The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold Page 8

  “Damn them!” Prisca spoke out suddenly. “I hate the church! I hate it!” She slammed down her laundry basket.

  “Don’t say that,” Rachel hissed, throwing a glance upstairs.

  “Don’t curse,” Liddy said, eyes wide.

  “But I do! I hate them! They don’t love us. Not really. And I hate having to bow to them!”

  “Prisca,” Rachel said, thoughts running through her brain, “it’s wrong to hate.”

  “So what?” Prisca looked up at her wildly. “I still hate them. I hate them all. I hate what they’re doing.”

  “You can’t hate the church of God,” Liddy said, attempting to be reasonable. “That’s like hating Christ.”

  “Oh shut up! Shut up!” Prisca sat down, folding her arms, and started sobbing.

  There was silence. Rachel sat down next to her younger sister, and put a tentative arm around her. It frightened her when Prisca was like this, so violently emotional. But she steeled herself. Distract her, she thought.

  “Prisca,” she said, invitingly, “we haven’t gone to Goodwill yet.”

  Prisca wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Can we go there after we get done slaving for Mrs. Pearson?”

  “Absolutely,” Rachel squeezed her hand.

  The cellar door banged, and Tammy bellowed downstairs, “Linette! Debbie!”

  “They’re not down here,” Rachel called up warningly.

  “Paul’s here for their lesson,” Tammy yelled, and walked away.

  Rachel raised an eyebrow. “They won’t have to go to the Pearsons. Lucky Paul is in Dad’s good graces.”

  “For now,” Prisca said. “Wait until he finds out that Paul’s actually a Babylonian Mystery Worshipper.” The joke had been making its rounds among the sisters, and hadn’t gotten old yet.

  Rachel took out a load of bedspreads to hang up on the old clothesline. The dryer was full, and they would dry faster in the hot sun. Besides, she liked the smell of sun-dried sheets and spreads. As she hung up the spreads, she watched Paul coaching the young girls through some cartwheels and walkovers.

  After she finished, he turned to her and said, “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. For swimming, she thought bitterly. “Any plans for the day after your lesson with my sisters?”

  “Nope. That’s the fun of being on vacation.”

  She smiled at him sardonically. “All of us should be so blessed.”

  He looked at her quizzically, and then cast his eyes around the property. “You girls must feel pretty lucky, growing up here.”

  “I suppose we should.”

  “I mean, you have so much land. And the bay. I guess since I grew up on a postage stamp in the suburbs, I’m jealous.” He grinned his baby boy’s grin at her. So naïve, she thought.

  “I guess the kids have it good,” she said flippantly. “My little brothers get to run around and play as much as they like. And the young girls. They’re lucky.”

  “Aren’t you lucky?” he asked.

  “I suppose some people would think so,” she said slowly. “I’m supposed to be grateful, aren’t I? After all, I have a father and stepmother who are married to each other, a nice house, and a good Christian upbringing. Yes, I should feel very grateful, shouldn’t I?”

  Her eyes bored into his.

  “But you’re not,” he said quietly. “Why?”

  The thought of Prisca’s fierce tears curled her lips with disdain. But that was not something she could tell him. Would tell him.

  “If you can’t understand that, I’m not going to explain it to you,” she said distantly, and turned away from him.

  Paul had found it difficult to adjust to his new schedule. He had been dragging in the afternoons. At a certain time of day, no matter where he was, it seemed to him of utmost importance to get back to his tent and sleep.

  The problem was, sometimes he wasn’t anywhere near his tent. Finally, the inevitable happened that day. It was around three in the warm afternoon, and he was coaching Linette and Debbie through a second round of juggling, when he began to yawn prodigiously.

  “Hey, are you tired?” Debbie asked, observing the obvious.

  “A little,” he confessed, trying to cover his gaping mouth.

  “Why don’t you go and take a nap?” Linette suggested. “You can lie down on the hammock.”

  “No—that’s okay—” Paul’s body began to go on automatic pilot. “I think I’d better go home now.” He turned away, collecting his clubs. “See you later.”

