“It’s me, Aunt Bethany. Tara. Ray lent me his phone.” I turn my back to him and lower my voice. “I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t, you know, trying to kidnap me.”
I hear a chuckle behind me, but I ignore it.
“Didn’t he give you our note?”
“What note?” I turn back to face Ray.
“D’oh!” he exclaims, hitting himself on the forehead again. “Forgot about that, too.” He pulls a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and hands it to me. I scan it quickly. Apparently Emily had a big fencing tournament that they couldn’t miss so they sent him to fetch me. I hand the note back to him.
“You still there, Tara?” Aunt Bethany asks, the phone breaking up a little. “We’ll be home soon after you arrive. Sorry about this.”
I tell her it’s fine and give the phone back to Ray. It’s not like I could expect them to rearrange their schedules for me. I wouldn’t even want them to.
Ray “yabbers” the whole twenty minutes it takes to get to the house. I manage to pick up a few colorful phrases. He had to “chuck a U-ee” at one point when he started going down a one-way street the wrong way, and then he told me some story about a “bloke” of his who wanted him to “chuck a sickie” last week so they could go to the movies. People apparently do a lot of chucking in Australia, which is where I finally figured out he’s from.
Aunt Bethany’s house is just as I imagined, on the outside at least. It’s very big, with a freshly mowed lawn, three-car garage, and a circular driveway made out of paving stones, not blacktop like a normal driveway. The crisp smell of apples hangs in the air, although I don’t see any apple trees.
“Out back’s a hole for a pool,” Ray says as he grabs my suitcase from the trunk.
I follow him up to the large red front door. “A hole?”
“Yup. The mister and missus can’t agree on the shape of the pool, so there’s been a hole for a year now.”
“Wow, Ray, you just said two whole sentences that I understood!”
He grins. “That bloody well won’t happen again!” As he unlocks the door he says, “The Aussie lingo comes out stronger when I first meet someone. You’ll get used to me.”
I’m not planning on getting used to anyone. I’m about to tell him this when I hear Mom’s voice in my head telling me to be polite. So I don’t say anything at all.
A large SUV squeals into the driveway and we both turn in the doorway. Emily jumps out of the backseat practically before the car stops moving. She’s grown a lot since I last saw her, but compared to her I still look freakishly oversized. She’s dressed in a thick silver outfit that covers every inch of her except her head and makes her look more like an astronaut than a fencer. A large silver medallion dangles from her neck that says 5TH PLACE and her light brown hair whips around her face.
“Tara!” she yells, leaping up the two porch steps. “I’m so glad you’re here!” She reaches around to give me a big hug but it’s kind of awkward because she’s wearing all this padding and her arms aren’t very long. She squeals and says, “This is going to be so much fun!”
When Emily lets go, Aunt Bethany hands her the fencing helmet that rolled out of the car after she jumped out, and takes her place in the hug. “You’re so tall! Just like your dad!” She and my mom have the same light olive skin and dark brown hair, but other than that they don’t look anything alike. For one thing, Aunt Bethany is wearing a dress and heels, full makeup and nail polish, and has jewelry on every place one can wear it including her ankle. If my mom puts on a skirt it means someone died.
Uncle Roger strolls over and pumps my hand with a huge grin. I remember now how straight he stands, with his chest sort of puffed out, but not in an arrogant way. He has lost some hair and grown a mustache in the few years since I’ve seen him. Even though he’s probably ten years older than my parents, he doesn’t have any gray hair. I wonder if it’s because he’s rich and doesn’t have to worry about a lot of things. Every time we move to a new house I spot a few more gray streaks on Dad.
Everyone asks me questions at once. “How was the train?” “Are you hungry?” “Do you want to see the town?” “Do you want to call your parents?”
I really don’t want to talk to my parents, but I don’t want them to worry, either. “I lost my cell phone on the train,” I explain, “so maybe you can call them?” I know they won’t be too mad about me losing the phone since Dad loses his every other week, but I’m not planning on telling them about losing everything else. Not until I absolutely have to.
