The Year My Sister Got Lucky (6 page)

“The morning is wiser than the evening”
goes an old Russian saying that Mom taught us ages ago. When I was little, I didn’t understand that expression, but this morning — my first in Fir Lake — I get it.

Because, as I pull back my makeshift curtain to see the daylight, I feel, if not smarter, than at least saner than I did last night. The sky is scrubbed clean, a blue so bright it blinds, and I can see mountains in the distance.
They’re pretty
, I think. The house next door, home of our mystery neighbor, seems plain and innocent, its shutters open to let in the cool air that hits my face when I open my own window.

I turn around to look at my new room, and again I feel wiser. When I put up decorations and put down a rug, this square little space might be almost … pleasant. And the first things I’ll hang up, I decide,
will be the ballet photograph from Trini, and my subway map from home.

On my bed, I see the crease in the sheet from where Michaela slept. Earlier this morning, I heard her creeping out of the room, carrying the tray with our empty mugs. Knowing my sister, she’s been on the floor of her room ever since, stretching in her ballet gear with her hair in a severe bun. If we were still in the city, we would be on our way to Anna Pavlova now, and Michaela believes that it’s dangerous to go too long without practice.

As I slip out of my room, even The Monstrosity seems friendlier. The oak walls are colored amber by the sun, and there’s no more suspicious groaning. When I pass the spiral staircase that leads up to the attic — a place I plan to explore later with Michaela — I strain my ears for Mom’s and Dad’s loud voices downstairs. They’ve got to be brewing coffee or wrestling with furniture. But all I can hear are faint birdcalls from outside. Maybe in a house this size, we don’t have to hear one another all the time.

Which is sort of nice.

And is also why I can’t tell that Michaela is listening to music at top volume until I open the door to her bedroom.

My sister is not in tights and a leotard. She’s wearing her denim shorts from yesterday and a green halter top that I think is new, and her hair is loose and freshly washed. And though she is dancing, it’s not
the kind of dancing that Svetlana would really approve of. Michaela’s iHome, set up on her desk, blasts old Pussycat Dolls —
“Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”
— and she is writhing her hips and rocking her head from side to side, her damp hair slapping her back. I stand there openmouthed because I have never seen my sister dance like this before — and she’s really, really good at it.

How?

For a second, I wonder if Michaela’s been sneaking out to dance clubs at night — there are tons not far from our old apartment, along Delancey and Rivington streets. But I would have heard her leaving our room. And Michaela wouldn’t sneak out without telling me.

“Uh, Michaela?” I say when I find my voice, and she spins around.

“Oh, Katie!” she exclaims, her eyes widening. “How long were you — I was just — um — unpacking….” She bites her lower lip, then smiles. “And, you know, getting some exercise.” Blushing, she hurries over to her desk to shut off the music, and I watch her, feeling as if I’ve interrupted a moment I wasn’t meant to see. There’s something awkward about the silence in the room when the music stops, but that’s just stupid. Michaela and I are never embarrassed in front of each other.

I glance around and notice that her room already looks lived in, with a (new) periwinkle rug on the
floor and her dresses and jeans hanging neatly in her walk-in closet. I vaguely remember the trips Michaela and Mom took to Crate and Barrel a week before the move. They invited me to join them, but I opted for taking one of my long walks instead, and was only a little envious when they returned laden down with bags and boxes. Now, I see that Michaela even got new bookshelves — beautiful creamy-white ones that run floor to ceiling. She’s obviously in the middle of arranging them; a carton of books seems to have exploded on the floor.

Michaela has tons of books. In the city, our bedroom shelves were heavy with mostly
her
novels, though I did fit a few of mine in there as well. When you grow up with a professor mom and a writer dad, it’s kind of hard
not
to accumulate a lot of books. But Michaela and I have very different tastes; Michaela likes serious stuff by James Joyce and Joyce Carol Oates and other writers possibly named Joyce. I prefer old-fashioned romances like
Wuthering Heights,
or ghost stories about tragically beautiful women.

I wouldn’t mind being tragically beautiful someday. I think that might be fun.

