Moonpenny Island (5 page)

T
omorrow. School starts tomorrow.

Cecilia's been in her room all day. Her domain, that's what school is. Name an award, Cecilia O'Dell has won it. You could paper a wall with all the photos of her accepting certificates and trophies and plaques. When Flor peeks in, she expects to see her sister hunched over her desk, pre-studying, but instead Cecilia lies on her bed, eyes closed and arms flung over her head, like she just fell from the sky.

“Cele?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I need to ask you something.”

“Uh-huh.”

Flor creeps into the room. It's the size of a closet, which it was, till Cecilia wore down Dad with her pleading not to share a room with Flor anymore, and he somehow bumped out a wall and added a tiny window. It smells like nail polish and hair product in here, but also like freshly sharpened pencils and brand-new notebooks. Cecilia's desk looks like she lined things up with a ruler. Flor sighs, remembering their favorite old game, Town. Cecilia, the mayor, sat writing proclamations. Flor got to be the doctor, the store owner, the beauty-salon lady. Thomas would beg to play, and they'd hand him the wastebasket and tell him he was the garbageman, which he actually liked.

“Did you ever make a promise you couldn't keep?”

Cecilia props herself up on an elbow. She's put something on her eyes that makes them look smoky and mysterious.
Mysterious
is not a word anyone normally associates with Cecilia.
Trustworthy. Polite. Adult-friendly
. These are your common Cecilia words.

“No,” says this dark stranger.

“Oh.”

“I'm the exception. Lots of people break their promises. Probably most people. Toothpicks! They break promises like toothpicks.”

Is this supposed to make Flor feel better or worse?

“The trick is to be choosy what you promise.” Cecilia rolls onto her back again. Her glamorous eyes regard the ceiling, and she smiles, like she can see straight through to the heavens above. Flor looks up, straining to see what her sister does, but it's just that same looping crack in the ceiling, the one they call the butt crack. “Think,” says Cecilia, “can I really do this? Do I want to do this, even on pain of death?”

Death? Who's talking about
death
?

“What if it's too late?” Flor says. “What if you already promised something and now you can't do it?”

“What did you promise?”

“Never mind,” says Flor.

“Then never mind back.”

She should've known better. When was the last time Cecilia helped her with anything besides her math, and remember what an excruciating experience
that was? On the way out, Flor palms some nail polish.

“Put that right back,” says Cecilia without turning her head.

That night, in honor of back to school, Mama takes special requests. Thomas gets naked spaghetti. Flor gets hamburger tacos. Cecilia gets a salad, though it's common knowledge her true favorite is an oozy cheese omelet. Last month they took a shopping trip to the mainland, and their new clothes are at the ready.

Also in honor of back to school: no arguing.

Not until the three of them are in bed, anyway. Then Mama can't understand what Dad was thinking when he spent their own money for repairs on the SUV, instead of charging it to the village. Dad says he'll get the money back eventually. Thomas already grew out of the shoes they bought him last month, and he's going to need a new winter coat, Mama says, and try saying “eventually” to their credit card statement. Her voice rises. Dad's sinks.

When Thomas shows up in her bedroom doorway, Flor lifts her sheet and he climbs in.

“You can't help how fast you're growing,” she tells him.

Thomas sucks the ear of Flor's favorite stuffed animal, Snowball the bunny, and she lets him. According to Cecilia, their parents didn't always fight. They met when they were really young, when Dad was still a rookie and Mama came over to work for the summer as a counselor at Camp Agape. Sparks flew, Cecilia says, and wedding bells rang. She says that she and Mama, their hair brushed to a shine and perfume dabbed behind their ears, would sit on the porch waiting for Dad to get home. Cele claims to remember when Dad tried to learn Spanish, though this sounds so preposterously un-Dad, Flor bets she made it up. Being born first puts a person in charge of the story. In Cecilia's story, small, fierce Mama and big, easygoing Dad fell in love because opposites attract. It's true that, when they're being lovey-dovey, Dad will slip his arm around Mama and say, “You can't map the ways of the heart.”

