“I’ll get it,” Nora mouthed, stepping into the doorway. Nora’s face was etched with worry. Clearly, she’d gathered that this was not the smoothest mother-daughter reunion.
Skylar leaped out of her chair, hoping to simultaneously placate her mother and intercept Nora. Maybe she could get Meg upstairs before Nora started talking. Supposedly, her aunt was heading out for the evening, to a “breath workshop” in Portland. Skylar had been hoping she’d be gone by the time Meg arrived. “Okay, Mom?” she pleaded into the phone while she trailed Nora to the front door. “Please tell me it’s okay. I don’t want to get off the phone like this.”
“Well, at least you had a few minutes for me,” Valerie said in a wounded tone. And then, without giving Skylar a chance to respond, she hung up.
Skylar stood there for a moment, shell-shocked, listening to the dial tone.
It was then that Nora swung open her heavy front door and came face-to-face with Meg, whose eyes were glittering gray in the moonlight.
“I’ve been waiting so long to meet you, Mrs. McVoy,” Meg said.
Nora began to respond in kind. “I finally get to meet the elusive Meg—” And then she stopped talking abruptly, her eyes falling over Meg’s flowing hair, red choker, and silver shirt. The hand that was holding her mug of tea shook violently, splashing scalding water on Nora’s wrist before she dropped the cup altogether. Nora let out a yelp.
“Aunt Nora!” Skylar rushed over. “Are you okay? Did you burn yourself?”
Nora didn’t answer; she kept her eyes locked on Meg.
Meg took another step into the house, an expression of concern on her face. “Are you all right, Mrs. McVoy?”
“I’m—I’m fine,” Nora said shakily, backing away from Meg. A nervous giggle emerged from her pinched mouth.
“Are you sure?” Meg dug in her purse. “I think I have some kind of salve in here. . . . I had a little bit of an accident myself a while back.” She trailed off, dumping the contents of her bag onto the floor of the entryway.
Skylar approached her aunt and took her hand. There was a sharp red welt on her wrist. “Oh my gosh. It’s all red!”
Nora pulled her hand away quickly and started gathering her things from the hooks on the wall. “I’ll be fine,” she said, hastily putting on her overcoat. “No worse than a cat scratch.” And with that, she was out the front door and into the night. “I’ll be back later this evening,” she called over her shoulder.
As they watched her go, Skylar gave Meg an exaggerated shoulder shrug.
“I have no idea what that was about,” she whispered. “She can be weird sometimes.”
Then her gaze fell on the shards of china and the pool of cooling tea. It was unlike Nora to leave a mess. It was like she couldn’t get away fast enough.
? ? ?
Upstairs, Meg sat in the high-backed chair in the corner of Skylar’s sunny tower room, while Skylar sprawled on the quilted bedspread, trying to push her mom’s injured voice out of her mind.
“I’m sorry my aunt is such a basket case,” Skylar said, rolling her eyes. “Between her and my mom . . .” Meg was one of the only people who knew that Skylar’s mom was, in fact, in jail—not sick.
“No, I’m sorry,” Meg responded, all wide-eyed. “It’s not because I came over, is it?” She tucked her legs beneath her on the chair. For the first time ever Meg looked slightly off her game.
“No, no,” Skylar reassured her quickly, even though Aunt Nora had obviously been freaked out by Meg for some reason. “She’s just bizarre. Don’t worry about it. Trust me, it’s the least of my problems.”
She told Meg everything about the pajama party, right down to her total humiliation about Gabby and Pierce.
“Don’t read too much into it,” Meg said. Skylar knew this meant she was scheming up some idea.
“How can I not?” Skylar rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “The message is obvious—Pierce likes Gabby. I have no chance. It’s so unfair.”
“But that’s exactly it,” Meg said calmly. “You have to even the playing field.”
There was a silence between them; Skylar flopped back onto her stomach so she could look at Meg.
“Pierce doesn’t like Gabby,” Meg continued. “He likes what she is. What she represents. Think about it—he’s a sophomore and about to be the new football star of Ascension. He probably feels like he’s in over his head. He thinks he needs to follow a ‘formula’”—Meg used finger quotes—“to live up to what people expect from him. It’s almost like your mom and the care package.” She pointed to the butterfly card and scented soap on the desk that Skylar had been planning to send to her mom. “She cares more about what people think of her than what she actually feels.”