“Hey, I have something for you,” Michaela is saying, still looking somewhat pink in the face as she crosses the room toward her window. Her view is striking — our back garden is wild with bushes and flowers and plants I can’t identify. Everything looks a little unkempt, and I remember that greenery needs
tending to; like the house, the garden is a fixer-upper. I just hope our parents don’t expect me and Michaela to take care of it. I’m so bad with plants that I killed a cactus Mom got me for my twelfth birthday. (Though, really, who gets their daughter a
cactus
? All I wanted was a satin envelope clutch, but that never came through.)

While Michaela begins rifling through a stack of rolled-up posters, I wander over to the jumble of books and bend down. Most of the names on the spines I’m glad not to share a room with anymore — Kafka, Camus, Carver. In other words: Yawn, yawn, and yawn. Then I see a book that sticks out from the rest — a picture book. How did
that
get mixed up in there? I take hold of the tattered spine, reading the title on the faded jacket:
City Mouse, Country Mouse: An Aesop Fable.

Memory rushes at me, smelling of bed linens and Mom’s Chanel perfume. Some nights when Michaela and I were growing up, while Dad wrote in the kitchen, we would snuggle into bed with our mom. The three of us would read the story of two mice who switch lives — the city dweller goes to the country, and vice versa. The moral was that, in the end, each mouse was happier with his old life. I remember studying the illustrations in the book and wondering why the city mouse would ever want to leave in the first place.

I get a shiver down my spine.

“I didn’t know you had this,” I say, turning to face Michaela with the book in hand, just as she’s turning to me, saying, “Here you go!”

The poster she’s holding out to me is the one of Ethan Stiefel that used to hang over her bed. I get the usual heart-skip from seeing Ethan’s gorgeousness, but I’m also confused. “You’re giving it to
me
?” I ask. Ethan was always hers — the guy she was going to meet when she was accepted into the American Ballet Theater, marry, and have lots of ballet-dancing babies with. I would live in the apartment next door with my not-quite-as-famous-dancer husband.

“Happy move-in day,” Michaela says, handing me the poster as she takes
City Mouse, Country Mouse
from me. “I’ve been selfish. I think it’s time you had Ethan all to yourself.”

I roll up the poster and feel a prickle of delight, knowing I’ll now get to stare up at His Hotness every night. Then I notice that Michaela is eyeing
City Mouse, Country Mouse
with a frown.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to pack
this
,” she says, turning the dusty pages. “It was in the throwaway pile back home.” She snaps the book shut, then looks up at me with a nostalgic smile. “Remember how much we loved this book? It’s so cute. Anyway, I’ll donate it the local library.”

“Michaela!” It’s weird, but there’s this part of me that feels like the book in her hands is our entire childhood. Or maybe I’m being overdramatic again.

Michaela reaches out to squeeze my arm, and her face is a mix of sympathy and amusement. “Katie, what’s the big deal? Neither of us is going to read this book
now
. This is what people do when they unpack. They figure out what they don’t need.” She lifts her bare shoulders and raises her brows at me.

I swallow down my hurt, but I’m surprised that my sister doesn’t want to keep some reminder of the past. My eyes travel over her shiny new furniture, and I feel relieved that she’s left me with our old stuff. I like to hang on to things. The contents of my drawers back home — which are now jammed into some unopened box — were a chaos of movie ticket stubs, bent MetroCards, gum wrappers, Duane Reade receipts…. Throwing anything away makes me sad. It’s like saying good-bye.

Michaela gives one of her big-sister sighs, and from her expression I know that
my
expression is sour and pouty. “Keep the book, Katie,” she says, passing it back to me. “I never knew it meant so much to you.”

“It doesn’t!” I say quickly, even as I press the book to my chest along with the Ethan Stiefel poster. “Whatever — I should go unpack, too — get my room in order —” Now, it’s my turn to blush as I wheel around and start for the door. The absolute last thing I want to do today is open my boxes and organize. I want to do what I’d normally do on a late summer weekend: Pick up iced caramel macchiatos from the corner Starbucks with Michaela, buy
Teen Vogue
from
the Universal News across the street, walk to SoHo and window-shop along Spring Street….

Of course I can still do all that stuff today.

In my
head
.

“Wait, Katie,” Michaela calls out before I leave her room. “I need extra Scotch tape, so I was hoping you’d come into town with me.”

