The Space Between Sisters (16 page)

“Are you hurt?”

“Just a little scraped up,” Linc said, which Sam knew could mean anything. Linc had a tremendous gift for understatement.

“You're sure you're not hurt?” he pressed him.

“No, But my bike won't start. Could you . . . ?”

“Yeah. I'll come and get you. Just tell me where you are.”

When Sam hung up, he explained the situation to Poppy.

“Poor guy,” she said. “You better get going, Sam.” She walked him to his truck.

“Can you lock up for me?” he asked, handing her the keys to Birch Tree Bait.

“Of course. I don't know how to close out the register, though.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll do it in the morning before we open. And, uh, come in tomorrow,” he said, sorry that he had to leave her like this. “You can pick up your last paycheck and we can figure out a time to have dinner or something.” He gave her a quick kiss before he opened the door to his pickup. But something about her expression made him hesitate before he got in. “Are you sure you're okay?” he asked her.

“
Yes,
I'm fine,” she said, smiling. “Go.” But there was a tremulous quality about her smile that Sam remembered long after he'd driven away.

W
hen Poppy went back inside Birch Tree Bait, the setting sun was filtering in through the shutters, turning the light in the room pink, and casting horizontal shadows onto the walls. It was quiet inside; quiet enough to hear the breeze from the overhead fan ruffling a newspaper someone had left on the coffee counter, quiet enough to hear the alternating buzz and hum of the freezer cases. She'd never been here alone after hours, and she might have enjoyed it—it was strangely soothing—if she hadn't been so full of anger. Not at Sam, at herself.
What is wrong with me?
she thought, resisting the urge to kick the stepladder that was parked at the end of one of the aisles, and instead dragging it over to a window and sitting down on it.
What happened to me down at the dock?
She twisted her hands in the hem of her T-shirt, her body taut with frustration.
Why did I panic like that? I wanted Sam to kiss me, and to touch me. I've wanted it since that night in his kitchen. No, since before that night. So why did I pull away from him?
But the answer came back to her almost immediately:
For the same reason you've always pulled away from everyone.

But Sam was different, wasn't he? And, more importantly,
she
was different with Sam. She chewed, impatiently, on her lower lip, and felt her anger recede, a little, only to be replaced by disappointment. She wanted to be close to Sam, in more ways than one. So why couldn't she just let herself be? Just . . . turn off the part of her that had flinched when he'd touched—no, grazed—the side of her breast.
Because it's not that simple, Poppy. And you know it.

She blew out a long, slow breath, and, bathed in the pink light from the windows, she forced herself to think about all of this. It wasn't easy. She'd been careful to compartmentalize her life, and her past. And while she might not have Win's organization skills when it came to kitchen utensils, she had them when it came to her memories. She was good at separating out the ones that were painful, and of relegating them to their own little-used drawer. Of course, they hadn't always
stayed
where she'd put them. And sometimes, after she'd cracked the drawer open on them, it was hard to slam it shut again. But tonight was different. Tonight, she would
let
herself remember,
really remember,
something she'd spent half a lifetime trying to forget . . .

A
nd, just like that, she was back there again. She was sixteen years old, a junior in high school, and it was the first day of spring. No, not the
actual
first day of spring, that had come weeks before. But the first day that felt truly spring-
like
in its mildness and its sunniness, and, to celebrate, Poppy had worn a sundress and a pair of flip-flops to school that morning. It was possible that this had been just a tiny bit premature on her part. It wasn't
that
warm outside, and she was shivering a little as she walked home from school that afternoon. Fortunately for Poppy, though, she was in a state of such pleasant preoccupation that she
was barely conscious of being cold. She had a decision to make, an
important
decision, maybe the
most
important decision of her life to date. Certainly, its implications would reach far beyond the present, she reflected, as she shifted her backpack from one shoulder to the other. After all, there could only be
one
first kiss in her lifetime, and only
one
person to share that first kiss with. In all likelihood, she thought, turning onto the street she lived on, she would never forget that person, or that kiss. She might even tell her own daughter about it one day.

