The Forget-Me-Not Summer (7 page)

“O
kay, act casual, but the eagle has landed,” Pilar said, and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. The girls were finishing their cheeseburgers. They were seated at a prime table at the Farmers Market, right near the French crepe place, which was where Alex Key was going to meet them. Sylvie had agreed to keep her distance as long as the girls stayed within her line of sight. She was drinking a milk shake at the 1950s diner counter, acting like she didn't know them, just like she'd promised.

“An American bald eagle!” Zinnie said, looking alarmed. “Where?” She was about to stand up when Marigold pulled her back into her seat. “What?” Zinnie asked. “They're very rare, especially in the Farmers Mar . . .” Zinnie trailed off when she saw the other girls laughing. “What?”

“‘The eagle has landed' is a code phrase. It means a cute boy just showed up,” Pilar said. “Alex Key. Marigold's future boyfriend.”

“Ooooh,” Zinnie said, “Alex Key.”

“Hey, ladies,” Alex said in his surfer drawl when he spotted them and approached the table.

“Heeeyyy,” they all answered at once.

“What's up?” he asked.

Pilar waited for Marigold to reply, but after a few awkward seconds passed, Pilar piped up. “Not much. Um, you know Marigold. This is her little sister, Zinnie.”

“Hi,” Zinnie said. “I've heard a lot about you.”

“A lot, huh?” Alex asked.

“A ton,” Zinnie answered.

Marigold and Pilar turned pink. “Well, we've just finished our dinner,” Pilar said, rising to the occasion. “Why don't Marigold and Alex get Presto Gelato, and Zinnie and I will get some pie?”

“Sounds good,” Alex said.

“But I want to get Presto—” Zinnie started to say.

Pilar pulled her away. “Nope, we're getting pie,” Pilar said.

“Oooh, right!” Zinnie said. “I just lo-o-o-ove pie!” Pilar giggled and looped her arms through Zinnie's.

“So,” Alex said to Marigold as they made their way toward Presto Gelato, “how's that TV show going? Are you, like, filming and stuff?”

“Not now,” Marigold said. “We're on hiatus.” Alex gave her a funny look. “A break.”

“Oh,” Alex said as they pushed through a crowd by a popular Mexican place. “That's cool.”

“I've tried all of the flavors except lavender honey,” Marigold said proudly.

“Why?” Alex asked.

“I just wanted to, I guess,” Marigold said.

“Girls are weird,” Alex said.

Marigold wasn't sure how to respond. She was proud of having tried almost every flavor and thought it was pretty interesting. They stood in the long line at Presto in complete silence for several minutes. Then, out of nowhere, Alex put an arm around her shoulder. What was she supposed to do? Put a hand on his back? Her limbs suddenly felt awkward and extra long, and she seemed unable to move them.

“What flavor do you think you're going to get?” she asked him, grateful that her mouth still worked, at least. She would need that later for kissing.

“S'mores,” he said.

“I love that kind,” she said.

“Course you do. It's awesome.” Alex smiled. “What are you going to get?”

“Lavender honey, of course,” she said.

“That sounds like soap,” Alex said. Marigold laughed. This was getting easier. He dropped his arm as they moved up in line, and while Marigold was
relieved to not have the heavy limb draped over her shoulder, she also kind of missed its being there.

They ordered their gelati and found seats at a table that was sort of off by itself. The conversation started to flow. It turned out that they both liked sushi, dogs that didn't lick too much, and Zuma Beach in Malibu. And lavender honey wasn't that bad. Under the table, one of Alex's knees touched hers. Then he closed his eyes and leaned toward her. Martin Goldblatt's kiss was on the verge of being completely erased from her life, replaced by a real first kiss with Alex Key, when Pilar rushed over, flustered and stressed.

“Oh, my God, there you are,” she said. “You've got to come quick. Zinnie is all puffy and itchy. Sylvie wants to take her to the hospital!”

“Did she eat a strawberry?” Marigold asked.

“Yes! Oh, God, oh, God! Yes!” Pilar said. “There are strawberries in the rhubarb pie!”

“She knows she shouldn't eat strawberries,” Marigold said.

“Is she going to die?” Pilar asked. “Because if I even breathe nut dust, I'm a goner.”

“No,” Marigold said, crumpling her napkin. “She's just going to look weird and get some hives.”

“Sylvie wants us to go,” Pilar said. Marigold didn't want to go. She wanted to stay. “Don't just sit there, Marigold. Hurry up.”

“Okay,” Marigold said. “Fine.”

“I'll see you around,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Marigold said, stood up, and gathered her purse. “Sure.”

Except she wouldn't. Because she was going to Massachusetts the next day. She was going to remain unkissed for the whole summer, and it was all Zinnie's fault. Luckily, she had a five-hour plane ride to think of how to get back at her.

“H
ey, Zin. It's time to wake up. We're leaving for the airport in twenty minutes,” Dad said, gently shaking her shoulder. Zinnie opened her eyes, which were still a little swollen from her reaction to the strawberries, and saw that the sky outside her window was purple dark. “I know it's early,” he said, “but we have to get a move on.”

