Chapter Four

The Way Things Are Going to Be

After the ill-fated meeting with their mom and their dad’s digital head the girls huddled in Lark’s room, trying to figure out what in the world had just happened.

Iris and Lark always hung out there, though Iris’s room was always clean and organized, and therefore navigating through it wasn’t a health-and-safety hazard. Getting to Lark’s bed meant traversing a jungle of Lark’s things—library books, bits and pieces of her various collections, bookstore books, stuffed animals, drawings, half-finished Rainbow Loom puppets and knitted scarves, plastic boxes of various sizes designed to help her keep her room clean, leggings and T-shirts and socks, stuffed animals, scrap paper, pens and markers of various colors and functions, and half-completed projects and supplies for her life’s work: the dollhouse.

When the girls were seven, their parents had given them a fancy old-fashioned dollhouse complete with a family of four—a father, a mother, a girl, and a genderless baby the girls named Baby Thing. The girls shared a room then, and when they moved to the new house the dollhouse went into Lark’s room and Iris kept the salamander cage (and with it Slimey the salamander—may she rest in peace). And Lark started to renovate the dollhouse one room at a time because, as she put it, dolls shouldn’t have to have old-people furniture.

Then one day Lark decided it would be nice if the doll family could go swimming, so she began to turn the baby’s room into a beach, complete with glued-on sand and a gel ocean.

Now the house looked like the set for someone’s very weird dreams. It consisted of a room wallpapered in watercolor sky with a flock of origami birds dangling from the ceiling; an armory with tinfoil swords and shields; a haunted guest bedroom with spiders and felt ghosts; a bear habitat; a disco room; and a stage with velvet curtains framing one solitary plastic chicken in soliloquy. The family of five (they’d added one identical girl doll because the best families have identical twins in them) sat in the former attic nursery roasting mini marshmallows over a campfire on the surface of the moon, Baby Thing parked at Doll Lark’s feet.

It would have never occurred to Iris to put a campfire on the surface of the moon. It wasn’t just that you can’t actually have fire on the moon; she was not one of those stick-in-the-mud people who insisted that people’s imaginations venture no further than the laws of science allowed. It was just that the atmosphere of her mind could never allow such ideas to spark in the first place.

Now Lark sat cross-legged on her bed, clutching her beanbag cat, Esmeralda. Iris could not sit. She felt like pacing, but pacing in Lark’s room would be fraught with peril, so she leaned against the wall and imagined she was pacing, which helped a little.

“Mom and Dad knew,” Lark breathed. “And they didn’t do anything about it.”

“They could have at least told us!”

“They could have told us, and they could have told Principal Peter that they didn’t want us to be separated.”

“I don’t understand how he could do this to us. Like, is he trying to punish us?”

Lark looked up at her. “Principal Peter? Why would he do that?”

“. . . I don’t think he likes me.”

“Well, you did march into his office and tell him Tommy Whedon was a menace.”

It was true. She had. Someone had had to do it.

Lark had always been a little frightened of Principal Peter, ever since first grade when he’d teased her about drawing in class instead of listening to the teacher. Iris, however, was not scared of him. Iris was the one who could look him in the eye and tell him the things that were awry in his school if need be.

“Remember next time you’re going to tell me before you do something like that?”

“Okay,” Iris grumbled. This was a frequent conversation between the two of them. The problem was, if she told Lark she was going to do something like march into Principal Peter’s office to hand him the anti-bullying policy and inform him he was not enforcing it, Lark would tell her not to do it, that it wouldn’t help, and that it would just make Iris even madder, and then Iris wouldn’t do it because she’d never disappoint Lark like that. So she didn’t tell Lark, she just did it, and it didn’t help, and it just made Iris even madder.

“Still,” Lark said. “I don’t think he’s punishing us.”

Iris gazed at her sister. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Lark said. “I don’t think principals are supposed to do things like that. You’re not actually supposed to take stuff out on kids. That’s got to be in the manual.”

Iris exhaled, then flopped down on the bed next to her sister. “Then why?”

Lark’s face darkened. “You heard Mom. Because he thinks it’s in our best interest. I don’t know why!” She sniffed. “But I don’t understand why Mom and Dad didn’t tell him he was wrong. I don’t. They seem to agree with him!” Her voice cracked.

Iris twirled a strand of hair in her fingers. She didn’t know what to say. How could anyone possibly think it in their best interest to be apart? What did that mean? The phrase didn’t even make sense—that wasn’t how any of those words were supposed to work.

“Maybe I should talk to them again.”

“It’s not going to matter,” Lark said. “You heard them. They made up their minds.”

“But . . .” But if she could just explain it. If she could find the right words, and the right way of saying those words, then maybe they’d listen.

Lark shook her head. “Iris, they’re not going to listen. There’s no point. They’ll just get mad at you for arguing with them.”

