17
In the few weeks that passed since Christmas, things had changed.
Jo and Laurie became inseparable.
Now that Shia was out of the country again, saving the world in his way, Meg was back to work at the King house. John Brooke would be home very soon, and it was all Meg would talk about. She was always so flustered while pretending not to be.
Meredith kept herself busy, with Aunt Hannah coming over more than usual.
Everyone was hunky-dory except Amy, who got suspended from school for continuing to trade food in class after the teacher told her multiple times not to.
Apparently, the principal was alerted when Amy was caught with a full-sized key lime pie inside her desk. A pie. In her desk. When she’d asked me to make it for her, I didn’t bat an eye. I figured it was for some school celebration, so I made her one from scratch that was supposed to be a homemade replica of Petite Amelie’s recipe.
So, Amy was home with me for a week and Meredith asked me to teach her while I was home. My online classes only took me around two hours a day to finish, so I had plenty of time during the next five days of her suspension. My sister was sitting across from me at the kitchen table; we had the house to ourselves that morning.
“I want to go to Laurie’s house again,” she complained through a spoonful of her cereal.
I dipped my spoon into the bowl and popped soggy rings of Cheerios into my mouth and, in the same mumbled manner she had spoken to me, asked, “Why?”
“Because!” Her sigh was heavy and dramatic. She was always the emotional one, more so than Meg even. Amy always seemed to be floating above the clouds. Meg was the most grounded of us, Amy the least.
“They have everything there. A big yard. They even have a golf cart parked in the backyard,” she whined.
I thought of the scooters and the bikes my parents had spent months saving for and had to remind myself that Amy was only twelve. She didn’t understand that she was being a spoiled little brat. “How do you know?”
Amy was always sneaking around. I heard Meredith telling Aunt Hannah that she should put a password on her laptop if she didn’t want Amy to go through it.
“I just do.” Amy had a glimmer in her eye as she went on. “We should just move in over there. There’s a library for Jo, a piano for you, and Meg loves the greenhouse. I’m sure we can find something for Meredith.”
It was true, Old Mr. Laurence had the most beautiful grand piano in his house. I had only seen it up close once, last week, when I went into the house for the first time.
I smiled at Amy. “We might run into a problem getting Old Mr. Laurence to give up that big house to us.”
Amy nodded, her blond curls rubbing against her shoulders. “You could convince him. One of us could even marry the old man!”
“Ew. You wouldn’t!” I gaped at my sister, mostly teasing, but I didn’t like the way she was already talking—in only the seventh grade—about marrying an elderly man for money. Who knew where she got that—maybe Meg?
“I would! So should you,” Amy said in a faux Southern accent. “I would do just about anything for a better life. If I was Old Mr. Laurence’s wife, I could paint all day and drink tea and be a proper Southern woman.” Raising her spoon up, Amy lifted her pinkie into the air.
I laughed a little at the change in her voice, but I didn’t like how quickly this conversation had gone awry. I needed to talk to Meredith about Amy’s comment, but honestly, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know anything about getting married, or even talking to the opposite sex.
Instead of giving her bad advice, I said, “If you put as much energy into math as you do planning your life as a trophy wife, you could at least have a diploma.”
Amy smiled, and the dimples in her cheeks flashed at me. Her teeth were so straight, but just a little too small for her face, making her look younger than she was.
“Whatevs.”
“That term is never going to be a thing, Amy.”
Eye roll. “It already is, Beth.”
“Be happy with what you have.”
She shook her head. “I want more.”
“Well, if you want more, then work for more. No one is going to hand you anything, and the sooner you realize that, the easier your life will be. Look at Dad: he does all of this for us, to make sure we have a good life.” I reached across the table and touched her hand. “I know it’s hard, but just try and be a little grateful.”
Amy looked down at the table, and then back up at me. “I thought he did it because of his patriotic duty?”
I laughed a little. “That too. Now, let’s go get your math booklet and let’s do some work.”
With a sigh, Amy took one last bite of her breakfast and followed me to the coffee table in the living room, where I spent two hours teaching her how to long divide. Her school textbook was so much more advanced than I thought it would be. She was already learning to subtract fractions. I don’t think I was learning that until at least ninth grade. I helped her add and subtract negatives without using our fingers, and she giggled when I got a few of the answers wrong. I quizzed her and she got better each time.
Sitting across from Amy, I felt like a big sister for the first time in a while. It felt like I was living inside one of those pure, family-friendly, Americana-themed television series where siblings hold hands and never want to rip each other’s heads off. Meg used to watch one of those shows, and we were all obsessed with it, but for the life of us we couldn’t remember what it was called. We remembered that a curly-haired girl talked to the moon, and that her neighbor had a crush on her, but not the title. A few months back we’d spent an afternoon searching the internet for it, but failed to find it again.
I got along with all of my sisters, usually. Jo and Amy fought the most, and consequently they hardly spent any time together. Amy and I would hang out more since I was always at home.
I wondered if she liked hanging out with me the same way she did Meg. I doubted it. Meg taught Amy how to straighten her curls with a flatiron and how to paint little flowers on her big-toe nail. When they were speaking, Jo taught Amy how to write short poems; they would read them out loud to each other, and I’d heard Jo telling Amy ghost stories about the French Quarter. Last Halloween—while Aunt Hannah watched Amy—me, Meg, Jo, and Meredith went on a ghost tour in the Quarter. The theme of the spooky tour was all about female murderers. It was awesome. Jo told Amy all about it when we got back and got cool points for that. Knowing Jo, she might have been trying to scare her sister, but instead it intrigued Amy.
I tried to think of what I brought to the sister table for Amy . . . But when nothing came to mind, I distracted myself by asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Old Mr. Laurence’s wife.” She laughed.
“Seriously.”
She shrugged and looked up at the ceiling. “I want to be like Meg.”
“Meg? In what way?”
I didn’t want to say that Meg hadn’t accomplished much in her life yet, but I had a feeling that Amy meant that she wanted to look like Meg.
“You know”—Amy shrugged—“I want to wear lipstick and tight dresses and be popular and pretty.”
Amy’s shirt had a little stain on the collar, and I wondered who’d taught her to care so much about being pretty. “It’s not your job to be pretty. It’s your job to make the best for yourself, but it isn’t your job to be pretty. You don’t owe anyone that.”
“Sure, Beth.”
And honestly I was a little surprised she’d even been listening to what I’d said.