hands in the kitchen sink. My footboard and headboard had crumbled to bits while they’d carried them out. I wondered how my uncle had carried the tall dresser alone without breaking it.
“Is there gonna be another fire?” Mikey asked when we’d all settled in together.
“Oh no, no, no.” My aunt reached over me to grab my brother’s shoulder. We slept with Uncle Flip on the very inside and Aunt Libby next to him, then me, then Mikey right by the entryway. We took up all the space there was in the tepee, and it bugged me that Tiffany thought this was weird, because it wasn’t.
“Don’t you worry, buddy.” My uncle’s voice was cool comfort from the back of the tepee. “There won’t be any more fires. Your aunt figures it was a floating ember from our fire that started it, and I’d say she’s probably right.”
