MOM TAPS OUT a Kool, sweat glistening along her hairline as she fishes in her pocket for a lighter. It’s too hot to eat, too hot to move, and the girls are already out on the porch squabbling over a game of Crazy Eights, but she raises her eyebrows at me when I push back from the supper table. “Hold it. You’re on dish duty.”
“For how long?”
“Until I say.” She sparks the lighter three times, then pulls her mouth to the side, touching the tip of the cigarette to the flame. I run water into the sink, watching her, remembering how hard Mags tried to get her to quit those things a few years ago. Hardly anybody’s parents smoke; you just don’t see it. Mags used to hide Mom’s packs behind the couch or up in the attic, and then she’d leave printouts from the American Lung Association site on Mom’s nightstand. I took a look at some of those, and it made me notice little things about Mom, like the stains on her fingertips where she holds her smokes, and the faint yellowish tint to her skin. Finally, when my sister put a No Puffin sticker on the fridge smack-dab in the middle of all the clippings from Nell’s plays, Mom said, “Margaret, enough,” in the tone that brings things to a full stop in our house.
Mags stared back at her, her hands in fists. “They’re killing you. Don’t you care?”
Mom blinked—maybe winced—then turned away, smacking the top of the Kools carton. “I find any more of these missing, they’re coming out of your savings account.”
I sweat while I scrub and rinse. A June bug bangs off the window screen above the sink. I watch it, thinking. “Has Hunt ever been married?”
Behind me, Mom coughs. “What brought that on?” I’ve surprised her out of being mad at me. I’m glad Libby’s at work and not here to remind her.
“Just wondering.”
She’s quiet for a second or two. When I glance back, she’s letting smoke trickle out her nose, watching it waft onto the sticky evening air like moth wings. “He was. Before we knew him.”
“What happened?”
She shrugs. Her collarbones are sharp against her old wash-worn sleeveless blouse. “Didn’t work out. You don’t ask somebody for details about their ex.”
Which meant they’d talked about it. I slide a dripping plate into the dish rack. “Well, she must’ve been an idiot to let go of Hunt.”
“You think so, huh.” Her tone reminds me that she has a few opinions about idiots herself. I’m not off the hook with her.
“Yeah. Seriously, Hunt’s awesome. He’s never a jerk and he knows how to fix stuff and he makes pretty good money at Danforth’s, right? And he’s cute, for an old guy.” My words land hard when I remember what she said about me getting pregnant this morning. That’s right. I’m supposed to be mad at her, too.
Mom inclines her head. “Hunt fixed up this house with his wife. Put that trailer out back so his mother could live close. Planned to build a barn, too, so his wife could have horses.” The Kool grinds into the cut-glass ashtray, and then she’s crinkling the pack for another. She still wears her wedding ring, the one Dad bought at a pawnshop with his whole week’s paycheck. It’s engraved with some other couple’s names inside, but Mom didn’t care; it was a joke between them, calling each other Wendy and Greg, signing cards to each other that way sometimes. “Marriage went south before they had more than the foundation laid. Hunt filled it with dirt so one of you kids wouldn’t fall in and break your neck when you were out running around in the woods.”
“I didn’t know that.” She lifts a shoulder. “Wait. Is that where all the lupines grow?”
“Mm-hmm. He seeded it.”
I haven’t been that far out back for a while, but I can picture it, a field of white, pink, and purple, shifting in the breeze. However things went down with his wife, Hunt couldn’t be too bitter if he planted those flowers where their life was supposed to happen. “What happened to his mom?”
“She got Alzheimer’s and ended up in a home,” Mom said, considering the tip of her cigarette. “Believe she’s dead now.”
As I dry our big salad bowl, I wander over to the front doorway and watch Mags and Nell play cards through the screen door. “Nellie,” I say, “what happened in the movie yesterday? I missed most of it.”
She claps her hand to her chest and flops back onto the floor. “Oh!”
“Nooo.” Mags holds her head, but it’s too late. Nell’s off.
She runs through the entire plot, backtracking a lot to fill in stuff she forgot to mention, doing impressions that get me laughing. Mags shoots me a dirty look. “Thanks. It’s all she’s talked about since we got home last night.”
“I don’t care. I loved it sooo much.” Nell’s cheeks flush. She’s dreaming about a Technicolor James Dean, all lit up and beautiful and bigger than life. “My favorite part was when Cal and Abra finally kiss on the Ferris wheel, right at the top”—she sighs—“and it was perfect. They have the whole town around them, but they’re still all alone. That’s how it should be.” She has her eyes closed, and at once I wish she’d stop talking, wish I’d never brought the subject up. She puts her hand to her chest like somebody moving in their sleep. “It’s best when nobody knows. When your love lives in your two hearts, and nobody else matters.”
Mags stares at her, then at me. I say, “Only in the movies, right, Nellie girl?”
She looks at me, eyes damp. “Uh-huh. Only in the movies.” She lies back, puts her hands behind her head, and starts to hum.
I didn’t really forget about sending a photo and a bio to Melissa Hartwell, but I pretend I did when Nell reminds me. I’ve actually been worrying about it ever since the welcome meeting. Once the booklets are out there, everybody will know. Darcy Prentiss is on the ballot? How the hell did that happen? I read through the Princess packet; Queen wins about $1,700 in scholarships, and second runner-up and Miss Congeniality get $100. I’ll be happy if I get out of this thing without a bucket of pig’s blood dumped on my head.
I have no idea what to say in my bio. I feel silly even writing it.
