Free Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer

high-pitched golden-trumpet laugh, then sobered abruptly and said, “You are kidding, right?”
    â€œNot really. Either that or a hot dog stand.”
    Doris rolled her big harvest-moon eyes. “Do you have any idea how little those kinds of places pay?”
    â€œThis isn’t about money, Doris.”
    â€œNo,” her friend agreed, “it’s about you fighting sneaky with Hoot.”
    Doris had good insights sometimes. It was true, Larque admitted to herself, that she was more than usually angry with Hoot; it was true that mid-life was making him seem more and more tiresome.
    But something else was more urgently true.
    â€œIt’s about tiding me over …” Until she could get back—not just her ability to paint, there was more to it than that, but she found it hard to describe how and why. She said, “If I can get back Sky, I think it’ll all come together eventually.”
    â€œHuh? Get back Sky? She’s right here.”
    â€œAre you kidding? Look at her.”
    They both gazed at the spirit-child who sat much too still, much too quietly, and gazed into space, not interested in the glassfish and delta-tail guppies playing in their aquarium against the wall, not listening to anything the two women had been saying.
    â€œI see what you mean,” Doris said. “She’s not all there.”
    â€œI think my mother blinked her.”
    Doris said, “That’s a funny thing, how your mother makes things go away but you make double what was there already.”
    This time it was Larque who did not hear. She was staring at the way Sky’s skirt puffed up around her little hands lying in her lap. Holding down the crinolines. God, crinolines, those scratchy implements of slow torture—Larque remembered now how they dug into thin legs, leaving a network of fine red stinging lines. Sky, the real historical Sky, had never sat still for crinolines. She had wriggled, and squirmed, and hiked up her skirts to scratch her scrawny thighs, and made many excuses to go to the bathroom for the sake of the temporary relief afforded by the smooth, cool toilet seat. For two years she had waged an oblique, fruitless battle with her stubbornly cheerful mother over crinolines. She had ditched crinolines in public restrooms, sabotaged crinolines with scissors, “lost” crinolines at school, hidden the awful things deep in her closet. Her mother, never scolding to acknowledge her naughtiness or sympathizing to acknowledge her discomfort, had serenely supplied her with more. Years later, long after the fashion had passed, Larque had realized that her mother could have simply provided a slip to go between the crinolines and her bare, assaulted legs. She had never asked her mother why she had not done this, because she had probably never told her mother why she hated the crinolines. In her family, quarrels were not allowed and, therefore, were never resolved.
    Crinolines. God, and for a solid day she had been watching this so-called Sky wear them like the good, good little girl her mother had always wanted.
    â€œStand up,” Larque ordered the doppelganger, misdirected anger roughening her voice.
    The little girl did it instantly, standing like a toy-store doll on display, and Larque went down on her knees in front of her, reaching under her voluminous skirt to tug the miserable net fashion-accessories-of-torment off. She couldn’t do it, of course. Her hands slipped right through whatever aspect of Sky she tried to grasp. Sky could impact on Larque’s world, boy could she impact, but Larque could not impact on Sky. Sky could mightily screw up Larque’s life, but Larque could not do anything to Sky, nooooooo. That would have been too easy. She was stuck with this child who was already done, completed, a fait accompli of her personal past.
    â€œCan you do it?” Larque begged her, still on her knees. “Take them off.