“Why not?”
“For one, wouldn’t you miss me?”
“Well . . . I don’t think so.”
Klara made a sound of wounded indignation.
“No, wait! Only because I wouldn’t be here to miss you. In theory, yes, of course I’d miss you. But if the wish worked, I’d jump straight to eighteen, and there you’d be.”
“Well, I’d miss you,” Klara argued.
“No, because it’s not like I would disappear or anything. I’d still live those years. I just wouldn’t . . . experience it? This me”—she tapped her chest—“would flash forward to high school graduation, that’s all.”
“How many yous are there?” Klara asked. “And what if . . .” She pursed her lips. “All right, what if I die between now and graduation? Wouldn’t you want to be there for that?”
“For your death?”
Klara looked at her. “You know what I mean.”
Emily envisioned a room in a funhouse, filled with mirrors. Emily after Emily after Emily, girl after girl after girl. Choice after choice after choice. And now Klara—the most alive person she knew—dying?
The conversation, already absurd, had only grown more so. She giggled.
“Omigosh,” Klara huffed. “I tell you I could die, and you laugh.”
“Klara, you’re not going to die.”
“I might. A shark could eat me.”
“A land shark? A lake shark?”
Klara pulled a face. “Fine. A tree could fall on my head.”
“Ah. But if a tree falls on your head, and no one is there to hear it . . .”
Klara shoved her. Emily toppled, but caught herself.
“Please don’t die, Klara,” she said. “There’s only one of you. You need to stay safe.”
“The same goes for you,” said Klara. “And don’t go away, either.” She shoved Emily harder, and this time Emily stayed where she landed, sprawled on the grass. She stretched out her arms, forming a T with her body. She gazed at the puffy, white clouds.
“Fine, I won’t wish to be older,” she said. The world beneath her was spinning, and she, on top of it, was spinning, too. But it felt as if she were lying still. “I wouldn’t have anyway. Probably.”
Klara arranged herself beside her. She formed a matching T, the tips of her fingers grazing Emily’s. “Okay, try this. Instead of wishing to get away from your mom, what if you wished for her to change?”
“To make her like me better, you mean?”
“She already likes you, dum-dum. She loves you. But . . . yeah.”
Emily thought about it. Klara’s suggestion made sense, but it seemed, somehow, like the wrong sort of wish. It wasn’t up to Emily to change who her mother was.
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be an abuse of power?”
“So?”
“I could wish to have a better relationship with her,” Emily mused. “That might work.”
“Yes!” Klara said. She slapped the ground. “If things get better with your mom now, you wouldn’t need to abandon me!”
“Oh, Klara. I’m not going to abandon you.” She tilted her head and looked at the line of the forest. Trees stood tall and proud. Leaves rustled. The afternoon sun cast a buttery light over the infinite palette of browns and greens, and Emily’s heart felt full.
Being alive was a gift.
Klara was a gift.
There were no such things as forbidden colors.
“If things were better between me and my mom, I could talk to her about visiting my dad,” Emily reflected. “Maybe, eventually, I could even bring up the idea of going to live with him. Possibly.”
“Live with him? But then I’d still miss you!” Klara wailed.
“And I’d miss you,” Emily said. “And, odds are it won’t happen. But I wouldn’t be gone gone. I’d come back to Willow Hill to see my mom, obviously. And you could visit me in California! We could have freshly squeezed orange juice whenever we wanted!”
Klara pouted.
“It’s unlikely it’ll happen,” Emily repeated.
For a moment, Klara didn’t speak. Then she sighed and said, “Oh, just ignore me. I’m being a baby.”
She patted around and found Emily’s hand again. “Of course I would visit you in California. Of course I’d see you when you came to see your mom in Willow Hill. You and me forever, right?”
Emily saw herself little again, driving away in the backseat of the car. “Forever and always.”
“Good girl,” Klara said. She squeezed Emily’s hand so hard it hurt.
I wish I had a sister, or even a brother.
—TALLY STRIKER, AGE FOURTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ava
“Cousins?” Tally said to Ava incredulously. “You dragged me out here to announce, out of the blue, that we’re cousins.” She blew air out of her mouth. “Ava, you’re adorable.”
Her tone was sarcastic. Like Natasha and Darya, she was treating Ava as if she were a dumb little kid.
Ava was younger than Tally, and since Tally subscribed to the same logic her sisters did, Ava was more likely to be wrong. But in this case, she wasn’t. She and Tally were cousins. She was almost absolutely sure.
The picture Tally had drawn was of her mother.
Tally’s mother was named Emily.
Ava’s mother, when she saw the picture, had known right away that it was Emily—the Emily, though older, who’d been her best friend when they were girls.
That meant the two Emilys were one and the same. Since Emily was Papa’s little sister, that meant that Emily was Ava’s aunt. It also meant that Ava’s mother, Klara, was Tally’s aunt.
Which meant.
They.
Were cousins. Ava and Tally.
Tally wasn’t just Ava’s cousin, either. She was Darya’s and Natasha’s as well.
Tally looked angrily at the sketch of her mom. She folded it up and shoved it into her jeans, her jaw tight.
“You’re upset,” said Ava. “You know why? Because you know everything I told you might be true.”
“No, I’m upset because everything you’re saying is ridiculous,” Tally countered. Her voice was terse, which strengthened Ava’s conviction. If Ava had told Tally that she was secretly an alien from another planet, Tally would have laughed. Maybe she’d have felt sorry for her. She wouldn’t have gone all stony, building a fortress around herself for protection.
Ava knew in her bones that Tally’s mother was Papa’s sister and Mama’s long-ago best friend. She could understand Tally’s reluctance to believe it, however.