Dad looked different this early in the morning, Zinnie thought. He seemed softer around the edges. Or maybe it was the medicine. She'd taken her allergy pills last night, and they always made her a little fuzzy the next morning. “Mom, Lily, and Marigold are downstairs eating breakfast. We thought we'd let you sleep in a little, but it's time to roll.” Dad put his coffee on the table and offered her his hands, but instead of leaping out of bed, Zinnie threw her arms around him.

“I'll miss you,” she said.

“I'll be thinking of you every day,” Dad said, and hugged her back.

“While you're up in the trees?”

“And camping under the stars. I'll look up and know that no matter how far away you are, we'll be looking up at the same moon.” Zinnie smiled at the idea. “Now, how about you wash your face and brush your teeth while I put your suitcases in the car. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and kicked off the covers.

“Is that all you have?” he asked, pointing to her roller bag and backpack. She'd packed shorts, jeans, undies, socks, T-shirts, her two favorite bathing suits, a couple of sweatshirts, sneakers, flip-flops, three
Night Sprite
books, a notebook and pen, and her hair goop, in case she had the courage to try it again.

“Should I have packed more?” she asked. “Mom said just the basics.”

“No,” Dad said. “It's just that Marigold is bringing three times this much.”

“Yeah, well,” Zinnie said, thinking about how Marigold hadn't said one word to her in the car ride home from the Farmers Market, “Marigold has issues.”

“We can talk about it downstairs,” Dad said, picking up her suitcase.

“I just need to pack up my laptop and charge my phone,” Zinnie said, plugging her phone into the charger. “I forgot to do it last night.”

“You won't need your computer, honey,” Dad said. “Why don't you leave it here? Go wash your face and come grab some breakfast when you're done. Berta came to say good-bye. She made pan dulce and your favorite, champurrado.”

“Mmm,” Zinnie said. Champurrado was a treat, and usually a wintertime one. Zinnie guessed that Lily had made a special request, and she was so glad. The idea of the warm, spicy cinnamon-and-chocolate drink made her momentarily forget about Marigold and her dirty looks.

But she couldn't forget for long. As soon as Zinnie entered the kitchen and took her usual seat at the table, Marigold stood up, brought her plate to the sink, and declared that she would be waiting in the car.

“By yourself?” Lily asked.

“We're leaving in five minutes,” Dad said. “Can you wait five minutes so that we can finish breakfast as a family?”

“No,” Marigold said, giving Berta a hug and kiss good-bye before she charged out the door.

Zinnie stood up to follow her, but Berta said, “Let her cool off,
mija
. She's almost a teenager, and teenagers need their space.” She ladled champurrado into Zinnie's favorite mug, the one with the Hollywood sign on it, and handed it to Zinnie. “Have some besos,” Berta said, nodding toward the basket of sugar-dusted pastries with raspberry jam filling.

“Thanks, Berta,” Zinnie said, already feeling a little better. Besos were Zinnie's favorite type of pan dulce.

“What happened between you two?” Mom asked, combing Zinnie's hair with her fingers and pulling it into a ponytail.

“She's mad that I ate a strawberry,” Zinnie said.

“Are you sure it's not something else?” Dad asked. Like a detective in one of the old movies they watched during Classics on Tuesdays, he could always sense missing information. “It takes two to tango, you know.”

“Or rumba!” Berta said, shaking her shoulders, and Lily laughed.

“You're going to have to try to get along for Aunt Sunny,” Mom said.

“I always try to get along,” Zinnie said. “She's the one who hates me!”

“She doesn't hate you, honey,” Mom said. “She loves you.”

“And she admires you,” Berta said from across the table as she sipped her champurrado. “She just doesn't know it yet.”

“Yeah, right!” Zinnie said. “Berta, that's crazy. She thinks I'm a dork.”

“Berta's not crazy!” Lily said. “She knows everything. She put the string back in my sweatshirt hood this morning using magic.”

“My angel!” Berta said, turning her attention to
Lily. “I'm going to need at least five more hugs before you go.”

“Five more, and then it's time to go,” Dad said as Lily and Berta began counting hugs aloud.

“One . . . two . . . ,” they counted together as they hugged.

“Come on, Zin. You can finish your breakfast in the car,” Mom said.

“Three . . . four . . . four and a half . . . four and three-quarters.” Berta and Lily continued as Zinnie wrapped her pan dulce in a napkin.

“How are we going to even know who Aunt Sunny is?” Zinnie asked, taking extra besos for the road. “What if we get in the car with the wrong lady?”

“Fiiiiive!” Berta and Lily said, elongating their final embrace.

“Sunny's not picking you up,” Mom said, grabbing her keys off the counter. “We didn't want her to have to drive to and from Boston in rush hour, so a driver is going to meet you at the airport in Boston to take you to Pruet. She'll be waiting for you with a big sign that has your names on it.”

