The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (23 page)

T
HERE WAS SNOW
in the woods. Her feet were slipping as she ran in her good yellow Easter shoes, ankles numb from cold. Lizzy was beside her. They were holding hands. Laughing each time they fell. Lizzy wore matching yellow shoes with pale satin bows: she had seen Rhonda’s and begged her mother to take her to the mall for an identical pair. It was like that with the girls: whatever one had, the other longed for.

Lizzy and Rhonda told everyone at school they were twin sisters living as cousins, when the truth was they were not related at all. But still, the other kids believed the story about them being twins. It was an easy lie to believe, because they looked so much alike: two chunky girls with straight, dark, tousled hair, dirt under their nails, funny overbites from sucking thumbs too long. They were quiet girls with big brown eyes. Koala bear eyes, lemur eyes, eyes that seemed to take up their whole plain faces.

They had been best friends since before they learned to talk—sharing a sandbox, being walked by their mothers in matching pink strollers down to the lake. And when words came to them, they seemed, the way their mothers described it, to develop their own secret language—a coded communication that no one else could understand, full of words such as
daloor
,
ub
,
ta
, and
skoe
. Their parents were worried that the girls would go on speaking this way to one another, would have no need for the rest of the world, for words like
cat
and
swim
and
thank you
.

Sometimes Rhonda thought about this when she looked at Lizzy—how once upon a time, all they needed was each other.

They had been born two days apart, this much was true, though they made up the lie about being from same mother—how Rhonda stayed in after Lizzy came out and their mother didn’t know about the other one until she went to the bathroom a couple of days later and out popped Rhonda.

“Into the toilet!” the girls would holler in their singsong voices, identical in pitch and tone. “Rhonda fell into the toilet!” Which didn’t seem like a bad beginning, just a funny one.

PETER WAS RUNNING
ahead of them, closest to the rabbit. He had his father’s red wool hunting cap on over his blond curls but he hadn’t worn a jacket. He was thirteen and Rhonda knew that as a general rule, thirteen-year-old boys didn’t believe in jackets unless it was way below freezing. He had announced that this was the last year he’d do the egg hunt: Easter baskets were kids’ stuff.

Rhonda and Lizzy rounded a bend in the path, and Lizzy hit a tree root and tripped, falling, pulling Rhonda down on top of her, both girls cackling, their good Easter dresses ruined already.

“Eew!” Rhonda complained, pushing herself up. “What have you been eating?”

“Sardines,” Lizzy said, smiling.

“Gross! For breakfast?”

“My dad says they’re full of calcium. You know, ’cause of the bones and stuff in them. They’re the latest part of the Rockette regime.”

“Your breath smells like cat food.” Rhonda took off down the path, toward Peter and the rabbit, Lizzy right behind her.

Rhonda thought the entire, ever-changing Rockette regime was stupid, even the name. She thought the dumbest part of all was that Lizzy had never even seen the Rockettes except on television. How can you decide from some five-minute routine on a twenty-inch television that that’s what you want to do with your life? But Lizzy was determined. And to be a Rockette, she kept reminding Rhonda, you had to be at least five foot six.

“I’m way too short, Rhonda.”

“You’re ten! You’re totally average for ten.”

“Neither of my parents are tall. I’ve got short genes. It’s a curse.”

So, in addition to practicing eye-high kicks, Lizzy ate weird, allegedly tallness-enhancing food and avoided soda, which she swore rotted your bones and stunted your growth.

“Besides,” she said, “soda’s full of sugar. And who’s ever heard of a fat Rockette?”

PETER AND THE
rabbit had reached the stage. The rabbit jumped into the driver’s seat of the old abandoned convertible and pretended to drive.

“Over here!” Peter shouted. The girls raced to catch up.

There, in a nest of snow tucked into the backseat, were the three plastic eggs that marked the true beginning of their hunt.

“Oh!” Lizzy exclaimed, clapping her hands together, like the eggs were a strange surprise—not the very thing she’d been looking for.

Rhonda bent down and picked her egg up out of the car. Tucked inside the orange egg, like a fortune in a cookie, was a message:
Go to the top of the hill. Look next to the rock.

