Moonpenny Island (19 page)

“Did he hit her?” Flor whispers.

They stare at the ditch. Be alive, be alive! One beat. Two. Three. Cautiously, a pair of mangy triangles rises over the edge. With a cry from the underworld, that cat vanishes among the trees. Yes! High fives! Flor and Jasper collapse into their rockers, panting with relief.

“He could've killed her!”

“Killed her and not even know!”

“Not even care!”

“He's the most reckless boy I've ever observed.”

Anger shoves relief out of the way. Flor jumps back up and punches the air around.

“I wish a predator would devour him! I wish he'd go extinct! I wish—”

“Who was with him?”

Flor freezes midpunch.

“Nobody. Who'd be brainless enough to ride with Perry Pinch?”

Jasper stares. Her mouth goes small as a nickel. “Right next to him.” Her voice is hushed, as if Flor's the one who nearly became roadkill. “You didn't see?”

Flor saw. Of course she did! She throws herself down in the rocker, flings her hands over her eyes, only it's no use. Maybe some creatures can choose to go blind, but not Flor.

“It was your sister, wasn't it? Is she in love with him?”

They were arguing. The heat in their faces, the pent-up anger in their bodies. Arguing, just like Mama and Dad.

Flor leaps back up. Thomas! Cecilia is supposed to be watching him! Did she leave him on his own? Has she gone that brainless? Flor runs down the steps.

“Flor, wait! I'll get Father to drive you.”

Within moments he's outside, shrugging on his
jacket, revving up the cart, following her directions without a single question. When they jolt to a stop at Flor's, she jumps out. Waving over her shoulder, she sees them looking back with twin faces of concern. If she had time, she'd run back and hug them both.

“Call if you need us!”

“Thomas?” She bangs open the front door. “Thomas? Where are you?”

No reply.

He's not a hiding kind of boy. Call his name, and he's there. Flor's brain, rattling around from Dr. Fife's driving, grows still. She walks from room to room, just in case, looking under beds and behind closet doors. In Cecilia's room she takes the time to knock everything off the desk.

Where? Moonpenny is suddenly big. Enormous. Flor has her bike out, ready to start searching, when she gets another idea. Back inside, she dials Cecilia's cell. Amazingly, her sister answers. Flor can't speak.

“Flor? Dad?” Cecilia's anxious. “Hello?”

“Where are you?” Flor manages to croak. “What do you think you're doing?”

“I'm at the library.”

“No, you're not! You liar! You left him! He's gone! He could be drowned, he could be stuffing things up his nose and suffocating. He—”

“Thomas, you mean? He's right here. I took him to after-school arts and crafts.”

“What?”

A pause.

“Hi, Flor,” says Thomas. “I made you a thing.”

“Now do you believe me, you insane person?” says Cecilia, and hangs up.

Your brother almost ran over Flossie Magruder
.

Flor hits
SEND
fast, before she can change her mind.

Then waits. Sylvie has to answer. She can't ignore feline-icide, not tenderhearted Sylvie, who rescues worms from puddles and weeps over squished squirrels.

Cecilia and Thomas come home, and Thomas gives Flor a mess of glued-together Popsicle sticks. Cecilia's eyes are red and puffy. She feels sick. She has
a headache and a stomachache, and from the chilly look she throws Flor, you'd think it was all Flor's fault.

So she didn't leave him alone. But she left him, all right. There's no trusting her, not at all. Her sister is a complete stranger. Who knows what she'll do next?

Flor keeps checking the computer. But the rest of the night goes by and . . . nothing.

Just before Dad says to turn it off for the night, Flor checks one last time. And there it is. In purple font.

“I have to tell you a secret.”

T
he next afternoon, Cecilia comes straight home, goes to her room, and locks the door. When Flor puts her ear to it, she hears brokenhearted music. She hears crying. Not really. She
feels
crying, right through the sturdy door Dad hung to give Cecilia her privacy.

Flor leans against the wall. She has the phone. She's guarding it, knowing Sylvie will call. All day she's tried to think what the secret could be, and she can't. Because transparent as just-washed glass—that's how the two of them are.

The phone rings!

But it's Jasper, who's never called Flor before. Over the phone, her voice sounds even deeper than in person. She's calling to say they have set their departure date. One week from today.

“The forecast is for the weather to turn much colder. Father says work conditions will be too difficult.”

Flor pictures their attic room. That wild sea of rocks and maps, filmy dust and dirty dishes, specimens in every stage of discovery. Dr. Fife at his worktable,
tap tap tap
ping with his little troll hammer. Jasper in her crazy-big clothes, the president of the Charles Darwin Fan Club.

You'd think you'd get used to having people leave you. Instead, it only gets harder and harder. Flor slides down the wall and sits on the floor.

“Flor?”

“I . . . I have to hang up. I'm expecting a really important phone call.”

This is so rude. Beyond rude. What is wrong with her mouth?

“Oh,” says Jasper. “All right.”

A predator, that's what Flor feels like, big and bad. Suddenly she's boiling over with anger. It's like she gets mad at herself on behalf of Jasper, which makes zero sense.

“Jasper, by every rule of friendship, you have the right to be furious at me!”

A pause.

“I guess I never learned those rules,” says Jasper.

“You need to! You definitely need to learn them!”

“All right! Okay!”

They hang up. Did they just have a fight? Decide to be friends? How can things get so complicated with a person who only ever speaks the truth?

The phone rings again.

“I'm sorry,” she begins.

“Flor!”

“Mama. Oh, Mama.”

“Titi Aurora told me you called.”

Flor goes into her room and shuts the door. She wants Mama all to herself.

