Overnight (2 page)

Most of the time, the girls brushed aside Martha’s jabs and stabs, otherwise she’d be at them all day long.

On the couch, Caitlin’s younger brother, Ty, was watching race-car driving, clenching his hands and whispering, “Go go go! Turbocharge it! Pedal to the metal!”

Gray flopped onto the couch and Ty scooted over obligingly. “It’s the Daytona Five Hundred,” he told her. He seemed so spellbound that Gray did not have the heart to ask him to switch the channel to see what else was on.

Around and around went the cars, the same thing again and again. Gray wondered what else there was to do. Everything seemed dumb and boring, she was hungry and she itched to wander. Maybe she would sneak up to Caitlin’s room and look through her bookshelf.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked Ty. “I’m going to the kitchen.”

Ty looked up, startled from his sports trance. “Uh. Grape juice,” he said. “No. Cranapple.”

“Be right back.” She stood, undecided whether to ask if anyone else wanted a drink. “Does anyone want, like, a snack or something from the kitchen?” But the other girls seemed too absorbed in Enchanted Castle to answer. Or they were being rude on purpose. Ignoring Gray was a game the group sometimes ganged up to play against her. “Save my seat,” she said, to nobody.

Gray walked upstairs to the empty kitchen. The polished glass sliding doors that looked out over the Donnelleys’ backyard and swimming pool were now solidly dark, creating a mirror effect, doubling the image of the kitchen’s gleaming chrome. She flipped on a light and flipped it off again.

Upstairs, Gray heard Mrs. Donnelley and Topher talking and laughing. That was nice. Gray knew that Mrs. Donnelley was not Topher’s real mom. Topher’s real mom was some lady who had been married to Mr. Donnelley a long time ago, who lived somewhere else now and was not part of this Donnelley family.

Abruptly, Gray wondered what kind of lady her dad would choose if her mother died and he got remarried. What were the chances that she and Robby would have a stepmother as nice as Mrs. Donnelley? Even as Gray tried to picture different mothers—all her friends’ mothers came to mind—she felt awful, like a traitor, a cheat, jinxing her own mother’s chances to get all the way better.

Gray pushed aside the vision of the other mothers.

Would she be in trouble if she helped herself and Ty to some juice? Would Mrs. Donnelley mind? She opened a cupboard and was confronted with rows and rows of sparkly clean glasses. Mrs. Donnelley’s house had so many rules! There was probably a special glass for each type of drink.

She closed the cupboard and noticed the phone on the wall next to the refrigerator. Maybe she would call home and tell her mother to come by with her fairy-folk bag. Although her dad would be angry if he found out. Gray and Robby weren’t supposed to bother their mother with extra errands and requests and lists of “I need.”

Well, so what? So what if he was angry? It was her mother’s mistake, after all. Gray picked up the phone and punched in her home number.

Four rings and then the answering machine. She left a message.

“Mom, it’s me at Caitlin’s. Will you please bring me my right sleeping bag? You brought the wrong one to school. I need
my
one, my pink one. You know which, with fairies on it.” She was trying not to whine and her voice sounded clogged at the base. She hung up the phone. From behind, she felt the prickling tug of being watched, although when she glanced around, nobody was in sight. The kitchen was quiet, gleaming, humming. Like a shut-down space station, Gray thought.

She opened the refrigerator. All this food! Cartons and bottles and tubs and containers of it, neatly wrapped and normal looking. No dark spinach and organic glop like what her mother ate now, for her health. The only problem was that none of the Donnelleys’ food looked easy to get to. Even the bottle of Cranapple juice Ty wanted was unopened, sealed around its lip with a thin, clear, childproof band.

A crisper filled with fruit seemed most promising. Gray slid open the drawer and pinched a bunch of fat purple grapes. They tasted okay, but coming from such a perfect refrigerator, she felt a brief flicker of disappointment that they should have been fruitier, cleaner, better.

She closed the refrigerator door.

A tattered apparition stood outside, behind the sliding doors. A woman. Gray’s heart jumped and her throat closed and she started to choke on her grape. As she coughed, the woman’s eyes rounded and her mouth dropped into an
O
that looked too big for her shocked face.

Gray stopped coughing and the woman’s mouth shut. She had sad eyes and long, ropy brown hair tied back in a handkerchief. Underneath her layers of clothing—a baggy dress and a rust-orange-colored coat with a feathery trim—she was knife-thin. Gray could see the bones of her neck and wrists, the shadows scooped into her cheeks and temples.

