Revenge of the Flower Girls

by Jennifer Ziegler

  “What happened to that nice fellow Alex?” Aunt Jane asked.

  “They broke up,” Darby said. “We don’t know why.”

  Aunt Jane made a little grunting noise that sounded like gah. “That’s too bad. He and Lily seemed perfect for each other.”

  We nodded. I saw Delaney pat the pocket where she’d stuck Alex’s RSVP.

  “I don’t understand why Lily is in such a hurry to get married,” Aunt Jane said. “She’s still so young. And marriage isn’t something to rush into. It’s something you should take a long time to decide about.”

  “Is that why you haven’t gotten married yet?” Delaney asked. Darby and I gave her warning looks. That girl is always asking too many personal questions.

  “Child, I don’t even want to share my life with a cat,” Aunt Jane said, chuckling. “I like to do things my way all the time. Marriage isn’t for everyone.”

  At that point, it was really hot, and we were all squished together in a small patch of shade, so we agreed we should go back inside.

  * * *

  Knowing we had more time with Aunt Jane to look forward to made us clean our room extra fast. When we were done, we came downstairs and found Mom and Aunt Jane giggling. The big box of photos was down from the top of the closet, and the coffee table was covered with old pictures. Mom always laughs more when her sister is around. Once Aunt Jane got her laughing so hard, she spit water all over her. It was amazing. The wall behind Aunt Jane was covered with drops except for a dry spot in the shape of her head. We were hoping it would stay that way forever, but Mom cleaned it up.

  Delaney had just asked if she could get the two of them some ice water — I could tell she was hoping to see Mom spray the wall again — when the door opened and Dad and Lily came in.

  “Jane!” Dad said.

  Aunt Jane leaped up from her chair and they did that thing they always do where they pretend to have a boxing match and end up hugging.

  Meanwhile, Mom sat there and shook her head at them. She always said Daddy acted more like Aunt Jane’s sibling than she did. Aunt Jane likes to say Mom was born a boring grown-up and that she was never real good at clowning around.

  “How are you, Phil-dog?” Aunt Jane asked Daddy.

  “Mean and ornery as ever,” he replied. “You?”

  “You know me. Busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’re kicking around here.”

  “Hi, Aunt Jane,” Lily said, stepping forward.

  Aunt Jane gathered her up in a big hug and then pulled back and frowned at her. “Miss Lily, what’s happened to your sparkle? Nothing can take the pretty out of you, but I’ve never seen your face so puckered and dull.”

  “I’ve just been under a lot of stress with the wedding plans and all,” Lily said, staring down at the floor.

  “Nonsense. You’re a bride-to-be. Shouldn’t you be extra radiant?”

  “Well … it’s been more stressful than most, I think. There hasn’t been a lot of time to plan.”

  Aunt Jane shook her head slowly and sat back down.

  “Oh! That reminds me.” Lily dug through her purse and pulled out a flash drive. “I have a surprise for all of you.”

  “What is it?” Mom asked.

  “Burton’s family made a slide show to be played at the rehearsal dinner.”

  “I want to see it!” Delaney said.

  Lily smiled. “I thought you might.”

  She put it into Mom’s computer and we all gathered around to watch. I wasn’t sure what it would be like, but even though I didn’t have any expectations, I was still disappointed. It started with the photo of Lily and Burton — the one Mrs. Caldwell gave Mom as a gift — but then the whole rest of it was picture after picture of Burton. Poor guy looked even more like an armadillo when he was young. And I guess he’s always had that same expression on his face, all stiff and uncomfortable — as if he were being pinched from behind. Delaney wondered aloud if he looked that way even when he slept, but Mom shushed her.

  All through the show, this song kept playing, where a woman kept talking about heroes and wind and wings. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand why they picked it, because at one point, Aunt Jane said, “How come they chose old-lady funeral music?”

  Eventually, it was over. Nobody seemed to have anything to say about it. Then Delaney said, “Where the heck was Lily? How come Lily isn’t in there?”

  “They were in a hurry,” Lily said. “And it’s not like they have a lot of photos of me.”

  “Only one of you and Burton together? That’s all?” asked Dad.

