“Sure,” I said. “Hit me with it.”
“A note scrawled on a Post-it. A breakup note, saying he was too young”—she brought out the quote fingers—“ ‘ to be saddled with such heavy crap.’ ”
“What heavy crap?” I said.
She twisted the corner of her mouth. “Darryl’s a loser. My kid brother—Lucas—he’s got CP. I take care of him a lot, that’s all.”
“CP, like ... cerebral palsy?”
“Yeah. And my mom, she works the night shift at the Black-eyed Pea, so ...” She lifted her fingers from the arm of her chair, then let them flutter back down. “Whatever. Like I said, Darryl’s a loser.”
Um, no, I’m the loser, I thought. I didn’t know tons about cerebral palsy, but I’d seen kids who probably had CP. They were bound to wheelchairs, their hands curling in on themselves and their heads drooping on the fragile stems of their necks.
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly.
She grew fierce. “Hey. Lucas is worth ten Darryls. Ten hundred Darryls. No, forget that—Darryl can fall off the planet, and no one would even care, least of all me. But Lucas?” Her mouth did something funny: not a tremble, not a scowl, but a tightening that was defiant and proud and ... adult.
“Lucas is special,” she said, jabbing her finger at me. The sparkly pink polish on her nail was chipped.
I nodded, choosing to believe her. Maybe needing to believe her.
She was so tiny. And she wore tube tops. Her pale tummy poofed out above the waist of her shorts, and she cared for her disabled kid brother while her mom worked at a chain restaurant that served, if I was remembering the right commercial, fried pickles and “cheese crunchers.”
Brooklyn leaned forward and dug a slim plastic wallet from her back pocket. She was a lot more friendly now that we weren’t talking about me. “Wanna see his picture?” She flipped open her wallet and held it out. “I take him to the portrait studio every three months. I have a punch card.”
The photo showed a toddler—Lucas—standing in a walker equipped with four wheels, a harness, and handgrips. Except he wasn’t exactly standing. More like leaning, in a skewed-hip, propped-up sort of way. He was grinning, and his head tilted at an odd angle over his shoulder. Across the bottom of the picture was the word KMART in gold gilt lettering.
“He’s adorable,” I said. I ran numbers in my head, reviewing what I’d learned from Mom’s baby books. “Is he ... two?”
“Two-and-a-half,” Brooklyn said.
“Is he, um, able to walk?” I said, struggling to sound as normal as I could. Keepin’ it real, said a voice in my brain, but luckily, I managed to suppress it.
“Near enough.” She looked at me sharply, like, You gonna make something out of it?
I handed the picture back to her. “I have a three-month-old sister,” I told her. “Her name’s Magnolia Grace.”
“Aw, I like that,” Brooklyn said. “Bet she’s started laughing by now, huh? At three months, that’s when you can make them laugh for real, not those fake gassy laughs.”
I nodded, seeing baby Maggie in my mind. Her laughs were sweeter than gumdrops.
“You miss her?” Brooklyn asked.
“For sure,” I said. I hesitated. “Do you miss Lucas? Who’s taking care of him while you’re here?” Then I realized how untactful that was and said, “Never mind.”
“He’s with my grammy,” Brooklyn said. She turned away, pretending to look out the window. “I’ll see him in a week. No big.”
I felt sad for her. I also felt uncomfortable, because not in a million years could I imagine being her. Having her life. Having baby Mags, or Ty, be disabled and strapped in a walker. I saw her tube top in a new light, like a flag waved bravely in the face of adversity.
“What made you decide to come to DeBordieu?” I asked. “Since it meant leaving Lucas, I mean.” “My grammy wanted me to just be a teenager for a month,” she said, her voice barely there.
To lighten the mood, I said, “Well, sure makes my problems seem stupid, doesn’t it?”
“Pretty much.” She swiveled her head to regard me. “Does your boyfriend know you didn’t like the gift card?”
“Um...”
“What’d you want him to give you? Jewelry? Perfume?”
“What? No.” I was so not a stupid girly-girl pouting because I didn’t get a necklace with a chubby gold heart on it.
