Chapter 16
Adelaide
Lining Up the Dominoes
“Is she gone?” Max asked, cracking an eye open from the couch about a minute after Miss Jeannie. I looked up from my book in surprise, because I totally thought he had been sleeping.
Man, I couldn’t wait until I got my enhanced senses so I could pick up on things like heartbeats and someone’s breath increasing as they switched from stone-cold asleep to wakeful.
“She is,” I murmured softly. Although Miss Jeannie was entirely human, all the rest of the adults in the room were not.
I loved my family, but I wasn’t sure about their ability to keep a secret.
As well as how many of them would approve of what we were planning.
“Stay there. I’m gonna peep out the window. ”
“Heard.”
Noting the page number I was on, I closed my book and headed over to one of the many, many windows in the main cabin, which was part of how I could read in the middle of the room with no light directly above me.
I preferred it like that since I hated the buzz that came with some of that fluorescent illumination.
Sure enough, I could see my auntie and Miss Jeannie a few feet from the main entrance before they turned to the opposite side of the building. Perfect.
“They’re headed to a blind spot, which is good, but I’ll give them another minute before I head out.” I said once I returned to Max’s side.
“Can I come with you?” Eva asked, popping up from where she had been playing with her dolls.
I didn’t really like Barbies or stuffed animals like she did, but I enjoyed the hare-brained dramas she acted out.
It was like my own personal soap opera—much better than the stuff that used to show on the TV when my mom had to go to the hospital.
“Sure, but remember you can’t say anything about what we’re doing.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “I know. I get it.”
“Yeah, Eva’s smart!”
“Yes, she is.”
And I would never argue otherwise.
I knew how my sister came off to people because she was quite shy and didn’t enjoy verbalizing her thoughts like I did, but that didn’t mean she was dumb.
In fact, it made me angry when people thought that.
If they just played with her or really listened to her when she got going, they’d understand there was a whole world in her head.
A cool one at that. But most people never even cared to try to get past the gates.
“Do you want my book while I’m gone?” I asked, changing the subject.
One thing I really liked about Max was that he had already proven that he would defend Eva from those very people who underestimated her.
He understood her, and he also understood me, which wasn’t always the case with other people, especially now that Eva and I were getting older and becoming more… Us.
I liked how we were, and although I knew we would change when we were all grown up, I never wanted either of us to be different just to fit in.
Daddy did a good job of encouraging us to be us, but sometimes it could get kinda lonely.
Sometimes, I felt like the only person I could have coherent and fulfilling conversations with at school was Symphony.
She was like me—always asking questions, always hungry for more info, more knowledge, and fiercely competitive.
I was grateful for her, but one friend did not make a healthy social circle, especially since she got burnt out on interaction really fast and needed time to recoup.
“Won’t that mess up where you are in the book? You don’t have a bookmark, right?”
“I memorized the last page I was on.”
I braced myself out of habit, prepared for him to tell me that was stupid.
He wouldn’t be the first person. Many people had pointed out to me in my short life that using a bookmark or—heaven forbid!
—dog-earing a page would be a much more simpler and consistent way of finding my spot again, but they didn’t get it.
It was like a little challenge. A way to earn my return to whatever I was enjoying.
If I didn’t remember, then I hadn’t absorbed the information well enough, so I deserved to reread whatever I needed to get back to where I had left off.
“Really? That’s kinda cool. Do you use a mnemonic device, or is it just raw memorization?”
I should’ve known better, because Max was never like that.
Ever. Even that first moment we met and my whole mind was locked up with that awful, awful, bright red, he never told me and my sister we were weird.
He just accepted us. And sometimes he even agreed with us, which told me we weren’t the freaks I felt we were.
After all, kids were supposed to have a mommy, right? I didn’t have that anymore. And a daddy, which Max didn’t have either.
Really, it was only logical that if we both lacked parental sets, we should combine. Synergy, I think I had read about it or something.
“I just kinda memorized it.”
“That’s cool. Maybe I should try that.”
“If it works for you. So, do you want it?”
“Yeah, if it’s chill with you. I want to hang here a bit longer, but I’m all slept out.”
I nodded. I knew that annoyed people, and I had several teachers who would tell me to use my words, but neither Max nor Miss Jeannie were like that.
“Sounds good. Eva, will you get your toys and put them next to Max?” I didn’t think anyone would steal them, not in our family, but I was worried about someone tripping over them, since a lot of the kids were now swarming Olivia because our cousin Jahmoni had managed to herd her into a corner.
“Yeah!”
Eva busied herself with doing that, and I went to the open doorway of the room, looking around for Daddy.
He’d been asked to help with something having to do with the ground earlier that morning, which was what led to Miss Jeannie offering to watch us, and us navigating her to the main cabin so that our Auntie Ana could help us.
He returned about half an hour ago, but when he saw we were all occupied, one of the great-uncles spirited him away, no doubt for some catch-up time.
Or to be a busybody. It really was a toss-up with the elders.
Still, I couldn’t believe our luck. Everything was going so perfectly, it felt like it was meant to be.
Like, maybe my mommy was helping.
