The Tori Trilogy (3 page)

He's always playing the part of the martyred college student with too many classes, too much homework, and a job that demands too much from him. He probably does have a right to be tired; most mornings he's up well before the rest of us to catch an early class before he starts work at the college bookstore (where, of course, he is employee extraordinaire), and at nights he doesn't go to sleep till after midnight. But still. Part of that's his own fault. If he didn't take all those Xbox breaks, he'd actually be able to finish his homework earlier and go to bed at a decent time.

“Gotta love Saturdays,” adds Ben.

I glance over at him. “Why? Do you have a date with Jaine tonight?”

“What do you think?” Joey cuts in before Ben can answer.

Ben shoots him a look. “Of course. We always go out on weekends.”

“And whenever else you possibly can,” I add dryly. I'm busy folding paper napkins into the shape of Japanese cranes. But I'm only making three of them this time: one for Dad, one for Mom, one for me, and zero for unappreciative brothers.

Mom turns around to face us. “You'll be gone again tonight, Ben? Andrew and Stephanie are coming for dinner. Maybe...maybe you could have Jaine over here? That way, we can all be together.”

Oh, great. Just what I need. Ben and his girlfriend and all their mushy love stuff all evening. “Mom,” I start to protest.

“Mom!” Joey chimes, looking equally horrified.

Ben levels a gaze at both of us. “I'll ask her, Mom,” he says evenly. “I'm sure she'd like that.”

Mom looks pleased for a moment--but only a moment, because then, Nate says, “You guys can count me out. I promised Preston I'd give him a hand with the Camaro tonight. He's driving it out to his girlfriend's tomorrow, so we've gotta get those issues cleared up.” Have I mentioned Nate is also a star mechanic? And a rude one too. I mean, “Count me out?” We're only his family, after all.

Dad transfers bacon onto a platter with the help of a metal spatula. “Do you have to do that tonight?” he asks, a little sadly. “Why don't you meet with Preston this afternoon? Then you can be home for dinner.” Poor Dad.

“Can't,” replies Nate. “He works today till six.”

“Well, couldn't he get someone else to help him?” Mom suggests. I feel really bad for my parents when my brothers act this way.

“He wants me, Mom. No one knows their way around a Camaro like I do,” returns Nate. A cocky smile spreads slowly over his lips.

“I know,” I say disdainfully. “You've worked on how many before? One? Two?”

He conveniently ignores that.

Mom sets a dish of fresh-fruit salad in the center of the table. “Let's eat,” she says with a sigh.

Joey takes one look at the fruit and wrinkles his nose. “Yuck! Bananas! Why do we always have to have bananas? They destroy everything.” He sticks his finger down his throat and gags disgustingly.

“Ew, Joey!” I cry. “You are so nasty!”

Mom gives him a withering look. “Joey, please. Not at the table.”

And I'm supposed to write a “family brag paper” and have it finished a week from Tuesday.

Auntie Luz drops off Gina around noon. Auntie Luz is Dad's youngest sibling, and my favorite aunt. She's small and pretty, and her eyes are full of shine, and when she moves, she sort of seems to twinkle. I guess that makes sense, because, after all, “Luz” means “Light” in Spanish.

“Have fun, girls,” she tells us, kissing Gina goodbye and me hello. “Hopefully you'll get inspired and put an end to this whole Halloween-costume dilemma.”

“We'll try,” I say.

“Bye, Mom!” calls Gina.

As soon as she's out the door, we race upstairs to my room.

“Guess what?” asks Gina, the moment we've closed the door behind us and collapsed across my bed.

“What?”

“I finished my paper.”

I sit up straight and stare at her. “You mean...?”

She nods. “My ‘family brag paper.' It's all done!”

“Already?” I gasp. “I'm dreading writing mine. I haven't even started thinking about it! How did you--”

“It was easy, really,” Gina cuts in. “Just like I thought. After all, in my family, there's just Mom, Dad, Sofie, and me.”

“And they're all easy to brag about,” I add sourly. I can't believe she's done!

Gina laughs. “My parents, yes. Sofie...well, she has her moments.”

