Andi Unexpected (2 page)

Amelie’s mouth twisted as she watched her niece go.

Later that night, I stood on top of a bed in the room that I would now share with my sister. I was hanging my favorite poster of the periodic table on the wall.

Bethany sat on the floor folding her countless pairs of Lucky jeans and Abercrombie tops. “I don’t want that poster hanging up in here.”

I froze with a piece of turquoise Sticky Tack hanging from my pointer finger. “Why not?”

“It makes me feel like I’m in school. I don’t need to be reminded of school when I’m in my room. And you don’t have to show off all of your science geek stuff anymore. There’s no one here to impress with it.”

I flinched. She was referring to our parents, of course. I knew she was. I smoothed the poster on the wall and said, “It’s my room too.”

Bethany slammed the bottom dresser drawer. Mr. Rochester, who’d been lying on the end of my bed, jumped and ran out of the room. It was half the size of either Bethany’s or my bedroom in the house we’d shared with our parents. “And don’t think you’re getting even one drawer in this chest,” she warned me.

As I sat on the bed, I felt a hard knot tighten in the pit of my stomach. I lay down and stretched out on my side. “It’s not my fault we’re here.”

When I didn’t say anything more, Bethany slammed the drawer shut a second time and flopped onto her own bed. The beds had matching blue plaid comforters and cotton blue sheets covered with thousands of tiny yellow daisies. The sheets still had the creases in them from the packaging.

Bethany turned over on her side and glared at me. “Let’s get this straight right now: This is my room, and I’m
letting
you sleep here. Don’t touch anything.”

I stared at the ceiling. Someone had painted it the
same bright blue as the ocean in my parents’ photographs of Belize.
What happened to those photographs?
I wondered. I felt Bethany’s glare. She knew what I was thinking. “Don’t talk about them. Don’t say anything about them. Understand? We’re starting over here, and it’s better if we forget.”

I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the tears.

In a rare moment of softness, Bethany whispered, “It will be too hard on us if we don’t.”

I rolled over and faced the wall.

The next morning I awoke
to the sound of faint, anxious murmurs floating up the stairs. And once I’m awake, I can never fall back asleep. The murmurs didn’t seem to bother Bethany who continued snoring softly on her side of our deeply divided bedroom. After stretching my arms and crawling out of bed, I pulled on a sweatshirt over my pajamas and followed the whispers down the hall.

I crept halfway down the stairs and crouched on the fifth step. In her tie-dye pajama bottoms and strawberry pink sweatshirt, Amelie looked more like one of my classmates than a college professor. Through the wooden railing, I could see she was perched on the living room sofa with her knees tucked close to her chest, talking on the phone. “I know you’ve been waiting for
this a long time. So have I … but I told you, there’s no way I can go …”

Mr. Rochester, who was lounging on the back of the couch like a lazy sea lion sunning itself on the shoreline, blinked at me. Then he jumped to the floor and pranced up the steps to sit beside me.

“I wish you would understand …” Amelie said to the person on the other end of the line. “It’s not like I planned for my brother to die in a plane crash …” She paused and said more quietly, “You’re right. That wasn’t fair …”

I wondered who Amelie was speaking to and what that person had said to upset her.
And what did any of this have to do with Dad?
I wondered. What did it have to do with my sister and me? Were we holding Amelie back from living her big exciting life like I’d feared? What kid wanted to be a burden?

“I want to stay here with the girls. I need to be here with them. We need each other … I’m sorry you can’t understand that … But I’m sure you can find someone else to go with you … Oh … you already have?” A tear slid down her sun-kissed cheek. “That’s probably for the best. Well, I have to go now. The girls will be up soon.”

She turned off the cordless phone and looked dazed for a minute. I fidgeted on the carpeted step, and my leg slid to a more comfortable position. Amelie glanced up.

“Andi!” she yelped. “How long have you been sitting there?”

I swallowed. “Not long. Sorry.”

