Look Both Ways (22 page)

Merry paused to whisper to Mally, without a trace of sarcasm, “That was completely the most romantic thing I ever heard, Ster.” Then she gathered a crowd around her as she began opening presents.

Mallory was walking on air.

Campbell, however, had both feet on the ground.

“Meredith’s right. That was beautiful,” she told Cooper, as he handed Tim’s guitar over to her. “That is one of the sweetest songs ever written. I was probably Adam’s age or younger when I first heard it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Brynn.”

“Mallory is very innocent.”

“No, she’s not that,” Cooper said.
Enjoy this moment,
Mallory thought then, as she watched Campbell’s face morph from disbelief to outright anger.
You won’t be out after six at night again until you’re twenty
. “I’m not talking about boys. If I were going to take advantage of a girl, like that, it wouldn’t be Eden’s . . . whatever . . . Eden’s protégé. I’m more afraid of Eden than I am of you, no offense. I mean Mally’s older in ways other than years.”

To Mallory’s relief, the other kids had drifted away. Campbell considered Cooper’s words. “That’s possible. What she saw last year changed her.”

“I mean she’s sensitive to people.”

“I accept that. She’s mature in that way. But she’s only fourteen.”

“Please kill me,” Mallory whispered. “Mom, Cooper’s leaving in two days. I don’t think he wants to run off and marry me before morning. We’re friends. Can you save the lecture?”

“I’m not lecturing,” Campbell said. “I just want him to know that Shakespeare was right. ‘These violent delights have violent ends’.”

“Oh. It’s Shakespeare now! Great. I’m not going to commit suicide either! Mom, please! It’s a party!”

Cooper said, “I know how Mallory feels, Mrs. Brynn, and that it’s unusual for her. The first time. No! Not that kind of first time! The first time she cared about a guy. I wouldn’t . . . I respect that and I respect Mallory.”

Campbell looked hard at Cooper. She said softly, “Okay. I believe you. Don’t let me be wrong.” She began to walk away, toward Meredith and Neely, who had been eavesdropping ferociously. Then she turned back. “That was a tremendously touching birthday gift, Cooper.”

Later that night, they stood in the snow, and Cooper tilted Mallory’s chin up to kiss her good night, promising to come to see her before he left.

“You were great with Mom. No one ever says boo to her.”

“I was sweating the whole time,” Cooper admitted. “Now I know where you get your personality!”

S
lowly, the residents of Ridgeline slogged through the last of the cold.

Skiers were thrilled that the snow stayed deep, with a new coat of light powder every few days. No one could remember a time when more than two feet of snow had stayed on the ground for two full months without going slushy and gray.

The Brynn twins took out their cross-country skis and cajoled their father into giving them new boots from the store, since they had outgrown theirs for the first time in three years. Out in the country, near their uncle Kevin’s house, they skied all over the farm fields and up and down the slight hullocks, returning to see Aunt Kate and their little cousins drained and sweaty as they never were from running. She gave them pumpkin-spiced tea and cookies and oranges. They skied the Cardinals’ land and tried the small hills.

But nothing could tire Mallory enough to make her stop thinking.

Each day, Mallory did everything but remove the mailbox and shake it upside down to see if a letter from Cooper would fall out.

None did.

She waited throughout January.

Why didn’t Boston Flanders allow e-mail? The whole deal about how letter-writing, real letter-writing, was part of a classical education was a bunch of garbage! If he had e-mail, or even a cell phone, she could talk to Cooper once a day at least!

On Valentine’s Day, instead of a sappy card, she got a postcard from Harvard. A guy with a red sweatshirt leaned against a column. The shirt read, “I Don’t Really Go Here.” On the back, Cooper had written,
My heart’s in the highlands wherever I roam. I didn’t make that up. Love, C.

Eden said not to worry; boys simply didn’t write long letters ever. She also counseled Mallory against sending any to Cooper.

“Make him wonder,” Eden suggested. “Cooper thinks he’s a real gift to women.”

