“But they didn’t. Why aren’t you happy?”
“I am happy, but I’m mad for next time.”
“Mad for next time?”
“Mad so there doesn’t have to be a next time.”
Preventative madness? It had seemed to Roo at the time like madness indeed, and this felt like that: preventative madness, aftermath madness, madness in relief. Rosie wanted just to go to bed.
Penn did not. “What were you thinking?” This without preamble and directionless, toward everyone in the room and no one in particular.
Orion, tumbling over himself already: “I wasn’t thinking anything. It was an accident.”
“An accident?”
“I didn’t mean to.” His voice was shaking. His hands too. “It just popped out.”
“How do you say something accidentally?”
“Like one of those camisole thingies.”
“Camisole thingies?”
“Freudian slips,” Rigel translated. Penn often suspected Orion and Rigel of telepathy because simple twindom insufficiently explained how they understood the inanities that came out of each other’s mouths.
“No,” said Penn. “Freudian slips are when you accidentally say what you actually mean rather than what you’re pretending to mean. Is that what happened here?”
Orion looked cowed and miserable but mostly lost.
Rigel put in, almost too quiet to hear, “It was just a good opportunity. You know?”
His parents did not.
“He could say it,” Roo explained, and his mother was surprised to hear his voice, “and it wouldn’t matter. For just a minute, it was like we didn’t all have to be carrying around this crazy secret.”
Rosie and Penn found themselves looking at Ben as if he were the one who could tell them whether all this was true or just boyish bullshittery. “Secrets are heavy things,” he said, absolving neither his brothers nor his parents.
“We have to be careful.” Penn struggled to keep his voice under control. “Now more than ever.”
“Why now more than ever?” Roo’s lip curled like a caterpillar.
“Because we’ve come this far,” said his father.
“Yeah but if that’s true,” said Ben, “won’t it always be now more than ever? Won’t every day be more than the day before?”
“Enough excuses.” Rosie was done with this conversation. “Orion, you were messing around with your friends, showing off, and you said something you shouldn’t have. It’s only luck this wasn’t much, much worse. It’s not your business; it’s Poppy’s. It’s not your life; it’s hers. Let’s not make this out to be gallantry. This was a warning shot, so heed it. Everyone else can keep their mouth shut. Everyone else has managed not to tell. You can too.”
These were perfectly reasonable points. But in the end—somewhat before the end actually—a large percentage of them proved untrue.
Transformation