But Aunt Jewel only shook her head, the cubic zirconias in her ears winking. “You’re children,” she said again. “That’s what children do, make things messier than they have to be.”
I thought of Ryan and Bee in the closet, her lipstick on his face, his eyes daring me to say I didn’t want them to be together.
Yeah, things were messy, all right.
Miss Annemarie stopped by the table, smiling down at the two of us. “Harper! I’ve seen your mama and your aunts in here, but I haven’t seen you in forever!”
“I’ve been busy with school,” I said, not adding that I’d been avoiding her since we’d tried to kill each other at Cotillion. It was still bizarre to look into her face and remember her coming after me with a knife.
After Miss Annemarie had gone back to the kitchen, promising to make some of her crab bisque, Aunt Jewel turned back to me, her eyes rheumy but sharp behind her glasses.
“Sweetheart, if anyone can handle all these responsibilities, it’s you. I’ve never known such a determined little thing in all my life. Did you know, when you were about two, your daddy built you and Leigh-Anne a sandbox. And every day, you’d toddle out there and try to build you a castle, and every day, your sister would knock it down.”
Clucking her tongue, she took her glasses off, letting them dangle down the front of her shirt. “I loved that little girl, but Lord, what a pill she could be. Anyway, all those times she knocked down your castle, you never once cried. Never complained. You jutted that bottom lip out and got back to work. You never quit, even when that would have been the smartest thing to do.”
Somehow, I didn’t think that was supposed to be a compliment. But I was still about to thank her when Aunt Jewel reached across the table and took my hand. “You are trying to be too many things to too many people, Harper Jane.”
Aunt Jewel’s fingers were cold, the skin papery, but she held me tight as she added, “And I think one day, one day soon, you’re gonna have to choose.”
Chapter 27
“YOUR LEOTARD is ugly.”
I looked down at the little girl standing next to me. She came up to right above my elbow, but I was pretty sure that a solid foot of that was hair. The rest of her was covered in a sea of pale blue ruffles, so I wasn’t sure how she had any room to talk about what was ugly.
Still, being mean to kids is never okay, so I made myself put on a smile. “That’s not very nice,” I told her, but the little girl shrugged.
“It’s very true.”
In front of us, another girl about the same age as this devil spawn standing next to me was practicing her “dance” on the stage. It mostly seemed to consist of some awkward shuffling and a few waves, and every now and again she’d glance down to where her mom was doing a much more enthusiastic version of the same dance in the front row.
I sighed and shifted my baton to my other hand. Normally the Little Miss Pine Grove portion of rehearsal was over by the time we got in, but Sara was running late today, so we were stuck waiting for the younger girls to finish. Which apparently also meant we were stuck getting harassed by second-graders.
“It’s the sleeves,” the girl next to me said, looking me up and down. There was something weird about the way she talked, and when she opened her mouth to yawn, I realized she was wearing those little fake teeth they use to cover a missing tooth or two.
Seriously, pageants were the weirdest.
“Well, I like the sleeves,” I told her, tugging at the material in question. I’d used Leigh-Anne’s old majorette uniform, a sparkly green number that was a little too big for me. Aunt Jewel had sewn on some sleeves for me to give it “a little flair.” Apparently, to Aunt Jewel, “a little flair” meant a metric ton of sequins and fake jewels, so every time I threw the baton, my arms clattered.
“You shouldn’t like them,” the little girl told me, “because they’re ugly.”
“Okay, thanks, got it,” I replied through clenched teeth.
“Get lost, Lullaby League,” Abi said, sauntering up, and the little girl stuck her tongue out at us before heading down the aisle toward the front of the stage.
Abi’s gaze slid over me. She was wearing a simple black dress, since her talent was playing the piano. Looking at her, I wished I hadn’t begged my mom to let me quit lessons when I was twelve, because piano seemed like a totally unembarrassing talent. A thin gold chain winked around her neck, and when Abi noticed me looking, she grinned, lifting the necklace up. “Isn’t it pretty? It’s from Spencer.”
That name made me want to shudder—a reminder that we might have been wrong about David’s visions, that we couldn’t change the future. And if that was true, what was the point of all of this?
Abi misread my expression, clearly, because she scowled at me, letting the necklace drop back to her chest. “Okay, Harper, enough with the judge-y face. Just because you’re boyfriend-less for the first time in, like, ever, it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy for other people.”
“I am,” I said, and the words might have been convincing had I not seen Bee walk in. She was practically running—worrying about being late, I guess—and while it’s not like she was wearing a sign that said, “I was making out with Ryan!” I couldn’t help but remember them locked together in the closet. She looked . . . suspiciously glowy.
Abi glanced over at Bee, and when her gaze swung back to me, both eyebrows were lifted. “Where were you at lunch today?” she asked.
I’d hid out in the library like a weirdo because I hadn’t wanted to face Bee or Ryan yet. I’d thought about hiding in the temporary newspaper lab, but when I’d walked past, David had been in there with Chie and Michael. As I’d sat on the floor in the back stacks of the library, I’d reminded myself that a few months ago, I would’ve died before being one of those people who hid during lunch. Lunch was primo socializing time, after all, but with Bee and Ryan being . . . Bee and Ryan, and me and David being not Me and David, I hadn’t known what else to do.
It was an icky feeling.
Bee’s eyes met mine across the auditorium, and her smile faded. This was ridiculous, not talking to her in the middle of everything that was going on, but I . . . couldn’t. I still didn’t know what to say. I had no right to be jealous, not of Bee for being with Ryan, and not of Ryan for taking Bee away from me. Abi was right; just because I was alone, that didn’t mean everyone else had to be, too.