The Brightest Stars of Summer (13 page)

“Y
ou have to hang the tablecloths with the wind at your back,” Aunt Sunny said the next morning. She was demonstrating how to pin one of the freshly washed tablecloths to the clothesline that hung between two posts in the backyard. Zinnie, Marigold, and Lily watched. Zinnie had woken up early, and she and Aunt Sunny had washed most of the tablecloths and napkins in the delicate cycle of the washing machine. They'd washed some of the lacy ones in the sink and rolled them in towels to remove the excess water. Aunt Sunny continued, “Otherwise the tablecloth will wrap around and you'll get all tangled up, not to mention wet.”

Zinnie nodded as if she were paying rapt attention, but she couldn't stop thinking about Tony. She
hadn't yet been able to discuss what she'd overheard with Marigold and she really needed to. With any luck, she'd only have to wait a few more minutes. Lily was all packed and ready to go to camp, her Princess Arabella lunch box in her hand. Aunt Sunny had made sure to give Lily several extra cookies so that she'd have plenty to share. Lily had packed a pendant with a pressed flower inside so that she could show the kids at camp an example of the project she was working on at home. Now Zinnie was just waiting for Aunt Sunny to finish explaining what she called “the lost art of hanging the wash.”

“And it would be best if you two worked together so these tablecloths, which we've just made so nice and clean, don't touch the ground,” Aunt Sunny said, handing Zinnie a corner. “Zinnia, dear, you take one end and I'll take the other.” With a sure hand, Aunt Sunny pinned one corner of a white cotton tablecloth with a wooden pin, and Zinnie pinned the other. The tablecloth flapped in the early-morning sunshine like a loose sail. “It's a perfect day for hanging the wash. We have a good southeasterly breeze, and the bright sunshine will get rid of any lingering stains.” Aunt Sunny checked her watch. “I have to get to work and Lily needs to get to camp. We'll see you both this afternoon. Don't forget that the band will be rehearsing here later. Max is going to arrive a little early to work on the platform, so you should expect him
around ten or so.”

Zinnie and Marigold waved good-bye to Sunny and Lily. As soon as they were out of sight, Zinnie told Marigold what she'd heard. “I asked Aunt Sunny if Tony could just take the property once they were married, and she said that he couldn't.”

“Then none of this makes any sense. Tony is so nice. Are you sure you heard him right?”

“I mean, I think so. He called her an ‘old girl' and a ‘fixer-upper' and said something about putting on a ‘good act' until the wedding.”

“I know!” Marigold said. “Sometimes people call a boat or a car a girl's name. Maybe he's fixing up a car or a boat as a present for her?”

“I guess that's possible,” Zinnie said.

“It's the only thing that makes sense,” Marigold said.

“Maybe you're right,” Zinnie said. It
did
make sense. “See, this is why I needed to talk to you so badly last night. But you fell asleep before I had a chance.”

An hour later, Zinnie and Marigold had hung about half of the tablecloths and napkins and were ready to take a break. Marigold went inside to get them some lemonade and a snack.

“Boo!” a voice said, startling Zinnie. She turned to see Max, in a bright-green T-shirt and jeans, his great big smile almost wider than his face.

“I didn't even hear you!” Zinnie said, laughing.

“What are doing?” Max asked.

“Oh, nothing much, except hanging the wash,” Zinnie said. “It's a lost art,” she added, quoting Aunt Sunny. She couldn't help but feel happy when she looked at Max, whose eyes were sparkling. “Cool guitar. Can you play me something?”

“Sure,” Max said, “What do you want to hear?”

“How about a song for hanging the wash?” Zinnie said with a shrug.

“Okay,” Max said, and began to strum a happy tune. “We can make up the words as we go, because I don't know any songs about laundry.”

“Oh, oh, oh my gosh, we're hanging the wash,” Zinnie sang.

Max laughed and added: “Please, oh please, can I have some squash? It's what I like to eat when I hang the wash.”

Zinnie laughed and sang: “If you don't have squash, will you go ask Josh?”

