Brave Warrior (2 page)

“Maisie?” her mother called from downstairs.

In such an enormous mansion, even when a person shouted, her voice sounded thin and far away.

“We’re off!”

We’re off?
Maisie thought. When had her mother and Bruce Fishbaum become a
we
?

She jumped off the bed and clomped down the long hallway to the top of the Grand Staircase, arriving just in time to see the giant front doors closing.

“Have a terrible time!” Maisie shouted.

But of course no one heard her.

Bitsy Beal, the queen bee of Felix’s new group of friends, was having a party. A March Madness party.
Because
, Bitsy said,
doesn’t everyone go a little mad in March?

This was exactly the kind of thing Maisie and Felix would hate. Should hate. But in fact, it was all Felix could talk about. Bitsy Beal and her stupid March Madness party. As if Maisie couldn’t be more miserable with her life, now there was this to contend with.

“It’s a costume party!” Felix announced over breakfast, as if this was the most brilliant idea ever.

Their mother was moping over her third cup of coffee, looking as miserable as Maisie felt.

“How fun,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic but missing by a lot.

“What’s wrong with you?” Maisie asked her.

But her mother just shook her head and gave a small sigh.

“I think I’m going to go as the Mad Hatter,” Felix said, not noticing that everyone around him couldn’t care less.

“What a great idea,” their mother said. She had
mascara smudges under her eyes and looked vaguely raccoonish.

“How was your date last night?” Maisie asked.

“We’re just friends, Maisie,” her mother said, staring into her coffee.

“Wait,” Maisie said. “Did Bruce Fishbaum break up with you?”

“You can’t break up with someone who’s just your friend, can you?” she said angrily. With that, she practically ran out of the room.

Felix was writing a list. “I’ll need a top hat,” he said. “Green, I think. And a yellow tuxedo jacket.”

“Seriously?” Maisie said, grabbing the pen out of his hand.

“Hey!”

“All you can think about is your stupid costume for Bitsy Beal’s stupid party? Didn’t you notice that Bruce Fishbaum dumped Mom last night?”

Felix looked around the Kitchen as if he had just realized their mother was gone.

“He did?”

“Yeah,” Maisie said. “Apparently.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?” Felix said. “We don’t like Bruce Fishbaum.”

Maisie blinked at her brother. “What did you say?”

“We don’t like Bruce Fishbaum, do we?” Felix said.

Maisie grinned at Felix.

“Right,” she said.

“All right then. May I have my pen back?”

Maisie handed Felix his pen, still grinning.

“You’re being weird,” Felix said, frowning at his list.

But Maisie didn’t care. He had said it himself. Despite Bitsy Beal and her dumb party and baseball and everything, Maisie and Felix were still a
we.

Everyone was surprised that night when, as they sat in the Library eating pizza their mother brought home from That’s Amore, Great-Uncle Thorne appeared in the doorway. With his mane of white hair uncut these past few weeks, and his voluminous white eyebrows pointing in every direction, and his great, drooping white mustache and goatee, and his flowing silk smoking jacket, he took up the entire doorway. In one hand he gripped a walking stick with a shiny silver carved top, and the other hand flailed
about like a conductor conducting an orchestra.

“What are you doing?” Great-Uncle Thorne bellowed.

Before any of them could answer, he bellowed some more.

“Eating? Pizza? In the LIBRARY?”

Their mother jumped to her feet, grabbing their plates and unceremoniously dumping their half-eaten pizza slices back into the box, which gaped open on one of the specially carved brass tables Phinneas Pickworth had brought back from India. Or Egypt. Somewhere special and far away.

“We do NOT eat in the LIBRARY!” Great-Uncle Thorne boomed.

“I am so sorry,” their mother was saying as she scurried around, scraping crumbs and wiping at the table.

“That table was made by nomads!” Great-Uncle Thorne continued. “Berbers! Carved in the heat of the Sahara!”

Maisie and Felix stared down at the table, which they had never paid much attention to before. But now Felix saw that there was a story carved there. Intricate camels and men in turbans walking across
a desert. Dunes rose behind them. Around the table, where Maisie sat, there were tents and food, a fire with a pot on it, and thin lines of steam etched into the brass.

“Sorry,” Felix said. “It’s beautiful,” he added.

“Of course it’s beautiful, you dolt. Phinneas Pickworth would not carry something that wasn’t beautiful over three thousand miles,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, striding into the room. He looked around, his eyes wild, as if searching for more infractions.

“The Dining Room just seems so empty,” their mother said.

Great-Uncle Thorne frowned down at her.

“I have been waiting for the willow trees to weep for my sister,” he said, his voice finally gentler. “And I have come down to announce that they have.”

“The willow trees are—” their mother began.

“Weeping! That’s what they do. Weeping willows, you ninny.” He shook his head in disgust. “Maisie was right,” he muttered. “She said you were a bunch of nincompoops.”

“But trees don’t feel anything,” their mother insisted.

“Ha!” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “Come with me.”