“No problem,” Uncle Roger says. “We can get you a new phone tomorrow. You got replacement insurance?”
I nod. Unable to think of anything else to say, I opt to stare at the ground. All this attention is making me miss the peace and quiet of the train, where no one bothered me. Ray picks up my suitcase, clears his throat, and says, “Tara probably wants to get settled upstairs. You know, wash the train off her.”
“Of course she does!” Aunt Bethany says, whisking me inside. Ray bounds up the long, carpeted staircase with my suitcase while I stare around me in all directions. A chandelier with at least a hundred diamond-shaped crystals hangs over what looks like marble floors. I’ve only seen marble floors in museums before. A huge living room off to the right is filled with leather couches and fancy paintings and a coffee table with three books spread out in a fan shape. I can’t see what’s at the end of the long hallway that leads off from the foyer. It looks like a house from the pages of a magazine. And it smells like lemon.
“Emily will show you the way to your room and help you settle in. She’s so excited you’re here!”
Emily nods vigorously. “C’mon, let’s go upstairs.” She grabs my arm and pulls me toward the stairs. I let my hand glide over the dark wooden banister as we climb the winding staircase. If the guest bedroom is anywhere near as nice as what I’ve seen so far, I’m sure it will be double the size of my room at home.
I follow Emily down the hallway, the carpet so plush that I can’t even hear our footsteps. She passes room after room of closed doors, then stops at the last one on the left and flings open the door. “Here it is!”
We are facing a large room that is clearly Emily’s own. Her bed is unmade, and clothes, books, papers, trophies, and fencing equipment lie scattered around all surfaces, including the two twin beds. The top of her desk is piled high with thick textbooks and three-ring binders.
“Make yourself at home,” Emily says, stepping neatly over what is probably a crumpled school uniform but could just as easily be last year’s Halloween costume.
I don’t move. “But this is your room.”
She opens her arms wide. “Our room.”
My heart sinks as I catch sight of my suitcase at the base of the second bed. I’ve never shared a room with anyone. I want to ask how there isn’t a guest room in a house this big, but what comes out instead is, “Were you, um, searching for something and that’s why it looks this way? Or you left your window open and a tornado passed through?”
Emily shakes her head and begins peeling off her fencing uniform. “Nope. It’s always like this. All the true geniuses were slobs.” She points to two posters sharing the space above her headboard. No pop stars or movie stars for her. Instead, my cousin has posters of two old men on her wall.
“That one’s Einstein, right?” I ask, pointing to the one of the guy with crazy white hair sticking out in all directions.
She nods. “And trust me, he was too busy figuring out how the universe works to bother with picking up his socks.”
“Or combing his hair,” I mumble. “So who’s the other one?”
“That’s Euclid, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.”
“Um, why do you have a poster of him over your bed?”
She grins. “I’m hoping some of his genius will seep into me while I’m sleeping! I’m trying to figure out one of the Millennium Prize Problems. They’ve stumped the greatest mathematical minds in history, bu
t I think I’m getting close. The winner gets a million dollars!”
“Wow.” But what really surprises me is that she doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by revealing such a geeky thing.
She leans over and pats Euclid’s cheek lovingly. I take a deep breath and make my way across the room, avoiding placing my feet directly on anything breakable. I push aside a winter coat that likely hadn’t been worn in the four months since winter ended and sit down on the edge of the bed.
“Hey, sorry about the whole squealing thing before,” Emily says, down to white leggings and a T-shirt now. “I’m not really a squealer. It’s just that I promised Mom I’d be more enthusiastic about things other than trying to prove the underlying structure of the universe through mathematical equations.” Without pausing to take a breath, she says, “It’s just that math is so amazing. It’s like this huge puzzle, only you don’t know what pieces to look for so you keep trying all these different ones and suddenly one fits!” She looks over her shoulder at her posters with obvious admiration. “Like Einstein said, ‘As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.’”