Then they sang together: “Because squash is what we eat when we hang the wash.” They burst into laughter.

That was when Marigold returned with two cups of lemonade and a Ziploc bag of cookies.

“What are you guys doing?” Marigold asked.

Max's cheeks flushed. Marigold, however, barely seemed to notice him.

“We're making up a song,” Zinnie said. She pulled a tablecloth from the basket and went to hang it on the line. She was so taken with Max and his guitar that she forgot Aunt Sunny's rule. The breeze picked up and the wet tablecloth wrapped around her, soaking her shirt and shorts.

“Uh, be right back,” Zinnie said, handing the tablecloth to Marigold. She ran into the house and up to the attic bedroom. Not only was it uncomfortable to wear wet clothes, but also she was worried that her T-shirt was now see-through.

She opened her drawer to put on a dry T-shirt, but she saw that the drawer was almost empty. Since Marigold had been borrowing so many of her clothes, Zinnie hardly had any clean T-shirts left. She had a reputation in her family for packing light, sometimes too light, and with Marigold raiding her drawer, now she had nothing to wear. The only T-shirts in there were ones she wore to bed.

Normally
Marigold would flip out if Zinnie borrowed her clothes without asking, and
normally
Zinnie respected that. But things were different this summer. Not only did Marigold want to borrow Zinnie's clothes, she had simply been taking her stuff whenever she wanted to. Zinnie didn't mind. In fact, she was kind of flattered. And in light of this new way of doing things, Zinnie reasoned that it should be perfectly okay for her take something of Marigold's without asking. She
wondered why she hadn't thought of it until now. Her heart quickened at the idea of selecting one of Marigold's beautiful things. Maybe she would wear the teal tank top that she'd been envying since Marigold had brought it home from the mall. Or what about the cute pink button-down? Did she want to borrow a dress, even?

She opened Marigold's drawer, where everything was folded as if it were on a display table at the Gap. She reached in to pick out a blue T-shirt from the middle of pile when she felt something slim and hard between the T-shirts. She pulled it out, realizing that it was Marigold's iPad.

She looked out the window to see Marigold outside, hanging the napkins and chatting with Max. Zinnie tucked the iPad back in the drawer. She opened Marigold's closet and considered what to wear. She was curious about whatever Marigold was trying to conceal on the iPad, but she wasn't about to leave Marigold alone with Max any longer than she had to.

“N
ice dress,” Marigold said, her nose wrinkled, as Zinnie walked back outside, wearing her sister's sea-foam-green dress. Max was seated on a tree stump, playing Marigold a tune that sounded more serious than their laundry-hanging song, and Marigold was hanging napkins. Zinnie flinched at the sight of Max's adoring gaze set firmly on her sister, but she kept her composure as she strode toward them. She had a new look and she liked it.

Back in the bedroom, Zinnie had used her phone's camera to see what she looked like in the dress. She was surprised to see that the dress didn't just look
not terrible
on her, it looked good. Really good, actually. The color brought out the hazel of her eyes and set off her dark hair. And the hem hit her knees, just like it did on Marigold. She knew that she'd had a
growth spurt this winter—but had she had another one this spring? Because not only was she getting a little bit taller (her legs had definitely lengthened), her overall shape was changing, too. She appeared to have developed something of a waist. Had this all happened overnight? How had she not noticed until now? Zinnie decided that she loved this dress.

Zinnie and Marigold had different-sized feet (Marigold's were long and narrow, while Zinnie's were small but wide), so she couldn't wear any of Marigold's shoes. Her sneakers didn't look good with the dress at all, and the ballet slipper shoes that she was going to wear to the wedding were too dressy. So Zinnie decided that she was going to go out to the yard barefoot.

“Kind of dressy for hanging tablecloths, don't you think?” Marigold asked. Zinnie could tell that even though Marigold had been totally comfortable borrowing
her
clothes all week, she was still shocked at seeing Zinnie in her dress.

