The Neighbor's Secret(48)
“I’m telling you, it’s a conspiracy, making us think there’s one right way to do things. Guess what, ladies? There are no rules in life.”
“Well, technically there are. They’re called laws.”
“Who’s conspiring?”
“They are. Them. Society. People.”
“You’re all being too literal. No one is supposed to actually plow a field.”
“Thanks, Katie. Congratulations on the big mock-trial win, by the way.”
“Katie, dear, some more napkins, please.”
“Lena, have you opened the cupcakes yet?”
“Ooooh, they’re so cute. Look at that tiny little pioneer.”
“With his tiny raccoon cap!”
“You know who needs Pioneer Parenting? Our vandal.”
“We should have Laurel look out for him.”
“Laurel? Why Laurel?”
“Sierra told me she’s been running the loop after dinner? We should fasten a GoPro to her head to catch any night activity.”
“She’s not out there at two in the morning.”
“The vandal doesn’t need Pioneer Parenting, ladies, he needs incarceration.”
“The stockades! Jeez, Harriet, don’t write that down. I was joking.”
“Or, and this is a radical thought, maybe we should just ignore him.”
“Seriously, Jen? I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“He hasn’t done anything major, you guys. It’s been a little aggression toward holidays. If this is the best he’s got, I’m not really impressed.”
FEBRUARY
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: [email protected] Happy Month of Love, Ladies!!
The book: ROSA OF KRAKOW, which reviewers have called “moving, lyrical, powerful.” The story of Rosa, a Polish seamstress coming of age in 1939 and torn between three men: her Jewish childhood friend Abel, Gunther, a Cadet in Hitler’s SS Youth—and Gary, an idealistic American Soldier.
Who will be a victim of history?
Who will win Rosa’s love?
Will Rosa use her sewing skills to join the resistance, or be pulled into the Kinder Kirsch?
“Passion, death, the triumphs of the heart and the siren song of family obligations … ROSA OF KRAKOW is a fascinating historical journey about a woman just like us, born at a pivotal time in history.”
(It is SO important, ladies, to take a moment and realize how #blessed we are.) Steel yourselves, ladies! You will swoon over this Holocaust love triangle.*
The place: Priya’s House
The rest: Y’all know the drill by now: start time is 7:30, creative snacks appreciated and bring tissues to spare!!!!!
*Square?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Middle schools were supposed to be dingy, depressing places with humming fluorescent lights and peeling mustard paint. The one Annie had attended, five miles east of Sandstone K-8, had an appropriately soul-sucking institutional feel.
By contrast, the Sandstone kiddos sprinted on landscaped sports fields and swung from monkey bars on an award-winning sustainably sourced playground. They skipped to class on bamboo-wood floors, through warm beams of sunlight refracted down by pyramid skylights, past student artwork that had been professionally framed.
Today, Annie walked slowly down the main hallway: balanced atop her overfilled steel coffee mug was a red velvet cupcake that she’d snagged from a platter in the teachers’ lounge.
She’d been gluttonous to take it: Lena was coming to dinner and had hinted that she was bringing something rich for dessert, but Annie used her slow pace to appreciate the new student art, which had been switched out over the weekend.
The rotating Student Art Gallery was a Sandstone point of pride, which didn’t mean the art was any good. Annie suspected that most of it wasn’t, certainly not the giant blurry photograph above the water station, which seemed to be a close-up of a dog’s nostrils.
The quality didn’t matter; what mattered was that everyone acted like it was the creative expression of geniuses, and the dog-nostril photographer—a self-aware sixth grader who’d come to Annie last year for strategies to cope with “perfectionist tendencies”—would feel valued, which would lead to good posture, strong eye contact, boosted self-esteem, and the courage to try new things.
Or she’d graduate feeling entitled to accolades she did not deserve, petulant and thirsty for external approval.
That was the risk of a Sandstone education, Annie supposed, and the rewards far outweighed them. The first time Annie had walked inside of the building, she had felt like one of those parasitical birds—Jen Chun-Pagano would know the name of the species—who laid their eggs into other birds’ nests.
I don’t belong here, Annie would sometimes think when she spotted Laurel on the kindergarten playground, but she sure as hell will.
There seemed to be a pet theme to this month’s art gallery. Up ahead was a painting—a slightly better piece, Annie suspected—that gave the Warholian faces treatment to someone’s Siamese cat. Sierra and Haley were deep in conversation against it, their heads framed by neon pink and green.
From Sierra’s hip jut, the way her mouth moved nonstop, interrupted by only Haley’s nods of agreement, Annie could identify an impassioned rant.