Her eyes still watery, she smiled at me.

I couldn’t help myself and asked, “Who were you talking to?”

She looked down at the phone. “Not long, huh?” Then she met my inquisitive stare with a knowing grin. “It was just a friend.”

I walked down the stairs and flopped down beside her on the couch. “Did you have to cancel a trip because of us?”

She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Well, aren’t you nosey?”

I shrugged, nonchalant. “That’s what Bethany says.”

In our old house, Bethany would set her easel by the huge windows in the great room. She said it had good morning light. I don’t know how many times I sneaked into the room and tried to see her paintings before they were done. Every time she caught me, and every time she’d say, “Well, aren’t you nosey, Andi?” But eventually she would show me the painting. I didn’t think she would show me one of her paintings now.

Amelie said, “I guess it comes with the territory. I was a pretty nosey kid when I was your age.” She leaned in closer and chuckled. “I think it’s a little sister thing. But to answer your question, I was going to travel to England this summer for a research trip. My colleague was upset that I have to back out.”

I stared at my orange socks. “Because of Bethany and me.”

She bumped my shoulder with hers. “Sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that now and again family has to come first. That’s what I was trying to
tell this person on the phone. I can go to England another time. It’s not going anywhere.”

“Are you sure this person is just a colleague?”

She laughed. “Did you sleep well?” She lowered her body onto the yoga mat on the floor and began stretching her long legs.

I shrugged. Every hour or so, I’d woken up to hear Bethany’s snoring or the old house groaning as it settled deeper into the earth. Sometimes both.

“I’m glad,” she said, jumping to her feet. “Would you like some breakfast?”

I followed her into the kitchen, a room filled with windows that were now dimmed by the dark, brooding skies outside. I stared out one of the windows as Amelie floated about the room like a colorful bird. The sky looked like what I’d expect to see on the day of a funeral. Although, on the day we buried my parents, it had been unseasonably warm and the sun shone in a periwinkle sky. Today’s sky would have worked better for me then; it was a sky that let me stay angry.

Amelie peered out the window, “Looks like it’s going to be a doozy.” She turned on the frosted glass ceiling light. As if she’d beckoned it by flipping on the electrical switch, the trees outside the kitchen windows bent almost in half from a wind gust that indicated the coming storm. The clouds churned to life. But no water splashed against the windows. The ground outside appeared dry, and the clouds swelled with the heavy burden they refused to release. The rain, it seemed, was holding back for the perfect moment. I wondered if it was waiting for a funeral to begin. I hoped not.

Amelie opened a cupboard and peered inside. “The weather is supposed to be bad all day. Kind of a crummy way to start the summer, don’t you think? But it should clear off by tomorrow.”

I nodded and climbed onto a tall stool by the breakfast bar.

“Are Honey Nut Cheerios okay? I used to like them when I was a kid, and I didn’t know what you guys like to eat for breakfast.”

“Cheerios are great,” I said. Hands-down, they would beat the runny eggs that Mrs. Cragmeyer insisted I eat every morning for the last few weeks. I’d be happy if I never ate another egg as long as I lived.

Amelie pulled the cereal box out of the cupboard and placed it, a bowl and a spoon, and a half-gallon of milk in front of me on the breakfast bar.

“Did you already have breakfast?” I asked.

She shook her head and grabbed a second bowl and spoon for herself. She ate her cereal while standing at the counter. After we’d settled into our breakfast, Amelie said, “You know, Andi, I really am glad that you and Bethany are here. I know we haven’t spent that much time together. And that’s my fault. I should have made more of an effort. But now I’m looking forward to getting to know both of you a lot better. Despite our disagreements, I loved your dad and mom very much. And I love you and Bethany just as much.”

I took a big bite of Cheerios.

As if she sensed my discomfort, Amelie asked, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

I asked the first question that popped into my head
that wasn’t about my parents. “Why do you think Bergita acted so weird when I told her my full name yesterday?”

