Sugar Castle, Chapter 2
Sophie stood at the bottom of the stairs, thinking. Her jacket was in her room, but if she went up her mother might ask where she was going. Instead, she got her father’s old raincoat out of the front hall closet and slipped out the front door. The wind went up the too-loose sleeves, so she folded them over her hands and walked around to the back of the house. Did she want to go to the treehouse? No, she decided. Instead, she walked past the barn and the vegetable garden, past the fire pile, and up the hill, walking on the path their dad mowed into the wildflowers and long grass.
As she went higher, the air seemed lighter, the sky closer. Halfway up she was as high as the roof of the barn, and when she got to the top, she was above all of their two and a half acres, even the five old pine trees that had been planted years ago as a windbreak. From here, she could see the road into town, the creek, the abandoned house that they used to think was haunted, and the hilly field where their neighbor’s cows grazed. Sometimes they looked as if they might fall over because of the slope, but they never did.
Their house looked small, like a dollhouse. She sat down in the long grass and let the wind blow over her. If she were in the house now, she’d seem tiny to someone on the hill, and for a minute, she tried to keep this doubled idea of herself in her head, Sophie on the hill in her right size and dollhouse Sophie, still in the dining room with dollhouse Colin. The house would be cut away on the side so that you could see into all the rooms. Gindy in her room, lying on her bed. Their mother in her office doing something on her laptop. While she watched, one of the barn cats came out from under the deck, a tiny furry speck, and ran across the yard. She knew it was Dawn because of the way she ran and how she jumped with her paws out, ready to fight an insect or an imaginary enemy. Dawn was fast and fierce. She climbed one of the posts the treehouse was built on and disappeared inside.
Sophie had heard her mother and her aunt talking a few weeks ago about how the children hadn’t played in the treehouse all summer. “They’re getting too old for it, I guess,” her mother had said. She sounded sad. Their father had built the treehouse for them when Sophie was eight and Colin was six. It had two rooms inside, a porch, and a ladder, like all proper treehouses, but also a ramp, for Colin.
Sophie didn’t want to think that she was too old for it. It was true that she’d only been in it a few times this summer, but that was because no one could come over to play. It had been lonely with just her and Colin. Gindy sometimes still played with them, but not like she used to. She had different priorities, she’d said last week, in what Sophie considered to be a fake voice. She didn’t want to be called Gindy anymore, she’d said, since she had a real name, they should use it. Colin had started calling her Virginia (although he forgot sometimes) but Sophie refused.
Sophie stood up and went a little higher, to the crown of the hill, right before the trees started. From here, if she craned her neck and stood on tiptoe, she could see the roof of the school. It was so close. From here, it almost seemed as if she could touch it.
If I was a bird, she thought, I could fly there and get my art project. Or if I was Ms. Impossible. Miss Impossible was her favorite superhero. She lived with her brothers and sisters in a supposedly haunted mansion, with a robot who took care of them. She could fly and also become invisible.
Sophie imagined herself taking off from the hill, her feet skimming over the tops of the trees, stopping to rest for a minute on the peak of the barn, where she could hold onto the weathervane, and get a good look at it, to see what the animals on its spokes were. Then she’d fly across the creek, across the road, over the cabins where tourists stayed in the summer (although not this summer), make a right at the church steeple, and then drop down into the recess yard. Easy as a shoofly pie, as her grandmother used to say.
Gindy lay on her bed, feet hanging off the end. She’d gotten bored texting with Sandra Z, but now she was even more bored. She could hear her mother talking on the phone, or maybe to herself. She had a remote job now, which she liked to joke wasn’t remotely any fun. A flash of movement outside caught her eye. Sophie was climbing the hill, their dad’s old coat flapping around her bare legs. Technically they weren’t supposed to leave the house without checking with their mother, which Sophie hadn’t. But if she told on her, their mother would probably just sigh and look troubled or unhappy, which Virginia hated.
The wind was blowing on the hill, making the trees dance and sway. The pine trees were too big to move much, but their branches trembled and rustled. If the window were open she’d be able to hear the noise that the wind made going through them, something like water falling or the way it sounded inside of a shell from the ocean. As she watched, Sophie reached the top of the hill and turned to look back. Suddenly Gindy wanted to be out there. She ran down the stairs, pulling on her sweater, and in a minute, she was out in the wind, which caught at her hair, blowing it across her face. If she went along the back of the pine trees, she’d be able to take Sophie by surprise, she thought.
Back there, where the hill started to rise in two directions, toward the crest where Sophie was, but also a gentler slope up to the cow field, there was a litter of things left from summer. A whiffle ball and a Frisbee. One of Sophie’s Barbies, wearing only a purple skirt which looked as if an animal had chewed on it. A few cat toys. An empty water bottle, squashed flat. Someone should come out and clean this stuff up, Gindy thought self righteously, although she had no intentions of that someone being her.
She circled back of the tree house, looking through the great trunks of the pines to see where Sophie was. She was still there, looking out toward town. When they were little, before they could go to the top of the hill by themselves, they had been convinced, she and Sophie, that they would be able to see the town from there. Gindy had imagined the view from the hill as a sort of map on which the buildings of the town would appear, looking magical, like a cartoon landscape. But it was too far away, twenty five minutes away by car. Fifteen as the crow flies, their father had always said, for the crow could go in a straight line, instead of taking the winding road that followed the curves of the hills.
At the last tree, she peered through its lower branches to check if Sophie was still there. She was, standing stock still. What was she thinking about? Gindy made a dash to the edge of the tall grass and started up, staying by the fence and keeping her head down. She felt a little guilty leaving Colin in the house by himself, but he couldn’t go up the hill, and so wasn’t it kinder not to bring him out and then leave him down in the yard? Besides, he was really into that new game he was playing.
Gindy prowled across the top of the hill, trying not to step on the crunchy dead leaves that were caught in the grass. She almost made it all the way to Sophie, sneaking up behind her, before she turned and gave a yip of surprise.
“Gotcha,” Gindy said.
“I knew you were there.”
“You didn’t.”
“Whatever.”
“What are you doing up here?”
“Listen,” Sophie said. “I want to go to school and get my art project. This is the perfect time, while Mom’s working.”
Gindy brushed some sticker seeds off her jeans. “School is locked up.”
“I know how to get in,” Sophie said. “Mrs. Marbel always leaves one of the basement windows open. Down in the outside stairwell in the back.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She smokes in the supply room sometimes. That’s where the window is. Where she keeps all the mops and brooms.”
“It’s a stupid idea.”
“It’s really not.”
“The art room would be locked anyway.”
“Yes, but – voila! -- there’s an extra set of keys in the supply room.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
Sophie grinned, hugging the long arms of the raincoat around her. “I’ve got my spies.”
“You look like a gremlin in that coat.”
“What does a gremlin even look like.”
“Like you,” Gindy said.
“Well you look like a priss.”
Gindy sat down on the grass, feeling first with her hand to see if it was wet. “Why do you care so much about an art project?”
Sophie jutted her chin out, her stubborn look. “I just do. So you want to come?”