Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [83]
How could Bridget have ever thought the lightning bugs were a good idea? What business had she to try to capture life and light? Why was she incapable of thinking anything through? She belonged in the lower orders with the termites and cockroaches. She belonged in a jar, small and powerless, where she couldn’t do harm.
Bridget crept out of her room and into Bailey’s. She carefully pried the jar from between Bailey’s arms and crept back to the hallway. She went through the back door out onto the dampening grass. She unscrewed the lid and showed the poor bugs the sky, imagining they would fly to freedom. But they didn’t. They were apparently so stunned by their twisting fate, the only way to get them out was to dump them on the grass. She watched them trying to reorient.
When Jones woke to a car alarm in the middle of the night, he looked at Carmen staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Tibby wants me to go to someplace in Pennsylvania on April second. If I go to New Orleans, I won’t be able to get back in time.”
“If you go to New Orleans?” He didn’t even question the notion of how Tibby could ask her to go someplace.
“Yeah, if I go.”
“You have to go.”
“I don’t have to go.”
Jones lifted his head and propped it on his hand, looking at her in disbelief. “It would be career suicide not to. I mean, think of it. How would your reps feel? Do you think you’ll be getting any more calls like this again?”
Carmen clamped her molars together. She could have these childish run-ins with Jones all she liked, but she could hear herself on the phone with her mother in the morning. Her mother would be saying, “You don’t have to go,” and Carmen would be saying, “It would be career suicide, Mom. What would my reps think?”
“Work’s not the only thing in life,” Carmen said petulantly.
“Of course it’s not. But this is a once-in-a-career opportunity, and what would you be missing it for? What do you think you are going to find in Pennsylvania? You’re not going to find Tibby, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”
Carmen turned on her pillow to face away from him. She stuffed her arms under her pillow. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was even more afraid of Pennsylvania than she was of New Orleans. She didn’t want him to see her cry anymore.
“You can go to Pennsylvania after you get back,” he added in a softer voice. “After the wedding. Tibby wouldn’t expect you to miss a casting meeting with one of the top directors in the world. She wouldn’t want to get in the way of your wedding.” He touched Carmen’s shoulder blade. “These are important things. She would understand.”
Tibby would understand what was important. Carmen agreed with that part. Tibby always understood. But as she struggled to see Tibby’s face in her mind, Carmen also knew what was important, and it wasn’t either of the things he said.
I’ll let you be in my dreams
if I can be in yours.
—Bob Dylan
Bridget woke the next morning to the sound of crying. She realized that there were tears on her face and there was panic in her chest but that the sobs didn’t belong to her. She couldn’t remember where she was. She gaped at the ceiling, trying to remember. Her mind spun through a series of beds in Mission apartments, at Perry and Violet’s place, at the Sea Star Inn. She had to sit up and look around before her mind finally and fully joined her body in Australia. The sobs were Bailey’s, coming from downstairs. She could hear Brian’s soothing voice, trying to comfort her.
Bridget dressed quickly. When she arrived in the kitchen, Bailey was still clutching the glass jar where the lightning bugs had been and sobbing. Brian cast Bridget a drowning look.
Bailey sat in her high chair, holding up the jar so Bridget could see it, but she was incapable of forming any words. After Bridget had released the bugs the night before, she’d put some grass back into the jar and returned it to Bailey’s crib.
Bridget pulled a chair close. “The bugs