The neighbor lady’s peculiar reaction had bounced around in my mind all night while I listened to the house murmur in the darkness. It was easier to wonder about that than the other questions that plagued my thoughts. Like why my parents died in that plane crash in Guatemala.

She grinned. “You sure are inquisitive. Your dad told me you want to be a scientist like him and Paula. You’re on the right track with such acute observation skills.”

I grinned. “Do you know?”

“You’re persistent too. Always a good trait in a scientist.” She shrugged. “Who knows why Bergita does anything? You can’t take what she says or does too seriously. You’ll learn that as you get to know her better.”

I wrinkled my nose. I may not know Bergita, but there was more to it than that.

“Maybe it
was
the egg salad,” Amelie added with a laugh. “I’ve had Bergita’s egg salad before. Horrible stuff. She has an affection for mayonnaise that’s just wrong. If she offers it to you, I suggest you run the other way. She’s a wonderful baker though. Her blueberry muffins are phenomenal.” She ate a big spoonful of Cheerios, and I realized that she’d finished her last bite before I’d spooned my second one. “Any other burning questions?”

I hesitated before asking, “Can I have my own room?”

Amelie thought for a minute. “You guys aren’t getting along?”

I shrugged and concentrated on sinking Cheerios with my spoon. The sunken Os bobbed back to the surface, creating tiny milk waves.

Amelie nodded as if she understood. “Well, let me make you a deal.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting up. I’d do anything to have my own room.

“I’ve been meaning to clean out the attic for a long time. Nothing’s been done with it since Mom died. I just shove more and more junk up there and close the hatch before it can fall and crush me to death. But when we were kids, the attic was your dad’s bedroom. If you clean it out and organize it, it can be your room.”

“Really?” I dropped my spoon into the bowl, sending honey-flavored Cheerios sailing to the bowl’s ceramic sides.

“Our neighborhood has a massive garage sale every summer. Bergita is the organizer, so it’s not your typical sale. She pulls out all the stops. If you finish the project by then, we can sell most of the stuff there.” She placed her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. “It’s in a couple of weeks. I don’t usually participate in the garage sale because it’s the same weekend as the Endless Summer Festival, an arts and activity fair at the university. But with you and Bethany helping, I bet we could pull it off. And then you and your sister can split the profits.”

I wiggled happily on the barstool. For a minute, I fantasized about having my own room and enough money to buy a new microscope. “When can I start?”

Amelie glanced out the window. “I was going to take you girls to the park today to show you my old haunts. But with this weather … today is as good a day as any.”

I jumped off the stool. “Let’s go look at it now.”

She gave me a huge smile. “Why not?”

We raced up the stairs and then tiptoed past the room I shared with Bethany, giggling when we heard a loud snore from behind the closed door. It reminded me of when Bethany and I would tiptoe around our house after our parents got home from a long research expedition. They were always so tired. We knew we’d be in trouble if we woke them, but we couldn’t help but laugh every time we crept by their door.

We walked past Amelie’s bedroom, the only full bathroom in the house, and a linen closet before coming to the end of the upstairs hallway. Amelie yanked hard on a white rope dangling from the ceiling. As she pulled open the attic hatch, a folded ladder appeared. And then a cloud of dust tumbled through the opening. Amelie sneezed. “I haven’t been up there in a while.”

I stepped out of the way as she unfolded the ladder.

“I’ll let you go first,” she said.

Slowly, I climbed the ladder as the rungs groaned under my weight.

“Be careful,” Amelie warned.

A beam of light fought its way through the dark stormy sky, the grimy windowpane, and a mountain of clutter as I made my way to the top of the creaky ladder. There were boxes everywhere—wooden boxes, cardboard boxes, plastic boxes, and metal boxes. I
suspected that the lump in the far corner of the room was Dad’s old bed.

Amelie poked her head up through the hatch like a meerkat on the African savannah. She sneezed again. “This place is a mess. Are you sure you want to tackle it?”

