“This feels like punishment.” Hadley Grant stomped her left foot. “I haven’t done anything bad. Did Hayden do something bad and you think I’m her? Take a good look, Mommy. I’m being good.”
Hayden knew Papa would have said Hadley was fighting a losing battle. Her parents had asked the twins to stay inside after they’d gotten back from breakfast at Porky Patty’s. That was her and Hadley’s favorite restaurant, and her parents took them there only for an extra-special treat. That should have been enough for Hadley. But Hadley always had to push for just a little more. Who cares if Mommy and Daddy wanted them to play inside? It was Friday and their parents had let them sleep in. No school! And their bellies were full with sausage gravy and biscuits.
“Come on, Hadley.” Hayden grabbed her sister’s hand. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll let you brush my hair.” Brushing people’s hair was, like, Hadley’s favorite thing on the planet. Even more than playing video games on Daddy’s tablet.
“I want to go outside.” Hadley plopped herself on the bottom stair. “It’s a nice day, and I want to draw chalk on the driveway.”
Hayden looked out the window. It didn’t look like a nice day. It was all gray. Mommy said days like this meant the clouds were coming for a dance. That was a nice thought, but whenever they came to dance the clouds always made her feel cold and just a little wet on her skin. Besides, Hadley’s chalk wouldn’t work when the day was like this. She was just being stubborn. And Hayden had an idea Mommy and Daddy knew it.
That wouldn’t be good for anybody.
Sure enough, Hayden heard her father’s footsteps coming down the hall. She looked up at her mother, who stood above Hadley with her hands on her hips and that look on her face Papa said meant business. Hayden didn’t know what kind of business Mommy meant when her face got like that, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to ever find out.
“Hadley, stand up right now.” Her father stood over Hadley now, too. He had his business face on, too. Hayden backed away. If someone was going to get punished, this wasn’t the time for Mommy and Daddy to be mixing up which twin was which.
Hadley stood and turned toward Daddy. Her hands were on her hips just like Mommy’s. Hayden looked away so she wouldn’t start giggling.
“Just tell me why we can’t play outside,” Hadley negotiated.
Daddy looked down at her, then up to look at Mommy. Hayden thought for a second her father was going to burst out laughing. But then he got that business look again.
“Because I said so.” Daddy’s voice wasn’t so laughy now.
Hadley stared at her father for a long minute while Hayden was sending frantic just be quiet thoughts to her twin. Hayden was thrilled when her sister turned toward her.
“Come on, Hayden. Let’s play beauty. You be the customer and I’ll fix your hair.”
Hayden looked to her mother and father and smiled. She liked it when her mother or father brushed her hair, but Hadley pulled too hard. Still, if it would stop anybody from yelling, Hayden was all for it.
“I’ll race you. Ready, set, go!” Hayden knew her sister would beat her. She was already at least four steps closer to their room when they started. But she raced up the stairs and into their room anyway. Losing the race was better than Hadley getting in trouble.
“Why do you do that?” Hayden closed the door to their bedroom while Hadley got the brush and comb off the dresser.
“Here,” Hadley ordered. “Sit on the bed. You’re my first customer of the day. Your name is Heavenly Alberta and you have a big, fancy party to go to. The prince will be there and you think he’s cute. You’re going to pay me a million dollars to fix your hair so the prince will fall madly in love with you and ask you to dance.”
Hayden liked the way Hadley always had the setup for their games in her head. She sat on the corner of the bed and fluffed her blond curls with both hands. “Oh, Jessica. That’s your name, by the way. Oh, Jessica. I think the prince loves someone else. Make me the girl with the prettiest hair and the prince will want to dance only with me.”
Hadley climbed behind her twin, knees on the bed, brush in her hand. “When he sees this, Heavenly, he’ll want to make you the queen and everyone in the land will come to me to have their hair cut. I’ll charge them all a million dollars and I’ll be rich, rich, rich.” She grabbed Hayden by the shoulders and twisted her toward her. “You do have my million dollars, don’t you?”
Hayden dug into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out an imaginary wad of bills. “Here’s two million dollars. Make the prince love me.”
Hadley tucked the invisible money into her invisible apron and brought the brush to Hayden’s head.
“Ow!” Hayden complained. “Not so hard.”
“How’s that?” Hadley eased up.
“That’s better.” Hayden let her sister brush and talk. “This is nice, Hadley. Wouldn’t it have been okay to just do what Mommy and Daddy wanted right from the start? Why do you have to make them explain everything? And you know they’re never going to listen to you when you stomp that sassy foot of yours.”
Hadley tossed the brush aside and crawled off the bed. She crossed over and flopped onto her own bed. “Rules, rules, rules. Do this. Do that. I want to play. Have fun.” She rolled over to her belly, looked at her sister, and wiggled her eyebrows. “Eat sausage and gravy every day!”
Both girls giggled. Hayden agreed she wouldn’t mind starting each and every morning at Porky Patty’s.
“And pizza from Giannino’s every night!” Hadley squealed.
“Except for when Papa makes us hamburgers on the grill.” Hayden fell back onto her bed and rubbed her stomach. “Yum!”
“A different dessert every night, but the same every day.” Hadley held a hand in front of her and counted on her fingers. “Monday would be hot fudge sundaes. Tuesdays would be lemon pie. You do the next two.”
“Wednesdays would be chocolate chip cookies and milk. While they’re still warm, of course.”
“Of course!”
“Thursdays will be banana pie. You do Friday, I’ll do Saturday, and we’ll have double desserts on Sunday.”
“Okay. For Fridays I pick…I pick Christmas cookies! Even in summer. Christmas cookies every Friday!”
