I didn’t know which one to ask.
“She and I became friends the first summer I was here,” Meg said. She didn’t sound sad talking about her friend. She sounded happy. Remembering. “I was an assistant in the costume shop. We were doing a full dress rehearsal, and I was in the audience watching and keeping an eye on the costumes—what fit right, and how they looked under the lights. They had to take a break to fix a trapdoor and I went up to adjust someone’s costume, and Lisette said something under her breath that made me laugh so hard I got tears in my eyes. No one else seemed to get the joke. She noticed. After that we spent a lot of time together. We were almost the same age and we both had big dreams.”
“Was her dream to go to Hollywood?”
Meg nodded.
“Was yours?”
“No,” Meg said. “I wanted to get hired as one of the costume experts at a big museum somewhere.”
But she was still here in Iron Creek. She did have the Costume Hall, though, which was kind of like a museum.
Did she like it when Lisette came back? Or did it remind Meg that she’d never left?
I didn’t ask that of course. But I realized something I should have thought of a long time ago. No wonder Leo liked Lisette so much. She was a kid from Iron Creek who had big dreams. And she made them happen.
32.
I dumped out a pile of straws and pipe cleaners on the table at home and got out some Elmer’s Glue and construction paper. It was a good thing my mom hadn’t really looked in the craft box she’d put together for us when we first moved to Iron Creek. There were an awful lot of supplies left.
“What are you doing?” Miles asked. “It’s time to go to Leo’s.”
“I’m going to need to talk to Leo for a while after we watch Times of Our Seasons,” I said. “So I’m leaving Mom a note in case she comes back while we’re still gone. And I’m leaving this. I want it to look like we were doing crafts.”
“What were we making?” Miles asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Miles picked up a straw. “In kindergarten we cut up the straws and put string through them and made necklaces. Do we have any string?”
“Good idea,” I said. I got out some string and scissors. We chopped up the straws and threaded string through them. Miles needed a haircut. His straight dark hair hung in his eyes and he pushed it away as he bent over to tie the ends of his necklace together. “There,” he said. “Done.”
“Nice,” I said. “Thanks.” The two of us had been a good team lately. If being a good team meant that we excelled at tricking our mom and eating a lot of candy and playing a lot of board games. I reached over and took the necklace he’d made from him. “Can I wear it?”
“Sure,” he said, sounding surprised. I pulled it over my head. I could barely get it on, and it was shorter than I expected it to be, more like a choker than a long necklace.
“Your head’s huge,” Miles said.
“I know.” Ben had had a big head too. You couldn’t really tell from looking at us, but when we wanted to wear hats, we always had to find them in the adult section. “It’s a sign of my giant brain.”
“Not necessarily,” Miles said. “Dinosaurs had huge heads and tiny brains.”
“Not necessarily,” I said back. “I heard once that some of them had a second brain, like in their tails.”
“That’s a myth,” Miles said. “But are you trying to tell me that you have a brain in your butt?”
“Maybe.” I shook my butt at him.
Miles clapped his hands over his eyes. “That’s disgusting.”
We left the other necklace and the supplies out on the counter, arranged theatrically.
“Do you think Mom will fall for it?” I asked Miles as we closed the blue door behind us and started toward Leo’s. I walked fast. We’d taken longer than I’d meant to with our craft.
“Probably,” Miles said. His mood seemed to have changed. He wasn’t looking at me. He stared down at the sidewalk, a frown on his face. His flip-flops snick-snacked on the pavement extra loud.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you only bring me places so you don’t get in trouble?”
“No,” I said. “I like hanging out with you. Which is good because I have to do it all the time.” I shoved into him.
He didn’t shove back.
“What about Leo?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you like him?”
“He’s my friend,” I said.
“Do you like like him?” Miles asked.
“No.”
“He probably wishes I’d stay home instead of hang around you guys.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Leo likes you.”
And then I realized that Leo was also Miles’s best friend in Iron Creek. And that Miles was feeling left out.
“I’m just going to go home when Times of Our Seasons is done,” Miles said. “Then you and Leo can talk in private.”
“I need you to stay with me so Mom doesn’t get mad,” I said. “Please.”
“What do you have to talk with him about?”
“Just something.”