Four Times Blessed (31 page)

Read Four Times Blessed Online

Authors: Alexa Liguori

BOOK: Four Times Blessed
5.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

             
“Well, they look fine now. Do you usually feed the chickens?”

             
“Yes, every day.”

             
“Every day, you go outside, by yourself, and stand with your back to the woods?”

             
I purse my lips. “Yes.”

             
He can’t believe me, I think, because he’s speechless.

             
“I do other stuff, too,” I blurt. “You should maybe come over earlier.”

             
I put the door back so it doesn’t make a sound. I tiptoe by the man rather briskly, and skitter back through the undergrowth that hides the start of the trail. 

             
Lium mumbles to himself the whole way back, despite the nervous pace I set. He’s in really good shape. I wonder if he exercises when he’s not with me. Because I know mostly everything else he does during the day. I wonder if my Uncle Groton asked him to escort me around so someone would always be keeping an eye on him. I wonder if Lium’s thought of that. I’m surprised when I think the answer is yes. I wonder if that means he’s smarter than me.

             
He takes a wrong turn onto a deer path and I decide that’s a no.

             
At the rock, I give him my most innocent, sweetest expression ever, and quickly kiss him on the cheek. Then I run.

 

              After a long morning of listening to piano output-sprinkler twenty-four j is clogged, and a longer afternoon of conducting piano input-I think the military sector accountants sent me their payroll, I cross the airfield and step into the shade. Both Cassie and Lium are waiting for me on the rock.

             
I heard them laughing before I saw them, but when they see me, they stop. Cassie, who I decide is much better to focus on right now, looks disapprovingly at the books in my arms. What? I really need them.

             
My final audio boards are coming up in December and I’m still not one hundred percent on clarinets. On all the practice tests, I’ve been getting about halfway through when my ears get criss-crossed so I check my visual displays but then the colors, lines, and frequencies are so messed up with all the other instrument lines that I get really antsy and click the New Question button.

             
Then I usually think of a solution.

             
And yesterday, the little flap on my meal bar wrapper told me Tip number thirty-seven fifty percent of M.D.S. Audio Board questions are NOT multiple choice.

             
I stuffed the remainder of the bar in my pocket, and hiked up to Resources. 

             
“Hey, Cassie, how you doing?”

             
“Good. You’re in trouble.”

             
“Lium can’t put me in trouble. He’s not in charge of me.” Or maybe she’s talking about the lab. But she doesn’t know about the focus room. So how…

             
“Chipmunks were talking about it.”

             
“Mm. Ok, Cassie. So, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.” I start down the path. Hear them crunch along behind me. One set of crunching is a little more emphatic.

             
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” My cousin huffs up beside me, so neither of us can walk facing forward without sidelining a trunk. Not a comfortable way to go down a trail. 

             
Frustrated, she says, “Chicken is for supper. Because you’re in lots of trouble.”

             
I pull my skirt from the sticky fingers of a bush. 

             
Strange. We hardly ever eat our chickens, except on special occasions. And my being in trouble isn’t usually one of them.

             
“Cassie? Do you know why I’m in trouble?”

             
“You killed the chickens.”

             
“What? No, I didn’t.”

             
I fed them. I remembered them and I fed them.

             
“Yeah, you did. You cursed them. You put a curse on all Zizi’s chickens and they died. Are you a witch?”

             
“No, I’m not a witch, Cassandra. That’s not a nice thing to say. Lium?” I try, but he’s decided to be unhelpful.

             
“I wish you were a witch,” Cassie continues, so wistful. Oh, Cassie. I could kiss you and strangle you.

             
“And why is that?” I ask.

             
“Because then you can grant me wishes.”

             
“I think those are genies.”

             
“No. I mean witches.”

             
“Are you sure you don’t mean genies? You know, the guys in the lamps that you rub and then you get three wishes.”

             
“It’s not just genies that give wishes. Wishes are magic. And witches have magic. So witches give wishes. Lots of them. Way more than a puny little genie.”

             
“Singular is jinn.”

             
We then of course have to debate the average size of one. I end up loosing. There’s no arguing with Cassie. That’s why I should have known better and listened to her when she told me I killed all the stupid chickens and I was in trouble.

             
When we walk in the door, my zizi is waiting. For me, it turns out. And she is not happy. Nope, she’s in the back, steaming like the five roasted chickens just coming off of the spits, ready to join the others on the counter. My books are suddenly much too cumbersome. I place them on a table.

             
Then I walk over to her and she tells me to go wait on the back porch so I do.

             
She leaves me out there for a while, which is petty, but maybe she’s just too busy to talk to me. It seems that she’s invited the entire island over to come eat my victims.

             
“Crusa, what in the name of the forefathers were you thinking?”

             
“What? I don’t know how it happened, I swear. I fed them like I always do and then I went to work.”

             
“You fed them from the wrong bag, my silly girl! You fed them out of the bag of ice-melting crystals that was out there. Didn’t you notice the difference?”

             
Oh. No. That’s awful. I’m awful. I just poisoned all our poor little poultry to death. I have nothing to say for myself. Except that I feel sick.

             
“We have ice-melting crystals? Still?”

             
“Yes! I work so hard to save them, and then you go and throw them all over the yard for the dumb chickens!”