“How can I write a biography if I don’t have a life?” I push the laptop across Mags’s bedspread to Nell. “You think of something.”
She pushes it back. “It’s about you. I can’t write it.” She wrote hers in ten seconds. Easy; she’s been practicing her acceptance speech since the fourth grade. She also has the business she wants to sponsor her all picked out: Weaver’s Flowers & Gifts. “They sponsor a girl every year,” she said. “Plus everybody gets their bouquets there anyway, so it’ll be one-stop shopping.” I tried not to laugh at how matter-of-fact she sounded, paging through one of my Seventeens. “You should ask Hannaford. The twins work there, so you know somebody. That helps.”
“Give it to me.” Mags reads aloud as she types: “Darcy is an upcoming senior at Sasanoa Area High School. Her interests are . . .” She snaps her fingers at me. “Quick. Make something up. G-rated.”
I throw her stuffed rabbit at her. “I’m gonna gut Mr. Buns while you sleep.” I take the laptop back, feeling a brain cramp coming on as I stare at the blinking cursor in the email. Finally, I type Darcy plans to travel after graduation, then hurry downstairs to get the camera and put on some makeup before I can change my mind.
Don’t ask me where that came from, traveling. The farthest I’ve ever been was the Maine Mall in Portland back in seventh grade. I went with Rhiannon; her mom drove us and took us out for lunch. I remember Rhiannon and I bought necklaces at Claire’s, hemp chokers with little clay beads and half a heart charm each. Rhiannon got the one that said Best.
I know Nell and Mags must’ve read what I wrote, but they don’t tease me about it when I come back. “Stand here.” Mags guides Nell back against the paisley throw with a picture of Janis Joplin on it tacked to the wall.
All it takes is one click. We look at the preview and Nell is gorgeous. She never looks self-conscious in pictures, just beaming and natural and completely herself. One of her curls spirals off at an angle from her widow’s peak, but it looks right, somehow.
Next, I stand in the same spot. “You know, everybody else is going to use their senior pictures, I bet.” I run my hands through my hair and fluff it out, which is impossible since it grows straight as a stick. “Bella probably went to Trask Studios and ordered the princess package or something.”
“Darce.” Mags raises the camera. “Shut up.”
After five retakes, I can live with the last one. I look kind of tired, but not too bad, considering how the day started. I’m not smiling, but like Nell’s crazy curl, it looks right.
After Nell’s gone home to bed, I lie out on the roof, slowly turning the buttercups between my thumb and forefinger. I just fished them out of the pocket of my work shorts, so they’re a little crushed and wilted, but I think I might hang them from the curtain rod in my room and let them dry.
Mags crawls out, and we sit together, watching the lights blink on the Narrows bridge. Libby’s car turns into the driveway. We stay quiet as she gets out, grabs her big patchwork shoulder bag, and goes into the trailer. She’s got this self-righteous swish to her walk, head held high, like the world owes her because she got left at the altar (almost) by some dude none of us know anything about, least of all Nell. I say, “I yelled at her for eavesdropping on me and Mom this morning.” Mags laughs. “I’m just so sick of her.”
“I know.”
“Wish she’d get her own place and move out of here. Nell could stay with us.” I pause. “She hates me. Libby.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure? She’s been running her mouth to Mom behind my back, repeating stuff. I don’t even know how she finds half of it out.”
“All she has to do is ask Nell. You know she won’t lie.”
I let that one slide, swearing and crossing my legs at the ankle. “Nobody’s business what I’m doing.” I chew my lip, remembering Mom this morning. “Don’t you think it’s weird that Mom never talked to us about sex at all?”
“Probably would’ve been weirder if she had.”
“But isn’t that what a mom’s supposed to do? Tell her daughters about getting their periods and sex and everything?”
“Maybe on TV.”
“No. Real moms do it. Kat’s mom took her to family planning and got her on the pill when she turned thirteen.”
“Ha. That’s because she knew if she didn’t she’d be raising another pair of bouncing baby hellions on top of the ones she’s already got. You remember a time when Kat’s mom didn’t have gray hair?” I shake my head. “Exactly.” We sit there awhile. She looks at the buttercups. “Pretty.” I nod. “Listen. I’m not trying to boss you here, but . . . on the Fourth, when you and Shea . . . were you safe?”
I lower my eyelids, turning the bridge lights into fuzzy bursts of red, then darkness, then red. You could see the fireworks from the quarry that night. That’s what it was like, colored bursts in the sky and bonfire smoke, the sound of people laughing from the other side of the pit. Him kissing me in the dark and me letting him, my back pressed against a tree, then the two of us going down into the grass together. “You don’t have to worry.”
She nods. The silence stretches out, awkward because I won’t say more. “Night, then.”
She climbs back into her bedroom. I hear the sound of her mattress creaking, then the rush as she turns the box fan on. I’m so tired I feel drugged, and I actually slip under for a few minutes before I jerk awake on the roof, tingling with the knowledge of how close the edge is, that I could’ve gone over.
I tiptoe through Mags’s dark room, into the hallway of our sleeping house. In my room, I tie the buttercups to the crystal hanging in the window. That’s when the headlights come on.
The car’s parked maybe forty yards down from our house. They must’ve been sitting there for a long time; nobody turned down our road while we were on the roof. They idle for a minute or two, then pull into the road and drive slowly past our house.
I wait for the sound of the engine to fade away, but instead, it comes back. They must’ve turned around on the old logging road a quarter mile down from our house. They tap their brakes at the stop sign where Old County Road meets 15, and like that, they’re gone.