Paperquake (3 page)

"Okay," said Rose. "So?"

"You have to ask yes and no questions about the situation," Jasmine explained, "trying to figure out what happened to the man."

"You mean how he died?" queried their mother.

"Yeah." Jasmine tilted her stool back and regarded the others with bright, amused eyes.

Violet pictured a cozy wooden cabin built of logs, nestled back among pine trees atop a mountain. A man lay dead inside the cabin, sprawled on top of his bed near the hearth. "Did the man have a heart attack?" she asked Jasmine.

"Nope," said Jasmine.

"Liver failure?" suggested Rose.

"Nope."

"Was he embarrassed to death by his sister?" Violet asked slyly. Jasmine frowned at her.

"It was probably some sudden illness," diagnosed Lily. "He wouldn't wear his jacket when his mother told him to?"

"Nope," giggled Jasmine.

"Was the man murdered?" asked Rose.

"Nope and nope," smiled Jasmine. "All wrong. No illness. No murder. The man was in perfect health. Ask about something else."

"Like what?" Violet couldn't think what else there was to ask. "People in perfect health don't die."

"Ask about the cabin," instructed Jasmine.

"What about it?" What was there to say about a cabin? "Was it a log cabin?" Violet asked.

"Nope!" cried Jasmine. "But that's good, Baby. Go on! You're getting close. Ask more about the cabin."

But Violet couldn't think of anything else to ask. She pictured the poor man dead in his bed, poor guy, and that was all there was to it. "Don't call me Baby," she snapped. It was one thing for her parents to call her Baby, but she didn't have to take it from her sisters.

When the phone rang, Lily left to answer it, but the three girls remained at the counter. Violet was sulking. Jasmine and Rose faced each other with twin looks of concentration.

"Was the cabin built in the woods?" asked Rose.

"No," grinned Jasmine. "It wasn't."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Aha," she said. "And is the cabin a house? Can you live in it?"

"No," said Jasmine.

"So the man didn't live in the cabin. Did anyone? No? And was the man alone?" Rose was firing questions fast how. "Is he the only one dead?"

Violet sighed and stopped listening. Her sisters were always together in things like this, tuned to the same wavelength. They enjoyed puzzles and games of skill; they were good at sports and contests. She wasn't especially good at anything.

"I've got it!" squealed Rose, and Violet tuned in again. "Is the cabin made of metal?"

Now why in the world would Rose ask that?
wondered Violet. But Jasmine laughed and cheered. "Yes! Oh, you're so close now, Rosy!"

"I know I am," exulted Rose. "It's a plane, isn't it? The cabin of an airplane. Because there was a crash on a mountain, right? And the dead man is the pilot—or I suppose he could be a dead passenger."

"Got it!" Jasmine crowed. "You're brilliant, Rosy."

"What?" Violet was completely bewildered. "I don't get it."

Jasmine looked at her pityingly. "Listen, Vi, it's simple. A man lies dead in a cabin on the side of a mountain! And first you picture a little log house and a man lying dead in his bed. Illness or something, right? But it's a plane crash. See? Something switches in your brain, and then it all makes sense."

"Totally," Rose agreed.

Violet sat looking from sister to sister as if she were watching a tennis match. She had no idea how Rose managed the leaps to airplane cabin, to dead pilot, to plane crash. She felt lost as her two sisters chortled together like conspirators and Rose begged, "Come on, test me again."

"Okay," said Jasmine. "Here's another good one. Ready?"

Rose nodded, brow furrowed already in concentration. Violet sighed. But she listened.

"The man was afraid to come home because of the man in the mask," announced Jasmine.

Violet immediately envisioned a man wearing a gorilla mask on his face, waiting at the door of another man's house. The other man stood outside in the driveway, afraid to enter. "Is it a gorilla mask?" she asked Jasmine tentatively.

Jasmine giggled. "Nope."

"Is it a scary mask?" asked Rose. "Like for the Halloween Ball?"

"Nope," said Jasmine.

"
Hmmm,
" murmured Rose, deep in thought. "Well then, is 'home' really a house? A house you could live in?"

"Nope!" squealed Jasmine. "But,
ooh,
Rosy, you're getting closer..."