I missed her so much sometimes. It hurt.
For a long time, there were only three people in the world who understood me—Eva, Daddy, and Mommy—so losing one-third of my support system had been hard, even with my mom preparing me for three years.
She never told me I was too mature for my age or that I was using weird words, and she also never told me that I was acting too immature either, which some folks did.
It was like people had this dichotomy in their head where if you were smart, you had to be more like an adult, no kid stuff allowed.
“Ready!” Eva exclaimed as she skidded to a stop next to me.
I’d kinda gotten stuck in my brain again.
Not exactly new. I always liked turning things this way and that within my mind, staring at them from different perspectives, testing them against different theories.
Maybe that was why I understood Eva’s own reluctance to communicate with outside people.
Sometimes, the world inside our heads was so much nicer than the one outside of it.
“Okay, let’s go. Daddy is probably in one of the lounges or the library.”
“Let’s find him!”
“Let’s find him,” I echoed. I’d noticed all the way back when she was just two years old that she was always delighted when people repeated her verbatim. I didn’t totally get why, but I didn’t need to. If it made my sister happy, I liked doing it.
The two of us headed off, which was probably a good thing since some of the adults were eyeing Eva’s hair.
The puffs atop her head were definitely slacking a little, but she was so tender-headed that I only trusted Daddy to do her hair.
I wasn’t afraid to tell other adults no, but it was nice not to have to go through the hassle.
“Do you think this is gonna work?” Eva asked as we walked through the main dining hall.
“Shhh.”
Confusion crossed her face, but when I gave her a meaningful look, it clicked.
“Oh.” She held a finger up to her lips and I gave her another nod.
“Yeah, exactly.”
She was quiet for the rest of her walk, but that wasn’t unusual.
It didn’t take us long to find Daddy. He was in one of the studies, a quiet place where a lot of elders hung out when they needed a break.
Unsurprisingly, the relative who had whisked him off was out cold in one of the comfortable seats, snoring heavily with a blanket in his lap that I knew my father had put there.
Daddy really was so kind. I wanted to be more like him when I grew up. I didn’t think I was a mean kid, but I didn’t have the warmth that either of my parents did. I was working on it, but it would be a lot easier if people didn’t have the capacity to be so annoying.
“Hey,” I murmured quietly, not wanting to rouse our snoozing elder.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” my dad said, tearing his gaze away from the window.
I peered out of the glass to try to guess what he was looking at, and I wasn’t exactly shocked to see that it was the path Miss Jeannie and Auntie Ana would have walked by to get to the old playground, which was exactly where our plan needed them to be.
“How’s it going? Did you need a break from the other kids? ”
“Max had to take a nap,” I fibbed. I wasn’t a huge fan of lying, but I had evaluated the situation, and I believed that it would be prudent to reach our goals. And surely a little bit of fibbing was okay if it was for a good cause, right? Like a really, really good cause.
“Yeah, he did seem pretty tired. Maybe you girls can encourage him to take it easy for the rest of today and tomorrow? We don’t want him knocked out for Christmas Day.”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Yeah!” Eva echoed, reaching for my hand. I took it of course.
“Really? How so?”
“I’m kinda worried if we’re around here a lot that he’ll get pulled into more stuff. But also, if we leave him to just lie around, he’ll probably find things to do on his own.”
“You know, I can see the logic in that. Something tells me that you have a plan in mind?”
I sure did, but probably not in a way daddy suspected.
“I do. You know that kinda lazy hike to the second main cabin that they tried to make happen but didn’t because there was, like, big family drama or something at the time?”
“It wasn’t family drama so much as it just wasn’t as convenient a location for all of us once the families started combining.”
“Right, whatever. I wanna see if it would be good for Max, so do you think you could take me and Eva on it tonight? Like around three-fifteen when everyone’s distracted, and we could scout it out?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure if he’d be all that into hiking. Or if his walker would work on uneven ground.”
I knew what he meant. Mommy had loved being in nature, but her walker was terrible at what she called “off-roading”. So much so, that sometimes Daddy would just carry her around because it was easier.
“Pretty please?” I asked, batting my eyes at him. I didn’t pull that out very often, because it was for special occasions, but this was worth it. There were many things in the world I still had to learn, but one thing that I was the most sure about was that Daddy deserved to be happy.
“Put the puppy-dog eyes away. You don’t gotta blackmail me. If you wanna check out the trail, I’ll be happy to take you. We should get back right before dark that way.”
“Yeah! That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Great minds think alike,” Daddy said, sending me one of his cheesy winks.
Sometimes, I accused him of being cringe, but really, I liked that I had a funny dad.
He always tried to smile, even when it was really difficult to do.
It made me want to do the same, although it was much easier to scowl so people would leave me alone with my books or my sister.
“Definitely,” I said, thinking of Max and the plan we’d hatch together starting at the breakfast table and ending in Auntie Ana’s cabin.
As hare-brained as our plot was, and even though we stole part of it from an ancient movie, it was worth it. I liked Max and Miss Jeannie a lot, and I also liked how they made Daddy feel, so I wouldn’t mind them sticking around for a good long while.