“But she's the cutest little thing ever!” I cry, thinking of my chubby toddler cousin with her soft black curls and high-pitched baby voice.

“She can be a pain, Tori. She's always getting into my stuff.”

“But still, I'm sure it wasn't exactly hard for you to brag about her,” I insist. “She's cute and sweet and cuddly...that's a lot more than I can say for my brothers!”

“Aw, they're not that bad, Tore.”

I stare at her. Has she gone mad? “Not that bad?” I repeat. “Well, maybe not Andrew. But, Gina...the rest...they're awful!”

Gina shrugs. “I have a lot of good memories of them. Like that Christmas we all drew names for Secret Santa, and Ben got mine, and he bought me that cute stuffed reindeer with the jingle-bell harness. It was so thoughtful. I mean, he could have just given me a gift card, or ten dollars, but he went and picked out something especially for me.”

“I'm sure it was just lucky,” I say. “He probably got it half-price somewhere on Christmas Eve.”

Gina ignores me. “Or what about the time Nate organized that surprise birthday party for Abuelito? Or when Joey took you and me ice skating last winter and bought us hot chocolate at the rink?”

“Everybody loves Abuelito, “ I reply. “And Joey...well, he must have hit his head or something.”

“Come on, Tori!” protests Gina. “They're good guys, all of them.”

I roll my eyes. She isn't going to get me to agree with that. “I thought you came over so we could talk about Halloween costumes,” I say after a moment.

Gina sighs and props her head up on one of my pillows. “Okay. So, let's talk about them. What kind of costume were you thinking? Scary? Funny? Fancy?”

“I have no idea.” I sort absentmindedly through the basket that holds my large Webkinz collection. “Last year, we dressed up like our pets. Remember that?”

“That was awesome,” says Gina. “Your mom did a great job with your cat makeup. You looked just like Ebony.”

I giggle. “And your rubber beak...that was hilarious.”

“And really hard to breathe through,” adds Gina. She went trick-or-treating as her cockatiel, Flutter.

“Those, I guess, were funny costumes,” I say. “Maybe we should try something different this Halloween.”

“Good idea. We should be either scary or fancy.”

I nod. “And it's gotta be good.”

“Of course.” Gina thinks for a moment. “What about...what about cheerleaders?”

I make a face. “That's too boring and predictable. A bunch of girls from school were cheerleaders last year, and I'm sure they will be again. We want to be really different.” I love dressing up for Halloween (it's another opportunity to “become” someone else) and I take it very seriously.

“Hmmm.” Gina presses her lips together. “Well...how about fifties girls?”

I frown at her. Talk about predictable.

“No?” Gina says helplessly. “What do you suggest, then?”

I close my eyes and think very hard. Something scary or fancy. Or...maybe a little bit of both. Maybe something mysterious. Maybe...! My eyes fly open as a light bulb turns on in my head. “I've got it!”

“You do?” Gina leans forward excitedly.

I jump up and run to my bookcase, scanning the row of bindings. “Here it is,” I say triumphantly, pulling a book off the shelf.

“A book?” Gina looks confused.

“Wait a minute.” I sling myself onto the bed next to her and begin flipping through the pages. I stop about halfway through the book and tap my finger on a picture of a beautiful dark-haired woman in a peasant-style top and a full twirling skirt of many colors. She wears an equally colorful scarf wrapped around her head, and huge gold hoop earrings, and more necklaces than you can imagine.

“Wow,” gasps Gina. “What an amazing outfit. It's so...exotic!”

“And mysterious,” I add, pleased by her reaction. “She's a gypsy.”

Gina nods. “That's awesome. What book is this?”

“An old collection of short stories my mom used to read when she was a kid. I discovered this picture a couple of months ago and I couldn't stop looking at it.”

“I can see why.” Gina glances from the book to me. “Being gypsies for Halloween is a great idea, Tori, but how are going to make our costumes that...” she searches for a word “...that elaborate?”

I shrug. “It'll be easy. We don't need blouses like that, since we'll probably be wearing jackets anyway, since Halloween is usually pretty cold. And scarves are easy to find. Our moms have lots of scarves, and you can get them for cheap at resale shops too. We both have hoop earrings, and dress-up jewelry....” I tick the things off on my fingers. “And we'll wear lots and lots of makeup. So all we really need are the skirts.”

