“Please don’t tell anyone,” I say, the words tumbling over each other. I’m shivering, and I can’t stop. “This here is private. Okay?”
His eyes fill with disappointment. “That may be one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a prodigy. Gifts like that are for sharing. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
I think of a deer I cornered once, terror rising from its coat in steamy puffs. I’d lowered my shotgun, ashamed. Its face had been swallowed up by the same eyes Nessa wore the night she stopped talking.
If I hadn’t been lost in the violin, I might’ve heard sooner. Heard in time.
“Please don’t say anything. Please?” My eyes well. “Please?”
He looks like he’s been struck as the tears slip down my cheeks. Dang tears. I almost never cried in the woods.
“I’m so sorry, Carey. I didn’t mean to push. I was just saying—ah, hell.”
“No worries,” I say quickly, like he’d said to me this morning. I pull myself together, surprised by my reaction. “It’s just that I have so much to juggle right now, and everything’s so different—”
“You don’t have to explain. Your playing, you’re just so—I got carried away.” He leans in, giving my shoulder a bump. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just—” I look at him, my cheeks burning. “I reckon for now, I just want to blend in.”
His eyes warm me like our crackliest fires, the ones inside the house.
“You, Carey Blackburn, could never blend in. Believe me,” he says, his words soft as cashmere, “that’s the truth. But, if you want to keep them thinking you’re Clumsy Carey—”
I give a wobbly laugh. “Yeah, I reckon.”
“Then who am I to stand in your way?”
His eyes flicker to the building, where two guys yell his name and press goofy faces against the glass. He tucks his hands into the armpits of his sweater, the way Jenessa and I did in the woods. His eyes hold mine, causing my stomach to flip.
“But we know better,” he adds, winking. “Right?
I hand him back his coat. “We know better.”
I watch his back, his feet crunching through the snow. At the door, he turns, his eyes centered on me, the real me.
Fee bee. Feeeeee bee.
“Catch ya later, then, CC.”
The door clicks shut behind him, and a moment later, the bell rings. I fit the violin and bow back in their bed of crushed velvet, my hands clumsy with cold. I take three big bites of my tuna sandwich and swig the apple juice in the container down to its last drop before dropping the rest of my lunch into the trash can and crunching my way to the door.
I’ve survived my first lunch period as the new girl.
I feel as proud of myself as I did catching my first fish or starting my first fire.
Prod-i-gy: person with extraordinary gifts; extraordinary thing.
I’d looked it up as soon as I got home.
“Could you please pass Jenessa the butter?” I ask politely.
Jenessa wants to melt a pat of butter on top of her peach cobbler.
“Ewwww.” Delaney wrinkles her nose.
Even after weeks of good food, Nessa remains slim like Mama, destined to be long and lithe and beautiful. Everywhere we go, grown-ups and kids alike stop to stare at her. At us. Before Pixie, I would’ve thought it was because we were backwoods losers stickin’ out like sore thumbs.
Good old Pixie.
Delaney ignores my request, although the butter dish sits right in front of her.
“I got it.” Melissa, smiling an apology in my direction, waves me to sit back down. She passes the butter to Nessa as Delaney feigns ignorance, concentrating on her plate, where she pushes around a few stalks of asparagus.
“Not a big pat. A pat-pat,” I tell Jenessa.
When she reaches for another, I shake my head no.
I still can’t get used to the taste of beef. It’s so different from pigeon, quail, squirrel, deer, and rabbit. Going back in my mind, I catch the glint of my hunting knife as I deftly gut a rabbit with a few skillful strokes. We’ve yet to have rabbit at my father’s house.
“How old do we have to be before we’re allowed to have a boyfriend?” Delaney asks with a sidelong glance in my direction.
I cut into my baked potato, fuming.
“Sixteen,” my father booms in his no-nonsense voice.
“How old to wear makeup?”
“Fifteen,” Melissa says. “Tastefully.”
Delaney smiles triumphantly.
“Why?” ask Melissa and my father together.
“Oh, no reason.” Delaney smiles, careful not to look at me. “Just checking.”
They exchange a glance. Melissa shrugs.
“Hey, Mom,” Delaney says, her mouth full of cobbler. “You work too hard. How about Carey and me clearing the table and loading the dishwasher?”
Melissa puts down her spoon, her plate empty except for sugary smears on the glass dessert dish and a few crumbs pressed against the sides.
“That would be lovely, helpful daughter of mine.”