I have only a passing acquaintance with what she just said, but clearly I won’t have to worry about my little cousin eating glue sticks anymore. “Um, you’re interested in fencing, right? So it’s not all about math.”
She glances at the open door then leans closer. “Fencing’s okay. I’m just doing it to prove I can be as well-rounded as the next kid at my school. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. Since you’re here now, I don’t have to go to camp this summer.” She shudders. “I hate camp.”
“You shouldn’t say ‘hate,’ ” I tell her, surprised — and kind of annoyed — that Mom’s words come so easily.
She laughs. “You sounded just like my babysitter Rory when you said that. Okay, I strongly dislike being told I have to swim in a cold lake infested with all sorts of bacteria and fungi, and forge lifelong friendships with my bunkmates only to turn on them when color war starts.”
It occurs to me that my cousin talks a lot. “You have a boy babysitter?”
She tosses all her fencing garb into the middle of the floor. I watch the helmet roll off and thump against the dresser. “Why would you think I have a boy babysitter?”
“Isn’t Rory a boy’s name?”
“Not in this case.”
“Oh.” And that’s where the conversation peters out. My mind drifts to the meager contents of my suitcase, and how there’s barely space in this bedroom for the few things I brought with me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Emily says, tossing her fencing medal over a bedpost stacked high with them. None, I notice, better than fifth place. Maybe she should stick to math.
“You’re thinking I’m a little old for a babysitter,” she says.
Actually, I had been thinking about how silly my Jake Harrison poster would look next to Emily’s white-haired geniuses. Not that Jake isn’t smart. I hear he gets straight A’s from all his on-set tutors.
“I’m at that awkward age,” Emily explains, even though I didn’t ask. “Too young to stay home alone, too old to need someone to watch me. Anyway, Rory’s more like a friend. She’s in seventh grade, same as you.”
I want to tell her that officially, I’m not in seventh grade anymore, having been kicked to the curb by an oversensitive principal. But I’m not sure what mom told Aunt Bethany, so I keep quiet and Emily keeps talking.
“I’m sure you’ll like Rory a lot. She’s funny without trying to be. And she’s kind of klutzy, too. We know you’ll want to socialize with your peer group while you’re here, so Mom planned a party for you to meet everyone.”
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone other than my mother use the words peer group. Well, maybe the school social workers. But I’ve never heard an eleven-year-old who sounds as grown up as she does or who talks as much as she does. The words party and for me are enough to make me want to crawl under the blanket (if I could find it) and sleep for two months. “You really don’t have to plan anything for me, I don’t really like —”
Aunt Bethany walks in as I’m about to say parties. “All unpacked?” she asks.
A little knot forms in my stomach. It’s probably homesickness, but since I’ve never been away from home before, I can’t be totally sure. “I’m about to start,” I reply, kneeling down next to my suitcase and knocking over a stack of CDs in the process.
Aunt Bethany frowns. “Emily! I told you to clean up this room before Tara arrived!”
“But, Mom, I thought I had longer and then —”
My aunt holds up her hand. “Just clean it now.”
“Fine,” Emily grumbles and begins tossing things from her bed to the floor.
“When Tara’s unpacked, the two of you can come down for dinner.” She shuts the door behind her.
“Sorry you have to clean your room because of me,” I tell her, not really sorry at all because frankly, all the stuff everywhere is giving me a headache.
Emily sighs. “It’s okay. I have a geometry test next week and haven’t been able to find my protractor for a month.” She starts yanking things off her bed and shoving them underneath, where they are likely to remain until she goes off to college. I’m about to tell her that I don’t think that’s what her mom meant by cleaning up, but I’m the guest here and it’s none of my business.
