They played six games that night. Not one of the games was played according to the rule book, what with Batty using secret passages where there weren’t any on the board, and Tommy and Skye throwing the tiny weapons at each other, and Jane forgetting her strategy because the mansion on the board reminded her of Arundel Hall—though Arundel Hall didn’t have a conservatory, and it certainly didn’t have a billiard room—and Aunt Claire guessing everything wrong on purpose so that she wouldn’t win. But, as Jane said, rules aren’t the most fun thing in life, and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely until Aunt Claire dragged a reluctant Batty up to bed for story time and sleep.
“What now?” Skye asked the other two.
“We could watch a movie,” said Jane, looking at Tommy. It was always more fun to watch a movie with Tommy around.
“Sure,” he said. “At least until Rosalind comes home.”
“Thanks for the ride home, Mrs. Cardasis. Good night, Anna,” said Rosalind, yet she made no effort to get out of their car and go into the house. The first thing she’d noticed when they drove up was that her father’s car wasn’t in the driveway. He was still out with Marianne.
“Come back with us,” said Anna. “You can spend the night, can’t she, Mom?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, but I shouldn’t.” The evening at Anna’s house had been so much fun—they’d played basketball, listened to music, and made caramel popcorn—that Rosalind had almost forgotten to worry about her father. But she couldn’t stay away from home for a whole night, not with Aunt Claire visiting. It would be heartless and selfish.
“Everything will work out fine with your father, Rosy,” said Anna’s mother. “You’ll see.”
“I guess so,” said Rosalind, finally getting out of the car. She hated it when people said that everything will work out fine. How could they know?
As Anna and her mother drove away, Rosalind started up the front walk, wondering if she could sneak up to her bedroom without talking to anyone. She didn’t want to hear about how Daddy had acted when he left, and she didn’t want to wait up for him to come home. Just this once it would be lovely to go to bed without new things to fret over.
Quietly she let herself into the house, then peeked into the living room. Aunt Claire was on the couch, watching a movie—one of those old-fashioned English dramas, it looked like—and Jane and Skye were stretched out on the floor, both sound asleep. Aunt Claire spotted her and blew her a kiss. Rosalind waved back and tiptoed away. So far, so good. She would just go upstairs, look in on Batty—but as she passed the kitchen, she heard the refrigerator door being shut. Who could that be? Surely Batty wasn’t awake and rummaging around in the refrigerator on her own.
It was Tommy, eating ice cream right out of the container. He hadn’t seen her, and she thought about slipping away before he did, but suddenly ice cream seemed like a good idea.
“People with manners use bowls, you know,” she said.
Tommy looked around helplessly. Taking pity on him, Rosalind got two bowls out of the cupboard and spooned a huge helping of ice cream into one bowl for him and about half as much into the other for herself.
“Thanks,” he said. “That movie they’re watching made me hungry.”
“Everything makes you hungry.”
“True.” Tommy’s bowl slipped from his hands and fell upside down onto the table. The ice cream splattered widely, though it seemed most attracted to Tommy’s shirt.
What was wrong with him? He certainly couldn’t be nervous, thought Rosalind, not around her. She dabbed at his shirt with a damp towel, then gave him another bowl of ice cream. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am.” To prove it, he got this new bowl safely to the table. “Rosy, do you know Trilby Ramirez?”
“I know who she is.” An eighth grader, Trilby had straight black hair that fell to her waist, and she was in gymnastics club. Rosalind had seen her do perfect splits on the balance beam.
“She asked me to go to that Autumn Extravaganza thing with her tomorrow night.”
“Are you sure?” That was rude, so she tried again. “I mean, why?”
“I don’t know.” Tommy sounded almost as surprised as she was. “I guess she likes me.”
Rosalind stopped herself from asking why again. After all, there wasn’t any reason for anyone not to like Tommy. “Well, of course she likes you. I only meant…” The one time Rosalind had tried a split on the balance beam, she’d fallen off and bruised her elbow. But what was the balance beam next to brains, anyway? “That is, I don’t know what I meant. Are you going?”