He is,
Mallory thought.

She wrote Cooper pages of letters, then folded them away in the wooden keepsake box she’d had since she was ten. She never sent them.

Relentlessly, she did extra credit for English in hopes of getting straight A’s. On long, brainless afternoons on the couch, she marched through 1984 and 1985 on
General Hospital,
marveling that she could have turned to any episode on any day of any week of any year before 1990 and been up to speed on the characters’ lives within seconds. She also worked on her choir parts and solo for the spring concert.

Cantabile was more exciting now because, under pressure from Mallory, Meredith had joined after the basketball season ended and before the late spring competition season began. Merry had an extra study hall too, and Campbell assured Merry that, since she’d always had a sweet singing voice—a nice pure soprano—chorus would be an easy A or B. Miss Yancy was delighted. She quickly planned to showcase the twins in a duet for the spring concert of the old folk song “Green Leaves of Summer”—though Cantabile usually didn’t do folk songs of any kind.

The words somehow made Mallory sad:
It was good to be young then / To be close to the earth / Now the green leaves of summer are calling me home
.

Cooper, come home,
she thought, and then rebuked herself.

A year ago, she would have mocked her sister savagely for being America’s number one priss. And now here she was, reliving one fifteen-minute kissing session over and over in her head until it was like a piece of paper she’d smudged and worn through with holes. She had to get over it.

With an abrupt turn of events, she almost did. She found herself bargaining with God that she’d give Cooper up if her soon-to-be-born little baby sibling would be okay.

Early in March, a month before her due date, Campbell began to have labor pains. Dr. Kellogg popped her into the hospital, where the pains subsided with medication. The twins and Adam went to the hospital to watch the little baby (“Not so little,” said Dr. Kellogg) dancing on ultrasound. With the 3-D technology, they could see his squashed little alien monkey face.

“He looks like you,” Adam told Merry.

“You look like that
now
,” she replied placidly.

“I can’t figure out what to name him,” Campbell said.

“I can’t figure out whether to put you on bed rest,” said Dr. Kellogg, who then decided to do just that.

Relief and pandemonium reigned at home.

Every day after choral practice, the girls, Tim, and Adam went to visit their mom, who was receiving royal treatment and special treats from all her old friends, competing to give her backrubs and milk shakes. She was grumpy, however, until the librarian, a cousin of the Brynns, brought her a stack of novels that weren’t even published yet. “You won’t be doing a whole lot of this for the next few months,” said Margie Bowen. “So you’d better stock up your head now.” After that, every time the family came, with Chinese noodles or pizza—no-cheese-extra-onions—Campbell had her feet canted up and her nose in a book.

Even fussy Meredith used up all her clothing before there was a general decision to do the wash. The kids watched TV, normally forbidden on school nights, until Adam literally had circles under his eyes. Their little brother, whom they were already calling Buddy, had done them a good turn.

Eden was curiously busy—even more than usual.

Mallory had always felt a bit odd about asking her to do something, but now, when Mally reached out, Eden cheerfully but firmly put her off with a deft excuse.

Then one day, she asked Mally if she’d like her to drive her to the hospital to visit her mother and then go shopping. When she showed up, Mallory was stunned. Always glorious, Eden now seemed somehow burnished, as if the advent of spring had caused her to burst out of an outworn skin. Her hair was shinier, her skin glowing with deep rose tones under the gold. She’d cut her long hair, not short, but shorter, in a fashionable waterfall of long layers.

“Eden, you look like you’ve had a makeover,” Campbell said, accepting a pot of crocuses Eden’s mother had forced into bloom. “Thank you. And what’s the cause of all this?”

“Nothing,” Eden said brightly. “Just the end of a long winter. Mallory and I are going to go shop the spring sales.”

“I’m not,” Mally said. “After what I spent this last winter, it’ll take me until next spring to buy the other half of my new-me wardrobe. If I even decide a new me is worth it.”