Gina sighs. “The skirts are a big part of the costume.”

I bite my lip, thinking a moment. Then I lay the book aside and stand up, grabbing Gina's hand. “Come with me,” I say.

Gina and I make our way slowly up the creaky attic steps. I glance behind me at the door at the bottom of the steep, narrow staircase. It's already swung halfway shut, and I shiver. Even though I know it's silly, our attic gives me the creeps.

At the top of the stairs, I flick the switch on the wall, splashing the attic with buttery yellow light. The air up here is musty and chilly. I'm glad I pulled on a hoodie sweatshirt before leaving my room, and I bet Gina is too.

I work my way over to a corner where the roof slants really low. I push my old Fischer-Price dollhouse out of the way and reach for the boxes wedged behind it.

“I haven't been up here in a long time,” Gina says. “I'd forgotten how big your attic is. Our is just, like, a crawlspace.”

“Big old houses always have big attics,” I say, pushing the battered cardboard boxes into the middle of the room, directly beneath the dust-covered light fixture.

“Awesome!” cries Gina. “So, these are the clothes?”

“These are the clothes,” I repeat, pushing back the limp cardboard folds of first one box lid, then the second.

Excitedly, we begin to rummage inside. The clothes belong to Mom. In the 1970s, when she was growing up, she sewed herself a lot of stuff: dresses and jumpers and kerchiefs, but best of all, skirts. Mom says that homemade outfits were really in fashion back then, and that lots of teenage girls went shopping for material and followed simple clothing patterns.

I'm really glad Mom was one of those girls. In the seventies, you see, people liked really weird, wild, colorful patterns. And they made their skirts long and full. Put those two things together and you have the makings for a perfect gypsy costume!

Gina and I weed through the clothes, pulling out the skirts and heaping them in a pile on the floor. Once we've got them all, we begin to try them on, tugging them over our jeans.

“Wow,” says Gina, swirling around in an orange-and-white skirt that's way too long for her. “Good thing you remembered about this stuff.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Mom showed them to me a long time ago. I never thought about using them for a costume before.” I twirl in a skirt, too. This one is mint-green and sky-blue with white detail. It's also way too long for me. “Maybe we should decide on the skirts we want,” I say, “and then my mom can hem them for us.”

“You're sure she won't mind us wearing them?” Gina asks.

“Of course not,” I tell her.

And then the attic plunges into darkness, just before the door at the bottom of the staircase slams shut. Gina and I can't help ourselves; we scream!

Chapter Four

Our attic has no windows, so it's pitch-black now, and Gina and I reach for each other in the darkness.

“What happened?” she asks, a little breathless. “Did someone blow a fuse or something?”

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” I answer slowly, trying to ignore the way my heart is slamming against my rib cage.

“What do you mean?”

Instead of replying, I slip out of the blue and green gypsy skirt and inch closer to where I'm pretty sure the wall is, groping for the light switch with my hand.

“Tori?” Gina says. “Where are you?”

“Over by the wall. I'm looking for the light.”

“It's so dark,” my cousin half-whispers.

“Don't worry,” I say, sounding braver than I feel. “Just stay right where you are so you don't trip over anything. I'll find the switch, I'm sure.” But after what feels like an eternity of patting down the wall, I still haven't met with any luck.

I hear Gina moving closer now. “You can't find it?” she asks in a small voice. “What if the attic is haunted, Tori?”

“Haunted!” I cry. “Don't be ridiculous.” But deep down, though I hate to admit it, I've always had a touch of that same silly fear.

“Maybe we should call for help,” suggests Gina. “Somebody'll hear us and--”

“No,” I say firmly. “Believe me, that's just what they want us to do.”

“What who wants us to do?”

I sigh. “Whichever one of my dumb brothers did this to us.”

“Your brothers?” she asks in surprise.

“Welcome to my life, Gina.”

“Well, what are we going to do then?”

I think for a second. “Let's find the top of the stairs, and then sit and scoot down them. That way, we can't trip and fall.”

“Okay,” Gina agrees slowly. “I guess.”