Moonpenny Island (6 page)

“And you have to pick,” says Sylvie. “Or else you're in the out group.”

“Which one will you pick?”

“I don't know!”

“You should go for popular.”

“Then in French, the teacher only spoke French! I couldn't understand a single word. And in math they might as well have been speaking another language
too. By the end of the day, I just wanted to come home. I mean, real home.”

Flor's sitting in the hallway on the bottom step, her family ebbing and flowing around her. She's waiting for Sylvie to ask about her day—her long list of complaints is all prepared. First, though, Sylvie needs cheering up.

“Tell me something good.” This is what Dad says to her when she's feeling blue. “There had to be at least one thing good.”

“Well, the art room.” Sylvie describes the tall windows and the cabinets brimming with paints and paper, and how you can learn to make jewelry or throw pots or carve wood. They even have welding supplies, to blast metal into sculptures. She goes on so long that Flor at last has to interrupt.

“Someone spied on me at recess.”

“What?”

“A new kid came the day you left. On the very same ferry.”

“Like reincarnation?”

“I haven't seen her since. I heard her father's a geologist or something and they're staying at the inn. Maybe it was her.”

“Why would she spy? How come she doesn't have to go to school?”

They speculate as Cecilia drifts through the hallway, cell phone in hand, holding her head like a birder listening for a rare species. Even when drifting, Cecilia has perfect posture. Thomas thunders down the steps, leaps over Flor, and keeps on going. Mama yells to halt in the name of the law! Thomas tries “We'll see about that,” but there's no escaping the long arm of Mama. Never, ever. Mama takes him prisoner, and he's on his way to the bathtub. Flor's fingers are going bloodless, she's been holding the phone so long.

“Flor?”

Uh-oh
. Flor can hear what's coming.

“So, did you . . .”

“He ditched, Sylvie.”

“What? On the first day?”

Sylvie sounds heartbroken. If that idiot Perry stood in front of Flor now, she'd pinch his head off. Ha! Pinch!

The second she hangs up, the phone rings again.

“Don't worry! If he doesn't come to school tomorrow, I'll . . .”

“Flor? It's you?”

“Oh, Lita.
Hola
.”

Her grandmother doesn't waste time on greetings but launches into a cross-examination of whether Flor is taking those iron pills, not to mention if she's studying hard in her pitiful island school. Lita and the aunts never come to Moonpenny. They act like people here live in huts and eat fish blubber. Toledo, the city—that's their idea of paradise. In the background, aunts and uncles and cousins laugh and talk, Spanish and English flitting around each other like crazy-bright butterflies. Mama's family is big, and they all live near one another. They act devastated when, after a visit, Mama packs up to return here. They act as if they thought this time for sure Mama would come to her senses and stay. Riding home to Moonpenny, where she's the only one who knows how to sing or pray in Spanish, the only one who checks anything other than Caucasian on forms, Mama stays quiet for miles and miles. Their car feels crowded with the relatives—you can almost hear their voices, almost feel their arms around you, and Flor, Cecilia, and Thomas keep quiet too, careful not to break the spell. Dad slips Mama sideways glances,
his eyes apologetic. Not till the car rolls off the ferry and onto the island does Mama give her shoulders a brisk shake and start to issue orders about unpacking and chores.

Today Lita has a cold and keeps clearing her throat. When Mama takes the phone, her forehead accordions up.

“Are you sick?” she asks, immediately worried, and switches into Spanish.

Flor leans back against the stairs. So many people in this world miss other people. Cecilia drifts by again, anxiously listening for that rare birdsong, not glancing at Flor, and Flor thinks you can even miss people who are right in front of you.

That night, Flor sends Sylvie an email.

We have to make a plan. Can you bump your head and pretend to go delusional? They'd send you home for sure.