  “Get some sleep!” Debbie yelled as they turned and ran back towards the house.

  Paul stumbled towards the woods, intending a shortcut to the road. But his eyes were beginning to close. Then he spotted a hollow in the ground, plush with green moss, shaded by ferns.

  Too perfect, he thought, and let his bag of juggling clubs fall. Without further ado, he curled up in the dell and fell fast asleep.

  It was as though fairies had put a spell upon him, so thoroughly did he sleep. He wasn’t certain how long he had been there when he heard the crack of a twig quite near him.

  He slowly opened his eyes, but didn’t move from his spot. Suddenly he heard voices close to him.

  “Let me see, please, let me see!” a girl’s voice begged in a whisper.

  “Shhh! No! Not till we get to the cave!”

  Then there was more cracking of twigs, and he heard, faintly, a rustle of plastic bag.

  “Oh… my … gosh… that is so gorgeous,” was a hushed voice.

  “Twelve bucks.” Paul recognized Taren’s voice.

  “No way!”

  “Yes. Mine, all mine. But if you like, you can borrow it after I’ve worn it a few times.”

  “That is such a killer dress. Feel the material! How did you get it?”

  “Well, Mom was looking for swimsuits for the boys, so I just started looking through the sales racks. And I found it! Then I just waited for her to go into a dressing room to try something on, and rushed up to the counter and paid for it with my babysitting money! See, it’s so little it folds into a nice packet. It fit right in my purse.”

  “Your legs will look great in that.” Paul wasn’t sure who the other girl was, but he was sure it was one of Colonel Durham’s daughters.

  “You bet. Now I just need to find decent shoes.”

  There was a rustle of plastic, and then silence. A few minutes later Paul heard the two girls making their stealthy way back up through the woods.

  He waited until they had passed him, and lifting his head gingerly, saw them going into the house.

  After a long while, he rolled over and crept out of the woody hollow where he had unintentionally hidden. Following the trail carefully, he found it wound down the side of the cliff leading to the beach. Suddenly he came upon a dark opening in the side of the rock.

  Casting a glance behind him, he went into the cave, blinking in the dim light. There were a few bicycles and a large wooden trunk of rough boards. It had a padlock on it.

  He put a hand to the padlock, and realized it hadn’t been closed properly. Giving it a slight jerk, he opened it and slid it out of the ring.

  He carefully raised the lid, and saw a jumble of dresses in a variety of colors. Folded on a plastic bag in one corner was a short brown tank dress of a suede material. They were all quite different from the dresses that the girls usually wore. Like night and day.

  For a few moments he looked at the dresses, not moving, thinking. Then slowly he replaced the lid and the lock, closing it properly.

  I’m taking a risk, he thought. But Colonel Durham had said he could.

  Quietly he left the little cave and retraced his steps back to the spot where he had been napping, where his juggling bag still lay. He stood there in the woods, wondering what to do next.

  Then he heard the screen door bang closed, and a girl came out of the house. He didn’t move.

  She started to wander down towards the bay, her golden hair falling around
her pensive round face. He recognized her—Melanie, the quiet smiling one.

  When she was almost upon him, she looked up and saw him.

  “You’re still here, Paul,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He indicated the dell. “I fell asleep here, and just woke up not too long ago.”

  “Oh.” She looked toward the bay through the woods, still pensive, and then looked back at him. Seeing his serious face, she smiled.

  When she smiled, her eyes crinkled into half moons. He couldn’t help smiling back at the young girl, her face as open as the sunshine. She reminded him of his youngest sister.

  “Can I ask you something about Mary?” she said, walking towards the bay.

  “Of course,” he said, swinging his bag over his shoulders and falling into step beside her.

  “Meeting,” Rachel said. The girls dressing in the cave by the light of the camping lamp stopped and looked at her.