  “It’s your wedding, too,” I said. “You should be in there.”

  “Maybe we can add some of ours,” Mom suggested.

  Lily shook her head. “I’m no good with tech stuff.”

  “We can do it. It’s easy!” Darby said. “You’re so busy anyway. Let me, Dawn, and Delaney help.”

  Lily took out the flash drive and looked at it. “Well, I don’t know …”

  “What’s the harm?” Aunt Jane said. “Like you said, they would have included you if they’d had photos of you. This way we save them the trouble.”

  “You guys would do that for me?” Lily asked, looking at Darby.

  “Of course!” Darby said. “We can even make the music better.”

  Lily thanked her about six times and handed over the flash drive. “I really appreciate this.”

  Darby turned to Mom. “Can we use the box of old photos? We want to include some old baby pictures of Lily.”

  Mom smiled at that idea. “Sure.”

  “Don’t include my seventh-grade yearbook photo!” Lily said as Darby and I each grabbed an end of the box and started carrying it up the stairs.

  “And make sure I have hair in all my shots!” Dad called out.

  As soon as we got up to the Triangular Office, I shut the door and said, “Why on earth did you volunteer us for this, Darby? We need to be stopping the wedding, not helping with a stupid slide show.”

  “But we are helping to stop it,” Darby said, her eyes all sparkly and sneaky-looking. “I have a plan.”

  I was happy it was me who had the brilliant idea for once. Usually, it’s Dawn who comes up with our strategies, followed by Delaney. Occasionally, I’ll hatch a scheme, but it usually involves me jumping out of a tree or hanging from the roof. This was a relatively low risk and wholesome plan for me.

  I shared my suggestion with everyone and they agreed it might work. We called it Operation Face-the-Facts. After brainstorming a few minutes, we headed back downstairs before anyone got suspicious.

  Mom was holding the phone and a menu for Pie in the Sky. “I’m not cooking in my clean kitchen,” she said. “So tell me what kind of pizza you want.”

  Dawn shouted, “Olive and mushroom!” and Delaney shouted, “Pepperoni!” I told her, anything but anchovies.

  Dad got up from his chair and started for the door.

  “Phil, you’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?” Aunt Jane asked.

  “Well … I … um …” Daddy looked over at Mom.

  Mom hesitated for a few seconds and then said, “Of course he’s staying. This is the pre-rehearsal-dinner dinner. The whole family should be here.”

  Dawn and I looked at each other and grinned. Delaney bounced on her toes. She kept on bouncing in her chair as we ate pizza. And she boinged around the room afterward.

  Aunt Jane made everything better.

  * * *

  After dinner, we worked on the slide show using our computer and scanner. We stayed up late finishing the presentation. When it was done, we were dog tired — even Quincy had gone to sleep ages ago — but we didn’t want to go to bed. Because if we went to bed, we would wake up and it would be the next day — the day of the rehearsal and snooty dinner — just one day before the wedding.

  “This is it. It’s really happening, you guys,” Dawn said. Her voice was all throaty like Quinc
y’s gets when he whines.

  “You mean it might happen,” Delaney said. “It still might not. Alex is coming. And we have a good plan.”

  “If it does happen, I guess we’ll be okay,” I said. “This hasn’t been all bad, you know. We get to see Aunt Jane. And Daddy is hanging around more. Still … I really really really hope the wedding doesn’t happen.”

  “I’d even be happy if the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner didn’t happen,” Dawn grumbled.

  “Yeah, what if our plan doesn’t work?” I said.

  “It’s going to be awful,” Delaney said. “And poor Lily! She probably won’t even get to eat tomorrow because of all the meat Mrs. Caldwell is having them serve. She’ll faint from lack of food — and she’s the bride!”

  Dawn made a growly kind of noise. “Ooh, it really steams me how Mrs. Caldwell has taken over everything. And you know what? I’m going to do something about it.” She got up and headed out of our room and down the stairs. Delaney and I exchanged confused looks, and then a few seconds later, Dawn returned with the phone. “I’m calling the restaurant and changing the dinner menu,” she said.