             
“I didn’t mean to, Zizi! I was in a rush.”

             
This leads to a lecture that would earn my aunt a Great Proficient. By the end, I feel completely defeated. 

             
“I’m
sorry
, Zizi. I didn’t mean to.” I wipe the infernal tears escaping down my face.

             
She closes her eyes. She’s gotten older without my noticing. So many whispers across her grey cheeks. I’m so sorry.

             
“Just promise you’ll be more careful.”

             
“I will.”

             
She sighs and gives me a tight hug. A cross between I-love-you and you-make-my-life-so-difficult.

             
“Good. Now go inside and eat. The only way I’ll still be mad is if you don’t eat.”

             
“Yes, Zizi.”

             
I’m not hungry at all, but I put some shreds of dark meat on my plate with some potatoes and greens and go sit down. I poke at it, the noise of the packed house pressing around me like I’m sitting on the beach with my eyes closed. Everybody loud and full and having a jolly old time. Except for me, of course.

             
“Hey. You gonna eat that?” I lift my head. My brother is there, sitting next to Cassie.

             
“Camillo! I haven’t seen you in forever! Help yourself,” I spring over the table and throttle him. He makes a choking sound but does hug me back. I’ve missed him. I sit back down and push my plate over. They both start picking off it with my fork and their fingers.

             
After a while, I sigh. They look up. Cassie spears a piece of golden meat and holds it up to my mouth. I frown. Milo gets up and pinches my cheeks together and crushes my arm so Cassie can pop it in through the hole. I close my mouth and resume frowning, but it’s all watering on the inside. It’s really good. I swallow.

             
“Maxine,” I whimper.

             
This brings on another round of the tag-team feeding effort, and they are even less gentle this time. Milo says it’s payback for the time I convinced him to eat mud and leaf ravioli. I ask how bad it could’ve been. I sprinkled some good fresh cheese on it. 

             
At some point, Lium and Hale come over. The boys all shake hands like they do while I blush. It’s really embarrassing having a constant guard to witness you doing things as stupid as wiping an entire species off of the face of an island.

             
Luckily, both Lium and Cassie are talkers, and they seem to appreciate that characteristic in one another, so they amble along in conversation while Hale says nothing and Milo finishes my dinner, and I stare at my brother to try to pinpoint what’s different. And slow my pulse since I can see he’s unhurt. Once, Cassie even makes him laugh.

             
Whatever she’s been doing, she’s taken very good care of him over there. My heart aches when I think about how I haven’t been able to help him since he went over there. The best I can do for him is to stay away. Let everyone on the other side of the island forget he has anything to do with me.

             
They despise me, that side of the family, starting when I didn’t go back to them after my mother died. She was one of them, actually, but I was little and my zizi came into Camillo and my bedroom with the priest and my Uncle Groton and Angie was there, too, and the priest, a visiting one with a singsong accent, he asked me who I wanted to live with.

             
I couldn’t answer him, my throat was closed, but my zizi knelt in front of me and told them to let her ask, she said you want to live with me, tell them, it’s what she wants. And I sobbed hot messy tears and snot and said yes. She hugged me, and Milo, too, as he agreed with whatever I said, like I knew he would, and she told me not to cry.

             
So I abandoned them and now I’ll bring my groom’s wealth to the family that stole me, as they insist. And killed my mother, as it’s passed in whispers or sometimes shouted. But Cassie, being who she is, she made them listen.

             
We sit around with cups of tea after the chickens are stripped to bones and the meat is packed away into the basement’s cooler and the bones are saved for broth making.

             
We listen to my uncles play their fiddles and guitars. They entice Milo to play with them. It’s nice. Warm and too stuffy. Someone opens a window and a moist breeze washes over my shoulders every once in a while. This air isn’t good for lamps and candles, my zizi declares.

             
But the sunset stretches on and on, so soon with the music the floorboards shudder with dancing. The sharp, rich, rosy smell of roasted chicken heavy over everything.

             
Cassie and I get up and drag Camillo away, into the winding lines and circles. It feels good to dance, so I stretch just a little farther, spin a little faster, strike a little harder, to make the heat and the tingling more intense. My body loves it. I wonder if it’s latent effects of the drugs.

             
I drop bits of myself around the hall and they glimmer and flare like the candles would have, while the sunset courses through the floundering net that I’ve become. Cassie takes my arms and we swirl around together, giving ourselves as wild things in the night.

             
After so many songs, the room is black and blue and the ocean air has crept up, rinsing out some of the chickeniness, thank the forefathers. I touch Cassie’s face and it’s hot as metal on the stove. Her hair is frizzy and wild. I’m sure I look the same only worse.

             
“Drinks,” she fumbles into me.

             
Camillo and I pull her lolling arms and legs of the dance floor, our laughter making us weak. We get water and stand at a window.

             
“So, why are you here?” I ask my brother.

Other books

Elite Ambition by Jessica Burkhart
Crimson Joy by Robert B. Parker
A Lesson in Dying by Cleeves, Ann
Rift Breaker by Tristan Michael Savage
Trust by Francine Pascal
The Sugar King of Havana by John Paul Rathbone
Mr Mingin by David Walliams
Wreathed by Curtis Edmonds