F
lor and Misty trot down Lilac Lane, out onto Shore Road, past Pinch Paving and Stone. Past the Pinches' big house, which, now that it's Sylvie-less, makes Flor think
mausoleum
, though she's not sure what that is. Trot into town, where Flossie Magruder the gangster cat sits on the front steps of the post office, licking her big paw. The last of the fairy roses still bloom, each a perfect doll's bouquet. A lone seagull does its goofy, backward-knee walk along the shore. The single faithful stoplight blinks, though there's not a car in sight. She pokes her head
into Two Sisters just to say hello. Queenie looks up from her sudoku and smiles.

“What's up?” she asks.

“The sun,” Flor says.

Every time, they say this.

Flor steps back outside. An empty chip bag skips across the sidewalk and hugs her ankle like it wants company. Except for the distant din of the quarry, it's perfectly quiet. The way born and bred islanders like it. Just how they like it. Exactly.

A flock of birds streaks overhead, in a hurry to get out of town.

A few days later, Flor's once more a solitary rock in the river of recess when the graveyard lilac starts to shimmy. Tucking her book under her arm, she darts across the road.

“Hello in there.”

The bush does not reply.

“You're not a very good spy. Plus, guaranteed you won't see anything much.”

“I'm not spying.” The voice is surprisingly deep. “And there is plenty to see.”

“Really? Like what?”

“You're the one who lives here. Shouldn't you know?”

“That's rude.”

“I'm not spying. I'm observing. Which, FYI, is step two in the scientific method.”

“I know that. FYI, step one is pose a question. Such as, ‘Why am I talking to a lilac bush?'”

Is that a laugh? Or a disgusted grunt? It's impossible to tell when gazing into branches and leaves instead of a face. Across the road, Mrs. Defoe calls her name.
“Flor!”
She makes it sound like something you walk on.

“Gotta go.” Flor races back to the school yard.

“Have you forgotten the rules?” Her teacher's brown arms are crossed. Her brown toe taps. “No leaving school grounds without permission.”

I was discussing the scientific method
, Flor could say. Across the road, the lilac quivers. A hiking boot with red laces pokes out. Strange. Exceedingly strange. Flor has to smile.

“You're a sixth grader now.
The
sixth grader. The legacy of an entire class rests on your shoulders.” The
way Mrs. Defoe is positioned, the clock tower appears to jut straight out of her head. “Are your shoulders capable of that responsibility, Flor O'Dell?”

“Sorry,” says Flor. “I mean, yes.”

Mrs. Defoe leans forward. The clock tower is now an extension of her spine.

“I ran into Mrs. Pinch the other day.” She sniffs as if detecting an unpleasant odor. “I hear Sylvie's new school is far superior in every way. Is what I hear.”

“Sylvie actually hates it there.”

Mrs. Defoe smiles. Smiling changes anyone's face, but hers gets a total makeover. Her twelve million wrinkles flatten, and her big teeth flash in the sun.

“Is that what she told you?”

“She'd come back in a heartbeat if she could.” Maybe it's not exactly what Sylvie said. But close enough.

“She's not impressed by all those fancy bells and expensive whistles? Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Not surprised in the least. Give me the old-fashioned ways any day, and twice on Sunday.”

A loud
clunk
turns them both around. Joe Hawkins just threw a rock at the clock tower. Mrs.
Defoe's face becomes a mask of horror. Can the boy have lost his mind? Yes, because look, he's picking up another rock! But before he can let it fly, a rusted-out van clanks to a halt in the parking lot, and out shambles his father. Mr. Hawkins drank his lunch at the Cockeyed Gull again—the scientific method is not required to deduce this. Joe drops the rock. He grabs his father's arm. Whatever he says makes Mr. Hawkins square his shoulders. Straighten up and grab his toolbox.

Mrs. Defoe shakes her head slowly.
Tch tch
. “He was once a promising student.”

“He still is!” says Flor.

