I FIGURED I should wait until Mom’s show was done before I told her. Maybe Violet had just gone with Ty to grab a coffee or something, and she’d be back any minute. I just had to make sure I didn’t lose the twins. It wasn’t easy, trying to keep an eye on them in this mass of people twice their height.
It was clouding over and a few drops of rain were starting to fall, but even when Mom was finished the show, people didn’t leave. They crowded around her, asking questions, arguing about stuff. I tried to catch her eye.
“Where’s Curtis?” Saffron asked. “Will he be here soon? I’m cold.”
I rubbed her bare arms. She had goose bumps. “Whisper, are you cold too?”
Whisper nodded.
Saffron was right, I thought. Whisper wasn’t talking at all.
“Mom!” I called out, pushing through the crowd. “The twins are freezing. And…” I leaned in close and lowered my voice, not wanting to make a public announcement. “Violet’s taken off with Ty.”
“Oh, Wolf.” She looked at me, exasperated, as if these things were somehow my fault. “Look, just keep the girls happy for a few minutes, can’t you?” She gestured across the street. “Find a coffee shop or something—get them a drink.”
“I’ll need some money.”
She put her hands on her hips in search of a pocket. “Curtis has my wallet.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I walked away from her and her fans, took the twins by their hands and tried to think up a game to keep them entertained. I didn’t want to risk hide- and-seek: we’d already lost Violet. “You guys want to play scavenger hunt?”
Saffron eyed me critically. “Like how?”
“Like…” I thought fast. “Like, okay. You two have to touch something green, something brown, something red and something blue. Go!”
They stared at me for about a second, and then they were running. “Grass!” Saffron yelled, bending down and uprooting a handful of it. Whisper followed her, touching the grass and darting across the sidewalk to a parking sign to touch the blue letters. “I can’t find red,” Saffron protested. “There’s no red, Wolf!”
“Sure there is.” I looked pointedly down at Whisper’s feet in their red Crocs. “Keep looking.”
She followed my eyes and squealed, pouncing on Whisper and grabbing her foot. “That’s it! I win!”
Startled, Whisper gasped, and tears came to her eyes. I rushed over, hoping to head off a meltdown. “Hey, nice teamwork!” I said. “You guys got all four colors so fast!”
They both stared at me for a second, and then Saffron opened her mouth. “But I won!”
I shook my head at her warningly. “Great teamwork,” I said again.
Too late. Whisper sank to the ground, curled up with her arms around her knees and started to wail. “Nice,” I said to Saffron.
She started to cry too. “What did I do?”
I couldn’t deal with this. Could. Not. Deal. I turned back toward where Mom was standing at the steps, her juggling balls on the ground at her feet. The crowd had moved on; there were just a couple of student types and a bearded older man still talking to her. “Mom!” I yelled.
She looked over. I pointed at the twins. “We need to go,” I said. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I just stood there, waiting, until she excused herself, picked up her stuff and headed our way. Deep inside me, I felt something boiling up, like bubbling hot magma trapped under the Earth’s shifting plates, pressure building, ready to blow.