“I don’t know. Do you think I should?”
“Why not?” Suddenly Rosalind was tired. She wished Tommy would leave. Him and his Trilby Ramirez and her long hair.
“I just thought maybe that you—” Tommy rapped his spoon against his head, then flinched. He’d forgotten he was helmet-less.
“That I what?”
“Nothing. I mean, it would be more comfortable if you were going, too.”
“Comfortable.” Rosalind stood up and put her bowl in the sink. “Well, I didn’t get invited to the eighth-grade dance.”
“I know that. Don’t be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad? I’ve just had a long day.”
He stood up, too, and said, “I’ll go home, then. Thanks for the ice cream.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Good night, Rosy.”
Out of patience with men and their confusions, Rosalind didn’t answer, waiting with her back turned until he left. Really, she was dreadfully tired.
But before she could rest, there was a littlest sister to check on. Rosalind crept upstairs and into Batty’s room, hoping that she wasn’t awake and expecting more stories. Yes, all was well. Batty was very much asleep, though she’d managed to kick her covers and most of her stuffed animals to the floor. But someone else was awake. Hound, sprawled across the bottom of the bed, was now blinking sleepily—and guiltily—at Rosalind.
“Off,” she whispered.
He dropped to the floor, taking the rest of the stuffed animals with him, and slunk into the corner where he was supposed to sleep.
“And stay there.” Rosalind said it firmly, though she and he both knew he wouldn’t.
She managed to get all of the covers and animals back to where they should be without disturbing Batty, then gave Hound one last stern—just for form’s sake—look. As she slipped back into the hallway, she heard the front door open downstairs. Daddy was home. Really, truly, Rosalind didn’t want to hear about the date, but some horrid fascination kept her rooted in the shadows at the top of the steps.
Aunt Claire was out of the living room now, speaking quietly, so as not to wake Skye and Jane. “How was your date?”
“Fine,” he answered, just as quietly.
Rosalind, despite herself, leaned closer to listen.
“Fine great? Fine okay? Fine like you’ll see her again?”
“Perhaps.” He yawned. “She’s a charming woman. She likes taking walks.”
“You took a walk with her, Martin? That was your date? That’s not much more exciting than reading a book to her.”
“I know what I’m doing, Claire. Everything will work out fine.”
Rosalind stumbled off to her room, badly needing someone or something to punish. And—perfect!—there on her desk were the brownies she’d baked for the Autumn Extravaganza, hidden away from hungry sisters.
BAM! BAM! BAM! She smashed the brownies into a million little pieces, then threw open her window and tossed the whole mess out into the night.
“The eighth graders,” she said, brushing crumbs from her hands, “are not good enough for my brownies.”
Before closing the window again, Rosalind stuck out her tongue in the general direction of the Geigers’ house. Why had she bothered? She didn’t know or care. Some things, she thought, were too unimportant to fuss over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jane
’s Grand Gesture
SKYE BURST OUT THROUGH the big front doors of Wildwood Elementary School, looking around frantically. She was searching for Jane. There were dozens of people swarming around, but no Jane. Where was she? Where? Where? Skye had to find her immediately and kill her.
“See you tomorrow, Skye!” That was her friend Geneviève, waving from the school bus as it pulled away. Skye waved back, but without enthusiasm. She wondered if she would ever be enthusiastic again.
“Hey, Penderwick. Race you to the end of the parking lot.” Pearson, who sat across from her in Mr. Geballe’s class, punched her on the arm.
“No,” she said, punching him back. She’d never turned down a race before, but she wanted nothing more to do with Pearson today.
Now here came Melissa Patenaude. Skye looked through her as though she were invisible—maybe if she was invisible, she wouldn’t be able to talk. But no such luck.
“Congratulations, Skye,” said Melissa. “I’m sure you’ll do well.”
“Thanks,” muttered Skye. After she murdered Jane, she would murder Melissa. A person could only be sent to prison once, and prison might not be as bad as what she was facing now.
