“I wish your mother had left us a letter to explain what she wanted, but—” Grandma Ellen gave a short laugh. “That wouldn’t have been like her, would it? Responsibility gave her hives.”
Kristen realized she was holding the kazoo so tightly it was a wonder it hadn’t bent. She relaxed her grip, the metal warm under her fingers. “Mom was responsible. She took good care of me.”
Grandma Ellen’s thin eyebrows rose as her gaze flickered to Kristen’s purple hair and nose piercing. “Well, what matters now is that we do what’s best for you.” She hesitated and then added, “I realize that moving is never easy, but you’ll have two whole months to say goodbye to your friends. As you know, this house is going to need some work before we put it on the market. The floors need refinishing, the kitchen and bathrooms need updating, the stairway has loose boards, and that wretched mural in the front hallway needs—”
“I love that mural!”
“Then your mother should have painted it on a canvas and not on a wall.” Grandma sighed, looking suddenly tired. “We don’t have time to argue. I need to line up repairmen and painters and… Seriously, we’ll be lucky to have half of it done before I have to be back at work. And it all has to be done before we list it—”
“You’re not selling Mom’s house, I’m not going to Raleigh, and that’s that!” A tear rolled down Kristen’s cheek. Embarrassed, she swiped it away, her face hot.
Grandma Ellen’s expression softened. “Sweetheart, we don’t have a choice. I can’t stay here, and you can’t live alone, which means—”
“I could live alone if I wanted. I could have myself declared independent.”
Grandma Ellen froze in place. Her hands, which had been loosely clasped on the table in front of her, were now tightly woven together. “You could,” she said slowly, her gaze never wavering. “But you’d have no money, so you’d eventually lose the house. There’s a mortgage to be paid, plus electricity and water and taxes.”
“Mom left me money.”
“I’m the executor of the will and your guardian. I wouldn’t release a penny to you under those circumstances.”
They stared at each other, Kristen’s fury now focused on Mom. Why did you leave Grandma in charge? You had to know she’d try to take me away from here.
But there was no answer. Kristen was alone.
Her eyes burned as her gaze slid past Grandma Ellen to the mural in the hallway. And somewhere deep in Kristen’s head, she heard Mom say, “You’re Wonder Kristen. You’ll win over evil no matter how hard the fight.” Oh, Mom. I wish that were true. But I can’t win this one.
That was the problem with superhero mythology. Unless you had real, honest-to-God powers, you were just plain old Diana Prince, whose only skill was gathering crucial information on the sly. Sadly, Kristen couldn’t think of any information that could help her right now.
Still, there was no benefit in letting her enemy know how deeply determined she was to stay in Dove Pond. Maybe I should be Diana Prince for a while and pretend I’m growing used to the idea of moving. That would keep Grandma Ellen off my back while I look for a way out of this mess.
“Kristen, surely we can find some middle ground here. A way to make this process more palatable to you.” Grandma Ellen leaned forward, her hands still neatly folded together, looking like a TV lawyer about to state the case-winning premise. “Would it help if I involved you in the process more?”
No. Not even a little. But all Kristen said was “How?”
Grandma Ellen’s tight expression eased. “How about I make a list of the updates that need to be made, and we go over them together? If you see something on the list you absolutely hate seeing changed, then we’ll cross that off.”
Be Diana Prince, Kristen told herself. “You’d do that?”
“I would. It might lower the overall profit, but—” Grandma Ellen shrugged. “I’m willing to compromise. I hope you are too.”
Ha! But instead of scoffing out loud, Kristen said, “We can try it, I guess.”
Grandma Ellen brightened. “There! Progress. And maybe, sometime over the next few weeks, we can spend a weekend at my home in Raleigh. I think you’ll love the city once you’ve gotten to know it a little. But right now, we can work on the list of updates. I’ve already started one. I’ll get it, and we can—”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m starving, plus I have an essay due Monday and I haven’t really started.”
Grandma Ellen’s smile dimmed a little, but after a moment, she shrugged. “Sure. Just promise we’ll do it within the next day or so. And Kristen, difficult decisions don’t get easier with time. It’s best to attack them early and with confidence.”
As if Kristen didn’t know that. “Sure.” There. That was easily said. All of it had been, to be honest. And she’d won a few days for herself in the process. A few days to plan her next steps. A few days without Grandma Ellen hounding her for “a talk.” Although thankful for the reprieve, Kristen felt an overwhelming need to do something comforting. Something normal.
She picked up her glass of chocolate milk and headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make chicken parm.”
Once there, she set her glass in the sink, opened the refrigerator, and leaned in as if examining the contents, although she knew exactly what was in there. The cool air calmed her hot cheeks, and she took a steadying breath before she pulled out a package of chicken.
When she turned around, Grandma Ellen was standing on the other side of the counter, her expression softer and far less guarded than it had been in a week.
She thinks she’s won. Wonder Kristen: score one. “Chicken parm is one of my favorite meals.” Kristen put the package on the counter beside the refrigerator. “We have plenty of chicken, and I bought breadcrumbs when I was at the store yesterday.”
“I noticed you’d gone to the store. If you’d let me know what you wanted, I could have gone while you were in school.”
“I like grocery shopping. I did it most of the time, especially when Mom didn’t feel like it.” Kristen grabbed a carton of eggs and the milk and then shoved the fridge door closed with her hip. “I did all the cooking and laundry, too. I also vacuumed and dusted.”
“And what did your mother do?”
“She created.”
Grandma Ellen frowned. “She should have been taking care of you.”
Kristen gestured to herself. “Do I look untaken care of?”
Her grandmother’s gaze flickered from Kristen’s hoodie to her purple hair. But after a pause, Grandma Ellen said in a cool, no-nonsense tone, “Of course not.”
It was obvious that wasn’t what she thought. Kristen knew she wasn’t like most of the kids her age. She had responsibilities her classmates never thought about, which was why she had very little in common with them. They thought she was weird, and she thought them shallow and stupid.
She hadn’t made friends—not good ones, anyway—until high school, when she’d met Missy Robinson and Josh Perez. Missy’s mother was an LPN who worked in family homes with people suffering from dementia, strokes, that sort of thing, so she was gone most nights. And since Missy’s father was the local postmaster, he was gone most mornings, which left Missy with the chores and the task of getting herself to school.