“How long is the ride from the airport?” Zinnie asked, following Mom out the door as a million other questions rushed into her brain, like: What did Aunt Sunny usually make for breakfast? Could she make champurrado? Had Mom told her that they were allowed to watch TV after dinner and on weekends?
Did Aunt Sunny have lots of rules? Would they have to clean their rooms every day? Would she allow Zinnie to stay up late reading if she couldn't fall asleep? How many days exactly were they going to be apart from California and their parents and Berta and their bedrooms and all their stuff? How many hours, how many minutes would they be thousands of miles away from home?

W
hen they stepped off the plane and made their way to baggage claim, Zinnie spotted a round, smiley lady holding a sign that said
SILVER SISTERS
. At first she thought she was Aunt Sunny, but then Marigold reminded them that she was the driver and Pruet was an hour and a half away.

Once in the car, after they'd collected their luggage, Zinnie looked out the window and contemplated her situation. Lily was asleep in the middle, and Marigold was seated as far from Zinnie as possible, her face turned toward the opposite window.

The plane ride had been turbulent for Zinnie, and not just because they'd hit weather over the Rocky Mountains. And not just because her seat back wasn't reclining or because she'd finished rereading the one
Night Sprites
book in her carry-on somewhere over the
Mississippi River, forcing her to play tic-tac-toe with herself and make origami out of the pages of the in-flight magazines.

It had been a rough ride because Marigold was furious with Zinnie for getting in the way of her kiss, even though it had been a complete mistake on Zinnie's part. Marigold was refusing to even acknowledge her except for the one time she called her number two. Zinnie knew darn well that number two wasn't only her birth order. The punishment did not fit the crime, Zinnie thought, because there hadn't even been a crime. There'd only been a mistake.

Zinnie had tried to explain to Marigold at least five times that she hadn't realized that rhubarb pie had strawberries in it. She'd never had rhubarb. She didn't know what it was. Pilar had been raving about it to the point that Zinnie was going to feel like a jerk if she didn't get it. Zinnie knew she was supposed to ask if things contained strawberries, but a pie usually said exactly what it had in it. Peach pie had peaches. Apple pie had apples. Blueberry pie had blueberries. None of those pies had secret strawberries in them, so why should rhubarb? Did Marigold think that she liked breaking out in hives? That she enjoyed being itchy and swollen?

Or maybe it was about more than the kiss. After Marigold had walked off toward the gelato shop with Alex, Pilar and Zinnie had gone into a store
and Zinnie had held up an enormous bra and said in her best grown-up voice, “This will be perfect for my big bazoombas! Does it come with matching underpants?” Pilar had laughed so hard Zinnie thought she was going to wet her pants. It inspired Zinnie to keep going. She grabbed a pair of leopard-print underwear and said to no one in particular, “Which way to the zoo? I'm an animal!” This had sent Pilar to the floor in convulsions. Zinnie wished Ronald P. Harp had been there so he could see that in real life people liked it when she pulled faces.

She also wished Marigold had been there. She wished Marigold had been the one laughing.

Zinnie had always had a feeling that Pilar liked her a lot. Even though Zinnie was still in the lower school, which made her totally uncool to middle schoolers, Pilar talked to her every day, in the library or on the playground or in the locker room. It was almost like Zinnie and Pilar had their own friendship. After last night, when Pilar had laughed so hard that she cried, Zinnie was starting to wonder if Pilar liked her more than her own sister did. After the way Marigold ignored her or merely tolerated her, it had felt good to be appreciated.

As the driver turned off the freeway onto a smaller road, Zinnie had to admit that it had also felt good to get so much attention from Pilar, to take something away from Marigold.

“Almost there,” the driver said. They drove over a small bridge, down a long, leafy street, through a little town with an ice cream place, a café, a general store, some small shops, Ed's Fish 'n' Tackle, and a tiny post office. A little farther up the road was something called a boatyard. A yard for boats? As they rounded the corner, a harbor came into full view. This place was so different from Los Angeles, where the roads were big, even, and smooth; and the freeways, alive with speeding cars, crossed over and under one another like snakes; and tall palm trees guarded the sidewalks. As they bumped down the road, Zinnie felt as if they were in the pages of a book about summertime. The houses along the little road, which were covered in gray shingles and had bright white or red or green shutters and flowers in the window boxes, were like cottages. The water was dark blue, calm and sparkling. Sailboats crossed in the distance. The trees with their green canopies seemed just the type to be occupied by talking animals.

“I thought we were going far away from California,” Lily said.

“We are,” Zinnie said. “We're just about as far away as you can get and still be in America.”

“Then why is the ocean right there?” Lily asked.

“It's a different ocean,” Zinnie said.

“A different ocean?” Lily asked. Her face tightened
with fear as she held Benny close. They turned up a dirt road. On either side of them there was a stone wall made of big, round rocks that looked like it was going to topple over.

They rolled down a long driveway and pulled up in front of a small house. Zinnie opened her window all the way. The air smelled sweet and sunny and green. She saw a face in the window, and then the door flung open.