“I don’t care if they’re mad at me!”

“But I do! And you get mad that they aren’t listening to you, and Dad starts using that voice and Mom looks sad and then they act really weird and plastic with me because they don’t want to let on to me that they’re annoyed at you because they want to show us that they think of us as individuals, even though I’d actually rather they just acted annoyed with me than weird and plastic, and meanwhile everyone in the house is mad at each other, and it doesn’t help. When has it ever helped?”

“Well . . .”

Lark was right. The truth was, never. It never helped. Just like at school. Instead Iris got talking-tos about how they were so glad she was able to stand up for herself and her sister and they always wanted her to know she could talk to them about anything, but at the same time, Iris, we’re your parents and sometimes enough is enough, sometimes you need to accept things and move on.

But that didn’t mean it might not work someday.

“What if Mr. Hunt is mean?” Lark said, clutching Esmeralda to her. “What if he’s one of those teachers who likes to call on students who don’t like to raise their hands? What if we have to do a lot of presentations?”

Iris eyed her sister. Lark seemed focused on the bed, but Iris knew she wasn’t really looking there: she had suddenly retreated into herself, into that corner of her brain that occupied itself with spinning stories about the future, all with terrible outcomes. It was one of Lark’s gifts and curses: she saw the story in everything. Once upon a time there was a girl who was given a new teacher at school, but no one knew that the teacher was really an evil sorcerer. He looked into the girl’s heart and saw there all of her fears, and then he made her fears come true.

“I don’t even know who else is in the class!” Lark exclaimed. “What if Tommy Whedon’s in there? Who am I going to be partners with? What if there’s an odd number of girls and no one wants to be partners with me? What if I say something weird and everyone laughs at me?”

Iris inhaled. What could she say? There was nothing to say, and Lark was stuck in that storytelling room in her brain, where even Iris’s words weren’t always enough to get her out.

A quiet knock on the door then. Iris sat straight up and Lark shot her a look, as their mom came in and perched herself against the wall, a plastic bag in her hands.

Iris could feel the words swelling in her chest: a cold What is it? And a hopeful Did you change your mind? And an angry What were you thinking? And a desperate Did you hear what Lark just said? She opened her mouth, not knowing which question would fly out, but her mom held up her hand. Wait.

Iris swallowed. Lark blinked rapidly.

“Girls,” she said, eyes guarded. “Your father and I are sorry—”

“So you’re calling Principal Peter?” Iris exclaimed.

Her mother’s eyebrows went up.

Shhh, Lark tapped quickly.

“Let me finish,” her mom said gently. “Iris. Lark,” she continued, looking at each girl in turn. “Your father and I are very sorry you’re upset.”

Iris blew air out of her cheeks. There was nothing sorry about I’m sorry you’re upset. I’m sorry you’re upset didn’t mean I did something wrong and I’m going to fix it right now. It meant I did something right and your reaction is the problem.

“But,” she went on, eyes on Iris, “we want you to understand that we have every confidence that you girls will succeed and be happy and have great school years. Just like you always do.” Now she smiled warmly at them. “I know it must seem scary, but it’s going to be okay. You still have each other’s backs, and we have your backs, always.”

At this, Lark’s hand flew to Iris’s knee. Iris clamped her mouth shut.

“We just want you two to try. Give it a chance. We have faith in you. And maybe after a few months you guys can have more faith in yourselves. Now,” she continued, straightening, “as we’ve discussed, we need to get you girls signed up for after-school programs this fall, and the deadline for some of them is Friday. Lark”—she reached into the bag and pulled out the printouts and pamphlets she’d been waving at them for the last couple of weeks—“there’s an art program at Barnhill that I think you’d be interested in.”

“Yeah, but Iris doesn’t—”

“I know. You guys are going to do different programs, too.”

“What?” Iris exclaimed.

“Just to try it. Just this fall. Lark, you love Ms. Messner. You love art, and this is a chance for you to really focus on it, and that will be so good for you! And Iris, you really love . . .”

Her mom stopped talking. Iris waited. Next to her, Lark cocked her head.

“Well, you might find something you love. This is a good chance for you to do that.”

“Mom,” Iris said, “I don’t want to do any of that. I might as well take art. I don’t mind it that much.”

At that, Lark made a small noise. Even Esmeralda seemed to laugh.

“No,” her mom said. “It doesn’t make sense for you to do something you don’t like. This is an opportunity to find something you do like.” She looked back and forth between the girls. “You guys don’t have to do everything together. It doesn’t mean you’re not still sisters.”

“That’s not it!” Iris said, a tremor at the edge of her words.

“My sweethearts. You’re still each other’s best friends, and you still can be there for each other. Nothing important is changing.” She smiled at them, eyes full of love and misunderstanding. “All we’re asking is that you try this. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”