Maps change, though. The one in their classroom was so outdated, Mrs. Halifax had to cross out the names of some countries and write in their new ones.

When Thomas falls asleep, Flor rescues poor Snowball. She dries and fluffs his long ears. Thomas
can hog a whole bed. Another of his questionable talents. On the sliver of mattress left to her, Flor tosses and turns. Last night on the phone Sylvie said her aunt and uncle sing duets in the car and garden together on Saturdays. They call each other Pal. Weird-a-roo, said Flor. Sylvie claims they're nice. Well, who
doesn't
Sylvie say that about?

She starts school tomorrow too. Her sixth grade has one hundred kids in it. One hundred times more than Flor's.

The stairs creak. Mama. Mama alone. It's the couch for Dad again tonight.

Out Flor's window, a flash of heat lightning bleaches the sky. One time she and Sylvie threw all their Barbies out that window into the big lilac bush below. Why? A mystery. Another time they wrote love notes to Joe Hawkins and paid Thomas two dollars to slide them under his front door, then raced after him and paid him another whole dollar not to. On their first day of kindergarten, they held hands the entire time except for going to the bathroom. At the end of the day, they couldn't even unbend their fingers.

They thought that's how it would be all the way through twelfth grade. Maybe they would even go to the same college. They'd marry brothers and live on the same street.

Flor never has bad dreams, but it's possible she does that night. When she wakes up, her legs feel weak and crumply. Like she's spent hours balancing on a narrow sliver of something, and not just her own mattress.

M
oonpenny School was built back in the day, when the island had several working quarries, vineyards, family farms, and a fishing industry. Back then, armies of kids lived here. The school is three stories high, with a clock tower and everything. As long as Flor can remember, that clock has said 11:16.

This morning, seventeen kids show up, the precise same number as last year, because a new kindergartner, Jocelyn Hawkins, takes Sylvie's place. Not that anyone can. Jocelyn shadows her brother, Joe, chewing on the strap of her beat-up camouflage backpack.
She's the only girl Hawkins, and stuck wearing hand-me-down T-shirts with pictures of football players. Mr. Hawkins, their father and the school custodian, leans against the toolshed like he's already exhausted, even though it's just the first hour of the first day. At least once a month, Dad hauls Mr. Hawkins's golf cart out of some ditch he drove into on his way home from the Cockeyed Gull. Certain people—well, pretty much every adult except Dad, whose job is to look out for each and every islander, no matter what—consider the Hawkins family certified trash.

If Sylvie was here, they'd be discussing how ridiculous Joe looks with his curly hair long as a rock star. They'd be watching him toss that rock from hand to hand, scowling up at the frozen clock. Queenie's grandson Duke races past, chasing a pop fly hit by Barney Magruder. He steps on Flor's toe and doesn't even notice. She has gone invisible. Mary Long hunches by the door, nose running, clutching a box of tissues. Thomas shinnies up the flagpole. If he tears those new pants, Mama will fry him.

The high schoolers clump near the door. One, two, three, four. Where is that Perry Pinch? Late on
the first day? By now he's all healed up from the accident, so what is his excuse?

Not a Pinch in sight.

Cecilia, wearing that new, clingy red sweater, which is not her style at all, looks anxious too. Odd. Very odd. At school Cecilia normally has one of two expressions: bored or fake earnest. Once, as they lay side by side staring up at the ceiling butt crack, she told Flor that she's not nearly as intelligent as everyone thinks. The island just doesn't provide a statistical sampling big enough for comparison, she said, sounding so smart she proved herself wrong. The closest Cecilia can come to a friend is Lauren Long, who calls Cecilia stuck up behind her back, but what can you expect? Lauren is a disappointed person. For one, she dreams of being a famous singer, but her voice is sandpaper, and for another, she's been in love with Perry Pinch since third grade. Ha! Guess who Perry is in love with? Himself. The one and only.

