That’s not a real question; neither one of them are.
Lauren and I don’t get close to the pit. Okay, maybe just a little. On top of Gramma Frieda’s afghans we pretend to be astronauts; the starlit white rim of the pit is the outline of the moon. My blanket is a flying carpet, a floating island where I sit and walk my fingers across the sky, leaping over meteors.
Mrs. Wiggins loves the sky. When it’s a full moon, I don’t have to look outside, check the tide chart, or The Old Farmer’s Almanac, because Mrs. Wiggins jumps on my bed and stares out the window, so I know it’s full. Now that she’s sick and old, she pees a little when she jumps, so Mom covers my bed with old towels.
I wish I could read Mrs. Wiggins’s mind. I tried her on a Ouija board once—shoved it under her nose and waited for her to nudge a series of letters that would spell out something—but she didn’t like it. She’s private, like me. After school one day, I found its chewed-up pieces in her dog bed.
When we finish our picnic, Lauren and I lay back, counting meteors out loud and laughing. After a while, we hear our parents whisper and Lauren shines her flashlight on them.
“I knew four flashlights were too many,” Dad says, turning his back to the beam. Mom lies beside him. He gives her a noisy kiss.
“Oh, Pablo,” Mom giggles. She calls him Pablo when they’re kissy.
“Oh, Pablo,” Lauren mimics, making loud smoochie sounds on her arm.
“Girls!” Dad snaps.
With my index finger I connect a series of stationary stars, and draw Mrs. Wiggins’s outline in the twinkling sky. A new constellation: Canis Wiggins.
“Lily, do the dogs run through the woods every night?”
I shrug but Lauren isn’t looking. I guess she asks me questions I can’t answer because I’m older than she is. Plus, our parents are making out, so she can’t ask them either.
“Mommy and Dad-dy, sitting in a tree,” she sings as she jumps rope. I smell the dust kicked up with every twirl. The ground thumps when her feet land together. “K-I-S-S . . .”
In the dark, on another flying blanket far away, Mom giggles.
“First comes love, then comes marriage,” Lauren continues.
Mrs. Wiggins’s water dish is in the stars too. And a cartoon bubble over her big square head that reads, STAY AWAY FROM THE—
Suddenly there’s a skid, and the rope stops turning. A thump. A moan.
Lauren! I jump to my feet.
“Lily?” she whispers.
“Lauren?” I whisper back.
“Girls?”
“Mrs. Asher, please!” Dad is being silly. “Your lips, the stars. Your lips, the stars.”
“For God’s sake, Paul, let go!” Mom flips on the flashlight and hurries toward us. I’m blinded by the glare. She quickly puts it down, and turning the beam away illuminates the gray scraped wall on the opposite side of the quarry.
“What’s going . . . Where’s . . . Lily, what are you doing?”
On my stomach.
Hanging my head and arms over the lip of the big black hole.
Reaching for my little sister.
My body flexes and stretches, the muscles lengthen, tighten, and grow strong; I smell the dogs’ musk, and feel their deep excited growls in my throat. Somehow I have one end of her jump rope. When I tug at it, Lauren looks up. She’s easy to see under a sky of bright stars that light her pink barrettes and the shiny tip of her sun-blistered nose. She stands on a tiny shelf, just out of arm’s reach, and clutching her end of the jump rope leans against the quarry wall, breathing heavily.
“Lauren!” Mom gasps as she kneels beside me. “Oh, Jesus!”
Dad turns his flashlight beam on Lauren, who blinks and closes her eyes. “It’s okay, Kit, we’ll get her out. She’s right here on a ledge, only a couple of feet away. She’s fine.” He clicks off the flashlight and hands it to Mom. “Daddy’s here, Lima Bean. I gotcha.”
He straddles me and wraps his hands around mine.
Doesn’t he see me? I’m not invisible.
“Lily, let me do it. I’ll pull her up.”
Lauren’s eyes shine with tears. “I’m scared,” she says quietly.
“I know,” I tell her. “When you feel me pull the rope, hold on real tight, okay?” Lauren doesn’t answer. “Lean against the rock and I’ll pull you up. If you feel another ledge, step up on it.”
I can do this. We can do this. I feel Mrs. Wiggins crouch beside me; I smell her hot rank breath.
“Lily,” Dad says sternly, “give me the rope. Let it go slowly.”
I ignore him. “Lean against the rocky wall, Lauren,” I say. “I’ll pull you up.”
“But it’s dirty.” Lauren hates being dirty.
“I know, but you can take a bath when we get home.” Mrs. Wiggins’s wet nose smudges my leg. Her toenails scratch the dirt. Somehow she’s behind me, ready to pull with me. “Just hold on really, really tight.”
“Lily,” Mom says, “let Daddy do it. He’s stronger than you.”
“No.”
“This is no time to be stubborn!”
“NO!”
“Please, Lily! Lauren’s in danger!”
“I am?”
“Lily!” Dad barks.
“NO!” I yell at them both. “Go back to your stupid kissing!” I don’t take my eyes off Lauren. “I won’t let you fall,” I tell her quietly. “Promise.”
I scoot backward and pull on the jump rope. The dirt and gravel scratch my stomach and then I do it, we do it, somehow we pull her up—Mrs. Wiggins, and maybe Dad and Mom, but mostly me—and Lauren slides up over the edge, out of the pit, flat on her belly, dirty and scared and whimpering.
Mom hugs Lauren to her big soft boobs. “Are you all right?” she asks while looking her over with the flashlight. Finally she looks at me. “Why must you always challenge us, Lily? Why can’t you do what we ask? The rope could have slipped from your hands, and then what? If your father hadn’t been there to pull her up . . .” Mom starts crying all over again. When Dad pats her shoulder, she lets go of Lauren and grabs his hand. “Oh God, Paul.”
Shouldn’t my sister be more scared than Mom?
Lauren climbs out of her lap.
“If you won’t listen to your father, Lily, then listen to me. We can’t protect you if you don’t do as we ask.”
“But you were kissing,” Lauren says. She twirls the jump rope, walking instead of jumping, stepping over it when it stops at her feet.
“Lauren! Put that damn thing down!” Mom says. “You’re the older sister, Lily. How many times have I told you—”
“Yeah.” When Mom yells at me, my voice gets small.
“Yeah? What the hell kind of answer is that?” Mom sniffs. “We’re your parents. If you don’t listen to us here, how can I trust you at Peace Lake?”
Peace Lake is our favorite family vacation spot. It’s also where Aunt Jamie swims. And me. And sometimes the whole swim club, the one thing I do with kids my age