Besides, everyone knows Eleanor has a secret boyfriend, even if she won’t admit it.
Everyone meaning me, Marla, and Astrid. It’s not the kind of thing we tell Mom and Dad. That’s what makes him a secret.
“Can we be excused?” Eleanor says. I’d like to clamp my hand over her mouth and superglue her to the chair.
“Come on,” I say. “Can’t you hang out for a few more minutes? Can’t we do something together? I’m bored.”
“Silly,” Mom says. “Don’t whine. You sound like Marla.” It’s not great that her only few words this morning are about me bothering her. She is wearing the same clothes as she was yesterday, and they are wrinkled and slept-in.
It’s official: she is not doing well.
I don’t look at Marla’s face. It will be crumpled with sadness after that comment.
“Don’t you get bored here?” I ask Mom. I mean it as a real question, not a whiny one, but I’m not sure she can tell the difference right now. Dad makes a dozen mini pancakes. Polka-Dot Pancakes, he calls them. They’re the kind he likes best. He puts bacon in the pan too, but not for long. Like me, he likes his bacon soft and chewy. We have a lot in common.
“I get bored everywhere,” Mom says with a shrug. Astrid stares at her orange juice, and Eleanor wipes her own forehead. Marla pours Mom more coffee, like that is some sort of antidote for boredom.
“No one’s bored,” Dad says. “There’s a lake. Go to the lake. You girls love the lake. Gretchen? You want to take them to the lake? I’ll clean up here, pack you a picnic. You and the girls can spend some time together.”
“No, thank you,” Eleanor says before Mom has a chance to say no as well. “Astrid and I have a whole thing we’re working on.”
“I’ll help,” I say.
“It’s not the kind of project you can help with,” Eleanor says. Astrid looks sorry, like she’d like to say yes to me but can’t. Eleanor thinks eleven is too young for everything, but Astrid knows eleven is not that young at all, especially in our family.
“I’m too tired to take anyone anywhere,” Mom says. Of course she is tired. She was up all night doing her routine, where she wanders from closet to closet, opening and closing the doors. Sometimes she steps inside for a few minutes or an hour. She’s always the saddest the mornings after her closet searching.
I stayed awake last night too, listening.
I opened the door to my own closet, trying to see whatever it was Mom was seeing. But all I saw were old suitcases and winter coats. I can’t even step all the way inside my own closet, it’s so full of things that smell like dust and grandparents. It seems like more things get piled in every year. Like someone is sneaking in extra coats and duffel bags and rain boots and broken umbrellas.
“We’ll watch a movie later,” Astrid says. “We’ll play Monopoly. We’ll make a collage to send to LilyLee.” Astrid kisses my forehead, a thing that no one else ever does. That one gentle touch against my sunburned skin is enough.
I’ve stopped needing very much at all.
Two
I knock on Astrid and Eleanor’s door in the late afternoon when the house is lonely and quiet. No one answers. No music is playing. I don’t hear their voices. I don’t smell anything or sense any movement behind the wooden door with the hand-painted ELEANOR AND ASTRID’S ROOM sign on the front.
I am officially crazy curious.
Marla catches me with my ear against the twins’ door. She sniffs, this noise she makes when she thinks she’s better than me.
“They won’t tell you what they’re up to,” Marla says.
“They won’t tell you either,” I say.
“They already did,” Marla says.
I can’t tell if she’s lying. Marla is the kind of person who lies, but not if she’s positive she could get caught. I squint, trying to see her better, but all I see is her dark mane, knotted at the ends, and her big blue eyes and the way her skirt rides up too far on one side.
Marla reaches for the doorknob, like she’s about to go in, and I seethe with jealousy. It comes all fast and unexpected, a feeling with force.
“We have to protect you, remember? That’s what Mom says. You’re special or whatever,” Marla says. She’s always mad at me for things that aren’t my fault, like the way Mom babies me even though she barely is able to even vaguely support or interact with anyone else a lot of the time.
Before I have a chance to respond, we hear a crash over by the stairway. Multiple clunks. A yelp. And a little-girl cry.