“Then what?” she pressed.
I scrubbed my face with my hand, then let my hand drop. “If you have to know,” I said. “I wanted a cupcake, all right?”
“A cupcake?”
“A cupcake.”
“A cupcake?”
“Yes, a cupcake! Can we move on?”
“Well, did you tell him you wanted a cupcake?” she asked. “Because he’s not a mind reader, I’m guessing. Unless he works as a psychic in a carnival tent and you forgot to mention it.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, he’s not a mind reader.”
“So what’s the problem? Are you one of those shriveled violets who can’t stand up for herself?”
I suspected she meant shrinking violet, and please, how ridiculous. “I think you have me confused with Dinah,” I said.
“Dinah?” Brooklyn repeated. “Who right this minute’s wrestling alligators in the swamp?”
I tried to laugh, but the laugh didn’t even make it halfway out.
“And here you are, afraid to tell your boyfriend you want a cupcake.” She pressed her hands against her pale thighs, flexing her wrists and bending her elbows in a way elbows weren’t meant to be bent.
“Whoa,” I said. “Are you double-jointed?”
She shook out her limbs and rotated her wrists, not bothering to answer.
“Listen,” I said. “You didn’t go crabbing, either. You said you were too young to die.”
“Free piece of advice,” she said. She stood and tugged at her tube top, which had ridden up. “You only live once.”
“Gee, really?”
“Don’t waste it being stupid.” She fluffed her bangs and strode from the room.
Virginia found me later. I was this close to drowsing off when she jostled the hammock and said, “Dinner duty or cleanup—what’s your poison?”
“Huh?” I said, blinking up at her.
“Dinah and Milo are going to be back with the crabs soon. Do you want to cook or clean up?”
“Oh,” I said. “Cook. Only, I don’t know how to cook crabs.”
“Easiest thing in the world,” Virginia said. “Clean the muck off them, fill a pot with boiling water—it’s got to be boiling—and plop ’em in. Add the Old Bay, and you’re done.”
“What’s Old Bay?”
“Seasoning. I’ll put a bag on the counter. Maybe corn on the cob and salad to go with it?”
A bang sounded from the front of the house. A glance out the porch window told me it was Cinnamon and James returning from the beach.
“And tell those guys they’re in charge of cleaning up,” Virginia said.
I swiveled my legs off the hammock, slid my feet to the floor, and sat up. I yawned. “Okay, sure.”
“Great,” Virginia said. “I’m off to the aquarium, but I’ll be back in an hour.”
I nodded.
“Just be sure the water’s boiling before you put in the crabs, got it?”
“What would happen if the water wasn’t boiling? And wait—the crabs’ll be dead by the time I get them, right?”
“Dead? No, they die when they hit the water.”
Oh. I hadn’t thought about the mechanics of it until now. Without thinking, I put my hand to my stomach. “Do they...feel it?”
“I hope not, but I suppose it’s possible. You do have another option. You could stab an ice pick behind their eyes.”
I found that option horrifying, and I suspect my expression showed it.
“Handle it as you choose,” Virginia said. “I’m off.”
I handled it by switching jobs. That’s what I ch
ose to do.
“You and James are supposed to cook dinner,” I told Cinnamon after hunting her down in the kitchen. She was freshly scrubbed and slightly pink from her afternoon in the sun. Out in the driveway, a low hum and the clunk of gravel announced that Dinah and Milo had arrived.
“Great,” Cinnamon said unenthusiastically. She sighed in resignation, then bellowed, “Ja-a-ames!”
“I’m right here,” he said, behind her.
“Oops,” she said, giggling. “Hey, we have to cook dinner.”
“So I heard.” He twined his fingers through hers, pulled her closer, and lightly kissed her lips. She giggled some more.
It was hard seeing Cinnamon be so lovey-dovey. She wasn’t doing anything wrong; I just felt twisty because of what was going on with Lars.
“You have to boil the crabs,” I told them. “You have to make sure the water is actually boiling when you drop them in.”
Cinnamon wrapped her arms around James’s neck, touching her nose to his. “Won’t that hurt them?”
