Chapter 14 Sparklers and Sparks
There was something about the Fourth of July that excited Tilly.
Holidays were stressful in the Nguyen house growing up.
Stiff holiday dinners with coordinated formal wear, extended family, too many forks, and always an odd cold soup between courses.
They weren't extremely wealthy, but the whole of the Nguyens valued money and status enough that the comfort in which they lived was exaggerated during Thanksgiving at her CFO Great Uncle's mansion and her Grandmother's grand Christmas gala.
Fourth of July was the one holiday that she got to slip away from family and join her best friend, Jill, for her family's hog roast on the lake.
She remembered feeling free at those parties.
Food in colorful bursts covered the lake house kitchen, loud music played over speakers wired in and outside of the house.
Country tunes drifted from the cool indoors where they packed their red, white, and blue plastic plates high with food her mother wouldn't touch, even to keep from offending the hostess.
They would take their plates out to the sticky outdoors, down the steep wooden deck staircase to the large flat deck jutting out onto the water.
Jill's mom hung lanterns of red and blue stars, and there were floating white lanterns in the lake where at least ten boats filled with families were decked out in the holiday colors and hands held drinks in koozies.
She and Jill spent the day and evening laughing, eating, jumping from one boat to the next, shedding their jean shorts and star-spangled tank tops to hop on a tube in the water whenever someone offered.
Once the sun finally gave relief to the sky, they'd sit on blankets on her backyard hill with everyone else and watch the harbor's display of country spirit exploding in the sky while drinking Jill's mom's blueberry punch.
They once slipped a ladle of the adult blueberry punch into their sparkling cups only to choke and cough at the sharp sting.
When Tilly was fifteen, this was the party where she got her first kiss.
It had been more humid than usual that year and he'd told her he liked the red and blue sparkly strands in her black hair, running unsure teenage hands over the strands making her feel pretty and like it was okay for her to be different.
Their kiss, as most first kisses are at that age, was tentative and clumsy with shaking breaths they were both far too aware of.
But it had been sweet and led to a two-month relationship with awkward school hallway hand holding, and lunchtime dates where they barely talked to each other in the way that young teenagers did.
He gave her a stuffed animal stingray on their one-month anniversary, and three days after their two-month anniversary, he broke up with her by way of a note that apologized because he liked someone else.
It wouldn't be her last heartbreak, and she knew even then that it hadn't been love, but it was the first romantic crack in a tender heart.
There was something about that first one, almost like an embarrassment.
It happened to us. Could we have prevented it? What does this mean about my value?
And then the next Fourth of July party at Jill's, they swore off boys, linking their gangly arms and dancing to the country music together, their matching star tattoos and blue sparkly eyeshadow fighting against the sweat and humidity.
She kept those memories close to her because those were the times she felt like she could laugh unfettered and escape the cruelty of her sister, the stoic judgment of her mother and relatives, and the voice that told her she didn't belong.
Jill moved away their senior year of high school but still, whenever the sticky holiday came around, the nostalgia filled her with her first memories of feeling free.
Today would be Salem's festival and before she celebrated with friends and sparklers, she was celebrating a different kind of freedom from an old, dingy one-bedroom apartment.
"You didn't have much to move," Eloise pointed out as Tilly exited the bedroom at The Lost Souls House that had claimed her.
And it really had. When Ursula turned the antique brass knob and the door swung inside with a slow squeak, Tilly's mouth opened in silent awe.
The walls were a dark red with paneling and intricate crown molding, lending it an old-money look.
The queen bed stood tall and sumptuous, matching the dresser in mahogany with artistic carvings of birds and stars.
Above the bed was a gorgeous painting of a lake with a weeping willow draping itself into the water and the backs of two girls sitting under its shade shoulder-to-shoulder.
A vintage area rug sat under the bed, spreading out over the warm wood flooring in woven reds and burnt oranges.
The room was warm and looked like something she would find in a castle. When she saw the fireplace, she laughed, shaking her head.
"Good?"
She turned a disbelieving look to where Ursula and Eloise stood leaning back against the hallway wall. "Good? This is like one of the castle rooms plucked out of a book I loved when I was little. It's perfect."
