Here's Lily (3 page)

“Joseph.” Mom spoke without raising her voice or even looking up from the salad she was dumping out of its plastic bag into bowls. “I said take that outside.”

“Good shot,” Joe said to Art as he dribbled the basketball toward the back door.

“That wasn't a shot,” Mom said. “It was pure luck, and it would have been
bad
luck if you'd knocked those glasses off the counter. Speaking of which, Joe, after you get rid of that ball, come back in and put milk in them.”

“It would have been bad if he'd knocked the glasses off with the ball, but you don't yell at him for hitting
me
with it?” Lily said.

“He got you in the rear end,” Joe teased. “Not that there's much of it, Stick Girl.”

“Mo-om!” Lily wailed again.

“I'll give him twenty lashes after dinner,” Mom said. “Check the casserole, would you?”

Still mumbling to herself, Lily opened the oven and peered in. “What's it supposed to be doing?”

“The polka.” Art started out of the kitchen. “Call me when dinner's on. I'll be in my room.”

“Stay here. We're close,” Mom told him. “If you go into that cave, we might not see you for hours.”

“I could play a whole song before Klutz even gets the casserole to the table.”

Lily almost opened her mouth to protest, but it was then that she thought about the card in her pocket. For a moment, she thought she could actually feel its warmth in there. She
wasn't
a gangly giraffe. Kathleen had said so.

“Lily, how come you're smiling into the oven?” Joe said from the doorway.

“Because she's weird,” Art said. “Just call me, okay, Mom?”

Mom tilted her head back and shouted, “Art! Dinner's ready!”

“You're so witty, Mother.”

“Did somebody say
dinner
?” Lily's father poked his head into the kitchen, a book dangling from one hand and his glasses from the other. Like Lily's, his red hair was standing up on end, but his blue-like-Lily's eyes weren't sharp and intense at the moment. They had that foggy look to them they
always
had when he'd been off in book-land. Which was usually.

Joe squinted his own brown doe-eyes. “False alarm, Dad,” he said. “Mom was being cute.”

“Oh.” Dad started to leave, putting his glasses back on, already halfway into the pages of his book again.

“Sit down at the table, hon,” Mom told him. “It's all but ready. How's it doing, Lil?”

“I don't know,” Lily said.

“So ask it,” Joe said.

“Is it bubbly and turning brownish on top?” Mom said.

“Yeah.”

“Then it's a done deal. Art, come back here and take that out for Lily.”

Art gave an exaggerated sigh from the doorway he'd almost sneaked out of. “Why can't she do it?”

“Because I asked you to do it. Joe, wash your hands. Lily, don't forget salad dressings.”

“No, it's because she's a klutz.” Art snatched the pot holders from their hook.

Lily flung open the refrigerator door—making the wipe-off calendar, with October already filled up, swing on its little hook—and almost started wailing for her mom. But then she patted the card, poked her head inside the fridge, and pulled out the blue cheese and the ranch in silence.

“Watch it, Dad,” Art said as he set the bubbling casserole on the table. “She's in a mood.”

“Who, Lilliputian?”

“Who else? I think her hormones are getting ready to kick in.”

“Arthur, enough.” Mom still didn't raise her voice, but her brown eyes said about as much as a whole website as she cut them in his direction.

Art just grinned and parked himself in his chair at the table.

“Why do you call her that anyway?” Joe said from the sink, where he was going through the motions of washing his hands.

“Call who what?” Art said. “Lily, pass the salad.”

“
After
we all sit down and
after
we ask the blessing.” Mom turned Joe back to the sink and handed him the soap, then got out the milk and set it soundly next to his elbow on the counter.

“Okay, okay,” Joe said, barely moving his lips.

Lily put the salad dressing bottles on the table and slid into her seat next to Dad. It was going to be at least another five minutes before everybody did everything they were supposed to do and got to their places. She used that time to study her family.

What would Kathleen do with them?
she wondered.