  Delaney looked up the place on the Internet. “Hurry,” she said. “They’re about to close.”

  Dawn punched in the number and waited. Her face was a bunch of crisscrossed lines and her eyes were fierce. “Yes,” she said eventually. “I need to talk to someone about changing the menu for tomorrow night’s dinner.”

  Delaney and I had to put pillows over our mouths to keep from laughing. Dawn had made her voice sound sort of like Mrs. Caldwell’s — high and squawky like an angry turkey.

  “Yes, we need it to be all vegetarian dishes,” Dawn went on. “No meat…. Yes…. That is fine…. That, too…. Thank you very much. I am going to tell everyone in the world how great you are. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and gave a satisfied nod.

  Dawn tried to get me to return the phone, but I was still laughing too hard, and Delaney is too fidgety and would get caught, so Dawn had to do it. By the time she got back, the laughter had stopped, and all the nervousness was back inside my stomach.

  The three of us climbed into our beds, but all we could do was toss and turn and make whimpering sounds. We wondered if this was how presidents felt before an election or a big battle. And we each described our nervousness. Dawn said it felt like a big bear claw was squeezing her stomach. Delaney said it felt like a swarm of grasshoppers were leaping around inside her. I said it felt like jumping on a trampoline in roller skates after you’ve eaten four hot dogs. (I know because I actually did that.)

  We kept on whispering in the dark, and the next thing I knew, it was morning. My hair was a tangled mess because I hadn’t brushed out my braid before bedtime. Dawn had fallen asleep while holding her George Washington figurine, and you could see the impression of his sword on her left cheek. Delaney was already up — or maybe she’d never actually gone to sleep — and was running around the front yard with Quincy.

  It was a tornado of a day. Mom, Lily, and Aunt Jane were zipping back and forth so much downstairs, we went outside to join Delaney. When it got too hot, we holed up in the Triangular Office. Delaney’s a restless person to begin with, and when she’s anxious, she’s like a squirrel that drank too much coffee. She drove us batty with her constant chatter and boinging and zipping about. She couldn’t stop messing with things, and her bouncing kept knocking things over, so after a while, our room was a total wreck again. But just when Dawn suggested tossing her out the window, Mom hollered upstairs for us to shower and get dressed for the rehearsal.

  By the time we walked into the living room, Mrs. Caldwell was already there, bossing people around.

  “That woman is a thorn in my rump,” Aunt Jane whispered. We nodded.

  Felicia, Mavis, and Bree were sitting on the couch, each of them texting on a cell phone. And it was odd seeing Mom and Lily standing off in a corner, as if they felt awkward in their own living room.

  “Where is Burton?” Mrs. Caldwell kept saying, pacing in a circle and raising her arms. “Where could he have gone?”

  Lily just stood there and shrugged. Poor Lily. She’s the opposite of Delaney. When she’s nervous, she just turns the color of an apple blossom and goes really quiet.

  When Dawn gave her the flash drive with the slide show on it, Lily looked at her without really seeing her and mumbled “thanks.” Then she stood there for several minutes just holding it until Mom took it and put it in her purse.

  Finally, Burton showed up. He was as rumpled-looking as ever, but this time in slightly nicer clothes. He apologized for being late and explained he was in the library.

  “Today?” Mrs. Caldwell shrieked.

  “Of course,” he said. He seemed surprised at her anger. “I had to since I won’t have much time tomorrow.”

  “What on earth are you saying? You won’t have any time tomorrow! Because tomorrow is your wedding day!”

  I thought flames might shoot out from the bottom of Mrs. Caldwell’s shoes and send her rocketing through our ceiling. Even the bridesmaids looked up from their cell phones.

  “Now, where is the father of the bride?” said Mrs. Caldwell, pacing again. “Where is he?”

  “He’ll be here any second,” Mom said. Then she turned to me and whispered. “Go find your father!”

  I was just about to go call him when I heard his Vespa outside. “He’s here!” I said.

  Mom and I met him at the door.

  “Phil! You’re wearing that?” Mom asked.

  Daddy had on his rainbow suspenders and red bow tie.

  “You said to dress up,” he said.

  “That’s dressing up?”