Eloise poked her head in and smiled with raised eyebrows. "Very medieval. I love it. We need to get you a bearskin rug, and if only we had a castle hound."
Casper bumped against Eloise, and she laughed, running a hand over his very tall, wiry head, and leaned down to kiss the wolf. "Only kidding, big guy."
His brown eyes closed as he leaned all of his weight into her, knocking her off balance onto the floor.
She let out a grunting noise of distress as Ursula chastised the dog, and Tilly reached down to help her up. But then Lady Macbeth and two of her kits, who were now nearly full-grown pounced on her, pulling out a guttural laugh.
"It's fine. I'm fine," she said, waving away Tilly's hand. "I'll live down here now. It's going to take me at least eight minutes to get up, and with-" a waving black and white striped tail, garbled her words as a raccoon sat squarely on her chest.
"Oh hey, Jen texted that she has our booth assignments for the festival tonight," Tilly said, looking at her phone.
"Ursula, you're with Bess on the tunnel of freedom lights.
You're at the strawberry and peach shortcake booth with Carmen Frederick," she pointed to Eloise, who was still struggling to get a raccoon tail out of her mouth, "and I am at the sparkler booth with," she squinted, reading the full text. "They're still finding a volunteer."
Eloise groaned again, though this time from her assignment and not being pushed over by a six-foot hound.
"Not Carmen Frederick," Eloise said as she spit out raccoon hair from her mouth.
One of the kits curled up on her chest while Lady sat on her stomach, petting Casper, who decided to lay in the middle of the hallway next to Eloise with his big head on her thighs.
"She's not that bad," Ursula said as she sat down on the floor, putting her back to the wall.
Tilly stepped over the pile of Eloise and furry creatures to sit next to Ursula.
"Uh, last time I went to the pharmacy to pick up an antibiotic for that insane sinus infection I had, she told me to just make a potion in my evil cauldron."
"Noooo," Tilly said. Eloise nodded.
"Yeah, that wasn't very nice," Ursula conceded.
Carmen Frederick and her husband had five children, were often seen in town exhausted and harried, rushed, and the epitome of overwhelmed.
Her husband worked an office job in the town over,r and he had the air of a man who had to brace himself between sitting in his car when he got home and walking in the front door.
"Hey, do you guys think Crystal is hiding a whole life of secrets from us?" Tilly asked it. The question. They all had it stored behind their teeth since the mysterious women had shown up in their town.
"Yes," Ursula and Eloise said in unison.
A feeling of something sliding into place filled Tilly. Eloise smelled sweet basil being cut and Ursula knew that there would be a new row of dalmatian peach foxgloves in the far right back corner of her garden, tucked behind the overgrown cucumbers.
"Alright, need to get up," Eloise said. "Up, furballs." When none of them moved she sighed. "I might be stuck here. Will someone bring me a peach thumbprint cookie?" she called as Tilly and Ursula got up.
That night was celebrated with fried food, bonfires sprinkled around the town, laughter, and music, and eight women with various forms of red, white, and blue spirit worn on their bodies and in their hair. Of course, hands were full of celebratory foods.
Tilly always went for the cheese curds that were fried with blue-colored dough, a marinara, and ranch on the side.
Ursula and Eloise shared a footlong corn dog in the same blue fried dough.
Kelsea and Bess each had a peach shake-up and a bag of popcorn, Carol carried a cupcake with fresh summer berries on sparkling white frosting, Crystal and Jessica had street corn with firecracker salsa.
Eloise stopped, her nose scrunched. Ursula asked her what was wrong, and Eloise said she smelled something odd. Her auburn hair shifted over her shoulder as she leaned her head, weighing the scent, with closed her eyes before she opened them and then shrugged.
Everyone had learned to take her particular sense of smell seriously.
"I need to get to the shortcake stand," Eloise said. "I got it set up with all of the shortcake and prepped fruit, and thankfully no sign of Carmen. Think she'll bail?"
"Doubtful."
Eloise's look of hope fell at Tilly's response.
"Jen running around with Cora?" Jessica asked.
Tilly nodded. "I swear she's going to run herself ragged if she's not careful."
"Said every woman about their women friends in the history of the world," Crystal replied with a knowing look. The other women silently wondered just how much history Crystal knew of, and if it was first or second hand knowledge.