Hayden kicked her legs in glee. “That’s such a good idea! Okay, for Saturdays I pick tapioca pudding. With whipped cream.”
Hadley scrunched her nose. “I don’t like tapioca pudding. Could I have vanilla instead?”
“Of course, madam.” Hayden made her voice sound snooty, like those people on that television show Mommy watches. “You are Jessica. You make millions of dollars on hairdos. Vanilla pudding for you, tapioca for me. And now for Sunday. My choice for double dessert day is blueberries and cream. And you, my lady?”
Hadley thought. “This is hard. Just one more pick. I don’t like that. But if I could only pick one for double dessert Sunday, I’d pick brownies. Ooey, gooey brownies. And I’d always get the corner piece with the snappy crusty edges.”
“Brownies!” Hayden smacked herself on the forehead. “How did it take us so long to come up with brownies? We’re just glum dumb stupid.” Hayden rested quietly in her bed, lost in her fantasy of ritualized dessert schedules. “Wouldn’t that be great, though?” she asked, after a minute.
“What?” Hadley wanted to know. “To have anything we wanted?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t that be the best?”
Hadley was quiet. Then she looked toward the bedroom door, like she was making sure it was closed. “What if there was a way?” she whispered.
Hayden scrunched up her nose. “Mommy has a three-dessert-a-week rule. We’re never getting past that one.”
“What if we were visiting someone who didn’t have those rules?” Hadley asked. “What if there was someone who said we could have anything and do anything we wanted when we went to visit?”
“You mean like Papa or Grandmama in Paris?” Hayden shook her head. “They’re a lot more fun than Mommy and Daddy. I gotta hand that one to you. But they still have rules. Remember the time you wanted to jump into the water off Papa’s houseboat? Remember he said we could only go in the water if he was in there with us? That’s a rule, Hadley. Every grown-up’s got ’em. Every last one of ’em.”
“Aunt Allie doesn’t.”
Hayden felt something she didn’t like flop around in her chest. She pulled herself into a seated position and looked right at her twin. “I don’t think we’re allowed to visit Aunt Allie. Mommy and Daddy seemed set on that. Even Papa didn’t think it was a good idea. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”
Hadley sat up and turned excited blue eyes toward her sister. “Isn’t she beautiful? She’s like a princess. I got to talk to her more on field day than you did. Her voice sounds like music. She loves us so much. All she wants to do is make us happy.”
“She said that?”
Hadley nodded and her blond curls danced. “She’s been working. All over the world. Not just in Paris like Grandmama, but lots of other places, too. She says each place is prettier than the last. With white sand and blue water. Castles and big houses. She’s been in airplanes—”
“We’ve been in airplanes, Hadley.” Hayden interrupted her twin. “How do you think we visit Grandmama?”
“Two times, Hayden.” Hadley sounded mad. “Two big whole times in our entire lives we’ve been to Paris. Aunt Allie says she goes there whenever she wants to. Like just to shop or get an ice cream cone. And she goes on trains, which don’t even try to tell me you’ve done because I know you haven’t. And she has more than one car. She has everything.”
Hayden doubted that. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
Hadley laughed. “You saw her! She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Of course she has a boyfriend. Maybe she even has more than one. I think at least one of them is a prince.”
“You don’t know that, do you?” Hayden teased. “You’re just making assupp…ansump—”
“I am not making assumptions.” Hadley sounded mad again. “And stop trying to say words you can’t say. It makes you look dumb.”
“Well, then, what’s the name of just one of her boyfriends?”
Hadley was quiet. Hayden hoped her twin wasn’t angry. It’s just that sometimes Hadley poked at her and it was hard to take. Hayden was glad to hear the fun back in Hadley’s voice when she finally did say something.
“I don’t know. But we could ask her.”
“Ask who?”
“Aunt Allie.” Hadley had that look she put on her face when she wanted Hayden to think she knew something Hayden didn’t. “We could ask Aunt Allie the name of one of her boyfriends right now.”
Hayden felt that floppy feeling in her chest again. It didn’t hurt exactly, but she didn’t like it, either.
Hadley put a finger to her lips. “You can’t tell anyone. Not Mommy. Not Daddy. Not even Papa. If you don’t promise me, I won’t show you something you really are gonna wish you could see.”
Hayden started breathing that way she does when she’s scared. But she was in her bedroom with her sister. There wasn’t anything to be scared of.
“I promise,” she whispered.
Hadley went into the closet they shared. She opened the door to her side and pushed past dresses and skirts to a shelf in the back. She pulled out a shoe box covered in ribbons and glitter. It was her treasure box. Hayden had made one like it, too. Each girl kept their most special possessions in it. Hayden’s held cards and drawings. A safety pin bracelet her friend Lucy made her in kindergarten. A plastic bag with scraps of her dad’s beard when he shaved it off. And her most prized possession of all: a photograph of Papa and a pretty woman who was her grandma. Papa’s wife. Hayden knew her name was Edie and she died when the twins were only three years old. In the picture Grandma Edie is holding her and Papa is standing behind them, looking all happy. Hayden looked happy, too. Even though she was just a little kid. Sometimes, if she tried real hard, Hayden could grab a little wisp of what might be a memory of her grandmother. But it always disappeared real fast.
Nobody was ever going to take that picture from her.
Hadley had a picture like that in her treasure box, too. Only in hers Grandma Edie is holding Hadley. But that wasn’t what Hadley reached for when she brought her box over to set on Hayden’s bed. Hadley looked again to the door, lifted off the glittery lid, and pulled out something that made Hayden gasp.
A cellphone.
The floppy feeling in Hayden’s chest got bigger, and it got real hard to breathe.