“I mean
Mr
. Hawkins.” Her teacher sighs. The million wrinkles make a comeback. “He had a natural aptitude for math. He could have taught me a thing or two, believe it or not.” She speaks like a person recalling something lost and precious. “But somewhere along the way . . .”

“You can't map the ways of the heart,” says Flor, a statement that makes most adults smile. But Mrs. Defoe's penciled-on eyebrows shoot up.

“Teachers take their pupils' fates to heart, Flor
O'Dell. When a student squanders his God-given gifts, we see it as our own failure.”

Jocelyn Hawkins, lone kindergartner, skips across the grass. She taps her father with her golden wand, then slips her hand into his. Her smile says,
You are the sun and I am a planet
. Don't try and tell Jocelyn her father is a loser.

The three Hawkinses climb the front steps, passing Cecilia, who huddles against the building with her cell phone to her ear. Her free hand's in front of her face, like she's casting a spell of invisibility. And it works. Cell phones are against school rules. But somehow Mrs. Defoe doesn't see. Somehow nobody ever sees Cecilia doing anything wrong.

Except Flor. She sees. And wishes she didn't. Because one, Cecilia never breaks rules, and two, who in the world can she be calling?

The deep voice of the lilac echoes inside Flor.
There is plenty to see. You live here—shouldn't you know that?

“I'm not in any group,” Sylvie says that afternoon on the phone.

“You're in my group. Our group. The group of you and me.”

“I'm the only one with unpierced ears. And unbraces teeth. And uncool music on my iPod.”

“Un is good, Sylvie. Unusual. Who wants to be like everybody else? Of course, it's a lot easier to be unusual here on good old Moonpenny, where everybody knows you, and won't judge you based on stupid superficial stuff like your ears or your—”

“Perry dropped out of school!”

Flor's heart tumbles into her shoes. Perry hasn't come to school once, but she figured he was sick, or faking he was sick, or something.

“He quit! My mother called and told me.”

Flor leans against the kitchen sink. She promised to look out for him. Is this her fault? This is her fault.

“My mother wants me to talk him out of it, but he won't answer his phone.” Sylvie's voice trembles. “Flor, I'm not supposed to tell anybody. Okay?”

Like they're going to be able to keep this a secret? Confused, Flor looks through the window over the sink. Cecilia's out there, lying on Mama's lounger. Flor stares at her sister, tries to think of what to say.

“Daddy's ready to kill him. He's more worried what people will say about the mayor's son being a dropout than he is about Perry. What kind of father cares more about gossip than his own son?”

Whoa. It's anti-Sylvie to criticize anyone, even her own parents. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but it's making hers grow tougher. Flor stares out the window. Cecilia's eyes are closed, and between her fingers is a sprig of something pink. She doesn't move a muscle. Flossie Magruder, that thug of a cat, crouches in the grass, watching her.

“Flor! You're not saying anything.”

“Oh. . . . I mean . . . why's he quitting?”

“He hates it. School's even harder for him than for me. Daddy says that's because he's lazy and doesn't try. Daddy says . . .” Sylvie breaks off, like she's said more than she meant to. Like there's still more she's not supposed to tell. “Anyway. Perry says everybody expects him to mess up. ‘Why disappoint people?' he says.”

“Perry shouldn't blame other people for his troubles.” Mama's voice comes out of Flor's own mouth. “It's his fault.”

Sylvie goes quiet. Not comfortable, best-friend kind of quiet. In the background, Flor can hear a barking dog and the honk of a car horn. Sylvie's outside, under the very same September sky, only now it feels like she's on another planet, hurtling around a different star. Flor turns the water on, turns it off. Out the window lies Cecilia. She looks just like Mama when Mama was a girl, Lita says.

“My mother said Perry didn't come home last night.” Sylvie's voice could fit inside a thimble. “Have you seen him, Flor?”

“No.” What a pathetic word. Flor toes the worn spot Mama's feet have made in front of the sink. “I'm sorry. I know I promised to look out for him.”