Free I Wish by Elizabeth Langston Page A

you?”
    “It’s like being a person who is sleep-deprived. I can’t trust my brain to keep track of everything that I need.” Her response was crisp and immediate, as if rehearsed. “I often walk around in a fog. I have to make decisions slowly. Repetition helps my brain remember things, so I take everything down and then reread my notes until they stick.” Her face flattened into calm acceptance. “It takes a lot of work to succeed, but I can.”
    “When did you move back to Magnolia Grove?”
    “This summer. We had been living near DC. The hospitals there are very good.” With a sudden hitch forward, she pulled her chair closer to the table and looked at her tablet. After tapping at it some, she added, “Mom moved here first. She’s a mural artist and had a commission to work on. Dad decided to stay in Northern Virginia. I was up there with him until last week.”
    Kimberley was so matter-of-fact. Was that part of her natural personality? Or part of the…?
    I couldn’t go there. “Are your parents divorced?”
    “Not yet.” She looked over at me. “What happened to your stepfather? I heard he died.”
    A fast and unexpected transition. “Yes, in an accident.” Motorcycle hits tree; rider without helmet .
    “Did you like him?”
    My eyeballs ached. “I liked him a lot.”
    “Cool. I don’t know many kids who get along with their steps.” Her fingers fluttered. “Enough personal stuff. Let’s take a look at these slides.”
    I sat back and watched. She’d gone to extraordinary lengths to research and contrast colonial utensils with their modern-day equivalents. The whole presentation was brilliant.
    Apparently, my sole contribution would be my name. Given how little I cared about “Daily Life in the Colonies”—and the high probability Mr. Jarrett had predetermined the score for the Linden/Rey Team—I went along with this. Flipping to a clean sheet in my notebook, I doodled pictures of toasting forks and tea kettles.
    After an hour of tweaking colors and fonts on the slides, Kimberley was still not satisfied. “Do you think we have enough?”
    I paused in the act of doodling. “We have the slides, plus we’re demoing with reproduction utensils. It’s twice as much as anyone else will do. We’re fine.” This assignment was only worth five percent of our final grade. Why was she trying so hard?
    “The project doesn’t feel complete yet. You need a bigger part in the presentation.”
    Anything would be bigger than what I was doing now. “What’s left? The only thing we’re lacking is a reproduction kitchen maid.”
    Her eyes widened. “Great idea.”
    “Wait. I was joking.”
    Her fingers flew across the computer. “My mom has a costume. It’s more like a pirate’s damsel, but we could modify it. It looks something like this.” She angled the screen around to show an image of a serving wench in a mob cap, dark skirt, white blouse, and a red corset stopping just below the breasts. “Would you wear it?”
    It was…wow. “Possibly,” I said in a strangled voice.
    “Good. We’re done.”
    Kimberley changed into a cleaning machine. She folded up her tablet case, collected our water bottles, and tossed them into a recycling bin. Maybe I’d been wrong about who the perfectionist was in this house.
    “I haven’t given up,” Kimberley said in a monotone as she wiped the condensation circles from the table before me.
    “On what?”
    “My mom and dad getting back together.”
    “Uh-huh.” I kept still. Mr. Rey lived hundreds of miles away from his wife and daughter. That made reconciliation difficult.
    “Dad is an architect.”
    Kimberley watched me, like she was expecting something.
    Was she inviting me to ask more? I looked at the clock. Already past nine. It was getting late. I had laundry to do and Henry’s homework to check over. But it felt like I needed to keep the conversation going. “How often do you talk to your dad?”
    “Most nights.” She pulled out her phone