“Mom!” Valerie yelled toward the kitchen. “Ma! C’mere, please! I don’t know what to do. Avery looks like a scarecrow!”
Mom came out with her biggest apron covering her mother-of-the-bride gown, looked me up and down, then said, “Oh, dear.”
Julie came out too, all angelic in her fluffy mauve flower-girl dress, that is if angels say, “Ew.”
“His bony wrists are sticking out!” Val wailed. “The jacket’s short! The knickerbockers don’t cover his knees!”
“I
told
you to get some little kid!” I was starting to feel bad for her, and I hate that.
“Avery Alexander, hush,” Mom said, turning to Valerie. “Honey, don’t worry about it. Nobody will notice.”
“The heck they won’t!” It was time for me to throw my fit.
Mom ignored me, telling the teary-eyed bride, “They’ll all be looking at
you
.
”
“Fine!” I yelled. “Then I don’t have to be there!”
“Yes, you do!” Mom snapped at me.
“Avery, I’m sorry!” cried Valerie at the same time, which was the last thing in the world I expected her to say and it really upset me. Why’d she have to turn human just when I needed her to be a pain? She was ruining everything, making me want to hug her and tell her it was okay when I was supposed to be throwing a tantrum. I couldn’t even remember what to say, so I just yelled, “You
ought
to be sorry!” then ran upstairs to my room and slammed the door.
And locked it.
Whew.
Thank God that part was done. It was time to put the rest of the plan in motion.
“Okay, Secret,” I whispered, opening my closet, “you can come out now.”
She pricked up her ears like she understood every word, and I swear to God she smiled at me. Victorian Secret—that’s what Mark and I named her—was not only the cutest little curly-haired white lap dog that ever lived, but she was
smart
. I should know. I’d been spending hours with Mark, helping him train her, and she was as quick as any dog I ever met.
Mark didn’t do too bad either; he seemed almost as smart as Secret.
All shampooed and sweet-smelling, she zinged spring-loaded out of the carrier I’d used to sneak her into the house, circled my room a couple of times to get the bounces out, then hopped onto my bed, ready for whatever.
Somebody knocked at my bedroom door. Secret didn’t bark. She never barked. Where she came from they debarked the dogs, which was a good thing, because Valerie didn’t want any barking during her wedding. Our dogs were staying at another farm for the day.
I’m the one who barked. At the door. “What!” Making sure I sounded really bratty and pissed off.
“Avery.” As I expected, it was my dad. Mom had sent him up to talk to me. “Open up.”
“No.” Mouthier than I ever could have done it if it was for real. “What do you want?”
“Avery Alexander Holsopple.” But Dad didn’t sound threat level red like he should have; he just sounded tired. “You come out of there. The preacher’s here. It’s almost time to start.”
I knew that, because through my bedroom window I could see the back field with rented chairs facing a kind of stage loaded with flowers. I could see people in their best clothes being shown to their chairs by ushers in black tuxedos with mauve vests and ties. I could see the string quartet playing.
“I’ll be down when I’m darn good and ready!” I yelled at my father.
“You’d better be down when
Valerie
is ready. You have the rings in there, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“You better come on down
now
.
”
“I’ll
be
there! When I have to! And not a minute sooner!”
“Why is it,” Dad appealed in that weary tone he’d been using a lot lately, “that a wedding invariably brings out the utmost lunacy in every member of any given family?”
“Go away,” I told him.
Without much heart, more like he was programmed to do it, Dad lectured my door about attitude, maturity, consideration for other people, et cetera, but finally he had to leave, because Mom and Val were calling him.
Meanwhile, I opened my back window a crack so I’d be able to hear what was going on. Also, being quiet so nobody would realize I was on the move, I took off my big floppy pink bowtie and put it onto Secret’s neck instead. It looked a heck of a lot cuter on her than it did on me. Made me smile, and I grinned even wider as I took off my pink cummerbund and put it on her too. It looked like a fancy silk skirt. Now she was all ready except for the rings.
I tiptoed to my closet to get the basket—Mark and I had sneaked Julie’s flower girl basket to a craft store and found a little Secret-sized basket just like it, plus the right kinds of frilly stuff we needed to fix it up. We’d spent an evening making fun of each other while we decorated it with lace. And ribbon. Mauve.
So there was Secret’s basket, with the rings in it on a little satin pillow Mark had rigged. I checked to make sure they were there—yeah. Two gold rings, one for the bride and one for the groom.
Meanwhile, from underneath my bedroom window I could hear the voices of the wedding party getting organized inside the screen porch. “We might have to do it without Avery,” Mom was saying.
“We can’t!” Valerie wailed. “He has the rings!”
“I could go break his door down and drag him out here by the ears.” Dad sounded like he almost meant it.
“No, don’t, Mr. Holsopple. Please. ” That was Mark, all earnest. “Avery is going to be my brother-in-law. I don’t want to get off to a bad start with him—”
My jaw dropped. So did the ring basket, almost, as I realized something, standing there with my mouth airing.
“—and when he says he’ll be here on time, I believe him,” Mark went on. “I think we ought to trust him. Let’s go ahead. Okay? Valerie?”
She must have agreed, because I heard the music change. I patted Secret and watched from my window as Mark walked out into the field.
“That sneaky geek,” I whispered in admiration, because now I understood that Mark had been doing
me
a favor, not Val or himself, by getting a certain wedding present for his bride. “He may be even smarter than you, huh, Secret?” I ruffled the curls on the little dog’s head.
