Hi, Snow,
I’m in detention again. It’s been five weeks since I last heard from you. According to Dad, you’re not only alive but getting prettier and more gracious every day, et cetera, but what I want is an answer to the question in my previous letter. One word: yes or no?
A thing you should understand about me is that I won’t keep a secret just because it’s a secret. I’ve been told that this makes me a bad friend, but I actually think it makes me a better friend than the secret-keepers. (Time will tell.)
If you don’t answer within the week, I’ll show your previous letter to Dad.
I’m sorry to have to threaten you like this. Really, I am.
Bird
Stop fretting, Bird. I’m in no more danger than you are. And right now I’m feeling embarrassed for both of us. I was a fool to write that other letter. It was too much for you — don’t try to tell me it wasn’t — and I’m sorry. Get ready for Thanksgiving… I’m coming with Aunt Clara and Uncle John and an assortment of baked goods and trinkets, and the first thing I’m going to do when I arrive is give you the biggest squeeze you ever had in your life.
Snow
—
over at the bookstore I asked Mom if she was really going to let Snow come home for Thanksgiving. That’s exactly how I asked it: “Are you gonna let her?”
Mom was deciding on prices for some books that had just come in the day before. Mrs. Fletcher had taught her to do this by smelling the paper and rubbing the corners of the pages between her fingertips.
Her hair was in her face, her eyes were closed, her nose was pressed to a coffee-brown page. “It’s been discussed,” she said.
“And you said yes?”
She wrote a number down on her notepad. Three figures, a pause, then she added another ninety-nine cents. “If you’re saying yes, then I’m saying yes.”
“Really? Well… I am saying yes, Mom.”
“That’s what I figured. Needless to say I’ll be watching her every move. Kidding, kidding…”
She wasn’t kidding. I asked her what Snow had ever done to her, and she said it was a good question.
5
i never knew a Thanksgiving that took so long to come around. I guess Louis Chen got tired of hearing me repeat those words, because he said: “You know, the way you’re talking is getting kind of creepy.”
Aunt Mia told me not to get my hopes up. Dad made chain mail, little scraps of knitted electrum with circles of blue crystal peeping through the links. He cut the crystals in deep Vs and the surfaces were dull until you tried to look down to the bottom of them and almost cooked your eyeballs. It wasn’t really jewelry — he couldn’t sell it, could only give it away. He handed me a piece and told me to hit my hopes right out of the ballpark.
Mom stopped going to Grammy Olivia’s coffee hours. “The gloating,” she said to Aunt Mia.
Everyone who remembered Snow seemed glad to hear she’d be back. “So pretty,” I kept hearing. “So well behaved.” No one said they’d missed her. Take Christina Morris who worked at the bakery — she’d been in Snow’s class at school, and when Dad told her Snow might look in on her, she said “Hurray!” just as if she’d been told Miss America was coming to town. It wasn’t the kind of reaction you’d give to news about someone who’d really been part of your life. I wanted to hear someone say they’d cried when they found out she wasn’t coming back to school. It would’ve been good to hear that somebody had done what I did last summer when Louis went away to summer camp. I went after him that very same afternoon, through fields and over low bridges in the direction I’d seen the bus take, running, then limping. I got as far as the fire station in Marstow, two towns over, then the sun set and I realized I didn’t know where to go next, so I walked back home with stones in my socks and was grounded for two weeks. I wanted somebody to say they’d done something like that because of Snow (who’s about a hundred times prettier than Louis, after all) but no one did.
Louis’s birthday was on the same day as Connie Ross’s, right in the middle of September, and Mom loaned me her blanket-sized U.S. flag in exchange for my promise that I’d guard it with my life. My contribution to the picnic was a few perfectly ripe Bartlett pears and some soft cheese that had a long name and came wrapped in waxy brown paper. I wound the flag around the pears and the cheese, tied the whole package to a stick, and went through the woods with lunch over my shoulder. As I went I made a deal with myself not to talk about Snow or Thanksgiving anymore. Talking wasn’t bringing either subject of conversation any closer. Also I was getting angry. Angry about the things people were saying, the way they were making Snow sound like some kind of ornament just passing by… not even passing by, but being passed around. Everybody agreed that Snow was valuable, but she was far too valuable to have around for keeps. Nice to look at for an afternoon, but we’ll all breathe easier once she’s safely back at the museum. I was beginning to hate people because of the way they talked about my sister, because of the way they didn’t really want her. Even Miss Fairfax was doing it, telling Dad to just have one afternoon when Snow would be at home to all visitors so as to get all the visiting over with in one go.
We sang “Happy Birthday” and Jerry Fallon started a food fight, running around the tree trunks whooping and throwing slices of luncheon meat. Later, once everything had been hurled or eaten, we washed the cheese and bread crumbs out of our hair and passed out in the sunshine, the six of us on Mom’s flag, which we’d spread out on the grass near Spooner’s Brook. I made everyone take their shoes off first. Jerry and Sam were back to back, and Connie and Ruth were top to toe, but we all had our arms around and over and under one another, warm skin and frosty violets (Ruth was wearing her mother’s perfume). Louis fell asleep with his head on my stomach. Once I was sure the others were asleep I laid my hand on his head. The boy was huffing and puffing the way he does when he’s having dreams; it made his hair dance. I didn’t sleep myself. I was just resting. Connie stood up and walked away — to pee, I thought. She didn’t make any effort to sneak away quietly. She walked normally, her feet crushing leaves.
Sam went next, then Jerry, I think — I’m not sure of the order because I didn’t open my eyes — then Ruth, their footsteps promising that they’d be back in a few seconds. They didn’t come back. When Louis got up, I opened my eyes. I was on my own beside the brook and the splash of the water was like fast, soft hand claps, keeping time with my heart. I sat up and the flag rolled up around me. I didn’t pull it up around my shoulders, it tucked itself around them. I looked over my shoulder, hoping I’d see the others in the distance, perched up in the trees grinning ghoulishly. They weren’t there. But as I breathed I felt a hand crumpling my shirt, fingers and thumb spread wide across my back. My eyes were open, and I looked right at him, the owner of the hand. But I couldn’t see anyone. He was there all right, but somehow it was like trying to see all of the sky at once. That was nonsense, so I tried to turn and look at him again, but an arm crossed my other shoulder and held me still. He wasn’t playing rough, whoever he was; it was more like he was shy, or just teasing me.
I was still trying to decide whether it’s smarter to scream before you start getting scared when he touched his lips to the back of my neck. Five times, maybe more, each kiss a little lower down. Slow, light, soft. All I saw was red, white, and blue above us, the flag streaming high as fountain jets. When he stopped, I shuddered and was breathless and warm all over. The flag lay flat and after a few minutes I felt tough enough to run my hands along the cotton, checking, but nothing moved inside it.