Slipping my arms around my best friend, I said, “Do you want to go?”
She blew out a breath like she’d been holding it forever and shook her head so hard strands of red drifted free of her bun. “No,” she admitted, looking only at me. “No. I don’t want to go.”
“Then we don’t go.” I linked my arm with hers and guided her to the kitchen.
Everyone else stood, stunned, in the mudroom.
“Decide if you’re coming or going,” I said over my shoulder. “You. Sit.” In the breakfast nook I pulled out a chair for Amy and went to the pantry to drag out our old game of Scrabble. “Wanna play?”
“God, do I,” she replied, tearing at her hair until it fell free around her shoulders.
In the mudroom a conversation went on without us.
“I’m going to get set for players to draw tiles…,” I warned as I dumped the box onto the table and helped Amy flip tiles facedown and slide them around.
Pietr stepped in briefly and leaned over my shoulder. “Alexi and I will go to represent the family.”
I shrugged, fighting disappointment. “It seems appropriate,” I agreed. “Soph?”
“I love Scrabble,” she responded, dragging a chair over for herself.
“Annabelle Lee Gillmansen?”
She groaned at my use of her full name. “Count me in. I will thoroughly trounce you.”
“You boys okay without me?” Dad asked. I looked back toward the mudroom. He was pulling his coat back off and hanging it up.
Pietr and Alexi nodded.
“I’m just afraid I’d say somethin’ that might call into question the Brodericks’ parentin’ skills.…”
And five of us sat down to play Scrabble, all dressed in black but much happier for exercising our free will and not blindly following social convention. Today we’d play by the rules that felt right to us.
Or what my mother would’ve wanted me to do, I realized.
Alexi
I folded the newspaper and set it down to showcase the headline:
Strange House Blaze at Edge of Town
I did not like seeing the term “strange” in the local newspapers—especially if I had no idea what the real story was. Now that Dmitri had left Junction and the company had been routed, it seemed strange—no, bizarre—to see so many odd little things still cropping up in the area. Abandoned houses did not just go up in startling blazes for no reason.
I thought back to the other recent headlines:
Graffiti Colors Junction
Vagrants Spotted Near Caves …
Something strange was definitely happening in Junction.
I grabbed my coffee and considered my options.
I could call Wanda and ask what she thought of the new anomalies. My stomach curled at the thought. She was again making herself scarce—though there was no reason for her to be stalking us now: All her questions had been answered, and she knew we were not in a position to just leave Junction on a whim, not without help.
I could call Nadezhda, but that would be more pleasure than business. No matter what she knew about me and regardless of her father’s intense curiosity about my family, I did not like the idea of entangling her further into the troubles we continually encountered stateside. So much the better if I could keep it that way.
The one who would know the most and make the best guess regarding the most recent oddities because she was local was also one of the youngest in our number: Jessie. Her curiosity and willingness to do sound research had given us an edge before.
Rising from the table, I stalked to the dining room window and considered the convertible: cherry red now dusted with the white of last night’s additional snowfall.
“It looks like some fabulous dessert,” Amy said, sneaking up beside me. “Like a decadent cherry pie sprinkled with powdered sugar.”
I nodded. “It is lovely, da?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps too lovely.”
She switched her focus from the car to me. “What are you thinking, Sasha? And don’t reply with some clever modification of something from Pinky and the Brain—they’re clever enough,” she said with a fleeting smile.
“Pinky and the…?”
“Never mind.” She waved the idea away. “What are you thinking?”
I took a long sip of coffee. “That Pietr does not know how to drive stick. That I am a poor teacher and that Max would surely compare driving a stick shift to something so overtly sexual anyone listening would blush.”
“So there’s no one to teach Pietr to drive the car?”
“Da. She does not get good gas mileage, and money is tight. And her body is far more fiberglass than steel.…”
“You’re thinking of selling her.”
“Da.” And thinking that I would never again enjoy driving her knowing she’d transported Mother’s body to an unmarked grave and taken us to an event people called a funeral but was more truly a celebration of a rapist’s life. No matter how Max might shine the convertible up, she had lost her appeal for me. “Da. I should sell her.”
Amy disappeared a moment and returned with the paper. “Place the ad. We can find something cheaper,” she assured me with a shrug. “It can be hard to let go,” she muttered, “but sometimes it’s necessary.”
As she often was, Amy was correct: Two days later we found a used car that fit our budget and thoroughly offended any sense of style we shared. Or any sense of style at all, I thought, regarding the vehicle with disdain.
But Mr. Gillmansen looked under its hood, kicked its tires, took it for a spin, as he said, and finally announced, “She’s good to go.” Receiving his approval we drove it home: our less than impressive, three-color Volkswagen Rabbit. Fitting the entire Rusakova family inside made it look even more like a clown car.
But finding a buyer for the convertible would mean a huge savings for the family.
Marlaena
I paused in the shadow of the thin tree line by a river, a bridge spanning its width not far from where my furred toes itched with cold. A girl was out for an evening jog, her hair—a flash of red proving to be a shade or two darker than Gabriel’s when she passed by a streetlight—flew behind her in a long ponytail that snapped in the growing breeze.
She paused on the old bridge, letting the darkness that puddled between lights swallow her up. Her hair fought the band binding it, tendrils of red dulled by the dark. Did it sting her face? A small branch tore off a nearby tree as the breeze changed direction, tossing clumps of snow into the air once more and uncovering a few brittle leaves left from autumn. They rattled a moment on the branch before snapping free and flying into her face with a crunch.