He began to walk out of the room, but turned around when he realized they weren’t following him.

“Hup to now,” he said.

Maisie, Felix, and their mother all quickly joined him.

“Willows don’t weep,” Great-Uncle Thorne said incredulously under his breath as he led them out the front doors, across the wide circular driveway, over the damp lawn, to the eastern side of Elm Medona.

There, a line of a dozen willow trees stood. And every one of them seemed bent in grief. Their branches, covered in pale green newly blossomed leaves, brushed the ground beneath them. A slight breeze blew, making the branches sway. The sight of twelve majestic trees mourning stopped all of them in their tracks.

“Listen,” Great-Uncle Thorne ordered.

They listened.

Indeed, the sound of faint weeping filled the air.

“When our mother died, Phinneas said the willows wept for the entire month,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

Maisie thought it was surely just the wind rustling through the branches that made that sound.

But Felix stared up at the giant trees and believed in that moment that they were actually weeping for Great-Aunt Maisie.

Above the line of willows, a full moon rose. The night was so clear that soon stars littered the sky, twinkling brightly. Eventually, one by one, Maisie and Felix and their mother went back inside, shivering in the March chill. But Great-Uncle Thorne stayed outside, weeping beside the willow trees, long into the night.

O
ne week before Bitsy Beal’s March Madness party, the weather suddenly turned warm and balmy. Everyone started showing up at school in shorts and polo shirts the color of Easter eggs. That Tuesday morning, Felix appeared in the Kitchen in his old madras shorts and a lavender polo shirt, his backpack slung over one shoulder. On his feet were a pair of Top-Siders, those ugly boat shoes just about everybody in Newport wore, that Maisie had never seen before. He shoved a piece of toast into his mouth and gulped down a glass of orange juice, ignoring Maisie, who watched him the whole time.

“Why are you staring at me?” Felix finally said.

He didn’t look at her when he spoke. Instead, he
worked on choosing a banana without any brown spots or any hints of green. Felix only liked perfect bananas, which were very hard to come by.

“I am staring at you because you look weird,” Maisie said.

At this, Felix paused, a banana in each hand, and stared back at his sister.

His eyes began at the top of Maisie, which was her unruly, tangly, not-quite-blond hair, and slowly moved downward: a faded black T-shirt from the play
A Chorus Line
with cracked gold foil letters and silhouettes of dancers holding top hats; jeans, also faded; lime-green Jack Purcells with yellow shoelaces on one sneaker and white shoelaces with tiny rainbows on the other.

“
I
look weird?” he said.

Maisie followed his gaze down to her shoes.

“The rainbows,” she said, “are meant to be ironic.”

Felix shrugged and went back to inspecting the bananas.

Just yesterday during lunch, Avery Mason, who was famous for her hair, had leaned over and whispered, “Felix, how could you be twins with someone so strange?”

And Felix’s heart had done a strange, confused tumble. He knew he should stick up for his sister. He should tell Avery Mason that Maisie wasn’t strange, just eccentric. He should defend her unique character, explain that once you got to know her, you would be impressed by how smart she was and excited by her adventurous spirit.

But instead, he had said, “Maybe they mixed up the babies at the hospital.” After he said it, his mouth tasted like chalk.

Now Felix sighed and rejected both bananas.

“I mean,” Maisie was saying, “you have a shirt with a pony on it.”

Felix chose to ignore her. He began to examine the oranges in the bowl on the counter. A perfect orange was more soft than hard, but not too soft.

“And it’s purple,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” Felix said, because why argue about clothes of all things? Especially when he understood that Maisie wasn’t really mad about his shirt. She was jealous that he had friends. Lots of them. And that he won the student council election. And that he liked living in Newport. A lot. Maisie had chosen to keep one foot in the past, but Felix had decided to
live very much in the present.

“You look,” she said slowly, “ridiculous.”

“Duly noted,” Felix said. He squeezed an orange. This might be the right one.

Their mother appeared in one of her rumpled business suits. She looked, Maisie thought, determined.

“Good morning,” she said brightly. “How about a ride to school?”

“What are you up to?” Maisie said.

“Can’t I give you a ride to school without being up to something?” she said, rolling her eyes. “So cynical, my daughter is.”

“As usual, everyone is picking on me,” Maisie said loudly. “Relentlessly.”

In language arts yesterday, Mrs. Witherspoon had told them that adverbs were a sign of weak writing, so Maisie had decided to use as many adverbs as possible.

Her mother narrowed her eyes. “Where in the world did you dig out that old thing?” she said, pointing to the T-shirt Maisie wore.

“In the giveaway box,” Maisie said. “I can’t believe all the great stuff you were thoughtlessly
planning on sending off to Goodwill.”

Her mother waved her hand as if she were sweeping things away. “Be my guest,” she said.

She glanced at her watch and announced if they wanted a ride, they had to leave.

“I accept,” Maisie said. “Gratefully.”

Felix groaned. Why couldn’t Maisie be even a little bit normal?