She gazed up at the rabbit, who was standing on the hood now, hands on his hips, impatient and ominous with his huge paws and ears, the plastic cartoon-style eyes scratched from years of Easter rentals, the white fur dingy and smelling of dry cleaning chemicals.

Rhonda took off to the top of the hill, leaving her two friends to their own quests.

It went on like this for almost an hour. Zigzagging through the woods, finding an egg, following the clues inside to get to the next one. She’d run into Lizzy and Peter and they’d compare hiding places and messages, but always with the breathless urgency to hurry back to the hunt.

Rhonda’s breath was smoke. She wheezed from exertion. The rabbit darted in and out of trees, taunting. Pointing in one direction, then another. Holding his head and belly as he doubled over in silent laughter when she slipped and fell, when she believed him and went the wrong way looking for her next egg. Trickster rabbit.

When at last she grew tired of the game and was too cold to go on, the rabbit appeared, took her hand in his white fluffy paw, and led her to a small clearing. There, on top of a large, flat rock was her orange basket, shimmering with green plastic grass, stuffed full of chocolate bunnies, eggs, and jelly beans. He nodded down at her, and just for a minute, before she picked up the basket, he led her in a celebratory dance, their own little joyful bunny hop, one furry arm around her waist, the other clutching her cold fingers in his thick paw. There were none of the high, Rockette-style kicks Lizzy was famous for, just a clumsy little slippery-soled shoe shuffle. They stomped a little circle in the snow, then he let her go and, with a wave, turned and hopped back down the hill.

Rhonda took her basket and raced through the woods to her house with its warm, familiar smells: coffee, cinnamon buns, bacon. The table was laid out for Easter brunch. Peter was already there, the contents of his own basket spilled out on the couch. Rhonda saw right away that he’d gotten comics and a pocketknife. She had Silly Putty and lip gloss. Peter was picking black jelly beans out of the mixed bag and throwing them up in the air to catch them in his mouth. He’d seen a guy do this with peanuts in a western and had been working on it ever since.

Rhonda couldn’t remember ever not having Easter brunch with Peter and Lizzy. Her dad and Peter and Lizzy’s dad, Daniel, had grown up together and been best friends forever. They were practically brothers, Rhonda heard her dad say once. And the Shales lived next door—a quarter mile down Lake Street, a little closer if you cut through the woods.

“Where’s Lizzy?” asked Aggie, Lizzy and Peter’s mom. She wore a lime green dress that showed her knees, shoes with heels, lipstick, and rouge. Her short, spiky hair was dyed magenta and stuck up like she’d just been struck by lightning. She had a highball glass in her hand even though it was only ten in the morning. Her hand trembled slightly, as if holding the glass took all her strength.

“Still in the woods with the rabbit,” Rhonda said.

“They’ll both end up with frostbite,” said Aggie.

“It’s not
that
cold, Ma,” Peter said, opening his new knife and running his finger across the blade.

Aggie fixed her eyes on Peter, drained what was left in her drink, and rattled the ice like dice in a cup. Rhonda could smell her perfume, which seemed both sweet and rotten—like a Venus flytrap, Rhonda imagined.

“Coffee’s ready,” said Rhonda’s father as he held out a cup to Aggie. His dark hair was cut short, and he had on a white button-down shirt and tie, which made his face and hands look tan even
though it was April; Clem had the kind of complexion that left him bronze year round.

Aggie squinted at him, put down the glass, and took the steaming mug. Rhonda’s father sipped at his own coffee, keeping an eye on Aggie the way you’d watch an unpredictable dog who might lunge and bite at the slightest provocation. He set down his coffee, reached into his shirt pocket for the unfiltered Camels, and lit one, using the three remaining fingers of his right hand as expertly as if the other two had been missing all his life.

When Rhonda was a little girl, she used to sit on his lap and ask him to tell the story of how he lost his fingers.

“It only took a second,” Clem would explain, Rhonda on his lap running her tiny fingers over the scarred nubs where his two missing digits had been.

“Daniel and I were at the mill, working on a big order of beams with Dave Lancaster.”

Rhonda would nod. She knew Dave. He was the boss at the mill. He’d once gotten into a wrestling match with a black bear, and if you weren’t careful, he’d offer to show you the scars, which were on his butt.