I looked around the room at the dusty boxes, sheet-covered furniture, and the cobwebby corners. And I truly smiled for the first time in months. “Yeah, I really do.”

“Andi! Lunchtime!”
Amelie’s voice floated up through the hatch.

“Just a minute!” I called back. I flipped through my grandparents’ wedding album. They looked so happy together. Grandma wore a simple white dress, and Grandpa wore a dark suit. The pair in the photo stood in front of Amelie’s big yellow house on Dunlap Avenue. I guess it’s my house now, too. The grainy images of my grandfather caught my attention. He looked so much like my dad. My eyes stung. Father and son had the same wide smile, big ears, and laughing eyes.

The attic was hot and stuffy, and when I blinked it seemed like more junk miraculously appeared. I sighed. The project was bigger than I first thought. No wonder Amelie hadn’t bothered with it, not that I could imagine my hyperactive aunt sitting anywhere
for more than five minutes unless she was twisted into a yoga pose. I’d been upstairs for three hours and hadn’t made a dent.

I closed the album and set it on top of a box. Boxes and furniture surrounded me on all sides. I hadn’t accomplished much in the way of sorting since Amelie had left me in the attic that morning. But I did manage to wade through the room and clear off a place to sit on the wooden floor.

I stood and dusted myself off. A clap of thunder shook the house and startled me so bad that I tripped over a stack of books and tumbled into a soft pile of old tablecloths. After getting back on my feet and weaving my way through more stacks of junk, I started down the ladder.

When I walked into the kitchen, I saw Bethany sitting hunched over the breakfast bar and eating a turkey sandwich.

“Is turkey okay, Andi?” Amelie piled turkey on a slice of wheat bread.

I nodded.

Amelie slid a plate in front of me. “Do you still draw, Bethany?”

“Yeah,” she answered. But her tone said,
So what?
She picked the crust off her sandwich and stared at her plate.

Amelie forced a cheerful smile. “Bergita—the lady next door—likes to paint and draw too. I told her about you and all of the beautiful pieces you’ve made for me over the years. She’s taking a painting class at the university this summer. It’s not too late to register.
And since I’m on the faculty there, I’m sure I can get you a spot in the class.”

“Maybe,” Bethany said as she picked up her phone and looked at it. She frowned. “My phone’s not working.”

Amelie snapped her fingers. “That’s because I got you a new one so you could be on my cell phone plan. Your old one has been deactivated.”

Bethany’s mouth fell open. “Deactivated?”

This wasn’t going to go well
.

Amelie opened a drawer and removed a blue cell phone that was almost identical to my sister’s. “It’s the same phone number. Some of the features are different though.”

Bethany’s eyes narrowed. “What features?”

“I had to change your plan to save money, so no more unlimited texting. Between us, we have just one hundred texts a month.”

“What? I send that many texts in a day.”

“You will have to be more careful then.”

Bethany blinked. I knew she was trying not to cry. “Why do you need to save money? What about all the money you got from Mom and Dad? I know there is money.”

My aunt stepped back and bumped into the corner of the open dishwasher door. “That money was put into a trust fund for your college education. I can’t use it to pay your cell phone bill.”

“If I can’t text, then how am I going to talk to anyone?”

“If you want the texting plan, you can pay for it yourself. Andi started cleaning out the attic so she can
move in up there. If you help her, you two can split the profits from the garage sale.”

“That won’t be enough to pay my cell phone bill forever.”

“No, but it’s a start,” Amelie said and then paused. “And you can always look for a part-time job. Baby-sitting or something like that.”

“Baby-sitting? You want me to
baby-sit
?” Bethany grabbed both cell phones and stormed out of the kitchen.

Amelie sighed. “I messed up the phone thing, didn’t I?”

I gave her a half smile and bit into my sandwich.

I was helping Amelie clean up the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

Amelie started clearing the table. “Would you get that, Andi?”