Completely baffled, Violet shoved back her stool and left the kitchen. She stomped up the stairs to her room. Her sisters shared the big bedroom on the left. The walls were papered in yellow and pink flowers. Jasmine's bed had a yellow quilt and Rose's had a pink quilt. Her own room down the hall was really just an alcove off the master bedroom. In fact, it didn't even have its own door. To get to it, she had to cross through her parents' room. The room had been perfect for her when she was a baby, they had told her, because she was so frail and tiny. They needed to be close by to check her heart monitor. The other two girls, always robust, roomed together right from the start.

But I don't need anyone cheeking on me in the night anymore,
Violet fumed as she entered her small room and sagged down on the lavender quilt.
And I haven't for years.
She should be able to share the big bedroom with Rosy and Jazzy and have a bedroom door to close.
Three's a crowd,
Violet thought dourly.
Not that I ever was really part of the threesome anyway.

Once she hadn't minded being set apart—it had made her feel special to be fussed over. But lately she hated being so different. And the scene with Jasmine flying in to check on her in school was the last straw. It was time for a change.

She got off her bed and went to the phone in her parents' room. She pressed Beth's number, the only one besides her own that she knew by heart; "I need your help," she said when Beth answered.

"With what? Your science paper? You're the lucky one—getting Mr. Koch's books to help you."

The last thing on Violet's mind was her science paper. "But I need help with
me,
" she said, "not with school stuff. You're an artistic type. You ought to be able to manage a little transformation. Make me tall and blond."

"You know I don't do plastic surgery." Beth giggled. "But how about platform shoes?"

If you knew how awful I feel, you wouldn't laugh,
Violet thought miserably. But she had tried before without success to make Beth understand how it felt to be so different from her sisters. "I'm nothing like my brother, and yet I don't care a bit," Beth had argued. "So what's the big deal?" The big deal was that Beth and her younger brother, Tom, were
supposed
to look different. They were different ages and different genders. They had never shared their mother's womb. Beth had not been born the odd-one-out of a matching set.

But there was no sense explaining to Beth anymore. Better just to make plans.

"How about dyeing my hair?" Violet suggested. "You know. Kind of golden."

"Well, my mom dyes her hair and it looks pretty good," Beth mused. "But on you—"

"Let's try it," said Violet impatiently.

Beth agreed that they could try it at her house while her mom and brother were out. "Come tomorrow," she said. "After lunch. Tom's soccer game starts then. He and Mom will both be gone for a couple hours. We can go to the drugstore first to get the color. That's where my mom gets hers."

After Violet hung up, she sat on her parents' bed staring at her reflection in their big wall mirror. She tried to imagine her dark hair as light as her sisters'. She hoped the drugstore would have the exact right color. She'd have "o get a sample to take along to the shop.

She jumped off the bed and went across the hall to her sisters' pink-and-yellow bedroom. It was empty. She crossed to the long dresser her sisters shared and picked up a hairbrush. It was clean and hairless; it must belong to Rose. Jasmine wasn't such a neatnik. Violet looked all around and finally located Jasmine's brush under her yellow-quilted bed. It was full of hair, but also of dust, and the wad that Violet pulled from the bristles looked more like a bird's nest than hair from her sister's head. It was dark and matted. Sighing, Violet looked around the room for inspiration. Her gaze fell on the red-handled scissors in the pencil mug on Rose's desk. Smiling, she stuck the dirty mat of hair back into the bristles and dropped the brush back on the floor where she'd found it. Rose's voice called up the stairs and Violet jumped guiltily. It was Violet's night to set the table. She would have to come back later.

At dinner the family sat in the dining room. The triplets' father, Greg Jackstone, who had been fairly beaming ever since he'd walked in the door, stood at the head of the table and poured his wife a glass of wine. Then he poured each daughter a quarter inch as well.

"Hey, all right!" said Jasmine, accepting the tiny drink. Normally Greg Jackstone allowed his daughters a sip of wine only during holidays or on birthdays. "Which holiday have I forgotten?"

"It's not a holiday," said Rose. "We haven't forgotten someone's birthday, have we? Or your anniversary?"

Violet sniffed her wine. "It's because nothing was damaged in the quake, isn't it, Daddy?"

"You're all way off base," their father said genially. "This is just a little family celebration in honor of the expanded business of Jackstone Gardens."