“I hope not,” I said. “Your other choice is to stab them with an ice pick.”
“Winnie, gross.”
Dinah and Milo entered the house through the basement.
“We have cra-abs!” Dinah called.
“TMI!” Cinnamon called back. James cracked up, and I would have, too, except I wasn’t in the mood.
Dinah tromped up the stairs and plonked a five-gallon bucket on the counter. It was full to the top.
“Look how many!” she bragged.
“Dinah, that’s awesome,” I said. “Was it fun?”
“So fun,” she said. She brushed past me on the way to the sink and whispered, “I kissed him!”
“What?! Dinah, omigosh!”
She turned on the faucet. “Shhh!”
“We’re not going to boil them alive,” Cinnamon pronounced, still gazing at James.
“You have to. Virginia said.” Milo came in looking very happy and very proud, and I cruised by the sink. To Dinah, I whispered, “For real? You kissed him?”
She leaned closer, eyes shining. “Actually, he kissed me!”
I’d known this was going to happen. I’d known it from the very first day we got here—and omigosh, it really had! I as happy for Dinah—I was—but I felt a prick in my heart, too. I covered my feelings with a smile.
“Nice haul,” James said to Milo. “You guys have fun?”
Milo’s eyes flew to Dinah. “We saw an alligator,” he said.
“But Milo threw a rock at it,” she said proudly. “It hit him smack on his snout, and he ran off.”
“Dude,” James said.
“Ah-ha, I know,” Cinnamon said. “We’ll put them in cold water, then gradually heat the water up. Don’t you think that would be better, Dinah?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. She wasn’t listening.
Cinnamon addressed the room in general. “Like how you get in the tub, and you think the water’s hot, but really you can stand it so much hotter. You just have to get used to it first.”
“But that doesn’t apply to scalding yourself,” I said. “If you heated the bathwater to boiling, you would feel it.”
“Not necessarily,” Cinnamon argued.
Dinah shut off the faucet and turned around. Across the room, Milo swallowed.
“Should we, uh, go unload the rest of the stuff?” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed. They clattered joyfully back down the stairs.
Cinnamon broke free from James and strode to the bucket of crabs. “Hey, sweet little crabbies,” she cooed. “Time for your bathie-wathie, crabbies.”
“Cinnamon ...”
“What?!” she snapped. “God, Winnie.”
All I wanted was to tell her that it really did matter, the boiling water part. But her tone, and the exasperated way she was looking at me ...
It made me mad, and tight, and because of those bad feelings, I said, “Fine. Nothing.”
James slipped his arms around her from behind and rested his chin on top of her head.
“You can leave,” Cinnamon informed me.
“Oh, can I?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll call you when it’s time.”
Fifteen minutes later, she did exactly that. I was already on my way back to the kitchen when I heard her, because my conscience, which had been wrestling with my grumpiness ever since I left, had finally come out on top. I couldn’t let Cinnamon hurt those crabs. I might be pissed at her, but I couldn’t take it out on the poor, innocent crabs.
From the middle of the staircase, I heard, “Ahhhhh! Help, help! OMIGOD THEY’RE CLIMBING OUT OF THE POT!!!”
I rushed the rest of the way. The crabs were scrabbling up and over the top of the pot, while Cinnamon, who was up on her toes, flapped her hands and shrieked as James lunged about, trying to catch the crabs. The water in the pot was lightly steaming, and as the last crab flung itself to freedom—forgive me!—I pressed my hands to my mouth to smother a laugh.
“Omigosh,” I managed to say. “You were supposed to boil the water first, remember?”
One crab click-clacked across the floor and over Cinnamon’s bare foot. She screamed.
James scooped up a crab on a mad dash for the living room. Its legs flailed. “Cinnamon, bring me the bucket!” he said.
“Winnie, bring him the bucket!” she screeched.
But I couldn’t. The crabs were too scuttle-y and gross, and plus, I was laughing too hard. I had never in my life seen Cinnamon reduced to a girly-girl screecher.
