The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

wouldleap onto their desks, tap heels clicking, jazz hands in formation.

“That line is not in the school version of the play, by the way!” Mr. Smith called after her. The punch line in the movie.

 

The first rehearsal was short: permission slips, announcements about costumes and fund-raising, an abbreviated run-through of the big ensemble song, “We Go Together,” with Mindy, the choreographer, who ran the ballet school in the Bells strip mall. Mr. Smith didn’t even hang around to watch. Paula was home sick, officially, although Lauren suspected she was home sulking about having been made property mistress again. Walking home, Lauren cut through Stitch’s yard, reached the weeping willow, looked through the kitchen window. Nobody home yet. She passed PJ and Sean shooting hoops in the Schecks’ driveway three houses up from home. Lauren walked through the front door and into the living room, pausing a moment when she saw Mirela asleep on the sofa. Mirela was taking Ritalin, which was something she had in common with Andy Figueroa. Her morning dose wore off in the late afternoon, making her ravenously hungry. She could eat a sleeve of Chips Ahoy! in a sitting, half a box of Hostess Powdered Donettes, great heaping BLTs, a tall glass of orange juice and half of another. Sedated by food, she would then fall asleep anywhere, almost like she was unconscious. Lauren tiptoed past her into the kitchen and saw Mom sitting at the table alone, hands folded in front of her, staring intelligently at nothing.

“Lauren,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Come sit with me.”

Lauren maneuvered carefully into the round-backed chair opposite her mother. It was pulled too close to the table, but shedidn’t dare push it back, in case the scraping sound stirred Mirela. It felt as if a hushed and jumpy team of surgeons huddledover the girl in the next room.

“So,” Mom murmured, letting out a half sigh, half laugh, “what’s new with you?”

Lauren shrugged and looked out the window that faced the backyard. “How is Mirela?”

“The same,” Mom said.

“I was thinking of how I might be able to help you more with Mirela,” Lauren said. There was a cardinal in the beech tree. Mom and Dad would get so excited when they saw a cardinal in the backyard—they always wanted everyone else to come see. “I wasn’t expecting to be in the musical, and I’ll have a lot of rehearsals, but—maybe after it’s over—this summer.”

“That’s sweet of you, Lauren. Don’t worry about Mirela. That’s my job. How are you?”

“I’m good.”

“How’s school?”

“Good.”

“How’s the play? The musical?”

“Good.”

They sat in silence for a while. Watching the cardinal preen and tic and nod and go about its business, Lauren felt the warmpooling feeling in her chest.

“How’s your friend Paula?”

“She’s home sick today. But she’s good.”

“Good,” Mom said, and they both laughed almost noiselessly under their hands.

“She’s a little negative,” Lauren admitted. “Negative energy.” Mom didn’t like negative energy.

“Does she have stuff going on at home?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“It must be hard for her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she . . . she didn’t win the lottery in the looks department. And you’re so pretty. It could be that she wants whatyou have.”

“No. I don’t think she cares,” Lauren said.

“Your friend Skip Rosen is in the musical with you again?”

“Stitch. Yeah, yeah, I know, you hate his dad.”

“I don’t hate anybody.”

“He’s a doctor, Mom. He helps people. He doesn’t hurt people.”

Mom sighed through her nose and rubbed her eyelids. “Andy Figueroa, too? He’s in the musical?” she asked. This was somethingMom did when she was straining for conversation—she would pose factual statements as questions, as if she didn’t know theanswers.

“Yeah, he’s playing Travolta,” Lauren said. “He has laryngitis, although Mr. Smith thinks he’s faking.”

“Oh?”

“Or not faking, but he says it’s—it’s psycho—psychodramatic?”

“Psychosomatic.”

“Yeah. It’s anxiety. Or that’s what Mr. Smith says.”

“His vocal cords work, but he thinks they don’t work, so they don’t work, because he’s nervous.”

“Something like that. But he didn’t have it during auditions, when it would make more sense to be nervous. He only has itnow that he needs to practice.”

“They used to call that hysterical blindness. Happened more with girls, supposedly. So Andy has hysterical laryngitis.”

“I wish I had that excuse,” Lauren said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I’m a very good singer. Or dancer.”

“Malarkey—you wouldn’t have been picked for the musical if that were true.”

“I stepped on my own foot when we were running through a song today. And Andy kept glaring over at me whenever I sang withthe group, so I lip-synched.”

“Ignore him. He sounds like a fruitcake. Much as I like his mother.”

“I think I’m going to be the worst one in the whole play.”

“Mamie Figueroa. She always has been such a nice woman. She asks after Mirela. She wants to know how to help.”

“Mr. Smith asks, too,” Lauren said.

“You like him a lot, don’t you?” Mom asked with a big smile, her chin in her hand.

“I guess so.”

“It’s nice to have some younger teachers in there. Someone closer to all of you in age. That youthful vim.”

“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “He’s weird. Moody. He, um—he just wants to be everyone’s friend all the time.”

“Oh. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. It’s creepy. It’s kind of pathetic.”

“Lauren, that isn’t very tolerant. Maybe you have been spending too much time with Paula.”

“You’re the one who said—” Lauren stopped. The warm pooling in her chest was turning cold. The cardinal flew out of the tree,and Lauren felt a new quick strange pressure on her sternum, a little phantom shove, like the cardinal had pushed and liftedoff her chest to take flight, and then a ridiculous sadness, one she could not articulate or admit to anyone, and it occurredto her with a dull thud to the head that it would always be possible to feel this way, for the rest of her life she wouldbe stalked by this panicky sorrow, even a stupid bird could bring it on, that it wasn’t the bird but it was her, it came from inside