“I don’t want to be Cali,” she said once she was settled there, wrapping herself in a section of the quilt. Hallie sat up and yanked a part of the comforter back over her own shoulders. Garnet couldn’t quite make out her sister’s face in the dark, but she could tell that Hallie was glaring at her.
“Don’t be a pill. You don’t want to be left out again. Don’t make me have to take care of you here, too.”
Garnet knew what Hallie meant; she understood the lengths to which her sister had gone to include her in West Chester-to make sure that she was neither ignored nor picked on. But she also knew that her sister derived a measure of satisfaction from looking out for her. Hallie was going to grow into either one of those adults who took great pride in being needed or a mean girl who took pleasure in the fealty of her friends.
“I was doing fine here at school and at dance class. I was making friends just like you until Daddy…” She didn’t finish the sentence, though she really didn’t have to. Until Daddy freaked out Molly Francoeur.
“Well, none of that means anything anymore. We don’t have a lot of friends at school. We don’t have a lot of friends at dance class. We really don’t have anyone but the plant ladies. No one. Those people are our friends right now, they’re what we’ve got.”
“Great. A group of middle-aged and old ladies as friends. I’m so glad we live here. Let’s stay here forever.”
“Reseda’s not middle-aged. Holly’s not middle-aged.”
“The rest are like grandmothers.”
“You really don’t like them?”
“No,” Garnet said firmly. “I don’t.”
“Well, you’re making a mistake. I do like them. I want to be one of them.”
One of them. Garnet thought about what that meant and realized that she honestly didn’t know. She had heard of ladies’ garden clubs where the women made floral arrangements and tried to spruce up parks and neighborhoods; there was one in West Chester and there was probably one in Littleton or Bethel. But these plant ladies were different. She thought of the books they had given her sister and her. These women wanted to make potions and tinctures and teas-not arrangements.
“Hallie?”
“It’s Rosemary,” she reminded Garnet, her voice flat and blunt.
“Why do you think they want us to take new names?”
“God, will you let that go? What is the big freaking deal?”
“It’s just-”
“Would it make a difference if they didn’t want to call you Cali? Would you stop making waves if you had a name you liked?”
She curled her bare feet underneath the quilt and accidentally grazed Hallie. “Your feet are freezing,” her sister cried out.
“I know. Sometimes I just can’t get warm in my room,” Garnet said.
“One more reason why you should accept the fact that, from now on, you’re Cali.”
“My room will suddenly warm up like yours?”
Her sister shrugged. “Everything is easier. Everything is better.”
Garnet tried to imagine a plant name she might like, but she could only come up with the names of ordinary vegetables and fruits and trees. And the women didn’t seem to use them very often. “There will still be that hole in the wall,” Garnet murmured. “The one that goes to the attic. There will still be that draft.”
“The door fits tight. There is no hole. There is no draft.”
She knew Hallie was right. But, still, her room always seemed chillier than her sister’s. “It scares me.”
“The little door? I think it’s cool. You know I’m jealous. Someday I think we should switch rooms.”
“Maybe,” Garnet said, but she knew in her heart that they never would. She understood that there was a certain amount of bluster to Hallie’s confidence. Her sister was frightened by the door, too. “When will you tell people at school?” she asked after a moment.
“You mean about my new name?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know. Anise says to wait until September. We just come back after the summer and tell everyone we want to be called by our new names. And we’ll have had some sort of cool naming ceremony in the summer-outdoors, when it’s warm.”
“Assuming Mom doesn’t mind.”
“Obviously.”
“And we’re still living here.”
“Which we will be.”
Garnet sighed unhappily. “Do they scare you?” she asked after a moment.
“The plant ladies? No. I can see why they might scare you-because you’re still being stubborn. But once you get over that stubbornness, you’ll see. They only want us to be happy.”
“I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“They need us.”
“ They need us? ” Hallie repeated, her tone incredulous and condescending.
The idea was vague and not wholly comprehensible to Garnet; she was still formulating the notion in her mind. Volume II. The Complete Book of Divination and Mediation with Animals and Humans. She had found nothing about it on the Internet. “Yes. I think they need us more than we need them.”
“Well, we need them a lot,” Hallie said. “I told you, they’re all we have.”
“Maybe. But do you see them spending time with any other kids? Wanting to give any other kids new names? I don’t.”
Hallie curled her knees up to her chest under the quilt and wrapped her arms around them. “So?”
“Why is that? Is it because we’re new and everyone else knows to stay away? Or is it because we’re twins? And, really, why do they want to rename us? You and me. Why do they want to teach us to make all those potions and teas and things?”
Outside, the rain continued to thwap against the window, and occasionally the glass rattled in its frame. Hallie seemed to consider this. “Mom said she might take a new name, too.”
“I know. It begins with a V.”
“You scared?”
“Sometimes. I wish we had houses nearby.”
“Like in West Chester.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You want to sleep in here tonight?” Hallie asked. And while this wasn’t why Garnet had come to her sister’s bedroom, she knew now that she did. And so she nodded and curled up under the sheets, and soon both girls were sound asleep.
Y our plane is, finally, a triple-seven heavy. A Boeing 777. You know the flight deck, even if you have never flown one before. And you know this is a dream because you are alone as you do the preflight checklists from the captain’s seat and because this peculiar airport is in the middle of a harbor. Literally. All of the planes are floating on the water, a row of skyscrapers rising up from the ground along the edge of the surf in the distance. But the belly of the plane is also hooked on to a conveyor belt, and the belt runs on a track just beneath the surface of the water. It is like a train track. No, a roller-coaster track. Because a quarter mile to your right a camelback rises from the salt water, the track summiting higher than any roller coaster you have ever seen in your life-higher than any roller coaster ever built anywhere. Is it fifty stories high? Maybe. One of the skyscrapers along the beach is Boston’s Prudential Center (though clearly this is not Boston because all of the other towers are unrecognizable totems), and the track’s peak is about the same height as the Prudential. But the descent doesn’t go all the way back to earth, to the gently rolling waves. If the vertical climb is fifty stories, the drop is only twenty-five. Then the track angles up again, but the pitch is gentle, no more then five degrees. This is, you understand, the runway. A chain lift locked into the bottom of your plane will pull you along the surface of the water and up to the peak of the camelback. Then, like it would a roller-coaster car, gravity will send your plane plummeting down the other side, the antirollback locks disengaged. You will be traveling two hundred miles an hour, your engines will click on and you will feel the plane hurtling along this runway track in the sky. And then you will be flying, leaving the edge of the track as if it were the end of an aircraft carrier. This is how you take off. You watch a 737 do it. Then a CRJ. Then an Airbus. Then another CRJ. It’s beautiful the way these planes are launched. They leave the track roughly thirty stories in the air, turn right into the departure corridor, and grow smaller and smaller as they disappear into a soft blue sky, an egg-colored setting sun in the distance. And then it is your turn. The tower has cleared you, and so you inform your passengers and flight crew that you are number one for takeoff.