Isabella was on my doorstep.
“Hey.” She was wearing white slacks and a white T-shirt with an oversize tweed jacket.
“Aren’t you hot?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Not really. Gonna invite me in?”
“Oh.” I stood aside.
Isabella pulled one hand out of her pocket and pointed to a picture on the wall. “Oh my God, baby Briddie!”
I froze. I’d been so worried about my bedroom, I’d forgotten to doctor the evidence of my awkwardness in the rest of my house. In the photo, Rhona was precious and pigtailed, and I was pressing my fist to my eye, a spit bubble forming. “It’s terrible, don’t look,” I said.
Isabella smiled. “It’s adorable. My mom lost a bunch of my baby pictures in the move, so you’ll just have to imagine me small and ugly.”
I scrabbled for the right response. “I hardly have to imagine,” I said.
She stuck her tongue out at me. “Is that your parents?” She gestured to a photo hanging over the telephone and began to walk down the corridor. There was an anticipatory clench in my stomach.
“Isabella? Sorry, it’s just, my mom—do you mind—is it OK if you take your shoes off?” I said, all in one breath.
“Sure.” She leaned against the banister, still staring at a picture of Mama and Dad in a rowboat on Lake Quinsigamond. As she handed me her sneakers I noticed her left sock had a ladder in it through which I could see the staggered line of her heel. Isabella shrugged off her jacket, too, and as I hung it up, I fumbled under the collar for the make. But an embroidered name tag had been sewn over the label: Ralph DeLaney. Of course. Ralph. What other allure could persuade someone to wear tweed in June? I gave it a tentative sniff. It was sour, like a dusty rug that had been lying in the sun. Isabella was climbing the stairs, whistling, and as she reached the top landing she turned. “Which one’s yours?”
I pointed to the door on the right and she let herself in. “Cool.”
The bed screeched, and I came in to see her bouncing on her elbows. As I’d hoped, she’d picked up my Treasures of Italy book and had opened it straight to the photos in the middle. “Oh my God. Look at that.” She held it toward me, tapping a photograph of a woman drinking espresso in front of a cathedral.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be impressed or scornful so I settled for a neutral “I know.”
Isabella sighed. “It’s divine,” she said with uncharacteristic wistfulness.
I perched on the edge of my dresser and then on the corner of the bed. Then back on the dresser. “So you’ll apply?”
Isabella frowned at me over the top of the book.
“For the academy. I mean, your parents will let you apply?”
Isabella snorted. “They couldn’t stop me.”
A treacly sort of happiness flooded my chest. “Me too,” I said. “I’ve been hoping for it since sophomore year. Though my grades are kind of . . .” I trailed off.
Isabella looked up at me, her eyes bright, conspiratorial. “Me too,” she said.
“So you like art history?” I stared at the carpet. It felt somehow exposing to be asking her directly.
Isabella rolled over onto her back. “I guess.” She smiled up at me. “And what’s not to like about adventuring in Europe? Jailbreak!”
I nodded. “I can’t wait to get out of St. Cyrus.” As I said it, I probed the idea, pushing myself to the town boundary, then to the coast, across the ocean. It was an elastic sort of feeling, projecting myself away from home. Pliant, precarious. I wasn’t sure that I liked it.
“A whole year away from Rotary Club luncheons,” Isabella said dreamily.
I had never been inconvenienced by a Rotary Club luncheon so it was hard to summon the right kind of relief. “It would be cool.”
“It would be everything,” Isabella said, fixing her eyes on me. “Just think, Briddie. We’d have a whole year, just for us!”
“We would?”
She laughed. “Of course.”
“But—” I licked my lips. “But what about Sophie?”
Isabella scoffed. “Sophie will be married to Matty before they’ve cut the cake at her cotillion.”
“Right,” I said, although I didn’t know who Matty was. “So.” I swallowed. “You’d go without her?”
“But you’re going, right?”
I crossed my fingers behind my back to avert a jinx. “I mean, I want to.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” she said, shrugging, as if the matter was settled. “You just have to swear that we’ll stick together so we can have fun—never mind the nuns.” And she laughed.
“OK,” I said. My cheeks were tingling. “I swear.”
She smiled. “It’ll be glorious, Briddie.”
Me and Isabella, juddering on bicycles through an orange grove, sitting at the end of a pier, dangling our legs into the sea. And then my heart plunged. “But, Ralph, he’s not— I mean, doesn’t he want to get married?” I pinched my nails into my palms.
Isabella sat up and twirled her hair around her wrist before letting it fall. “His trust is all tied up ’til he’s twenty-one, so, you know.”
I nodded, although I didn’t really know. The important thing was that he wasn’t trying to claim her. I saw Ralph and Sophie falling aside like two bowling pins. “You should probably take this.” I handed over the bracelet.
Isabella let out a breath. “Briddie, you’re my champion.” She thrust her wrist toward me, and when I stared at it, she shook her arm. “Help, please.”
I focused so hard on clipping her bracelet that I grew light-headed.
“My parents woulda given me the lecture of a lifetime if I lost this again,” Isabella said, waving her wrist so the charms clacked together. With a bounce, she leaped off the bed and opened my closet. She flicked through my dresses in such a perfunctory way, I knew she wasn’t admiring them.
“How did yours meet?” she said. I was concentrating so closely on the shuffle of my darned cardigans that I didn’t catch her meaning. “Your parents.”
“Oh.” There was a tightening in my throat. I could feel the conversation brewing before us. “The war,” I said eventually. Although that wasn’t strictly true. Or true in any part.
“Neato.” Isabella pulled out my straw boater and admired herself in the mirror on the inside of the closet door. “Was your dad in the army?”