Mom had her brown sugar–colored hair pulled up on top of her head in a ponytail, and there was definitely no makeup on her big brown eyes or her tan face or her twitchy little mouth. Lily's mom didn't smile that much, but she wasn't serious either. She said funny things with a straight face, and her lips were always threatening to burst into a laugh but almost never did. Lily was sure Kathleen would have replaced the gray Cedar Hills High School Coaching Staff sweatshirt with one of her scarves—
if
she could have gotten the shirt off Mom. She was pretty proud of her girls' volleyball team.

Lily shifted her attention to Dad, who was reading the back of the blue cheese dressing bottle. He was a taller, male version of Lily, except that he wore glasses and wasn't clumsy. Of course, Lily didn't think a person had to be too coordinated to teach English literature to college students.

Art, she decided, looked like the two of them too, only he had Mom's brown-like-a-deer's eyes, and his hair was brown with just a tinge of red instead of looking like a bumper crop of carrots. His was also wild-curly, but he kept it cut very short so no one ever accused
him
of looking like he was about to take flight. Lily had often almost wished she could shave hers off the way he did, but after today with Kathleen, she was glad she hadn't. Her hair might not be so bad after all.

Joe and Art haven't said anything hateful about it all afternoon
, she thought.
I bet they've noticed that there's something different about me, only they can't figure out what yet
.

Joe finally finished filling the milk glasses and got them and himself to the table. Lily surveyed him carefully. He was definitely the best-looking one in the family. He had Mom's smooth hair and her big brown eyes and her golden-bronze complexion. He'd gotten Dad's huge mouth and full lips, but they kind of worked on him, maybe because his face was wider. He never looked as if his smile were going to go off his face and meet in the back of his head, the way hers did.

Except Kathleen said I have a great mouth and great lips
, Lily reminded herself.

“What are you starin' at?” Joe said. “Mom, make Lily quit starin' at me. She's weirdin' me out.”

“Your turn to ask the blessing, hon,” Mom said.

They all held hands, and Dad thanked God for the food and for their family and asked Him to guide them through life. Lily added her usual silent,
And please help my brothers not to pick at me
, and then put in,
And thank You for Kathleen.

“Amen.”

“Lilliputian
,” Dad said, “is a reference to the book
Gulliver's Travels
.”

They all looked blankly at Dad.

“What's he talking about?” Art said to Mom.

“Joe asked why I call Lily
Lilliputian
. It's a literary allusion.”

“Great,” Art said. “Pass the salad.”

“In the land of the Lilliputians,” Dad went on, “Gulliver found the people to be extremely small.”

“Then I still don't get why you call
her
that,” Joe said. “Lily's, like, way tall.”

“She's a beanpole,” Art said. “What do I have to do to get the salad around here?”

“You have to stop being rude,” Lily said. She was trying to think about the card in her pocket and not let Art make her yell, but it was getting harder. “And I am not a beanpole.”

“What is a beanpole anyway?” Joe asked. “I don't get that.”

“Something tall and thin like your sister,” Mom said. “Elbows, Joe.”

Joe removed his elbows from the table and smiled at Lily like a little imp. “Does it have a big mouth?”

Lily gritted her teeth.

“Did he just ask if a beanpole has a mouth?” Dad asked, blinking behind his glasses.

Mom's lips twitched. “It isn't that Lily's mouth is so big. It's just that her face is so small.”

Art stopped pouring ranch dressing onto his salad to look at Lily. “Nah,” he said. “Her mouth's just big.”

“Mo-om!” Card or no card, Lily couldn't help herself.

Dad put his fork down and reached over to squeeze the back of Lily's neck with his warm Daddy-hand. “Ignore them, Lilliputian,” he said. “You know we love you no matter what you look like.”

Lily shook herself away from her father and scraped her chair back from the table.

“You know what?” she said as she stuck her hand into her pocket. “You're all wrong! A lady from a modeling agency came to our school today, and she said I was model material!” She pulled out the card and shoved it into Art's face. “So there!”

Four

A
rt snatched the card from her. “This is fake.”

“It is not! Mo-om! Make him give it back.”

