Nessa likes to listen to our conversations from the kitchen table after its cleared, where she swings her legs and draws pictures of Shorty and my father scrunched beneath rainbows that take up half pages, or of Delaney and Melissa smiling beneath bulbous yellow suns. The drawings aren’t half-bad, actually. They crowd the refrigerator doors, held in place by tiny black magnets. I count another three drawings taped to the pantry door, and one sketch of our woods through Jenessa’s eyes, framed and hung on the dining room wall—the first Nessa ever drew for Melissa.
That one’s my favorite, drawn in old, familiar Bic, the trees scratching the page with a straight-lined elegance, the camper in the clearing, the creek running off the bottom of the paper. Nessa could be an artist, one day.
“It’s nice of Carey to take Courtney to the party,” Melissa says, giving Delaney an impromptu hug as she passes.
“Mom, really. You’re messing up my hair.”
“I’d imagine she has one tough row to hoe,” Melissa continues, “being young and accelerated. It doesn’t surprise me you two would hit it off.”
I bristle. “Why? Because we’re freaks?”
I watch Melissa climb barefoot onto the counter to put away the crystal bowls on the cabinet’s top shelf. My father doesn’t like it when she does that. He wants her to use the step stool, even if it’s a pain to unfold and heavy to drag in from the hallway closet.
Melissa climbs down and turns to me.
“Freak? Where did you hear that?”
We both look at Delaney through the archway, where she languishes on the sofa, reading Star and People. Freak’s a word she’d use forever if I admitted that, one, I don’t know who any of the people in People are, or why some of the older women look like cats—cats with huge lips—and two, to me, the teens look bizarre with their blinding white smiles, impossibly perfect hair, and expensive purses and bags. Ness and I could’ve lived in the woods for a year, maybe two, with the money it costs to buy one of those “Louis Vuitton” bags.
A horn bleeps outside. Delaney rushes to find her coat, then pops her head through the doorway.
“I’m going now. Bye!”
Melissa stops her.
“Are you sure you don’t have room for Carey and Pixie, Delly?”
I cringe. Adults can be so optimistic. Delaney’s face could wither one of Nessa’s smiling paper flowers into a petalless, slumped brown shoot.
“Sorry, Mom. We’re going to Kara’s house first, and then the party. I can’t make the girls wait.”
Melissa looks at me, and I’m the slumped brown shoot. Not that I’d go to the party with Delaney anyway. I’d rather eat skunk, which (thanks, Saint Joseph!) Nessa and I never had to do.
“We understand. Have fun, honey. No drinking, and wear your seat belt! And no texting while driving, you hear? Anything untoward, and you have them stop the car and I’ll come pick you up.”
Delaney groans. “And I’d be the laughingstock of high school.”
“I don’t care. At least you’d be a live laughingstock!”
The front door slams behind her just as my father comes in from the back.
“Who’s slamming doors around here?”
Jenessa raises her hand and giggles.
“Oh, you think so, huh?”
He descends on Ness with tickling fingers, her bubbly laughter loud and infectious, so close to real words, I almost expect her to talk out loud. Smart as the shuffle fox, she slides under the table, but it’s obvious she doesn’t really want to escape.
“That’s enough now,” Melissa warns. “She just ate dinner.”
Still laughing, my father helps Jenessa back into her chair, her hand so tiny in his large one. I know it’s considered impolite, but I can’t help staring at him. It’s like finding something you didn’t know was yours, and the only way to get to know it is to look and look. With his tousled hair and wide smile, he looks younger and happier than he did that first day in the woods. He doesn’t look like a guy who doesn’t care about his daughters.
Everyone loves Nessa. Melissa, Delaney, Mrs. Haskell, Mrs. Tompkins, the entire second-grade class, and obviously, my father. It should be hard for Ness, like it is for me, but for her, it’s not. It’s like when we went food shopping with Melissa last weekend and on the way home, the SUV caught one green light after another.
Lucky. Easy. That’s how it is for Jenessa.
I smile at her, a pink smile, seeing the candy necklace she’s gnawing on. She must’ve gotten it at school. Or from Melissa. She’s eaten most of the candy beads, except for the pink ones.
A strong rap on the front door, and we all turn our heads.
“I’ll get it,” my father says.
I watch from my chair as he greets Courtney and her mom. I’m surprised by how young Pixie’s mom is.
“Would you like to come in?”
Pixie’s mom shyly holds out her hand. “I’m Amy Macleod. Carey is all Courtney talks about.”
Pixie turns almost as red as her hair. “Mom!”
“Let me take your coat,” Melissa says warmly.
I’ve been ready for ages. My puffer coat hangs on a peg by the door, with thick wool mittens the color of dusty rose shoved in a pocket apiece. I’m wearing the new boots, which cling like a second skin all the way to my knees, and which, Melissa says, fashion trends aside, are really equestrian boots.