I ran to the front door. When I opened it, I found Colin standing on the doorstep holding a bright orange umbrella. “Hi.” He pushed his bangs off his glasses, and I noticed his eyes were the same color as his hair, somewhere between hot cocoa and dark chocolate.

“Hi,” I replied.

He closed his umbrella and tapped it nervously against his leg, unaware of the wet spot it made on his shorts.

Amelie stepped into the living room. “Colin, don’t just stand out there in the rain. Come in! Would you like some lunch?”

Colin left his umbrella on the porch and stepped into the house. “We just ate.”

I perched on the edge of the sofa, itching to go back to the attic.

Colin shifted from foot to foot and stared at his shoes.

Amelie cocked her head. “Well, do you want to help Andi with a special project?”

My head snapped up, and I gaped at my aunt.

Colin grinned, obviously relieved. “What is it?”

“She’s cleaning out the attic so she can turn it into her bedroom. You still interested?”

“Sure. I bet there’s a bunch of cool old stuff up there.”

Amelie glanced at me. “Would it be okay if Colin helped you?”

Did I have a choice? I put my hands in my pockets. “If he wants to, but I haven’t found anything that exciting.”

She grinned. “You will. You guys go ahead, and I’ll be up in a little while.”

Back in the stuffy attic, I wedged myself into my nest on the hardwood floor, and Colin sat down on an old trunk.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

I spun around to get a better view of him. His hair clung to his damp forehead. It was twenty degrees warmer in the attic than in the rest of the house.

“The first thing we can do is move the boxes and furniture around so we both have plenty of space to work,” I said.

“Sounds like a plan.” Colin agreed. “Look at all this stuff. And I thought
our
attic was bad.”

“Amelie hasn’t had time to do anything with the attic since my grandparents died.”

Colin held up his hand. “There must be decades of stuff up here. Put me to work.”

I studied him to make sure he was serious, and his expression looked genuine. “Just pick a spot and start clearing. The trash bags are over there.”

A loud clap of thunder shook the attic. Colin yelped and jumped three feet into the air.

I laughed.

He said, “I hope Bergita is sitting with Jackson. He’s afraid of thunderstorms.”

“You call your grandma ‘Bergita’?”

He shrugged and adjusted his glasses. “She’s more like a ‘Bergita’ than a ‘Grandma.’”

Thunder clapped again. “The storm is only a few miles away,” Colin said.

“This is nothing compared to the storms my dad saw in Central America. He always said the lightning there could skin a cat …” My voice trailed off. I’d learned over the last few weeks that most kids don’t like to hear about someone’s dead parents. They don’t like to be reminded that it could happen to them too.

Mr. Rochester, who’d been lounging beside me on a pile of old newspapers, meowed as if offended by my skinned-cat comment.

“Sorry, Mr. Rochester. No one would ever think of doing that to you.” I scratched behind his left ear.

Colin started moving boxes from a spot close to the window. “Amelie said they went to Guatemala a lot.”

I opened a box that was full to bursting with dusty artificial flowers, and I sneezed. “Yeah, they did. They were working with some other scientists down there, looking for endangered plants.”

After a bout of coughs and sneezes, Colin said, “I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Thanks.”

I rearranged a group of boxes so I could sit closer to the wall and lean against it while I sorted through the flowers.
If I could somehow remove the years of dust from these silk petals and leaves
, I thought,
they might make good sellers at the garage sale
. After we moved the boxes, I noticed the lower half of the wall was wallpapered from the floor up to my hip. Red and blue sailboats rocked on a gentle sea. The once-white billows of the ships were now yellowed like pages of really old books.

I stared at the wallpaper, thinking about my father as a little boy choosing that particular pattern because boats are symbols of adventure, of moving, of being somewhere else. My father always wanted to be somewhere else. Even after Bethany and I were born, he and my mother never stayed home much. Too many endangered plants in the forests of the world needed to be saved. The forests were too remote for us to join our globetrotting parents. During those times, just like we’d done during the last few weeks since the funeral, we’d stayed with the Cragmeyers.