The groomsmen followed Mark like ducks in tuxes, all of them taking their places in a line by the preacher, who had been standing there waiting. I watched while the ushers escorted my mother and Mark’s mom and dad to front-row seats. Then the music changed again, for the bridesmaids to sail down the aisle like more ducks, mauve, in a row. Next, the flower girl was supposed to go, strewing rose petals for the bride—the main event—who would then walk down the aisle on her father’s arm.
The ring bearer was supposed to be with the flower girl.
I waited until the bridesmaids got started, then patted Secret, picked her up in one hand and her basket in the other, and ran downstairs and out to the screen porch. Julie, Val and Dad all heard me coming and turned to tell me what they thought of me, but when they saw where my cummerbund and bow tie had got to, their mouths opened and just stayed that way. With a big grin, I bowed like a magician.
“Go ahead, Julie,” I told my sister as I crouched to put Secret on the floor, giving her the little ring basket to carry in her mouth.
Julie did, she followed the bridesmaids down the aisle the way she was supposed to, but she was so flummoxed that she forgot to strew her rose petals until she got to the end, when she turned her basket over and dumped the petals all in a pile in front of the stage.
Behind me, Valerie was making funny little noises. I couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying. And I couldn’t look, because I had a dog to handle.
I told Secret. “Go to Mark,” and opened the screen porch door. She bounced out with her basket in her mouth, and Mark snapped his fingers so she spotted him, and just the way we’d trained her, she trotted right up the aisle, incidentally scattering rose petals with her paws before she sat down beside Mark’s shiny patent-leather heel, still holding her basket in her mouth.
While everybody out there in the chairs was oohing at pretty pink Julie and aahing at too-cute-to-shoot Victorian Secret, my sister finally got her voice back and said, “Avery Alexander Holsopple.” She sounded like she didn’t know whether to smack me or hug me. “What is that dog doing in my wedding?”
“Ask Mark,” I told her as I turned around, but then I just stood there staring at her and Dad. Valerie looked so different, tears on her face but also a glow it’s hard to describe. Kind of like she was all sunrise inside. And Dad—well, for the first time in weeks, Dad didn’t look tired. Or helpless. He was smiling. He wouldn’t look at me, but he was grinning like his team had just scored a touchdown.
The string quartet started to play that “Here Comes the Bride” music.
“I’ll wait here till you get up front,” I told Val. “Go ahead. Get married.”
“I will. Thank you ever so much for your permission.” She gave me the funniest smile. Then she looked at Dad, got all serious again, and off they went. Everybody stood up and craned their necks to watch as he walked her down the aisle and handed her over to Mark.
“Dearly beloved,” the preacher started, “we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony…”
I sneaked to a seat in the back, feeling kind of weird—not because of my stupid outfit; I didn’t care anymore what I looked like. It was that “holy matrimony” thing making me kind of dizzy, a little bit off balance, like my sister was going away into a different dimension of life. When she went up on the stage with Mark, and turned so I could see her face, she looked so, like, beautiful in a way I never saw before, so kind of uplifted, that she seemed like a stranger to me, like she was leaving the farm behind and nothing was ever going to be the same again—
Just then, Secret stood up, set the ring basket down beside Mark, trotted down the steps of the stage and ran off toward a vacant part of the field. Where the grass was taller.
And the whole wedding stopped while everybody watched, not sure what to do, as the little white dog—
Picked a spot to squat.
Oh, no. Oh, man, Val was never going to forgive me. I wished I could just disappear into the earth like dog pee. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault my crazy sister got married in a dog’s bathroom, and Secret was a good girl, excusing herself. After she finished her business, she ran right back to Mark, like, okay, let’s get on with it. Smart little dog. I heard people chuckling while I cringed, I covered my eyes, afraid to look at my sister’s face—
But, talk about utmost lunacy, Valerie started laughing! Really laughing, warm and happy. When I looked, Val was picking up her new, furry ring bearer and hugging her. She didn’t put Secret down again until it was time to do the vows and the rings. Then, when the wedding was over, Val came up the aisle and back to the house with a husband in one hand and her bouquet plus a little white dog in the other.
“Avery,” she said the minute she saw me, “would you for gosh sake get out of that ridiculous outfit? Go put on your church clothes or something.”
So finally, no more mauve melodrama; things were back to normal. Except better, because Mark gave me a high five.
Edgar Award–winning author
Nancy Springer
,
well known for her science fiction, fantasy, and young adult novels,
has written a gripping psychological thriller—smart, chilling, and unrelenting…
DARK LIE
available in paperback and e-book in November 2012
from New American Library
Dorrie and Sam White are not the ordinary Midwestern couple they seem. For plain, hard-working Sam hides a deep passion for his wife. And Dorrie is secretly following the sixteen-year-old daughter, Juliet, she gave up for adoption long ago. Then one day at the mall, Dorrie watches horror-stricken as Juliet is forced into a van that drives away. Instinctively, Dorrie sends her own car speeding after it—an act of reckless courage that puts her on a collision course with a depraved killer…and draws Sam into a desperate search to save his wife. And as mother and daughter unite in a terrifying struggle to survive, Dorrie must confront her own dark, tormented past.
“A darkly riveting read...compelling.”
—Wendy Corsi Staub, national bestselling author
of Nightwatcher
and
Sleepwalker
“
A fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you reading late into the night and cheering for the novel's unlikely but steadfast heroine.”
—Heather Gudenkauf,
New York Tim
es best-selling author of
The Weight of Silence
and
These Things Hidden
Learn more about all of Nancy’s titles at her website, www.nancyspringer.com.