Somehow Mom got the card from Art, and Dad made him
and
Joe “cut Lily some slack” for the rest of the meal, and both her parents promised they would talk about Kathleen and the modeling agency later.

Since “later” had been known to stretch into “never,” Lily brought it up again as soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, before Dad could disappear into his study. She caught them both in the family room, where Mom was folding laundry and Dad was looking for a pen, and told them all about it.

“Sounds like it was fun for you,” Mom said when Lily was finished. “I personally would have hated it, but then you're nothing like me—and that's okay,” she added quickly. “You know we want you to be exactly who God made you to be.”

“So will you call her?” Lily said.

“Why exactly does she want to talk to your mother?” Dad held up a blue pen. “Ah, here it is! How did it wind up under somebody's sweatpants? Whose pants are these anyway?”

“She says she wants me in her next class,” Lily said.

“I see.” Mom scowled at some unpaired socks. “Does that dryer eat our socks, do you think?”

“So can I?”

Mom looked at Dad, but he gave her the this-one's-up-to-you shrug. “Hon.” Mom touched Lily's arm gently. “I have a feeling the lady is trying to drum up business for her school. I don't mean to burst your bubble, but that could be why she gave you her card.”

“Then why didn't she give everybody cards?” Lily said. “They were practically begging her to, but she only gave one to me.”

“Oh.”

“She has a point,” Dad said.

“But I've never known you to have an interest in modeling before,” Mom said. “We don't know how much this is going to cost, and for something you just suddenly decided you wanted to do . . .”

“I don't
know
if I want to do it,” Lily said. “But she said I'd be good at it. If Art wanted to try a new instrument he'd never played before, you'd let him do it.”

“He's a musician,” Dad said. “We established that when he was five years old.”

“And if Joe wanted to play another sport, you'd sign him up.”

“He's an athlete—”

“But what am I?”

“You're—”

Mom stopped shaking out jeans and looked at Dad. He was chewing on the earpiece of his glasses.

“See?” Lily said. “Nobody knows. I don't even know! I want to have a ‘thing' just like all of you do.”

Her parents exchanged more looks, and Lily bit her lip to keep from nagging. That was one sure way to get your whole case thrown out. Finally, Dad cleared his throat, and Mom nodded.

“All right,” Mom said. “I'll call her and get the particulars, but we're not promising anything.”

“Will you call her now?” Lily said. “The phone number's on the card.”

Mom sighed and pushed the laundry basket toward her. “I can see there will be no rest until I do it. Finish folding those for me, would you?”

“You might have to describe me to her,” Lily called after her. “Just in case she doesn't remember me.”

“Oh, don't worry about that,” Dad said.

Mom was back in five minutes and announced that Saturday afternoon they'd all be going to a meeting at the agency for prospective models and their parents where they'd get the answers to all their questions.

“You'll have some kind of interview,” Mom explained. “Then they'll decide if they want you, and we'll decide if we
want
them to want you—or something like that. Now can we drop it between now and then, or are you going to drive us crazy until we get there?”

“I'll drop it,” Lily said.

But she didn't “drop it” from her own head. She could think of almost nothing else until Saturday.

She used her half hour on the computer she had to share with Joe to look up the Rutledge Modeling Agency. All the girls on the website seemed so perfect that she couldn't imagine herself fitting in. Still, Kathleen
had
invited her. Maybe she would look like them when she was done.

When she wasn't memorizing the website, she e-mailed Reni. Called Reni. She would have texted her too, if she'd had a cell phone.

Lily did tell Reni about the modeling thing, of course, and they whispered about it at school every chance they got—a fact that didn't escape Shad Shifferdecker. It suddenly seemed like every time they put their heads together, Shad appeared with his hand cupped around his ear.

At Friday afternoon recess, the two girls were sitting against the fence in the corner farthest from the building under the only tree on the playground. It finally looked like they were safely out of Shad's earshot, so they didn't whisper as they picked up gold- and rust-colored leaves from the ground and made confetti out of them while they talked.