The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [117]
Now she kicked off the comforter and climbed from bed and walked down the short hallway to Hallie’s room. They slept with their doors open and the hall light on these days, and so she figured that, if Hallie was awake, she was already aware that her sister was on the way to her bedroom. Just in case, she stood for a moment in the doorway, watching the shape of her twin huddled underneath her own quilt.
“Hallie?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “You awake?”
The body didn’t move, but she heard her sister grumble. “I am,” she said. “And I told you that, when it’s just us, I want you to call me Rosemary. Anise said it would help me get used to it. And you should start trying to be Cali.”
Garnet knew that Hallie was not going to be receptive at all to what she wanted to discuss, and she feared that she would probably wind up retreating to her own bedroom with her feelings hurt. But she also knew that she didn’t want to “start trying to be Cali,” and so she crossed the bedroom floor and climbed into bed beside her sister.
“I don’t want to be Cali,” she said once she was settled there, wrapping herself in a section of the quilt. Hallie sat up and yanked a part of the comforter back over her own shoulders. Garnet couldn’t quite make out her sister’s face in the dark, but she could tell that Hallie was glaring at her.
“Don’t be a pill. You don’t want to be left out again. Don’t make me have to take care of you here, too.”
Garnet knew what Hallie meant; she understood the lengths to which her sister had gone to include her in West Chester—to make sure that she was neither ignored nor picked on. But she also knew that her sister derived a measure of satisfaction from looking out for her. Hallie was going to grow into either one of those adults who took great pride in being needed or a mean girl who took pleasure in the fealty of her friends.
“I was doing fine here at school and at dance class. I was making friends just like you until Daddy …” She didn’t finish the sentence, though she really didn’t have to. Until Daddy freaked out Molly Francoeur.
“Well, none of that means anything anymore. We don’t have a lot of friends at school. We don’t have a lot of friends at dance class. We really don’t have anyone but the plant ladies. No one. Those people are our friends right now, they’re what we’ve got.”
“Great. A group of middle-aged and old ladies as friends. I’m so glad we live here. Let’s stay here forever.”
“Reseda’s not middle-aged. Holly’s not middle-aged.”
“The rest are like grandmothers.”
“You really don’t like them?”
“No,” Garnet said firmly. “I don’t.”
“Well, you’re making a mistake. I do like them. I want to be one of them.”
One of them. Garnet thought about what that meant and realized that she honestly didn’t know. She had heard of ladies’ garden clubs where the women made floral arrangements and tried to spruce up parks and neighborhoods; there was one in West Chester and there was probably one in Littleton or Bethel. But these plant ladies were different. She thought of the books they had given her sister and her. These women wanted to make potions and tinctures and teas—not arrangements.
“Hallie?”
“It’s Rosemary,” she reminded Garnet, her voice flat and blunt.
“Why do you think they want us to take new names?”
“God, will you let that go? What is the big freaking deal?”
“It’s just—”
“Would it make a difference if they didn’t want to call you Cali? Would you stop making waves if you had a name you liked?”
She curled her bare feet underneath the quilt and accidentally grazed Hallie. “Your feet are freezing,” her sister cried out.