“Yeah.” A wisp of memory comes to me, her blonde hair, the way she sang to me, and I feel a pain so old it’s polished to a patina.
“I can’t even stand to think about my mom or Nana dying.” She stares at the horizon, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have said that. Then she asks, “How did she die?”
“Breast cancer. There were not many treatments in those days.”
“Do you still miss her?”
“Not really.” I give her a chocolate Kiss. “Let’s talk about happier things.”
“I don’t really feel that happy. I don’t want to move to London and no one is listening to me.”
This is above my pay grade, but it feels like she’s really confiding in me, and I can’t let her down. “It can really be hard to make a big change like that,” I say.
“I liked our house in Portland. I like being close to Nana, and I have all these friends at school who are going to miss me, and I’ll miss them, and what if nobody likes me in England?”
I take that all in. “Well, first of all, people will definitely like you in London. I’ve been there. I’ve met the people and they are really nice. And you are an extremely likable person.”
“Did you meet any kids, though? And also, you’re a movie star, so everybody is nice to you.”
I laugh. “That is kind of true, although I hate to admit it, and no, I’ve never met any English kids, but I have met you.”
“I think I’m kind of weird.”
“That’s fine,” I say, shrugging. “Normal is kind of boring, don’t you think?”
“Nana is normal.”
“Not even.”
“Yes, she is!” Jasmine cries. “She has a normal house and a normal car and she eats normal food and she does normal things.”
“Does that mean you think she’s boring?”
She smacks me and makes a groaning noise. “No way! She’s really fun. She loves to play games and she teaches me all kinds of things—”
“She is all that. And she’s not normal because she’s like . . . one of the best people in the world.” A surprising sting of emotion rises in my throat. “Right?”
Jasmine pulls her knees to her chest and rocks a little. “Yes.”
I toss an arm around her and pull her close to me, wrapping my big sweater around us.
She wails, “I don’t want to go to London! It’s too far away!”
I lean my cheek against her hair. She smells of sunshine and wind and the untainted sweat of children. “She will come see you and you will come see her. And I promise, one hundred percent, that you will find magical things in London. So many magical things.”
“Like what?”
“Candy that’s not like the candy you get here, for one thing.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And there are castles you can visit, like so many of them.” I pause, trying to think what would appeal to a ten-year-old. “Oh! You might be able to have high tea, which is a bunch of tiny sandwiches and tiny desserts and tea served in beautiful tea sets, like the prettiest tea sets I’ve ever seen.”
“That sounds kind of good.”
“Maybe your mom will let you get a cat.”
“She won’t,” Jasmine says sadly. “She doesn’t like cat hair on things. She’s only telling me that she might let me have one so I won’t feel so bad about leaving Nana.”
“That’s a pretty dark thought from a kid.”
“Everyone tells me I’m old for my age.”
“You are that, kiddo. For sure.” On the horizon, a bank of clouds is gathering. We watch it for a few minutes. I wonder if I should tell Stephanie what Jasmine said, how much she’s dreading the move. But is that my business?
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go check out the tide pools before the rain comes.”
When we walk back up the hill, Maui is agitated and runs to the front of the house as we let ourselves in the back. “Stay here,” I say to Jasmine.
“What? Did something happen?”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Outside on the deck, I feel a sudden clutch of fear, and pause, listening. I can hear only the sound of the surf and a loud seagull. Maui has not come back, and I can’t leave him out here, so I round the deck and go down to the path to the front yard. My heart is pounding, my ears straining to hear anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing. Maybe he’s just being a silly dog.
When I emerge from the path to the front of the house, he’s sniffing the gravel of the driveway intently. No one is around. “Maui!” I cry. “Why did you run off like that?”
He looks up, tongue lolling, but abruptly, he turns toward the forest and lets go of a long howl. It’s a loud, eerie, protesting sound, and every hair on my body stands on end. I peer into the trees, but nothing looks strange. Frozen in place, I hold my arms and try to penetrate the darkness.
Nothing.
Maui returns his attention to sniffing the dirt, following some invisible trail, and I wonder if he’s smelling the squirrel that was left. Maybe it was killed by another animal.
Jasmine suddenly pops out the front door. “What are you guys doing?”
“Jasmine! I told you to stay put.”
“I was just curious,” she says.
Maui romps up the steps and slams into her legs as if he hasn’t seen her in forty-seven years. I pause for a moment and look around carefully. No footsteps I can discern in the gravel, but there wouldn’t be, would there? I turn in a circle, looking carefully, but I can’t see anything out of place.
I let go of my breath. “Inside, everybody,” I say with a confidence I don’t feel. When we’re safely inside, I lock the door and make sure the back is locked, too, and pull the shades. I wonder briefly if I should call the police, but what would I say? The dog was acting weird and howled at the trees? No. I’d feel obligated to call Phoebe, too.
She needs to enjoy her date night. It’s a little thing to give her.
“How about spaghetti?” I ask Jasmine.
“Yes! Can I help?”
“Of course.”
Chapter Fifteen
Phoebe
Getting ready for my date with Ben, I have to face my feelings of insecurity with my body. My too-big hips and breasts that don’t sit anywhere close to where they once did and the wrinkles at my throat. How much do I hate those wrinkles?
“Stop it,” I say. I’d never want Jasmine or Stephanie to talk to themselves like this. Instead, I run a hot shower and step under the spray. I touch my arms, my throat, my breasts, my thighs and thank each one. I think of Ben’s face, his glittering eyes. A swell of hope makes the world feel light and shiny.
In a special bag in one of my bathroom drawers is a collection of exquisite makeup brushes Suze brought me from Paris a few years ago, along with high-end cosmetics that, while they can’t make me into a star, can definitely make the best of what I’ve got. At first, I was reluctant to use them, but she encouraged me to think of my face as one of my canvases, which turned makeup into something fun.
The year she came to Portland at spring break, the year we were thirteen, we’d had makeovers at the mall.
The whole week was one of the most fun times I ever had. My dad took us to the movies, twice, and to the zoo, and on Thursday, he dropped us off at the mall so we could get ready for the party on Friday. My mother had insisted and we were having some kids over for a pool party.
Suze was like a kid at the circus when we got to the mall, wide eyed and so full of longing.
One of the cool things we’d discovered early on was that our birthdays were five days apart—mine on May 20 and hers on the twenty-fifth, which made me a Taurus, her a Gemini. School wasn’t out until June 6, so I wouldn’t see her during “our” week, and we decided to celebrate each other now. We wandered the entire mall, looking at earrings and books and trying on eye shadow at the cosmetic counter. One lady was so taken with Suze’s eyes that she made her up all the way, with foundation and blush and this subtle aqua eyeshadow and dark-blue eyeliner and thick mascara. “There you go, sweetie,” she said. “You look like a model. Maybe you should go to New York. Those girls make a lot of money.”