  “I thought the tux was just for tomorrow?”

  Mom shook her head. “Never mind. Come in. We need to get the rehearsal started right now.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Mrs. Caldwell had us practice the wedding. It was really silly. Basically, we all took turns walking down the aisle. First Dawn, Delaney, and I went. Mom didn’t want us to throw the actual fake flowers because she wanted to keep the house clean, so we just pretended to throw stuff. Mrs. Caldwell kept saying we were throwing too many flowers — even though we weren’t throwing any. So then we had to go back to the beginning and throw every four steps.

  “One, two, three, throw! One, two, three, throw!” Mrs. Caldwell kept chanting.

  I thought Dawn was going to karate-kick her.

  Eventually, Mrs. Caldwell was satisfied. Only, then we had to stand next to the potted palm that was supposed to be Reverend Hoffmeyer for the rest of the rehearsal. We couldn’t talk or sit down, and anytime Delaney started boinging or swiveling, Mrs. Caldwell would tell her to keep still.

  After us came Bree, then Mavis, and then Felicia. They also had to walk down the aisle over and over because they wouldn’t put down their cell phones or kept rolling their eyes. Bree had to do it four times because Mrs. Caldwell said the boots made her lurch like a sick pony.

  Meanwhile, Dawn, Delaney, and I were getting super antsy. It was hard standing still and we were worried about Operation Face-the-Facts. The only thing that got us through it was Aunt Jane. She kept pretending to trip people with her foot and made faces at Mrs. Caldwell behind her back until Mom made her stop.

  When Mrs. Caldwell said we were done and it was time to go to the restaurant to meet our special guests and the newspaper reporter, everyone cheered.

  The three of us huddled up before leaving the house.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” Dawn said.

  The rehearsal dinner was at a ritzy place just outside town called Cypress Creek Inn. I’m not sure why it’s called that. In historical novels, inns are places where travelers can rest their horses, have a pint of ale and some mutton stew, and take a room for the night. But there were no beds anywhere. And the menu didn’t have mutton stew as far as I could tell. It just looked like your typical fancy restaurant with soft music, tablecloths, and tiny candles on every table.

 
“The wedding party should stay in the foyer,” Mrs. Caldwell told us.

  “I thought the party was inside,” I said, pointing into the main dining room.

  Mrs. Caldwell said, “No. What I mean is, the people who are in the wedding need to stand out here and greet the guests. That means flower girls, too.”

  And here I’d thought we were done with all the standing around. I was feeling crazy restless, so I asked Dawn and Darby to cover for me. “If I don’t get this energy out of me, I’ll burst apart in a disgusting display,” I explained.

  “Fine,” Dawn said. “Go run around. They probably won’t notice if one of us is missing. But you owe us!”

  I promised I’d give them a break, too, after I’d settled myself down. Then I sneaked back outside to look for a good spot to do cartwheels.

  I wasn’t the only one playing hooky. I skipped around the side of the building and found Bree leaning against the wall, shaking her cell phone.

  “Is it at all possible that you might have a cell phone charger?” she asked me.

  “Nope,” I said, propping my left foot on the wall beside her. “Mom won’t let us have cell phones. She says giving us phones would be like giving computers to crocodiles. One time, I borrowed Lily’s phone and tried to play a game on it but ended up taking all of these pictures of my nose on accident. Apparently, I e-mailed one to her old boss and —”

  “Kiddo. Please. Take a breath,” she said. “Aunt Edith has me so stressed, I came out here to get some peace — and send out some epic complaints. Only, my stupid phone died and I can’t get ahold of anyone.”

  “You can complain to me,” I said, switching legs.

  She made a sniffing sound. “What are you? Like … ten?”

  “No way,” I said, straightening up as high as I could without actually getting on my tiptoes. “I’m eleven.”

  She followed me with her raccoon eyes as I headed to a patch of grass and did some cartwheels and jumping jacks.

  “What’s up with you anyway? Too much sugar?”

  “This is how I deal with stress,” I said. At that point, my body was beginning to settle down. I was still jittery, but I no longer felt as if all that energy trapped inside me was going to build into a big volcanic kablooie.