Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [75]
“Again,” Bailey said as soon as they got to the other side.
“Okay,” Bridget said. They went across again, slipping and sliding. Bridget couldn’t tell from Bailey’s face whether she liked it or hated it.
“Again,” Bailey said again, and so they did.
They went back and forth and back and forth with complete solemnity until a foot went wrong and landed in the shallow flow. Bailey looked up at Bridget to see how they felt about it. Bridget smiled. “Ha! Cold!” she said.
Bailey’s serious face transformed into an expression of pure glee. “Ha!” she said. “Ha ha!”
Bridget felt her face mirroring Bailey’s. “Ha ha!”
Once they made friends with the water, they started looking for things to catch. At first it was just a stringy bug that Bridget picked up from the surface. She held it out on her palm as it wriggled. Bailey touched it in fascination. Bridget couldn’t think of a specific name for it. “Bug,” she said.
“Bug,” Bailey repeated, digging into the “g” sound, looking at Bridget as though she were a genius. It was nice to be around someone so easily impressed.
Bridget put the bug back gently. As much as she felt like a child, she realized that as a child she would have just as easily crushed it in her hand or smashed it against a rock. She never thought of the bug fitting into a larger perspective back then.
They perched on neighboring rocks, Bridget holding Bailey’s hand, and dangled their free hands in the water to sieve for crayfish. Bridget caught one and triumphantly held it up, all its little legs going.
“Big bug,” Bailey intoned carefully. There was so much motion she was timid about touching it.
“It doesn’t bite.” Bridget put Bailey’s finger on it so she could enjoy its sliminess.
“Bite,” Bailey said. She got a slightly vicious look on her face and snapped her jaws together.
“No, it doesn’t bite us. And we don’t bite it.”
Bailey thought this was funny. Or seemed to think it should be funny. She opened her mouth in a wide and somewhat fake laugh. Bridget saw she only had about eight teeth, all crowded to the front, and big spaces where the molars would go.
“Here. You can throw it back,” Bridget said. She carefully put it in Bailey’s palm. “Gentle,” Bridget said as Bailey’s fingers closed around it with a crunching sound.
“Okay, say goodbye.”
Bailey flung the disfigured, mostly dead crayfish. “Bye! Bye-bye!” she shouted gaily.
Why did you want this for me, Tib? Why did you make me do it?
Lena walked for blocks and blocks. So much for her carefully labeled map of London. She didn’t have any direction in mind and she barely looked up.
Maybe it was so Lena could finally see what was obviously true to everyone else: Kostos had moved on. He was far out of her league.
Tibby wouldn’t think of it that way, exactly, because she had always overvalued Lena. But she would want Lena to understand that it was time for her to move on too.
Lena passed unthinkingly through one neighborhood and then another.
At last she was too cold and tired to go on. She didn’t want to sit at a restaurant or drink at a bar by herself. She ducked into a supermarket that was open late.
Sightlessly she walked up and down the aisles, and eventually stood by the front window. It was dark on the street and brightly lit in the store, so she couldn’t see the outside; she saw only her forlorn reflection. She wanted to distract herself with the life on the sidewalk, but instead she saw her red dress and felt embarrassed.
There had been a fantasy. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, but there absolutely had been. She would wear her red dress, and Kostos would see her anew. He would see her here in London and realize he loved her again, maybe had loved her all along. He would grasp not just the letter but her. He would take her in his arms and overwhelm all of her fears and misgivings. In some way she longed to turn herself over to him,