I have no idea what he said or how long it took him to get Zoe to take that first step onto the ice, but by the time I realized Josh wasn’t doing the drill anymore, he had her way out in the middle of the pond, skating between his legs, and she didn’t even look scared. She had a huge smile on her face.
“Yay, Zoe!” I yelled.
She smiled even bigger.
“Hey! Can you bring us one of those?” Josh called, pointing to the circle of plastic chairs my parents had set up next to the pond.
“Onto the ice?”
“Uh-huh.”
Zoe clearly wasn’t the first kid Josh had taught to skate. The chair was genius. Zoe could lean on it and push it along the ice. By the time we went inside, she was pushing off and gliding a good ways holding on to the chair with just one hand.
When we got back to the house, we went straight to the living room to warm up by the fire. Jeanine was in there on the couch reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Again. I’m pretty sure she was still staying up at night reading it because her eyes were puffy and red all the time. If you asked my parents, this was from allergies even though we all knew Jeanine stopped getting allergies when it got cold.
Jeanine hadn’t gotten on the ice even once and not just because she was convinced she was going to fall through it. Now that she was done with gathering stuff for her project, she never left the house. At least before, she’d go outside to collect leaves and dirt and “scat,” which is what she called the animal poop she picked up with rubber gloves, put in ziplock bags, and stored in our freezer. But now that she had everything she needed, she wouldn’t even get off the couch. She sat there all day long working on her project and studying for the Regional Solve-a-Thon, this huge competition for all the Jeanine Levins and Kevin Metzes in the Northeast who want to see how many math problems they can do in six hours. When she needed a break, she’d read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase for the bazillionth time.
I took off my jacket and gloves and hung them on the fireplace screen. “I’m making hot chocolate. Who wants?”
“Is this a trick question?” Josh said.
“With marshandyellows,” Zoe said.
“Me too,” Jeanine said, without looking up from the book.
“What’s hot chocolate without marshandyellows?” Josh said and plopped down on the couch next to Jeanine. “You know, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is, like, one of my top favorite books of all time.”
Jeanine sat up. “You’ve read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase?”
“Only like a hundred times.”
“Me too!”
I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach.
Zoe tugged on my hand. “Hot chocolate!” I was standing at the entrance to the living room watching Jeanine and Josh like they were behind glass. “Now,” she said, pulling me into the kitchen.
As I stirred the milk in the saucepan, I listened to Josh and Jeanine talking in the living room.
Jeanine: “Have you read the sequel?”
Josh: “Black Hearts in Battersea? Yeah, not as good.”
Jeanine: “I know. Um, do you think you’d want to join a book club with me and my friend Kevin? He lives in Manhattan, but he’ll join by Skype.”
Josh: “Sure. That sounds cool. My mom can get us the books on interlibrary loan if you want.”
Jeanine: “Oh, yeah.”
My skin felt prickly all over. “Hot chocolate!” I yelled. The milk was barely hot, but I poured it into the cups anyway. I stirred and stirred, but the cocoa clumped up and wouldn’t dissolve.
“So I’m joining your book club,” Josh said as he and Jeanine came into the kitchen.
Jeanine laughed. “Tris doesn’t do book clubs. He isn’t really a reader.” Then she picked up her hot chocolate and took a sip. “Uch, this is cold,” she said and went back into the living room.
Josh, Zoe, and I sat down at the kitchen table and drank our awful hot chocolate.
“Thanks for the making this,” Josh said.
“I took the milk off too soon.”
“It’s still good.”
I shrugged.
“The marshandyellows are good,” Zoe said.
“Great,” I said.
She put her cup down and squinted at me. “How come you have the mad face?”
“I’m not mad.”
“You have the face.” She stuck out her chin and mashed her lips together.
“Are you mad?” Josh asked.
“No, I’m just…don’t worry about it.”
What could I say? Don’t be so nice? You can’t be in my sister’s book club? He’d think I was a complete jerk.
Besides, I wasn’t mad at him. This wasn’t his fault. It was Jeanine’s. Had I ever asked Kevin to play basketball? There were rules about sisters and brothers and friends, and Jeanine had broken them. Josh wasn’t the only kid in Petersville. If she wanted a friend here, she should leave the house and find one.
• • •
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Basically, because it’s all about food and being thankful that you have food, which, not to brag, I feel like I am normally anyway. Not because I think so much more about world hunger than the next kid, but because I think way more about food than the next kid. Anyway, since food is food no matter where you are, and since Mom’s food is always amazing, I figured Thanksgiving could be the way it was supposed to be even in Petersville.
Then Charlie called.
It was after dinner. We were in the middle of dessert, something new Mom was calling Three P Crumble because it’s made with pears, plums, and pecans. We were arguing about whether it was good enough to make the menu. I was a big no. She’d left the skins on the plums, and they’d made the whole thing bitter.
Suddenly, the lights went out.
We thought it was the power, but then the phone rang. I knew it was Charlie calling to ask what he should
