Moonpenny Island (18 page)

Dad and Flor help Violet and Minnie into the back of Dad's car. He always drives with both hands on the wheel, at ten o'clock and two o'clock. He turns up the east Shore Road, passes the big sign
CAUTION
:
LOW-FLYING PLANES
. They hit a pothole, and Flor's soft brain rattles in her hard skull.

“You let him off the hook,” she says.

“Could be,” Dad says.

The landing strip is empty, but a swirl of gulls rises on an updraft. Violet and Minnie are asleep, and a sweet, doggy smell fills the car.

“People wanted you to call him out.”

“One thing a police officer learns quick.” Dad keeps his eyes on the road. “What people want isn't necessarily what's best for them.”

He turns onto the rutted road to Violet's house. The neck keeps narrowing, like in a horror movie where the walls of a room press closer and closer. The trees hunch in the wind. Dad hums, no tune she can recognize.

How fast Perry got angry. How big his fists were. How much damage he could do. She looks down at her arm where he grabbed her. How could she have felt sorry for him for a single second?

Violet lives in a fishing shack up on cinder blocks, with a crooked chimney and thorny brambles all around. Dad helps her out, and Flor sets Minnie
on the ground. The matching red ribbons flutter in the wind. Think how dark it must get out here. The sound of the lake your only company. Talk about alone. Maybe Perry's right—Violet would be better off someplace else. But she would never go. This place is mapped on her heart with indelible ink.

Now she bows like a wind-up toy, and Minnie follows her inside. The door shuts. A lock clicks.

Back in the car, Dad squeezes Flor's hand.

“I saw you protect Minnie. That made me proud, Flor.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Flor doesn't expect another word. Her father's not one to explain himself, let alone defend himself. But wait. The day's surprises aren't over yet.

“Don't get me wrong,” he says. “I was tempted to ream that boy out. There's a special spot in hell for those who pick on the weak! But in the end, embarrassing Perry in front of people he's got to live with day in and day out would've just made him angrier. That's the last thing that kid needs.”

Every now and then, the thick trees allow a glimpse of lake sparkle. She closes her eyes for a second
and sees Perry's jaw tremble. Sympathy pushes at the walls of her heart.

“His life's not so easy as people think,” Dad says.

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

Dad is too forgiving, Mama's voice says. He'll do anything to keep the peace. Perry will only get worse if he keeps getting away with everything. Someday that boy is bound to really hurt someone.

Flor looks down at her arm. The marks have faded, yet how strong he was, how angry—that's tattooed there.

Dad's not done.

“Everybody wants to feel like their life matters, I guess.” It's so un-Dad to talk this way. Flor turns to look at him. His cop cap. His big hands firm on the wheel. “We're all after something in this world. Perry. Violet. You. Your sister.” His Adam's apple bobs. He works his lips. “Mama.” A long pause. “The heck of it is, Flor? No two people see eye to eye on what happy is.”

Cecilia said, “It doesn't matter whose side we're on,” and Flor hopes that's true. Because she's got
both her parents inside her. She sees through both their eyes. Never, ever will she be able to choose between them.

The trees give way and there's the lake, stretching out forever. The restless water slaps against the silent rocks.

T
onight in her dream, instead of being way up high, Flor's only a few feet off the ground. It's not ground, though—it's water, all around. I can swim, Dream Flor thinks, except where is the shore? Somehow she knows the water is deep. In fact, it has no bottom. In her dream, she finally understands how this can be. It makes perfect sense that something can become nothing. Solid can give way to empty. Alive can become dead.

Flor sits straight up in bed. Her heart bangs inside her. In the mirror, her face is white as an egg.

Usually Cecilia gets a ride to school with Dad, and Flor and Thomas take their bikes. Today Flor says she wants a ride too. It's too cold, she says. You'd think this would raise eyebrows, since Flor has been known to bike in snowstorms, but Dad just says fine, and Cecilia just says she better be ready on time.

The fact that Flor has resolved not to let her sister out of her sight does not occur to either of them.

At school, Joe motions her over.

“You're not going to believe it. It's uncanny.”

Uncanny.
Uncanny?

He glances around the playground, like strange forces are on the loose. They could get ambushed at any moment.

“When Defoe called me inside on Friday? She was nice to me.”

“¡Dios mío!”

“She asked why I keep throwing rocks at the clock. And then, instead of biting my head off, she actually waited for me to answer. I was so surprised, I told her. And guess what. Uh-oh. Speak of the devil.”

Mrs. Defoe steps outside. Her brown jacket is
buttoned to her chin, but what is this? Around her neck is a yellow scarf. Not brownish yellow, but the pure yellow of buttercups. Knotted under her chin, the scarf reflects upward, just the way the flowers do.

Joe and Flor gape at each other.

“Uncanny,” whispers Flor. “Is that what uncanny is?”

“We had a conversation. I mean, an actual two-way deal. It turns out she hates the clock being broken too. She said this place should be a beacon of knowledge, but it's giving out inaccurate information. She said getting used to something can be the worst kind of ignorant behavior.” Joe pauses for breath. “She got pretty worked up. It was terrifying, like her body was host to an alien force.”

They turn to stare at their teacher.

“She said I was right; she bet my father could fix it. She said she knew he had it in him, and it's never too late.”

Flor watches Mrs. Defoe finger her bright scarf. Is it possible? Can their teacher be evolving?

“She said some more stuff,” Joe goes on. “About how every day is a new day . . .”

“With no mistakes in it yet,” finishes Flor.

Joe's eyes widen. “How'd you know?”

“It's from a book we both love.”

“
What?
You and her?”

Flor shrugs.

Joe laughs.