  Rachel, who had gotten into an old dress of her mother’s, a sleeveless white sheath, said, “We’ve got to make some rules. In order to keep our secret.” Given how Prisca had behaved this morning, Rachel was not entirely sure this conversation would go well. But she forged ahead. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Miriam said, and Cheryl and the twins nodded. The other girls gave their assent.

  “When we go out, we have to be careful how we behave, just so that nothing carries over into our lives the next day. For instance, smoking,” she looked at Prisca, who had been sharing a smoke with Alan in the boat last night. Prisca had also been quite familiarly nestled up against him, which, Miriam had informed Rachel, had incensed Pete. “Smoke gets into clothes. And hair. And skin. It has a smell.”

  “A stink,” Debbie volunteered, wrinkling her nose. Some of the sisters giggled.

  “A smell,” repeated Rachel, “which could tip off the parents, hmm?” The other girls considered. “Plus if you were to acquire a habit, just how are you going to satisfy that nicotine craving in the middle of the day? Running off in the minivan to spend your babysitting money on a pack of ciggies?”

  “Mom and Dad would ask questions, and if they found out, all of us would be in trouble,” Cheryl spoke up, a bit self-righteously. Prisca scowled at her.

  “All righty then!” she snapped.

  “Same with alcohol,” Rachel said. “It has a smell. If you have any, you’d better brush your teeth at least three times before we go upstairs. Plus, if you take too much, you’ll have a hangover the next day. You want to run that risk?”

  All the girls shook their heads no. Good, that part was easy, Rachel thought to herself. Lucky her sisters were inexperienced with drinking anyway.

  “Third thing,” she said briskly. “A buddy system. We can’t have anyone falling overboard, drowning, getting drunk, whatever. We have to watch out for each other, at all times, or we’re going to be sorry. Can you live with that?”

  This was the most ham-handed she had yet been, and she waited, a bit anxious, to see how her sisters would take it. She knew that some of the older girls were yearning to get alone with a particular guy, and this would put a crimp in their style. All the same, Rachel didn’t see any way around it. I don’t mind us being risky, but not stupid, she repeated to herself.

  “Yeah, that sounds fair,” Brittany spoke up. The older girls were a bit silent. Cheryl said, “Who partners with who?”

  “The same partners all the time,” Rachel said, forging ahead. “So you have to make sure you stick with your partner, even when you divide up into different boats, okay? You stick with your buddy, and your buddy sticks with you.”

  She took a breath. “Cheryl, you and Brittany. Tammy with Liddy, Becca with Taren. Miriam with Linette. Melanie with Debbie. Prisca and me.”

  It had taken her two days to come up with the combinations, and she prayed they would accept them without question. She had tried to split up natural rivals, had given the younger kids into the hands of the more sensible sisters, and had taken the most volatile of the group—Prisca—for herself. She didn’t trust anyone else to keep Prisca in line.

  “All right,” Tammy said grudgingly, and Miriam said, “I got the best bud,” and high-fived Linette, who perked up immediately. Debbie edged over towards Melanie, who looked relieved.

  “Can we use handcuffs?” Becca asked innocently, and Taren yelped.

  “Yes, for you,” Taren shot back.

  “If necessary.” A smile played around Rachel’s lips. “Okay. That’s it. Let’s get going.”

  “Alan said he was going to get his neighbor to come on over with his boat,” Prisca announced, wiggling into her dress.

  “How old is he? The neighbor?” Taren asked.

  “Nineteen. And he’s not a Christian. At least, he doesn’t go to church. But he has a red speedboat,” Prisca boasted. Rachel downed a tiny sigh within herself. No more time with Taylor, she foresaw. Tonight, she would be guard-dogging her younger sister aboard a red speedboat.

  Well, maybe that’s all right. She resigned herself. Give Cheryl a chance to talk to Taylor. He’s a fairly decent guy. Despite his nighttime rebellion, he was the sort of guy who would straighten out eventually, probably go for baptism to become a full member of the church. The kind of guy who would interest Cheryl.