Now the woman rapped her knuckles on the glass and motioned for Gray to let her inside. Gray stared. She did not recognize the woman as a friend of Mrs. Donnelley’s. She did not recognize the woman as a mother from school, either—although she was about the same age as a mother. Perhaps she was one of the Donnelleys’ next-door neighbors? Like Mrs. Nuñez, who lived across the street from the Rosenfelds? Mrs. Nuñez wore safety-pinned bath towels as skirts and she never turned off her radio and she strung Christmas lights in her holly bushes all year long. Gray’s parents called Mrs. Nuñez “a real piece of work” and always wished she would move away.

Maybe this woman also was “a real piece of work”?

Gray paused another moment, then crossed the kitchen, unlocked and slid open the door. The woman did not move. “Hello, you!” she exclaimed in a soft, curious voice. “Am I late? I saw the balloons.”

“Oh, those are for Caitlin. It’s her birthday party.”

“I’ve been driving around and around, looking for the party. When I saw the balloons, I guessed I was at the right place.” The woman stared at Gray expectantly.

“Do you want to come inside?” Gray wondered if this was the right thing to ask. She was not stupid. She knew all the rules about not talking to strangers.

The woman seemed harmless, though. She stepped delicately into the kitchen as if it were stuffed with people, not just herself and Gray. She kept her back pressed against the glass wall. Her eyes darted from counter to counter. “Oh, I don’t like it here. It’s different on the inside. I like more lights, maybe a radio. This isn’t my party, after all.”

“Are you a neighbor?” Gray asked.

“Yes,” said the woman. “Do you live here?”

“No. And I need to go home,” Gray blurted out. Tears souped her eyes. “I have to pick up my sleeping bag.”

“Of course.” The woman agreed as if she knew that already. “I think we’d better go now.” She held out her hand for Gray to take. “All set?”

“Oh!” Gray smiled. “Are you here for me? Are you from Helping Hands?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

No. That couldn’t be right. This woman did not look like a Helping Hands person, and Gray had met quite a few of them. Last year, when her mother had been very sick, Helping Hands people had been around a lot of the time. Mostly women, but there had been one man, Brett. They all were nice, especially Ann Lee and Moira, although Moira could get impatient if Gray didn’t know the directions to soccer practice or kept her waiting too long in the Fielding parking lot.

This woman could not be a Helping Hands lady. Also, Gray’s parents did not use the Helping Hands service anymore, now that her mother was recovering.

Or do we use it but only sometimes because maybe Mom picked up my message and called in for a Helping Hands person for just this once this one important errand?

“We’re going to get my sleeping bag and come right back?” Gray asked.

“Yes,” said the woman. She snapped her fingers. “We need to hurry. I have a lot of other things to do.”

Z
Oë WAS GOING TO
win. She was the best. She knew that. Besides, the other girls did not care as much about winning. Their hearts did not flutter when the Enchanted Castle game board was opened. Their mouths did not dry up when the scorecards were laid out, neat as buttons, all in a row. Their fingers did not sweat with each roll of the dice.

I’ll win this game, Zoë thought. Yes, yes! Because I always win this game.

From the start, though, Zoë sensed that Kristy was trying to tip off the table to let Caitlin win. Kristy Kiss-up, that’s what Martha called Kristy behind her back because of how she acted toward Caitlin. Sure enough, when Caitlin got up to go to the bathroom, Kristy leaned forward.

“You guys, it’s Caitlin’s birthday,” Kristy whispered, “and she never wins. Let’s let her beat us this once.”

No, no! thought Zoë. Not fair! Caitlin had too much luck already. Caitlin was a girl who always had the right sneakers, the right hair bands and clips, even the right day—Valentine’s Day!—for her birthday. The right mother, too, because Mrs. Donnelley was perfect. Mrs. Donnelley, who wore thigh-length tennis dresses, whose legs were shiny, moisturized, and tan—even in winter—and who picked up Caitlin at school on time every afternoon. And who, glamorous as she was, never was doing anything so important that she couldn’t interrupt herself to perform even the silliest, smallest errand for Caitlin.

Caitlin didn’t need to win! No fair!

“Gosh, I think letting Caitlin beat us is a sweet idea, Kristy,” said Martha in a honeyed voice. She winked at Zoë and pursed her lips into a kiss. Zoë swallowed and clenched her fists and was silent.