And herein lay the problem. Whom should that first kiss be with? Poppy had whittled the list of candidates down to two. The first, Matty Lumner, a senior and co-captain of the basketball team, was the obvious choice. But was it
too
obvious, she wondered, too . . . unimaginative? Which brought her to Taylor Montgomery. Like Poppy, he was only a junior, not a highly coveted senior. And unlike Matty, he was not an athlete; in fact, he was sort of the
opposite
of an athlete, he played the saxophone in the school orchestra. Still, he had soulful brown eyes, and an attractive slouch, and the fact that he played a woodwind instrument seemed to suggest that he was probably pretty good with his lips.

Poppy sighed, dreamily, as she reached the door to her apartment building. She tugged it open, and walked through its somewhat cramped lobby, not bothering to glance at the bank of mailboxes on her left. Her family almost never got any personal mail, except for the occasional birthday card or holiday card from her grandparents. Mostly, what they got were bills, the threatening kind of bills that had words like
final notice
printed on their envelopes. But Poppy wasn't thinking about this today as she boarded the slightly creaky elevator and pressed the button for her floor. She was thinking about the kiss. Or what she and
Win jokingly referred to, in their late night conversations, as “operation first kiss.”

When the elevator stopped, and the door slid open, though, reality intruded again. Poppy got off reluctantly. She was sorry now that marching band practice had been canceled today. She hated coming home to an empty apartment. She'd be alone, of course. Her parents were never there, not if they could possibly help it. And Win was only home after six, when the myriad extracurricular activities she participated in had all ended. She let her backpack slide off her shoulder now, and dragged it down the hall after her, thereby allowing it to slow down, if only incrementally, her arrival at the too quiet apartment.

“Hey,” she heard someone say.

She jumped. She hadn't even noticed that one of her neighbors was standing in his apartment doorway.

“Hi,” she said, offering a neutral smile. Poppy's family didn't really know any of the people on their floor. They'd lived in so many different apartments over the years that they no longer bothered to introduce themselves to anyone. Instead, Poppy and Win gave their own names to the few neighbors who caught their interest, or inspired their dislike. “The mean lady,” for instance, lived at the end of their hallway, “the tired couple with the crying baby” lived across the hall, and “the woman with the facial piercings” lived directly to the right of the elevator. This man, the one who'd just said hello, they referred to simply as “the photographer.” They'd never spoken to him before, but they'd seen him carrying his equipment in and out of the building, and they'd seen, too, the girls that occasionally came and went from his apartment.

“I'm Rich, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand for her to
shake. And when he saw her hesitate, he laughed. “It's all right,” he said. “I don't bite.”

She came closer and shook his hand. “I'm Poppy,” she said, studying him, shyly. It was hard to tell how old he was, but he was pretty old, she decided. Thirty-five, at least, and maybe even forty. He was tall and rangy, with dark hair worn longer than the boys at her high school wore it, and with a little patch of a beard worn under his mouth that only later would Poppy learn was referred to as a “soul patch.” Add to that his outfit—a vintage rock concert tee, tight jeans, and pair of leather boots—and Poppy supposed he looked pretty cool. Or at least
he
seemed to think he did.

“Ah,
Poppy,
” he said of her name. “Just like poppies in the springtime. You must be enjoying this beautiful weather then?” he asked, giving her sundress a frankly appraising look that made her feel instantly self-conscious.

She blushed, and fidgeted with the dress's neckline. “It's okay,” she said, noncommittally, hoisting her backpack back up onto her shoulder again and twisting it around so she could unzip the front compartment and get her keys out.

“It's okay?”
he said, imitating her nonchalant tone. “Are you kidding? This weather is
gorgeous
. I did a bikini shoot outside today. It's probably the first day I could have done it this spring without the models getting frostbite. Even so, we had to have bathrobes and hot chocolate waiting for them when it was over.”

“You did?” she said, interested in spite of herself. “That sounds like fun.” She meant the part about the bathrobes and the hot chocolate. She didn't know whether posing for a photographer would be fun or not.

“I don't know if the
models
would have called it fun,” he said.
“It's a lot of hard work. But it pays. Each of those girls made five hundred dollars today.”

Poppy's eyes widened. “They made that just . . . standing around?” she asked, fascinated.

“Well, in fairness to them, they weren't
just
standing around. There's a lot more to modeling than that. But you know that, don't you? You must have already tested the waters a little.”