  The neighbor was named Kirk, and he turned out to be a lean, hawk-like sort of guy, not really good-looking, with a fierce haircut and a beady eye. She figured he was a local hick, but decided to tolerate him.

  She and Prisca were alone with him in the speedboat, and Prisca was chattering and flirting outrageously. Rachel only stepped into the conversation to break her sister’s momentum. She was a bit embarrassed for Prisca, but Kirk seemed to find Prisca amusing and not really interesting. Rachel could tell Kirk was more interested in herself.

  To pass the time, she kept looking out at the other boats. The buddy system meant that Alan and Keith had full boats—five and six total, respectively, while Cheryl (with Brittany) had Taylor all to herself. It was awfully lopsided. What we need, she thought, are six boats. If only we had our own boat.

  “Whatch you thinking?” Kirk asked her. Prisca had run out of things to say and was sitting breathless, looking out at the water.

  Rachel decided to alter her thoughts. “I wish I knew how to drive a boat,” she said, lowering her lashes.

  “Want to learn? ‘Seasy. I’ll show you. Move over here.”

  Rachel wondered if he was going to use this as an attempt to put his arms around her, but Kirk was apparently not so fast. He sat back and named the parts of the boat—the throttle, the clutch, the steering—she paid attention and started to learn.

  Pretty soon she was cautiously applying pressure on the gas and chugging gently over waves. “That’s it,” Kirk said over the engine. “Give her more power.”

  Rachel did, and was enthralled at the response of the engine and the speed. Soon she was slicing through the waves while Prisca yelped and clutched the side.

  “You’re a natural!” Kirk yelled delightedly. When she finally stopped, breathless, she grinned, momentarily breaking her reserve.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Man, you’re a bit of a wild thing after all, you are,” he said appreciatively. She knew he was right, but chose not to respond, merely smiled. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Prisca was insanely jealous. Perhaps this partnership was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

  CRACK!

  As soon as he heard the sound, Paul knew that something bad had happened. Swiftly catching all the other clubs in his hands, he stared at the one he had dropped and the rock protruding from the ground which had split it from top to bottom.

  Trying to suppress his frustration, he sat down, wiping the sweat from his brow. He picked up the broken club and tried to put the pieces back together. It was damaged, badly.

  What made it worse was that these were the hand-carved wooden clubs he had borrowed from a friend, since
they fit in with the Colonial period more than his plastic ones. Well, there was nothing to do now except pick up the pieces and try to do what he could to fix them. It was going to take time, and money. And it had to be done before the festival started tomorrow.

  Gloomily he got to his feet, stashed the rest of the clubs safely into the tent, wrapped the broken pieces in a cloth and put them into his juggling bag. He was supposed to go teach Debbie and Linette soon, but he would have to get this club fixed first. He slung the bag over his shoulder, and headed into town dejectedly.

  I should have been paying more careful attention to my juggling, he chastised himself as he jogged along. Guess I have too much on my mind.

  While he was making some progress on the logistics of being an invisible bodyguard during the girls’ midnight escapades, he felt he wasn’t making very much progress towards his final goal. Maybe Debbie and Linette were beginning to trust him, but he was sure that Rachel disliked him and the other girls barely registered his existence when he was at the Durham house during the day. He wasn’t sure that Melanie and Sallie’s other daughters didn’t think he was some kind of pagan.

  Eventually, Paul found the hardware store and went inside.

  “Can I help you?” a cheerful older blond lady whose nametag read “Dolo” asked as soon as he walked in.

  “Uh—sure. I need to repair these,” he said, pulling the clubs out of his bag.

  Dolo examined the clubs with a professional eye. “Some wood glue will do the trick,” she said. “And some clamps. Aisles 2 and 5.”

  The wood glue wasn’t much, but the clamps he needed to fix the club turned out to be expensive. With a sinking heart, he shelled out more of his food money to pay for them.

  As Dolo rang up his bill, she remarked, “Night job getting you down?”

  He looked at her, a bit startled. “Sort of,” he said cautiously, fingering his miraculous medal.