Finally! Here came Jane, strolling out of the school with a group of her friends. Skye was beside her in a flash, taking her firmly by the arm and steering her away from the others.
“Ouch,” said Jane. “Unhand me, you minion.”
“Minion yourself,” said Skye. “We have to talk.”
Jane went white and dropped her backpack. “What’s wrong? Is Daddy okay? Batty?”
“Everyone’s fine except me. I’m not at all fine. My teacher assigned parts in your play today. Guess who’s going to be Rainbow.”
“Kelsey.”
“No.”
“Isabelle? Maya?”
“No, Jane, think awful. Really awful.”
“Don’t tell me Melissa got the starring part!”
“No, she’s going to be Grass Flower.”
“That’s okay, I guess, since Grass Flower is kind of a jerk, though I’d rather Melissa never utter any words of mine, even for jerky characters.” Jane thought. “Well, who then?”
“Me.”
Now all was horrifyingly clear to Jane. Skye, as courageous as anyone when it came to physical deeds of derring-do, was terrified of being on a stage. A scarring experience in first grade—a hula skirt that fell down during a skit about Hawaii—had set her against performing for the rest of her life. “Did you explain to Mr. Geballe?”
“I tried, but he thought I was just shy about being in a play I wrote. I couldn’t explain to him that I didn’t care about that, since you wrote it. And by the way—” Skye turned ferociously on her younger sister. “Guess who’s going to be Coyote—Pearson!”
“Oh, he’ll be good.”
“Jane, who cares how good he’ll be? Remember all those speeches about undying love and romance? I’ll have to say them to him! What the heck were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking that you were going to have to say them to Pearson. I wasn’t thinking you’d have to say them at all. You’re the last person I’d choose for the part,” Jane said. The truth was that when she wrote Sisters and Sacrifice, she’d imagined herself as Rainbow. It was a glorious role.
“What am I going to do? I don’t know if I can memorize all that stuff about maize and self-denial. If it were primary numbers. Or geometry! I’ve memorized lots of geometry. Listen: If two lines are cut by a transversal, and—and what? It’s gone! This stress has ruined my brain!”
“Calm down. The bus line is staring.” By the bus line, Jane meant Melissa, who was not only staring at them, but trying to listen, too.
“I could break my leg. That’s the solution, Jane. I’ll accidentally-on-purpose fall off the garage roof and break my leg. They can’t force me to be in a play with a broken leg, can they?”
“No, but you can’t play soccer with a broken leg, either.”
“Then how about pneumonia or malaria or tuberculosis?”
“Same problem.” It wrung Jane’s heart to see her brave sister brought so low. “It won’t be that bad, Skye. I’ll help you memorize the lines. Come on, let’s go home.”
Skye allowed herself to be led home, all the while calculating how many people would be in the audience for the Sixth Grade Performance Night. Since all of the sixth graders would be involved in one way or another, all of their families would come, which meant, well, twenty-six students in each of the four sixth-grade classes, and if at least two—no, probably three—family members came for each student, plus all the teachers, plus various fifth graders…
“Four hundred people,” she said in sepulchral tones. “At least four hundred people will watch me make a fool out of myself.”
“Four hundred,” Jane repeated, but her tone was not sepulchral, for not until then had she realized how many people would see her play performed. It was intoxicating.
“It’s nauseating.” And Skye did look a little sick at the idea, and when they got home, she went right in through the front door and upstairs.
“Four hundred,” said Jane again, following her sister into the house, lost in the vision of the Wildwood Elementary School auditorium, with its real stage, with wings and flies and a huge billowing curtain. The four hundred people in the audience were applauding wildly, and there was Jane, herself, on the stage, taking the author’s bow and holding a huge bouquet of roses, no, being pelted with roses from the audience—maybe first graders could do the pelting—while humbly—
“Rats,” she said, stopping herself. She wouldn’t be taking the author’s bow. Skye would be doing it, and worse, not even enjoying it. Oh, well. There would be other plays and other triumphs, and as for now, she was hungry. She went into the kitchen, where Rosalind and Anna were doing their Latin homework.