Lily beamed at him across the table. "I'll drink to that!"

Violet sipped her wine; it tasted sharp and clean.

"Mom and I closed the sale today on the new shop in San Francisco." Greg grinned at his girls. "You girls all know how long we've been trying to buy it. There were loads of glitches, but now we've got it. It has been empty for years so it needs some work. But once it's fixed up, it'll be great. And it's in a neighborhood where there isn't any competition."

"Pretty cool, Dad," said Jasmine. "Three Jackstone Gardens in the Bay Area."

"It'll be one for each of you to inherit someday," said Lily. Her eyes rested on Violet, and Violet imagined she could read her mother's thoughts:
If only poor Baby lives that long!
Her mom never seemed to notice that Violet had grown nearly as tall as the other girls and was just about as strong. And she'd hardly been sick all last winter.

"Oh, Mom. You're so morbid." Rose drained her wine and held the glass out for more.

"That's not morbid, Rosy. It's called planning for the future." Greg waved away her glass. "Anyway, we'll need to work fast to get the shop in shape for business."

"I'm so glad you girls promised to help with cleaning," lily said, passing the salad. "We're counting on you."

"When did we promise that?" squealed Rose.

"A few weeks ago," their mother said calmly. "I remember it perfectly."

"Weeks ago? I'm sure it was
months
ago," Jasmine objected. "And you have to give us a warning, Dad."

"We weren't in our right minds then, Dad," Rose protested.

"Nonetheless, you did promise, and I'm giving you fair warning right now. I need you tomorrow, and I'm counting on you."

Violet picked at her salad, barely listening. She dug into the rice pilaf her mother had prepared. It was fragrant with herbs and fresh vegetables. She had no special interest in her parents' business and was thinking instead about the transformation she and Beth would bring about with hair dye. Her sisters' outraged voices broke into her reverie. "Dad! That isn't fair!" cried Rose. "We already have plans for tomorrow!"

"Any day but tomorrow, Dad," begged Jasmine. "Casey and Brett are coming over. Coming
here!
We just arranged everything."

Their father frowned. "Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to
rearrange
everything."

And their mother's gentle voice seconded him. "Really, girls, we were counting on your help. You did offer, and we took your offer seriously."

"Yeah, but not tomorrow," said Rose coldly. "We have a life, too, you know."

"We can't just drop everything, Dad," explained Jasmine in a more wheedling tone. She was the best negotiator of the three girls. "How about if we go on Sunday instead?"

Greg frowned. "Your mother and I are planning to go on Sunday as well. But tomorrow, as you all well know, we'll be busy in the other two shops. I don't want you having guests over to the house when we're not at home, anyway. Now, you kids promised your help, and I'm going to hold you to your promise."

"Oh, Dad!" wailed Jasmine.

"You can meet with your friends just about any other time," said Lily comfortingly. "You can make new plans."

Jasmine and Rose looked at their father's implacable face, then at each other across the table. "Oh, all right," said Rose ungraciously.

And Jasmine added, "Plans? Who had any plans?"

"All right then," said their father. "That's the old Jackstone spirit! Now, I'm going to give the two of you all the supplies you need, and I'll drive you right after breakfast to the BART station. You won't be afraid to take the BART alone?"

"Actually we will, Dad," said Rose. "We'll be terrified. It's cruel to make us go."

Greg fixed her with a stern eye. "Enough, young lady."

"Of course, we can go," said Jasmine brightly. "We
are
fourteen, after all." The look she gave Rose across the table was one that held a message. Violet, although she wasn't included in what she privately called their "twinspeak," was nonetheless able to interpret that Jasmine had a plan up her sleeve—something that would make having to go to San Francisco more fun.

"I'll go, too," Violet announced.

Rose groaned.

Jasmine tossed back her mane of hair. She looked over at Violet and spoke earnestiy. "You don't want to come, Vi. We'll be cleaning for hours. It'll be hard work."

"No, not you, Baby," agreed their father, smiling indulgently. "Your sisters will do a fine job." He winked at them. Rose glowered back. But Jasmine nodded.

"That's right. We'll be fine."

"I'm going with them. I want to work, too." Violet folded her arms across her chest. She felt fierce. Jasmine had a plan for fun—fun that once again excluded her. She was determined not to miss out.