The Bookish Life of Nina Hill(66)

“The only thing that pops into my head is books,” said Millie, worriedly. “And if I ask them a load of questions, they’ll think I’m even stranger than they already think I am. Last week a boy at school said I was weird, and nobody else said I wasn’t. Nobody said anything.” Her voice broke a little on the last word, and suddenly Nina was furious.

Trying to keep her voice calm, she asked, “What did he mean, weird?” She looked at Archie and saw he felt the same way.

Millie shrugged. “I don’t know. Weird. We had been talking about Aragog—you know, the spider?” Both Archie and Nina nodded. “And then I started talking about Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web, and all the bugs in James and the Giant Peach, and this other book about a boy and a beetle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . . .”

“Masterpiece,” interjected Nina.

“Yes, and the cockroaches in the Gregor books, and I said bugs are interesting because they’re smaller than kids, right, and the way characters treat them is like how we get treated by grown-ups, and then he stared at me and said I was weird.” She looked at the table. “I thought it was a reasonable theory.”

Archie took a drink of water. “Well, I’ll be honest, Millie. That’s not what I would call weird, it’s what I would call smart, but ten-year-old boys aren’t famous for their insights into literature.” He put his glass down. “Or their manners.”

Nina was gazing at her little sister and wasn’t prepared for the rush of affection she felt for a girl she’d met only half an hour earlier. She reached across the table, again. “Listen, I’ll call your mom myself. You have to come to my book club, and then we can go have dinner afterward and talk about all this stuff.”

“How often is the book club?”

Nina frowned. “Once a month.”

“Oh,” Millie said. “That’s not very much.”

“But maybe your mom will let me pick you up after school sometimes, and we can hang out and chat. I don’t mind coming out to Malibu.” She almost choked on the sentence, but found it was actually true.

Millie looked happier. “That would be awesome. I don’t really have anyone to talk to, now.”

“Well then,” said Nina. “I’ll make it happen. We can do it on Thursdays,” she added impulsively. “I have nothing planned on Thursdays.”

“Really?” said Millie, squeezing her hand.

“Yes, really,” said Nina, confidently. “Thursdays can be our night.”





Twenty-two




In which Nina gets a shock.

The Larchmont Spring Festival was, as you might expect, an annual affair. There was cotton candy and sno-cones, there were hot dogs and burgers, and the scent of burning onions blended beautifully with Los Angeles’s signature perfume: sunscreen and money. There were even ponies to ride, though it was hard to reach them through the animal rights protesters complaining that there were ponies to ride.

Knight’s was closed for the day, but Nina, Polly, and Liz always went to the Festival and mingled with the punters, as Liz put it.

“It’s a community event,” she said. “Get out there and commune.”

This year, Nina invited Tom to meet her by the carousel and tried not to be filled with childish glee when she saw him. But it was hard; she was a smitten kitten, and she was starting to be OK with that.

He pulled her into a hug and kissed her firmly. Polly, who was tagging along, grinned and demanded a hug, too.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, but thankfully, didn’t elaborate.

“What do you want to do first?” he asked them. “Pony ride? Corn dog on a stick?”

“I want to go in a giant floaty ball,” said Polly, confidently.

A major draw for the children of Larchmont was a vast paddling pool of water in which floated maybe a dozen large, clear inflatable balls. You climbed into one, they blew it up around you, and then you rolled yourself into the water and wobbled about and got wet and overheated, and thirty seconds after you realized sunstroke and suffocation were distinct possibilities, your time was up. The kids loved it, but Nina rarely saw adults in there, because, you know, wisdom.

Polly was ready to embrace it, though.

“I think it looks like fun, and every year I want to do it and every year I talk myself out of it, but not this year.” She took a breath. “This year I’m going to ignore my inner voice and go for it.” She looked defiantly at Nina and Tom, but they just shrugged.

“Honestly, you’re overthinking it. Go, be your best self, and get into a smelly ball of plastic,” said Nina.

Polly went off to do that, and Nina and Tom wandered over to the sno-cone stand.

“Sno-cones don’t really make a lot of sense,” said Nina. “They’re only ice and sugar water, yet they’re deeply pleasing.” She sucked on a mouthful of shavings. “They started in Baltimore, you know.”

Tom smiled at her. “I didn’t know that. What else do you know about the humble sno-cone?”

“Well, they’re regionally distinct, of course.”

Tom nodded.

“And they became widely popular during the Second World War because all the ice cream was sent to the soldiers.”