Everything in my suitcase is jumbled from when I went through it at the train station. The bag Mom packed with her jewelry has made its way to the top of the pile. I set it aside so I can bring it down to dinner. Jake’s poster is still on the bottom, folded in a way that would keep his face crease-free.
“What’s this?” Emily asks, picking up the little red pouch with the bracelets I “borrowed” from Mom in it. Before I can stop her, she opens it and shakes out the contents into her hand.
“Two of the same?” she asks, lifting one up to admire it. “You bought us friendship bracelets!” She slips one right over her wrist without even needing to unclasp it. Then she hands the other one to me. I hold it between my fingers, unsure what to do next.
“Want me to help you put it on?”
When I don’t answer, she plucks it from my hand and attaches it around my wrist. I’ve never had friendship bracelets with anyone. I hope it doesn’t come with some level of responsibility that I can’t possibly live up to. I have to admit, it fits perfectly. I wonder why my mom never wore it. Emily is twisting her arm side to side, admiring hers, too. How am I going to get it back from her at the end of the summer? How do I get myself into these situations?
“And what’s this?” she asks.
In a flash, Emily lifts Grandma’s hatbox out of my suitcase. I reach for it and grab on to the bottom part. Unfortunately, she’s gripping the top so tightly that when I pull on the bottom the whole thing opens up and my letters go flying out. I scramble around to pick them up before she can get too close a look. I only brought them in the first place because it would have been like leaving my diary at home. I’m sure Julie the Pen Pal has forgotten all about me after I didn’t answer her first letter. Or her tenth. That’s when they stopped coming.
“Wow, what are all those? Letters from friends?”
When I don’t answer, she says, “You must be really popular.”
“It’s not really like that.” I stick the last letter back in the box and hold out my hand for the top.
She holds on to it a second longer than necessary. “My mom has some old hatboxes like this. They were Grandma Emilia’s.”
“This was hers, too.” I wedge the top back on. “My mom said she had a whole collection.”
Emily nods. “Grandma was a really famous actress, you know. At least in Willow Falls.” She stares at the hatbox, almost longingly, then says, “Everyone tells me I look just like her. Does anyone tell you that?”
I look up to see if she’s serious. If people thought we both looked like our grandmo
ther, that would mean we looked like each other, too, which we totally don’t. Instead of pointing that out to her, though, I shake my head. “I’ve never met anyone who knew her, since we’ve never lived here.”
“Right!” she says. “Duh. I wasn’t thinking. Why’d your parents move from Willow Falls anyway?”
I shrug. “I never asked and they never said.”
Her eyes soften as pity pools inside them.
“My mom likes to move a lot,” I explain. “I guess she just got tired of living here. But don’t feel too sorry for me. I’ve lived in plenty of small towns in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure they’re just like Willow Falls.”
She shakes her head. “Not like Willow Falls. This town is …” She trails off, searching for the right word. Finally she finds it. “Special.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” I stare down at the jumbled contents of my suitcase. I know it’s silly to be jealous of someone because they actually like where they live, but I can’t help it.
“Hey,” Emily says, “I’d be bummed, too, if my parents were somewhere really cool where no kids are allowed, but we’ll have fun here, I promise.”
I wonder if that lie originated from my mother or from Aunt Bethany, but I’m glad to know that Emily doesn’t know the real reason I’m here. “Thanks,” I mutter.
She returns to throwing her piles of stuff onto other piles of stuff. After a minute of silence, she says, “I emptied out the bottom drawer of the dresser for your things. Will that be enough space?”
I nod.
“Maybe you should unpack later, though. I forgot my mom wanted us to come down for dinner. She gets super-cranky when she’s hungry.”
I zip up my suitcase, not in the mood to unpack anyway. “My mom gets like that, too,” I tell her, glad to be talking about something other than the “specialness” of Willow Falls.
“It’s kind of weird,” she says as she opens the door, “how they’re sisters, but hardly ever see each other. I always figured if I had a sister we’d be best friends.”