The Starfish Sisters: A Novel

I was haunted by a scene of the kids in the diner getting flour poured on their heads. It was so humiliating.

“Gandhi did it,” Joel said.

“But this is America,” I said, lured by argument. My dad loved to debate, and so did my mother, and they loved getting into these deep back-and-forthings. Not their fighting, but the way they talked about ideas. “America, my dad says, takes revolution and sells it back to you for a dollar ninety-nine.”

Joel cracked up. “That’s good.”

“He’s a professor,” I said, proud.

“Fancy,” Joel commented.

“Not really.”

“Phoebe likes to pretend she’s not rich,” Suze said, something pointed in her tone, “but she is.”

I looked at her with a frown. “That was a mean thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said nonchalantly. “It’s just a fact.”

It still stung. She was making us different. “We aren’t rich.”

“You have a swimming pool,” Suze said. “You’re wearing a cashmere sweater.”

Again my ears burned. She was right. “You should see what some of the girls in my school wear. Where they live.”

“It’s okay,” Joel said. “We don’t choose where we’re born.”

“I know.” I shot Suze a look. “You didn’t choose to be a preacher’s daughter.”

“That is true.” Her face changed, and she suddenly jumped up. “What time is it?”

I had a tiny watch my mother had given me. “Four forty-five. Are you in trouble?”

“Dang it! I gotta go. I have to be in church at five.” She hugged me. “Be good,” she said in a singsong, and rushed out.

Joel and I sat there. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and he was quiet, too. Why did I always have to be so awkward?

I was about to make an excuse and go home when he said, “It stopped raining. Want to walk on the beach?”

A swell rose in my heart. I hoped it didn’t show. “Sure.”

Suze

I ran down the hill, trying to avoid splashing mud on my legs, and managed to get into the kitchen through the back door five minutes before services started. Two of the church ladies were making coffee in a giant percolator, talking in quiet voices. On the counter were trays of simple treats, brownies and oranges, like we were all in kindergarten, but my father’s edict was that fellowship made a stronger church, and it seemed like he was right, because the congregation had been growing these past few months.

“Hello, Suzanne,” said Mrs. Henry, a plump older woman who often did this work. She nodded toward the ladies’ room. “You have time to clean up before they start.”

I washed the splatters of mud from my shins and calves and splashed water on my face. My hair was damp, but it looked nice the way little bits curled around my face, and my cheeks were red from exercise, which even I could see made my eyes look super, super bright. For a minute, I got stuck in looking at my face, at the end of my nose and the shape of my mouth, and wondered if I could be in the movies. Be Juliet, be Anne Frank, be anyone but me, honestly. It seemed like it would be so much fun. How did a person even do it?

I heard the choir start to sing and raced out to the sanctuary. It was packed tonight for the Saturday evening prayer service. I took my place on the second pew from the front, on the outside. Tonight, I sat next to Mr. and Mrs. Nesbit, who ran the hardware store. She was one of the women who wanted to mother me, and patted my knee when I sat down. I gave her a distracted smile, grabbing the hymnal and flipping to the page shown on the bulletin board on the wall by the pulpit. It was my job to change the numbers before every service, standing on a stepladder to slide the black digits in and out of the rows.

The singing ended and my father took the pulpit. He was a tall man, blond and broad shouldered, and I knew women liked his face, which was handsome unless you’d seen him so furious that he switched you. Once I saw a picture of a Nazi in the encyclopedia at school, and he reminded me of my dad. Handsome, but cruel.

My dad didn’t do long sermons on Saturday prayer meetings ordinarily, but he had a pet peeve about people overeating on holidays. “Friends, as we enter this traditional week of celebration, let us be mindful of our habits. In Proverbs 23:20, the Bible says, ‘Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’”

I pulled my sweater around me in the chilly sanctuary and tuned him out, thinking instead about Billy Jack and rescue, and getting jealous knowing that Phoebe and Joel were probably hanging out while I was stuck here. It made my stomach twist with jealousy: over Phoebe, over Joel, over my friends being friends without me. I thought Phoebe had a crush on Joel, too, and that was a weird feeling. It wasn’t that I liked him, but I didn’t want her to like somebody more than she liked me. I hated that I had to be here, instead of with them.

If God was so great, why did he drop me into such an awful situation? It was a thought that came to me a lot lately.

Phoebe

Joel and I had to walk all the way round the bluff, which took us by the lit-up church where Suze no doubt sat. We could hear Reverend Ogden preaching, his deep, booming voice traveling easily through the windows. “Do you go to church?” Joel asked.

“My mom is an atheist, but sometimes I go with my grandma. Do you?”

He gave me a little sideways grin. “I’m Indian. We have other kinds of church.”

“Like what?”

“I’m teasing you. I don’t know. We never do anything, either.”

I eyed the brightly lit windows, with their colorful designs. “I wonder if it would be good. To like, believe in something.”

“Nah.” His face looked hard. “Her dad beats her, you know.”

I nodded, blinking back sudden tears. “I wish I could save her.”

“Me too. My ma says you have to be wary of men in power.”

I blinked. He’d used “wary” in a sentence! I didn’t know any other guy who would do that, and an electric sensation ran through my body. We kept walking, taking the cut between the dunes that led to the ocean. The sky was thick and heavy. I pulled up the hood on my raincoat in preparation for the rain that would almost certainly fall any second. “Do you have a hat or something?”

“No. I’m used to rain.”

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere the sun shines all the time. Like Arizona or California.”

“I like the rain. It gives me room to think.”

We made it to the beach and the crispy sand that was washed hard and flat. I’d been to other beaches, but none of them had this walkable, hard sand I loved. The waves were soft and ruffly, flowing flat and friendly this side of the stacks. “What do you think about when you think?” I asked, and was embarrassed instantly over how stupid it sounded.

But he didn’t react badly. “Lots of things.” He tucked his hands in his jeans pockets. “Space travel lately. I’ve been reading this cool science fiction book about other planets, and now every time I look up at the stars, I think about what planets might be around them.”

“Cool. What’s the book?”

“A Wrinkle in Time.” He looked at me. “Have you read it?”

I stopped in my tracks. “I love that book!”

His grin this time was big, making his eyes tilt. In the dark, you couldn’t really see his acne at all. “Right on. That’s right, Suze said you love to read.”

“I do. You can pick up a book and go somewhere else.”

“Yeah. I gotta say I didn’t really like Go Ask Alice, though. It seemed kinda fake. Like she gets addicted to drugs in five seconds and she’s peddling to elementary school kids? Who does that?”

I frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“No big thing. Just didn’t make sense.”

“You’re right, though,” I exclaimed, retracing the narrative in my mind. “I mean, that’s hard core, right? Dealing to little kids.”

“Yeah.”

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