Tonight, no shouting aunts or laughing cousins in the background. No music or TV. Just Mama, her voice clear and familiar as if she's standing in her spot
beside the sink, her paring knife flashing like she's slicing up light itself.

Mama asks about school, and Flor tells her that today Mrs. Defoe wore a pink blouse. Mama laughs. She wants to know how it's going without Sylvie, and Flor tells her terrible. Then she says she met a girl who's in love with Charles Darwin, who was in love with islands and spurting beetles and birds who can't fly. She explains that species evolve depending on what they need, so some of Darwin's finches had fat beaks, but on other islands they had long beaks. Mama says that's interesting, tell her more. Flor tells her it's not about becoming the biggest or smartest. Dr. Fife says every creature is important. Everyone needs something and everyone has something to give. Just like Dad says about the island.

Mama says, “Oh, Flor.” And goes quiet for a while.

It's the longest they've talked since Mama left, and it's all about Flor. Not Cecilia, not Thomas, just her. It's nice. It's so nice. It's as nice as when Mama was here, almost.

At last Mama says she's had time to think. To really think.

“I'll be home this weekend,” she says.

For good?
The words scald Flor's tongue. They explode in her mouth. But she's too chickenhearted to let them out.

“Good,” she whispers.

Mama doesn't ask to talk to anyone else. It's like Flor was enough. After they say good-bye, Flor pulls on her jacket and, phone in hand, goes outside. The stars are pinwheels. It's like the quarry, only spread across the sky, light blazing, shining out from so far away, so long ago, from stars that may no longer exist. Things that are here but aren't.

The phone comes alive in her hand.

“Sylvie!” This time it's really her. “I'm sorry! My mother called and . . .”

“It's okay. Only I can't talk long.”

Flor's nervous legs want to pace, but a few feet from the house, the connection dies.

“I'm wearing my wild horses T-shirt,” Sylvie says.

“Me too!”

“My aunt actually threw it away, but I rescued it.”

“We need to get new ones.”

“Flor.” Sylvie's voice breaks. “Is Flossie okay?”

“She's fine. She's probably got nine hundred lives left. At least.”

“That's good.”

“I know.”

“I never told you what happened,” Sylvie says. “Why I came here.”

But she did tell. This can't be the secret.

“Your parents think our school isn't good enough, that's why.”

“I only told you part, Flor.”

The connection dies, and Flor scuttles back toward the house in time to hear Sylvie say, “. . . the rest. You know what Daddy says now? He wants me to be an engineer! Actually, he says I
will be
an engineer! Even though I still hate math. Hate it! I decided I'm going to be a sculptor.”

“Really? Sylvie, that's so cool! Why didn't I think of that? It's perfect for you!”

“When I told Daddy, he said I'm too young to know what I want. He said I'll grow out of it. Flor, I'm growing
into
it. Why can't he see that?”

Anger is Flor, not Sylvie. But her voice shakes with it, eleven-plus years' worth of it. It's like anger
is the secret she's kept inside, the way the blue-and-green Earth hides her fiery core.

“Now I know why he and Perry fight so much. I used to wish Perry would just do what Daddy said, but now I know. He can't. Oh, Flor, how'd it get to be such a big mess?”

“What are you talking about, Syl?”

“My family. It's been messed up for a long time, and this summer . . . Perry kept getting in more and more trouble, and then he said he was going to quit school, and my father said no way, and they were yelling at each other all the time, and my mother started getting drunk even in the daytime.”

“What?” Flor misheard. “What did you just—”

“That's why I never wanted you to come over.”

Flor looks up. The pointy stars spear a passing cloud.

“They call it her bad habit, like she bites her nails or watches too much TV. It's the same as saying somebody
passed
because you can't stand to say the truth. They
died
.”

The stars shred the cloud.

“It kept getting worse, Flor. She'd turn into this
horrible crying mess. Or else she'd just sit and stare at the wall like a zombie.”

How could Flor not have known this? She can't believe her best friend carried around a secret this terrible.

“My father blamed Perry. He said it's because Perry is such a big disappointment to Mom. And Perry said my father's a bully and a dictator and no wonder my mother's so lonely. I don't know which one of them's right, Flor! It doesn't even matter. Because she just keeps drinking.”

Mrs. Pinch, always perfect, always beautiful. Flor was so used to seeing Sylvie's mother that way, she never saw . . .

“One night Perry and Dad started fighting for real. Pushing and shoving each other. Grabbing and shoving each other, getting madder and madder. I tried to get them to stop, I begged them and begged them, but they wouldn't.”

“Didn't your mother do anything?”

“She was passed out by then.”

Mrs. Pinch, so perfect. Mr. Pinch, so powerful he owns the Earth's guts. Even for the Pinches, it had to
be hard to keep a secret like this. “That boy's life is harder than people think,” Dad said. Did Dad know? Is that why . . . ?

“They both have such bad tempers, Flor. It was the most . . . I couldn't stand it. I had to stop them. And we were upstairs, and you know the stairs, you know how they're slippery . . .”

The stairs in the Pinches' house are made of marble. Special marble Mr. Pinch ordered from a quarry in Italy.

“And my father told me to get out of the way, but Perry shoved him, and I don't know, one of them . . . maybe both of them . . . They didn't mean it! But somehow I fell down the stairs.”

“No! No no no.”

“They were both so sorry.” The anger drains from her voice. “They got me ice, and gave me Tylenol, and they kept saying they were sorry sorry sorry. Perry about died.” Her voice hushes, like this might be her fault. “He'd never hurt me on purpose. Never.”

“Only he did!” Flor cries. “On purpose or not! And you forgive him, right? You love him no matter what.”