“Run, little crabs!” I said. “Run for your lives!”
“Get it off me, get-it-off-me, getitoffme!” Cinnamon squealed, hopping around like a crazed booly-booly dancer. Swinging from her cutoffs, its crusher claw affixed to the frayed denim, was a humongous crab. Its hard shell was grayish-green; it had way more legs than seemed necessary; and horrible thin antennae protruded from his head, with nubblets that were possibly eyeballs bobbling from the tips.
I sank helplessly to the floor—then sprang right back up as a stampede of crabs made a break for it less than a foot away.
“James!” Cinnamon wailed. When she moved, the crab on her cutoffs swung back and forth. I thought of my grandmother’s curtains, brown and orange with pom-pom balls dangling from the trim.
“He likes you!” I said through mad laughter. “You are his savior!”
“Get it off!” she said. “It’s yucky!”
“Did you know that once a crab imprints on you, he follows you everywhere?”
The crab must have heard me, because he floundered his crusty legs, scrambling for purchase on her smooth thigh.
“I’m going to faint,” she said, and if James hadn’t dashed to catch her, she might have. From her prone position on the floor, the crabs would have borne her away, lifting her high and proclaiming her Queen of Crustaceans.
I went to her and shook the leg of her shorts, dislodging the monster crab. I jumped back as it hit the ground. Cinnamon looked at me greenly.
“Remember the very first day we were here, when you hid under my bed?” I said. I was making this up, this cobbled-together motivation that hid the uglier truth of my jealousy. But the crabs were safe, and I felt better ... and Cinnamon did have it coming to her.
“And you jumped out and said ‘boo,’?” I shook my head. “I almost died, that’s how scared I was.”
“I didn’t say ‘boo,’ and you didn’t almost die.”
“Well, now we’re even.”
Dinner was delicious, consisting of corn, salad, and buttered slices of bread. Virginia also put a jar of peanut butter in the middle of the table.
“I can’t believe you boiled the corn alive,” I said to Cinnamon as I took a warm, salty bite. Mmm, I loved corn on the cob.
Ryan guffawed. “And think of all the wheat you murdered to make the bread.”
“Ha ha,” Cinnamon said. “The bread is store-bought, doofus.”
“Ah, but you condoned it,”
I said. “Every time you eat a piece of bread, you’re saying it’s all right to chop down those poor stalks of wheat and ... husk them or whatever.” I had no idea what you did with wheat, really, to turn it into bread. I crunched off another bite of corn.
“You guys are, too, then,” Cinnamon said. She nodded to include the table at large. “Every single one of you who has bread is condoning the murder of innocent grains of wheat.”
“I, for one, am glad you let the crabs go,” Dinah said. She sat next to Milo, and I could almost swear their knees were pressing up together beneath the table. “Even though I’m the one who caught them—”
“Yes, Dinah,” we all chorused. We’d heard many times the story of how she’d braved the alligator-infested marsh.
“Well, Milo and I,” she self-corrected, giving Milo a dreamy look.
“Yes, Dinah,” we chorused.
Milo’s acne-scarred skin turned redder than usual. Dinah sighed happily. “Even though Milo and I are the ones who caught the crabs—all twenty-five of them, did I mention that? Twenty-five crabs?”
“Yes, Dinah!” we caroled.
“And Milo!” I added.
Dinah smiled. “I was just going to say that even though we caught the crabs, I, personally, am glad you didn’t kill them, Cinnamon.”
Cinnamon gave a slight bow. “Thank you.”
“I agree,” said tube-top Brooklyn. “It’s mean. Some of them probably have babies to take care of.”
“Aw, geez,” Mark scoffed. “Babies? Who cares about crab babies?”
“Anyone with a heart,” I responded. Later, I would catch Cinnamon and Dinah up on all I’d found out about Brooklyn. For now, I wadded up a piece of bread and lobbed it at Mark. I caught Brooklyn’s eye, and she hesitated, then shot me a smile.
“You shouldn’t eat an animal you’ve met,” Dinah said.
“A crab isn’t an animal,” Ryan said. “It’s a crustacean.”