Town?

I pause and feel my ears prick up, like I’m a puppy hearing the word
walk.

Sure, I knew Fir Lake was a “town,” but I figured that town was made up of the farmstands we saw yesterday. Now, it dawns on me that there’s an area here that we didn’t drive through, an area where one can actually purchase Scotch tape. And Scotch tape could lead to thumbtacks and to chewing gum and to shoe stores and to iced coffee and to movie theaters and streetlights….

My spirits soar. There’s hope after all.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m showered, dressed, and hurrying down the staircase, my wooden wedge heels clicking against the oak. I decided to get a little fancy for town; I’m wearing a dark pink tunic over lacy brown leggings, with ropes of pink beads. I’m hoping Michaela and I can do some shopping today, since I need something even more outstanding for the first day of school.

The first day of
high school.

Which, I realize as my stomach jumps, is only
about a week away. I’ve been so distracted by The Monstrosity that I haven’t given much thought to the
other
beast looming on the horizon. But I forget about school as I weave through the boxes in the living room and hear soft voices snaking out of the kitchen. Mom and Michaela are in there, I realize, and they’re whispering. Pausing outside the kitchen door, I can distinctly make out the words “ballet,” “barre,” “you shouldn’t,” and “Katya.”

More secrets? More surprises? I take a deep breath and sweep into the kitchen, hoping to catch them in the act. They are sitting with mugs of tea at the round wooden table my parents got from Ikea. My mother has papers spread out in front of her — I see the Fenimore Cooper College letterhead on them — and she and Michaela are leaning their heads together, deep in conversation. The second I enter, they jerk away from each other.

“What’s up?” I ask, trying to be nonchalant, but I bet I have a semi-crazy glint in my eyes.

“Katya, would you like some tea?” Mom asks casually, gesturing to the pot on the stove. Like Michaela’s room, the kitchen is all set up, as perfect as a doll-house, with checkered curtains on the windows, and cups and bowls stacked on the blue-painted shelves. One more thing my sister and my mother have in common.

“No, I don’t want
tea
,” I reply meaningfully, hoping my tone will indicate that
I know
. Though what it is I know … I don’t know yet.

Then I notice that Michaela is watching me with one hand held up to her lips, clearly fighting back giggles.

“Is there a problem?” I ask her, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Aren’t you, um, a little overdressed?” Michaela asks, allowing a small laugh to escape before pursing her lips again. “I mean, you look adorable, Katie, but …”

I stop bristling. I may be bothered by my sister’s chumminess with our mom, but Michaela can critique my outfit all she likes. I know I’m the more fashionable Wilder sister; Sofia guiltily whispered that fact to me at Jennifer’s birthday party in December, when I wore a black woolen jumper with big glassy buttons, fishnets, and patent leather flats, and Michaela just had on jeans and a high-necked flowery top. That’s why I’ve never really worn Michaela’s hand-me-downs (well, that and the fact that we’ve never been the same size). Her clothes aren’t quite fabulous enough for me.

I guess I take after our mom in that one respect; growing up, I loved going through her closet, letting my fingers slip over her rich fabrics and silks. And I still think half the fun of ballet is the costumes.

As Michaela stands up and pulls on her cotton hoodie, Mom waves us off without asking us when we’ll be back. Strange. In the city, whenever Michaela
and I went anywhere (except for dance school, which was old hat), we had to leave a detailed list of names, dates, times, subway stops, and, essentially, an oath written in blood that we’d be back. Here, though, Mom simply returns to her paperwork.

And when Michaela and I step outside, I think
both
our parents have gone over the deep end. Because we find our father standing on a ladder, hammering something into the roof. Terror grips me, and Michaela cries, “Dad!” Never in his life — or at least in
our
lives — has our father held a hammer. Or stood on a ladder. Or done both at the same time. I’m prepared to take my cell out of my bag and call 911. I’m thinking an ambulance should be standing by, just in case.

“Making some repairs to the place,” Dad says, grinning down at us. His cheeks are red and he continues to hammer away — though
what
he’s hammering is unclear. “This is healthy for me, girls. Gets those endorphins going before I sit down to write.”