Where is that chucklehead?

Mrs. Defoe stands on the school steps, arms folded like she's posing for a statue titled
Figure of Authority
. Moonpenny School is too small to have a
real principal, so Mrs. Defoe is in charge. She wears a brown skirt and beige blouse. Brown shoes with brown laces. Her entire wardrobe is some shade of mud, which drove Sylvie, lover of color, insane. Even Dad swears he can't remember her ever wearing anything but. Mrs. Defoe is a human version of the frozen clock. Which, Dad likes to point out, is right twice a day.

Invisible Flor turns back toward her sister and all of a sudden remembers last night's dream. She stood perched on a ledge of smooth, slick stone, the kind by the swim hole. She couldn't see the ground. She couldn't see her feet. She couldn't see anything at all. Only darkness.
Open your eyes!
she told herself, her dream heart racing.
You're not blind—your eyes are just closed!

Then what? Flor's real, undreaming heart quickens as she tries to remember. Did she fall? Leap? Of course she didn't leap! Into thin, treacherous nothingness? Even in her dreams she's not that
loca
!

Across the schoolyard, Cecilia's brow creases. She plucks at her new, sexy sweater like it's giving her a rash. Flor would run and grab her hand.
Are you all right?
she would ask.
Did you have a bad dream too?

But Mrs. Defoe lifts her handbell and
clang!
The new year begins.

It's different. Everything. The room. The teacher. Being the youngest in the group again. Three eighth graders, two seventh graders, and her.

The desk next to Flor is empty.

“Welcome to the sixth grade, Flor O'Dell.”

Mrs. Defoe hands her a pile of textbooks. Flor opens the one on top and sees
CECILIA O
'
DELL
written in precise, pointy letters.

“You labor in a long shadow.”

Flor nods.

“Please write your name clearly and legibly. Handwriting is not a lost art in my classroom.”

Flor nods again. A bobblehead, that's what she's been reduced to.

“You're a middle grader now. Expect great things of yourself, and great things will inevitably follow.”

One seat over, Joe Hawkins pretends to strangle himself. Surprise and gratitude bubble up inside Flor.

And there you have the best part of the entire dreary morning.

At recess, Flor stares at a book she grabbed on the
way out. Total mesmerization, that's what she's hoping for. Unfortunately, the book turns out to be about the water cycle. She's rifling pages, searching for a single one with conversation, when she feels someone's eyes on her. She raises her head. A repeat of the morning scene. She is invisible. Still 11:16, insists the clock.

But the saying “I feel someone's eyes on me” is precise. It's like stepping into a shadow. You feel it move over you, even though you can't touch it.

Across the road, a low stone wall rings a graveyard.
The
graveyard. The Pinch family monument rises up in the center, a castle surrounded by peasant huts. Lilac bushes nod in the breeze. Lilacs adore Moonpenny's limey soil and grow to enormous proportions. Godzilla lilacs. One bush shakes in an unnatural way. It looks so funny Flor smiles, which makes her smile muscles exclaim, “Whoa! We thought you'd forgotten we even existed!”

“Want to play?” a small voice asks, and Flor spins around.

Jocelyn Hawkins. The sole kindergartner stares up at the sole sixth grader. She clutches a slender willow branch.

“I'm playing fairy ponies.” She waves her golden wand. “They can fly. Mine's named Rainbow Sparkle Darling.”

“Cool.” Flor's so lonesome, she's tempted. Only there is such a thing as dignity. She holds up the deadly boring book. “I'm reading.”

“Joe already taught me to read,” says Jocelyn, like
what
is the big deal, and gallops away. When Flor looks back at the jittery lilac bush, it's motionless.

That night, Sylvie says Ridgewood Academy has groups, like the popular group and the sports group and the nerdy group, which is something they've seen on TV shows and in magazines but never for real. On Moonpenny there aren't enough kids for groups.