“As someone I know once said, a dress is suitable for any occasion,” Zinnie responded. “And since we share clothes now, I knew you wouldn't mind.”

Marigold opened her mouth to reply but quickly shut it.

“I think it's cool when girls don't dress up too much. Like you, Marigold. You're always wearing the kind of clothes that you can run around in and stuff,” Max said. Zinnie's spirits lowered a bit as she watched Max
focus on Marigold, who was wearing
her clothes
. “I hate getting dressed up. My parents sent me to private school one year and I had to wear a tie every day and I totally hated it.”

“I know what you mean,” Zinnie said. “I don't like dressing up either.”

“But you just said you liked dresses,” Max said, confused.

“But I didn't really mean that,” Zinnie said. “I meant—” She started to protest more, but stopped when she could feel that she was just making the situation worse. She usually didn't like wearing dresses. This one had been a total exception. As Max bent his head to tune his guitar, Zinnie looked to Marigold to back her up, but Marigold pointed to her sealed lips. Zinnie had told her not to talk to Max, but she didn't mean now, when Marigold could have helped her out.

“Then why'd you say it?” Max asked with curiosity.

“I don't know,” Zinnie said, shaking her head.

“Man, girls are so complicated,” Max said, and he looked longingly at Marigold. “Well, not all girls. Marigold, do you have any requests? I can play a lot of songs.” Marigold shook her head no. Max started to pluck a tune on his guitar and began to sing.

“There is a very shy girl I know, hey, hey, hey. She doesn't like attention, but I can tell she has a lot to say,” Max sang. “She doesn't care about dresses or makeup or what her hair looks like at all. She's from
a big city, but she's a country girl in spite of it all.”

Oh my goodness, he's singing about Marigold,
Zinnie thought. She watched Marigold pause in her laundry hanging and blush.

“Okay, so I rhymed ‘all' with ‘all,' but, hey, I'm making this up as I go along!” Max said playfully as Marigold hung the last of the napkins.

A shy girl?
Zinnie thought.
A girl who doesn't care about makeup and stuff? Please!
Zinnie wanted to put an end to the madness and yell, “This isn't true,” but she sensed that Max was set on liking Marigold no matter what.

It wasn't every day that Zinnie came across someone as fun and creative as Max. The fact that it was a boy who was her imaginative equal both didn't matter at all (a fun friend is a fun friend!) and mattered a ton (this was Zinnie's first boy-who-is-a-friend or possibly boyfriend). Why did Marigold have to interfere?

Tony's pickup truck rumbled down the driveway.

“Hi there, girls!” Tony called as he parked. He smiled and waved. If he was up to something suspicious, he was a really good actor. “And hello, Max!”

“Hi, Grandpa!” Max said, strumming his guitar.

“Hi, Tony,” Zinnie said as she and Marigold exchanged a quick look. “I was wondering, do you know how to fix up cars?”

“I sure wish I did know how, but cars aren't really my thing.”

“What about boats?” Zinnie asked. “Do you like to fix up boats?”

“I'm afraid not,” Tony said. “You're not going to believe this given where I live, but I'm not much of a sailor. More of a landlubber.”

“Interesting,” Zinnie said, pinching Marigold.

“Are you looking for a new mode of transportation?” Tony asked. “I could build you a skateboard if you like.”

“Grandpa built one for me this fall,” Max said. “I painted it black and red. It's so cool.”

“No, thank you,” Zinnie said. “I'm just trying to learn more about my new great-uncle.”

“Well, I'm an open book. So if you have any questions, just ask. Are you ready to get to work, Max?” Tony asked, pulling his own guitar out of the backseat. “And by work I mean play a little rock and roll.”

“Yup, I'm coming, Grandpa!” Max turned back to Zinnie and Marigold, flashed one of his sunbeam smiles, and said “I'll see you later.”

“See you later,” Zinnie said. Even though she had a story to write and a mystery to get to the bottom of, for the moment all she could think about was Max, and the way his smile made something inside her melt like ice cream in the sun.