A bright flash of lightning bounced off a piece of metal on the far wall. But when I looked more closely, the glint of metal disappeared. I crawled on my hands and knees to the spot.

“What is it?” Colin asked.

“I thought I saw something.” I pointed at the area where I’d seen the reflection.

“A ghost?” Colin asked. His eyes were the size of ping-pong balls.

“No, not a ghost. A piece of metal.”

“What’s so interesting about that?”

“I only saw it when the lightning flashed.” I tapped the wall. “It was right around here.”

Colin wove his way through the maze of boxes and squatted down beside me, forcing me to scoot over until my hip thwacked into the corner of an old maple dresser. Colin ran his hand up and down over the wallpaper. Abruptly, his palm froze while his fingers continued to tickle a particular spot in the wallpaper. “There’s something here.”

“Move your hand,” I said.

He did, and I put my own palm in its place. “What is it?” I asked.

“It felt like a hinge.”

“Like a door hinge?”

“Yeah.”

We looked at each other.

Colin asked, “Do you think we should open it?”

I slid my fingernail under the edge of the old paper. With a good grip, I peeled away a wide strip. Colin joined in. Piece by piece, the red and blue sailboats fell to the floor in shreds. The old glue, which had held the wallpaper onto the wall for all those years, posed no match for us. Sections of wallpaper came off in larger and larger pieces, leaving whole sailboats intact.

Finally, the scraps of discarded wallpaper revealed an outline of a small door in the wall. It looked nearly
two feet high with no doorknob. The hinges made only the slightest bump on the wall, about the length of my thumb. Someone had drilled a small hole where a tiny doorknob should have been. I fit my pinkie finger into it. “How do we get in?” I asked.

Colin stood up and pieces of wallpaper floated to the floor. “There has to be something up here we could use. A screwdriver or a hammer, maybe?” He began opening boxes, and I joined in. Dust flew through the air as we rifled past generations of clutter. Colin sneezed but paused only a moment to wipe his nose on his dust-covered sleeve before continuing to look for the right tool.

“What about this?” I asked. I held up a silver letter opener with a tiger engraved on the handle.

“That should work.”

We knelt outside the door again. I slid the letter opener between the wall and the door. Colin spat on the hinges, and a few specks of his saliva hit my face.

“What are you doing?” I asked, wiping his spit from my eye.

“These hinges are old. I’m trying to lubricate them so the door opens easier. I saw it in a movie once.”

“Oh, good idea. Kinda gross, but still a good idea.”

He spat a couple more times, and I bent the letter opener against the wall, pressing down hard.

Snap!
The tip of the letter opener broke off and clattered to the floor on the other side of the door. Luckily, the pressure from the blade cracked the door just enough so I could get my fingers around the edge. Colin did the same. “On the count of three,” I said.

We counted together. “One … two … three!” And then we pulled with all our might. Colin huffed with exertion beside me, and his face turned beet red.

The old hinges finally relented, and Colin and I toppled to the floor. I landed on his stomach—hard. A cloud of blue-black dust flew out of the open door like confetti. We both scrambled to our feet, waving the dust from our faces, coughing and gagging as we inhaled the musty scent of the long-forgotten crawlspace.

“Do you see anything?”

“Nothing.” Colin sneezed as the last bit of dust settled onto the floor.

I reached my hand into the black hole. My hand ran into something hard and square. “I think it’s a trunk! Help me pull it out.”

Colin squeezed beside me, and together we pulled out the trunk. It was about twice the size of a shoebox, and it looked as if it were meant to hold a doll’s clothes. Blue cracked leather covered the lid and peeled away from the trunk’s brass edges. I ran my hand over the uneven top. Colin scooted up beside me and peered closer at the old lock. He wiped the grime away with his T-shirt.

“Look,” he said.

I turned my gaze to where he was pointing and saw one word engraved on the trunk’s brass nameplate: A
NDORA
.