Samantha's cheeks were back to their normal color.
She didn't know anyone who blushed as much as she did; it was annoying, so immature. She realized Valerie had entirely changed the mood of the kitchen and gotten everyone thinking of something else in a very short time.
Valerie perched on one of the stools and asked Mabel if she could have a bowl of the macaroni and cheese. 'It's my ultimate comfort food' She was looking at Samantha, so Sam nodded and final y found some words. 'Mine, too, along with chocolate pudding and whipped cream.'
“And warm applesauce,' Arlene suggested. Soon everyone was listing their favorites—mashed potatoes, cinnamon toast, tapioca—until Mabel brought the reverie to a halt with her own candidate—sardine sandwiches.
“Ugh! That's more like bait, Mabel,' Dot said. She was about to elaborate when they heard the trample of little feet, many little feet. Samantha and Arlene jumped up to take the huge trays of steaming food out to the tables, where the kids helped themselves family-style. But first Jim asked for quiet. Samantha expected some reference to the mouse incident: 'If anyone has any information'—the old 'Put your heads down on your desks and I won't tel who raises a hand' kind of thing. Yet he didn't mention it. Instead, he recited from Tennyson's 'Crossing the Bar,' his voice growing slightly husky at 'Sunset and evening star/And one clear cal for me!' Jim started every meal with some inspirational nautical quotation. The man must have spent years memorizing them al . Sam was curious to see whether he recycled them each session or whether there would be a new one every day. Irreverently, she wondered whether he had picked today's quote as a tribute to the mice.
She stood near the wal on one side of the dining room, ready to refil platters and the pitchers of milk and water that were set in the middle of each table. She took the opportunity to study Jim. He didn't seem to be Valerie's type. He dressed invariably in L. L. Bean khakis, the camp T-shirt, and, of course, Top-Siders. He was handsome.
Days on the water had bleached out his light brown hair and given him a good tan. His eyes were clear and blue.
He always looked as if he'd had a good night's sleep. But there was nothing exotic about him, nothing special. He didn't have any style. Samantha found herself searching for the exact words that would sum up her employer. Jim Atherton was ... wel , he was just so straight.
As she'd groped for the definition, Jim's antithesis appeared at the dining room door: black/white, ying/yang, right/wrong, you say either—al rol ed up into one. It had to be Duncan. A nudge and a whisper from Arlene confirmed it. Samantha watched as Jim Atherton's gaze, which had been sweeping steadily across the room at regular intervals like the beam from the old Eagle Island lighthouse, rested on his stepson. There was no mistaking Jim's look of dismay. He concealed it hastily and walked toward the young man.
“Duncan. Hel o. Are you hungry? Take a seat. We're stil on the macaroni and cheese' Jim made the mistake of resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. Duncan shook it off with disdain. Arlene whispered, 'Cooties' in Samantha's ear. Sam had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Duncan had looked childish.
Duncan Cowley inhabited that curious limbo between childhood and adulthood, cal ed, depending on the speaker, 'the best years of your life,”
“the process of self-actualization,' or 'teen hel .' To stake out his own particular territory in this strange land, Duncan had chosen to dress al in black. Today he wore a Metal ica concert T-shirt under an unbuttoned black denim shirt, black jeans, and black high-top L.A. Lites, untied and without socks. A black leather bracelet complete with lethal metal spikes completed the ensemble.
“His parents should make him smel his shoes for punishment,' Samantha said, adding, 'I thought only elementary school kids wore those shoes that light up.
You're right. What a loser.”
Without a word to his stepfather, Duncan made his way to the kitchen, his shoes indeed flashing tiny red spots of light as he walked. The girls turned to the wal . It was the kind of thing that could send them into uncontrol able fits of the giggles.
“And he stinks, too! What is that smel ?' Samantha gasped.
“Musk and B.O.'
“Poor Valerie.' Samantha was in total sympathy with his mother, something that would have astonished some of her Aleford friends. But then, she wasn't in Aleford, and besides, Valerie wasn't like a regular parent.
At dinner that night, Samantha couldn't stop talking about the Athertons. She and her mother had taken big bowls of chili down to the deck by their own boathouse. Life with Samantha was turning out to be very relaxed, Pix thought as she reached for a tortil a chip straight from the bag. She hadn't even bothered with a bowl and she pushed thoughts of what Mother—and Faith—would say far from her mind. Instead, she concentrated on a cold Dos Equis—
Faith would at least approve of the beer—and on what Samantha was saying. Obviously, the girl was in love.
Had Pix's own besotted crush on their neighbor, Priscil a Graham, been as boring, and even slightly irritating to Ursula? Pix sighed. If she was going to have to listen to paens to Valerie every night, she'd better lay in some more booze. What made it worse was that Valerie was a pretty fascinating creature and Pix liked her. She also knew, though, that in terms of types of women, she, Pix, was somewhere in Julia Ward Howedom, while Valerie inhabited the realms of Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert, women who could and did wear satin.
“You have got to see him, Mom. He wears an earring, but not one like normal people—it's a notebook ring. I don't even want to think about how he got it through!”
It was an unappetizing thought, Pix agreed. Her mind swerved to the current fashion that bestowed normalcy on male earrings and she laughed aloud. She liked the freedom today's kids had to dress the way they did, although she stil wished Samantha would cut her hair. In Pix's day, the most outre thing one dared do was wear one's Pandora cardigan buttoned up the back instead of the front.
“What are you laughing at?'
“Nothing in particular. I was just thinking about how differently teenagers dress now compared with when I was growing up.'
“Your kilts and kneesocks? Your Weejuns? Your circle pin?' Samantha teased her.
“Someone told me circle pins were coming back. I always used to get so confused about which side to wear it on that I never wore mine much—one side meant you were anice' girl and one meant the opposite. The middle meant something, too, but I can't remember what.”
Now Samantha laughed. 'Where would you have put it?'
“None of your business.' Pix was not the type of parent who believed in revealing al to her children, especial y before they had passed through the particular stage.
“Do you real y think Duncan put the dead mice on the counter?' Pix was ready to move on to another topic. This had been the first thing Samantha had blurted out to her mother when Pix picked her up. Pix knew there could be no possible connection with Mitchel Pierce's murder, but it was another unsettling event in a place usual y devoid of such things.
“I don't know. It's no secret he hates Jim, hates the camp, maybe even hates his mother for bringing him here.
Arlene says he only has a couple of loser friends, mostly younger kids who are together not because they particularly want to be, but because nobody else likes them. They al wear a lot of black and listen to mope rock, that kind of stuff.'
“Mope rock?' This was a new one, but Pix had grown to expect unrelenting novelty after raising one adolescent.
The temps and mores changed at roughly the speed of light.
“Yeah, The Cure, New Order. I mean, I like them sometimes, except it gets a little much—tormented souls, desperate love. It's depressing.'
“I think these were the kids who used to write poetry and try to get their parents to let them take the train down to Greenwich Vil age in an earlier day.'
“Beatniks! I read about them in my American history book.”
Sometimes children could make you feel very, very old with merely a few wel -chosen words.
“I've read about them, too,' Pix countered. She picked up her empty bowl and glass—she had taken the