She stared, blankly, at him.

“You know. Done a little modeling?”

She shook her head.

“None at all?”

“No.”

“How is that even possible? A beautiful girl like you? You must have been approached by agents, though.”

She hesitated, and then gave her head a tiny shake. This was a lie, though. Twice—once at the Mall of America and once at the Minnesota State Fair—people who'd said they were agents had approached her and given her their cards. But both times, her mom had said no. She was too young to model, she'd told her, and besides, she was too busy to spend her time driving Poppy around to any appointments, anyway.

“Unbelievable,”
Rich was saying now. “You must know how beautiful you are, though, right? I mean, people must tell you that all the time.”

Again, Poppy shook her head. This was another lie. People
did
tell her that all the time. Her feelings about the way she looked, though, were complicated. She knew, objectively, that she was pretty. But she also knew that it shouldn't be the most important thing about her. Her grandparents, whom Poppy adored, often reminded her of this.
Pretty girls are a dime a dozen,
her
grandfather would say.
It's what's in here that counts,
he'd add, using two fingers to thump on his chest, over the place where his heart was. And Poppy knew he was right. She knew because the one person she admired more than anyone else in the world, her younger sister, Win, was so much more than just pretty. She was smart and responsible and kind, all the things Poppy worked hard to be, even if they didn't come as naturally to her as they did to Win.

“Well, you are prettier, by far, than any of the models whose pictures I took today,” Rich said, leaning on his doorframe. “You should give it a try. I mean, if nothing else, it would be a great way to pick up some easy money.”

Easy money,
Poppy thought. That sounded appealing. In her family, there was nothing easy about money. Her parents never had any—whether because they didn't like working very much, or they just weren't very good at it, Poppy couldn't be sure—and Win only had a little, and only because she babysat on weekend nights. More often than not, Poppy was left scrambling to pay for her majorette uniforms and her band fees.

“Of course, you'd have to get some head shots done,” Rich said, casually. “You need those to call on agents with. They're expensive, though.”

“Are they?” Poppy said, feeling disappointed. They were out of the question, then. She smiled a polite smile that she hoped indicated their conversation was over, and she started moving down the hallway to her apartment.

“Hey, sorry about Mr. McKinley,” he called after her. She stopped. Mr. McKinley was the building's manager. He didn't like her parents, and they didn't like him.

“What about Mr. McKinley?” she asked, turning around.

He shrugged. “He was up here the other day, talking to your parents. Well, not
talking to
. More like
yelling at
. I could hear him through this,” he said, indicating his front door. “I guess there was some problem with the rent,” he added, and Poppy's face burned. There was
always
some problem with the rent. It was why they moved so much.

She nodded, and started to move down the hall again. But he came after her. “Hey, don't feel bad about it,” he said, when she stopped and turned to him. “I'm friendly with Mr. McKinley. He listens to me. Maybe I could put a good word in for your parents. I mean, if they haven't got the money, they haven't got the money, right?”

Poppy didn't answer him. It was possible, though, that her parents
did
have the money and just didn't feel like spending it on rent. It was also possible they didn't have the money, and were broke, or what her dad liked to call
flat
broke. Sometimes, when they were this, her grandparents sent them money. But they couldn't always afford to help. They lived on her grandfather's military pension, and that wasn't always enough to pay their bills and their son's bills, too. And now, they had rented out their cabin on Butternut Lake so they could afford to live in a retirement community in Florida, where their grandfather said the weather was kinder to old people. (How their grandparents—calm, dependable, steadfast people—had produced Poppy and Win's father was a subject of endless fascination to the sisters.)

“Look, I didn't mean to embarrass you,” Rich said. “We all have problems, right?”

Poppy nodded, not sure what else he wanted her to say.

“And you're lucky, in a way, that your problems are financial. Those problems are the easiest to fix. At least for a pretty girl like you.”

Poppy looked at him, not understanding.

“I'm going to take your pictures,” he explained now. “Your head shots. And I'm going to waive my fee, which, by the way, is
very
high. And then you can take my pictures—
our
pictures—to a modeling agency and start landing some jobs. After that, you should be able to start earning some spending money. And who knows? You might even earn enough to be able to pay the rent one day. What do you say?”