“I was guiding a piece of hemlock through the saw,” Clem would continue. “Daniel was behind me.”

“And he had a seizure,” Rhonda would say, having the story memorized.

“That’s right, sweetie. He fell against me and I wasn’t expecting it. My hand went right into the blade.”

“Did it hurt bad?” Rhonda asked.

“No,” Clem answered. “It happened too fast and then after, I was too surprised. I was in shock.”

“In shock,” young Rhonda would repeat back to him, thinking about electricity, how she was not supposed to go near outlets or play in thunderstorms because of shocks.

“It was an accident,” Clem would tell her.

“But what happened to your fingers?” Rhonda would ask, squirming on her father’s lap.

“I guess I don’t know,” Clem would answer.

Rhonda would imagine the fingers lying there in the sawdust on the floor of the mill, still warm.

“I think your fingers were lonely for your hand,” the little girl would say, and this would make her father—who once admitted that on some mornings he thought he could feel himself wriggling those fingers awake—smile a sad and longing smile.

RHONDA’S MOTHER, JUSTINE,
shuffled into the dining room from the kitchen, her feet in worn pink slippers. She had on her usual outfit: a matching sweat suit; this time, for Easter, she’d worn one in pale lavender. She carried a fresh tray of cinnamon buns and placed it in the center of the table.

“Justine,” Aggie said, her voice thick with an alcohol drawl, “you’ve outdone yourself! Everything looks
won
-derful!”

Justine nodded and went back into the kitchen to make waffles and, no doubt, hide out in the breakfast nook with a cup of black coffee and a romance novel. Rhonda thought she should go help her mother, keep her company at least, but she found herself planted by the French doors leading from the dining room to the patio, scanning the tree line at the edge of the yard for Lizzy and the rabbit.

“Maybe they got lost,” Rhonda said to no one in particular. She turned back to see Aggie lean over and pull the cigarette from between her father’s lips and place it in her own, taking a long, deep, lung-killing drag.

Rhonda went back to looking out the window, breathing onto the cold panes of glass to leave a film, then drawing in the condensation. She drew eggs. And a crude-looking rabbit with uneven ears.

“There they are now,” Peter said. He’d come up behind her
and rested his chin on her shoulder, his black-jelly-bean-scented breath hitting her cheek, making her feel warm all over.

Through the trees came the rabbit with Lizzy sitting high up on his shoulders, like an Easter queen in her yellow dress and shoes. She was laughing, swinging a pink basket full of candy as the rabbit jogged with her across the lawn, holding her legs against his chest with huge white paws.

Once inside, the rabbit set Lizzy down, then walked over to Aggie, whispering something in her ear and grabbing her rear end. She leaned back into him, wiggling her butt against him and laughing. She turned around to face him and tugged gently at his crooked white ears.

“Take this silly thing off, Daniel,” she said, and the rabbit took off his head, tucking it under his arm.

Daniel’s shaggy blond hair was sticking up at funny angles. He had a thick walrus mustache, which he’d had the whole time Rhonda knew him. It was the kind of mustache food got caught in. The kind that tickled when he leaned down to kiss your cheek or blow on your belly button.

Peter snuck up and snatched the rabbit head from him, dropped it over his own head. Daniel let out a howl of mock rage and chased Peter around the dining room table. Lizzy squealed with delight and took Rhonda’s hand to watch the chase. Justine came out of the kitchen, pink-covered romance novel in hand, to see what all the fuss was about. Aggie reached into Clem’s pocket and grabbed his pack of unfiltered Camels, shook one out, and lit it with a match from the book Clem kept tucked in the cellophane. She crossed her arms and watched the chase through a haze of smoke, her eyes focused not on her husband or son but on the French doors beyond them, which had been left open. Aggie looked out onto the patio expectantly, as if she was waiting for some uninvited guest to arrive. Or maybe, thought Rhonda, she was planning to make a break for it.

The oversized rabbit head shifted as Peter ran, turning him into a life-size bobblehead doll. When Daniel caught Peter, he held him upside down, shaking him while Peter bucked and squealed, “Enough, Dad! I give!” until the large rabbit head slipped off and landed softly on the thick beige carpet, mesh eyes fixed on the French doors, like it, too, was dreaming of escape.