“Qui, quae, quod,” said Rosalind. “Cuius, cuius, cuius.”
“Cui, cui, cui,” said Anna. “Quem, quam, quad.”
“Not quad—quod. Jane, you’re last in. Call Daddy.”
“Are you sure?” Anna looked down at her textbook. “You’re right. Quod. Let me start over.”
Jane took a box of raisins from the counter for a snack, then called her father at the university. He didn’t answer his phone, but she left a message that all his daughters were home safe, which she doubted he could hear with all the Latin chanting in the background. She hung up and had started to wander off, when the Latin stopped and a familiar name caught her ear.
“What did you say?” she asked Anna.
“That Trilby Ramirez is all whacked out over Tommy.” Anna saw the confused look on Jane’s face and explained. “They were together at the Autumn Extravaganza on Saturday night. Rumor has it that Tommy even danced with her. We didn’t know that Tommy could dance.”
“Plural,” said Rosalind. “Qui, quae, quae, quorum, quarum, quorum—”
“I don’t understand,” interrupted Jane. “Rosalind, it’s you he adores and wants for a girlfriend, not somebody named Trilby.”
“He doesn’t want me for a girlfriend, and if he did, he couldn’t anyway.” Rosalind sniffed at the idea. “No one can for years and years, and even then, it won’t be Tommy.”
“Still, why Trilby?” asked Anna. “She’s about as smart as concrete, and she’s a wimp, too. There was a spider in the girls’ locker room and she practically passed out.”
“I heard it was a large spider,” said Rosalind calmly. “Quibus, quibus, quibus.”
“Don’t you care?” asked Jane. She was shocked at this display of indifference. Why, if she were old enough and Tommy looked at her the way he looked at Rosalind, she would never let him date someone named Trilby.
“Why should I? Quos, quas, quae, quibus, quibus, quibus. Anna, let’s go again. Qui, quae, quod, cuius—”
Jane went upstairs, thinking that there certainly was a lot of trouble with dating in the Penderwick house. When she got to her room and found Skye’s copy of Sisters an
d Sacrifice dumped on the floor—and no Skye—she sighed. There was a lot of trouble, period, in the house. She looked out the window, and yes, there was Skye on the roof, staring glumly at the clouds through her binoculars.
“May I come out?”
Skye nodded, and Jane climbed out gingerly and settled herself. Next door, two faces in odd glasses were staring at her from an upstairs window. She waved, and Ben waved back, but Batty disappeared, and then Ben disappeared, as though Batty had yanked him out of sight, too. Ah, to be young and feckless again, thought Jane. “Feckless” was one of her favorite words lately. She’d even managed to work it into Sisters and Sacrifice.
“Did you get to the place where Rainbow calls Grass Flower feckless?” she asked Skye. “That’s a good line, right?”
Skye put down her binoculars. “It doesn’t matter whether the lines are good. I can’t memorize them, and even if I could, I can’t act at all. We read the first few scenes out loud, and I was terrible.”
“Maybe I could coach you.” Suddenly Jane saw herself as a director. She could wear a slouchy hat and have her own chair and a script scribbled all over with notes. Maybe she could even skip her science class to do it, if the schedule worked out right. “Please let me, Skye. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun like in ‘fungus,’” said Skye, but after much pleading from Jane, she consented to climb back into the bedroom and pick up the script. After all, she figured, Jane couldn’t possibly make her worse than she already was.
The next half hour was painful for both sisters. So flat—so without feeling or expression—was Skye’s reading that Jane began to doubt her own writing. She tried some rewriting, hoping to find the words that would bring a spark to Skye’s delivery. But that just frustrated Skye more—she swore she’d never be able to learn the lines if Jane kept changing them. Desperate now, Jane drew Aztec-ish lines on Skye’s face with wet colored pencils, thinking stage makeup would help her. After that, she did manage to put feeling into one line.
“You forget, sister, how good I am with the bow and the knife.”