“Practice starts in a week, doesn’t it?” Campbell asked.

“Yes, and then nice clothes won’t count at all,” Mally said.

“For some things,” Eden replied.

At the mall, Eden spent freely, on nightgowns and sundresses, new espadrille sandals and a big sun hat.

“Are you going on a cruise?” Mallory asked jokingly.

“No, but it’s sunny in New Mexico,” Eden answered.

“New Mexico?”

“I’m going with James,” Eden said. “It’s so fantastic I can’t even breathe when I think about it. I fasted and I prayed. And I decided I have to follow my heart.”

Mallory was floored. She cried, “Edie, what about your family and school? What about soccer and college? Have you asked your grandmother what would happen if James stayed with you, instead of you going with him?”

“It wouldn’t be allowed! Do you think I want to leave little Honeybee and Raina and Tanisi and not see them grow up? Do you think I won’t miss Cooper? That I’m ready to leave my mother and father? I’m not! It’s my only chance.”

“Why this time? Why not next time? You’re so young, Eden. Eighteen is an adult by law. But not really. What if James isn’t the one? What if you leave everyone and it goes wrong?”

“It won’t go wrong.”

Mallory pleaded, “No one thinks anything could go wrong when she’s in love, Eden!”

“James was offered a full-time job in Santa Fe, with tuition benefits. I can take the HSED and start college. He says he’ll come back for me, but what if he doesn’t? A high school girl compared with the girls he’ll meet at New Mexico State? He’ll find someone else. And I’ll be alone.”

“Eden, don’t you trust him? You’re giving up your whole life for him, and you’re afraid he’d find someone else?”

“Mallory, I’m just a kid from Ridgeline. I’m trapped in a life I can’t stand anymore! At least if I lost James there, I’d still be free.”

“What about me?” Mallory asked. “You and Drew are all I have.”

“My Mallory, my little Mallory,” Eden said. “You’ll have a full and lovely life. You’ll be happy. There are two of you. You have people to depend on who understand and care.”

“So do you.”

“No, Mallory. They depend on me. Now it’s my turn.”

Mallory had no idea what to say and less of what to do. Everything Eden said was right. Eden did owe way too much to her family. So much shouldn’t be placed on one girl’s shoulders, no matter how level or strong those shoulders were. But the danger to James and Eden in her dream came . . . from James and Eden. It wasn’t turning on her family. It wasn’t taking off at eighteen. Other people had done that and made lives for themselves. It was the heavy, unshakable sense of menace in the dream of James alone in the glade, beneath the cliff, the lion watching him from above—when something unspeakable happened.

T
hat afternoon, when Mallory got out of Eden’s car, she tried to wave good-bye brightly, but no sooner had she opened her backpack than a small white card fell out. This was like Edie. Anyone else would have sent a text message. But Eden would give Mallory something to hold in her hand, on all the long nights to come. She wanted to hold it against her heart. She wanted to rip it up.

Finally, she opened the envelope.

Mallory read:

Mallory crushed the note in her hand.

No!

This was now! Not spring break, now!

What was Mallory to do with no notice?

Did she have even a night to spare? There was nothing she could do before morning, and until after church. Her father would be suspicious.

And so, she stayed awake until sleep weighed her down, only to wake in a sweat, shivering. She paced her room until she could no longer bear the sight of the walls, then padded softly down to the living room couch. Sleep came and went, with dreams that chased each other—dreams of wide brown eyes and almond golden eyes, teeth and claws and caves. At one A.M., Mallory sat up and texted Eden: ?4U. To her relief, Eden answered, 411? The information that Mallory wanted was simple: LEMENO WEN.
Please, please answer, Eden,
Mally thought.

And after a long interval, Eden wrote, PCKING. 2MORRO.

Tomorrow.

CU, Mally texted.

The location would be James’s camp behind the Cardinal farm. Not far from where Mally had walked with Cooper on the night of the powwow. That meant Mallory had at least the morning to try to change . . . to change what?