The very second school is over, Flor races out the door. She's waiting when Cecilia comes out, dragging her feet in their high-heel boots.

“Let's walk home together,” Flor says. “We haven't done that all year!”

“All right,” says her big sister.

“Why not? We can—Wait. Did you say all right?”

Cecilia rolls her eyes. She pulls out her lip gloss and coats her beautiful lips.

“Unless you want to go home with your friend.”

She points the lip-gloss tube. Jasper stands beside the lilac bush. Not
in
it. Beside it. She waves. Joe, his brothers, and his sister stream by, and Joe stops to do fist bumps. Which Jasper has no idea how to do, so he teaches her.

“I can't go with her.” To her own surprise, Flor's
disappointed. “I have to watch Thomas.” And
you
, she does not say.

“I'll watch him,” says Cecilia.

“You will?”

“What else have I got to do?” she snaps. “Name one thing!”

It'll be a long afternoon trying to stick to her. And if she's watching Thomas, she can't go anywhere. She can't do anything stupid or dangerous with him at her high heels.

So Flor and Jasper walk to the Red Robin Inn, which is more or less deserted. All the birders are gone by now. The two of them prowl around, peeking in the different rooms, trying out the beds, looking through a pair of binoculars someone left behind. Jasper makes them cocoa in the microwave. Dr. Fife's still out in the field, though not for long. The sun sets earlier and earlier, shrinking the afternoons.

They take their cocoa out on the porch and sit in the rockers. Jasper's got a new book, photos from the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin made some of his most important discoveries.

“See these giant tortoises? They can live to be two
hundred years old. Darwin rode on one's back and clocked its speed at approximately—”

Flor interrupts, pointing to a photo of a bird that resembles a Moonpenny Island cormorant, only with wings so small they're like feathered flaps. It is, Jasper the Endless Explainer explains, the flightless cormorant, a species endemic to the Galápagos, meaning it exists nowhere else. Its ancestors could fly, but once they arrived on their island, they had no predators. They no longer needed to make quick getaways, so little by little, over generations, their wings shrank.

“Wait. Wait a minute. They gave up flying?”

“Umm-hmm.”

“I'm sorry, but that's completely birdbrained. Who'd give up being able to fly?”

“The flightless cormorant, that's who. It's perfectly adapted to its environment.”

“But . . .”

“People think that evolution is all about getting stronger and bigger and faster. But no. Species evolve according to what they need. Not everyone needs to be big and powerful.”

Flor speeds up her rocking chair, like that will
make her brain work better.

“You can ask my father. Some of his favorite trilobites evolved to be blind.”

Flor stops rocking so abruptly she almost dislocates her head. “Now you're trying to trick me,” she says.

“Why would I do that?”

Flor stares at the empty road. Flossie Magruder trots out of the woods to sit in the middle of it and bite her fleas, serious work that commands every ounce of her attention.

“You wouldn't,” says Flor. “So you better explain.”

“It's simple. The ocean was getting crowded. There were more and more creatures who could swim fast, which meant increasing competition for food. Also, many more predators.”

Jasper pauses significantly. Predators. She and Flor are united in antipredatorism.

“Meanwhile, the bottom of the ocean floor had plenty of food. It had plenty of soft mud to burrow in and rocks to hide under. So some trilobites returned there. It was so dark that little by little, their eyes narrowed to slits, and then . . .”

“Eek!” Flor covers her own eyes to protect them. “I don't want to hear it! It's like a horror movie!”

“Not really. Their going back was better for everybody. Everybody got what they needed.”

To live forever in the dark? Who could possibly need that? Parting her fingers, Flor watches Flossie flop over in the road and roll on her back, paws tucked up, her yellow eyes nothing but slits. Slits of bliss.

Jasper is still talking. Her mother and her team have made a big discovery. They found a new species of toxodon, with bigger teeth and a heavier snout. The toxodontidae world is going wild. They may even name the species after her.

Flor tries to be polite. How cool, she says, but inside she's angry. Jasper's mother chose an extinct, big-snouted creature over her! And now she's famous! Is this fair? Is this justice? Meanwhile, sweet Dr. Fife is stuck with trilobites who evolved backward.

As if on cue, he putters around the bend in his golf cart. Flossie gives him the skunk eye, and he carefully tootles around her. He swings into the driveway, just missing the porch, and clambers out.
He's had another glorious day, little animalcules! His eyes twinkle. His socks droop. His white beard has grown so long, he could definitely pass for Santa, if he gained a hundred pounds. When he goes inside, he leaves a little shimmer of joy behind him on the porch.

“Your father's the happiest adult I ever met.”

“I know. It gets on my nerves sometimes.”

“Really? I wouldn't mind some happy parents, myself.”

They rock in their chairs. The day's light is dwindling fast.

“He loves what he does,” Jasper says. “Every day, he loves it. He's not in it for the fame. Darwin didn't do it alone, you know. You rarely hear about the other scientists who contributed to his theories, but he couldn't have done it without them. What Father finds out on Moonpenny could help unlock new secrets about the origins of species. That's enough for him, I guess.” Her deep laugh. “The trilobite's his hero! Try and get more humble than that.”

Flor thinks of her own father. Him and his unmappable ways of the heart. Out in the road,
Flossie Magruder quits scratching. Her ears go on high alert. Two seconds later, Perry Pinch's pickup zooms around the curve. Going way too fast. Way too fast! Middle of the road. Spitting gravel. Flossie freezes. Flor and Jasper leap from their rockers.

“Flossie!” they scream as one. “Look out!”

The old cat levitates, all four paws in the air. A blood-chilling yowl, a streak of fur hurtling into the ditch at the side of the road. A dust cloud where the truck was.