“That’s cheating,” countered Leticia, “and I won’t play if the game is
fixed!”

Serena sighed prettily and shook back her thick ginger hair. “I agree.”

“Me, too,” said Zoë, relaxing her hands. Ha, ha, you lose, Martha.

“Oh, you’re all such morons,” said Martha. “Like it matters who wins! Like it means anything!”

“Yeah, have it your own dumb way,” said Kristy. “Here comes Caitlin back, so shut up about it.”

On Kristy’s next turn, Zoë watched as she picked up a card and rubbed her nose. She must have found one of the Queen’s treasures. Kristy was easy to read. She had so many tics and twitchy habits.

Yawning, Kristy replaced the card in the Throne Room. Zoë, her own face blank, made a mental note of it.

When Gray quit the game, Zoë’s victory was assured. Gray was good at Enchanted Castle. She paid attention and followed the rules.

Zoë watched as Gray mumbled some excuse and retreated to the couch. She looked worn and sunk.

What was wrong with Gray these days? Her mom was supposed to be cured, or at least close to cured. So it couldn’t be that.

Zoë would not be the one to bring it up. She had learned her lesson this past fall when she had found Gray crying in the bathroom. Concerned, she had made the mistake of telling the others in the group. As a friend! As a friend was why she told!

“Poor Gray! She was crying in the stall next to mine. What do you think’s the matter? Do you think it’s about her mom?”

“Gray’s such a lick,” Martha had answered. “I bet I could make her cry just by staring at her.”

Then Martha had stared at Gray all through lunch, unsmiling, unspeaking, until Gray had collapsed in tears. “Why are you doing that, Martha? Stop watching me!”

That was how the game started. Stare-at-Gray-till-she-cried. Ignore-Gray-till-she-cried. It was sort of funny but not really. Then Martha didn’t invite Gray to her skating party. Eventually, Gray was pretty much nudged out of the Lucky Seven, but last month she had drifted back in. Probably on account of Caitlin’s influence, Zoë figured. Caitlin’s and Gray’s moms had been friends forever, so Caitlin and Gray used to be best friends when they were little.

Zoë bet next year would be different. These days, Caitlin and Kristy were stuck together like peanut butter and jelly. And Gray sometimes acted like a
lick
, she was too
spanky
, she could be
unc
; all Lucky Seven words that Zoë herself had made up. It was Martha who loved to use the words Zoë had invented for the group. Zoë didn’t. Not on Gray, anyway. Gray’s feelings got hurt too easy.

After Gray went upstairs, Martha turned to Zoë and said, “I bet she’s pigging down the cake.”

Zoë laughed, though it made her feel guilty. Gray was small and underweight, but she was always hungry, always eating in the same rabbity, bad-habit way that Zoë bit her nails. But Zoë laughed because there was something magnetic about Martha when she was joking and friendly. Her eyes sparkled like gold firecrackers, a change that warmed her hard, flat face.

“Gray can eat the whole entire cake and she’ll never gain a pound,” Caitlin said. “My mom always makes stuff low-fat, so that I can watch my figure.”

Zoë thought it was cool that Mrs. Donnelley was already thinking about Caitlin’s figure. It made Caitlin seem mature.

“I have a really good metabolism, so I can eat whatever I want,” Zoë said.

“Ugh, Zoë, you get High Honors every single report card. Isn’t that enough? Why does everything have to be a competition with you?” snapped Martha. She began talking in an announcer’s voice. “And now, Fielding Academy’s prize for Best Metabolism this year goes to—Zoë Atacropolis! Again, folks! Amazing!”

Everyone laughed. Zoë smiled, but only to show she was a good sport.

Sometimes, secretly, Zoë wanted out of the Lucky Seven. Even if it was the best, the most popular group, sometimes the group did not seem fun enough for the effort it took to stay in it. The problem was that if she dropped out, then she would be a quitter. Maybe even a loser. Two things her older brother, Shelton, would never let himself be.

Martha was talking into her microphone fist, still acting like a broadcaster. “This is Miss Atacropolis’s sixth straight year of winning Best Meta—”

“Hey, would you shut up, Martha?” Leticia interrupted. “I can’t concentrate.”

The others stopped laughing.

Martha stopped talking. She looked surprised.

Nobody spoke. Everyone watched as Leticia drew a card and finished her turn.

“Go, Kristy,” she said, pushing the dice.

And so the game continued.