How was Jenny to explain when she herself didn’t know? She was searching for a sign of something burning up inside her little star, that was all. An ability that was bound to set her apart, just as surely as if she were a giantess, or a girl who ate fire, or a woman who could walk over glass without feeling the slightest bit of pain.
“I just wanted to know what you wanted for your birthday breakfast. French toast? Waffles? Eggs over easy? I’ve got raisin bread. The kind with the walnuts.”
If it had to happen, let it be something simple and helpful, the ability to mend clothes with a single stitch, perhaps, or a talent for trigonometry. Let it be an aptitude for foreign languages, or an open heart, or a resilient nature. If worse came to worst, perhaps she could see in the dark, always a welcome attribute, or quiet wild dogs with a mere gesture.
“I don’t eat breakfast anymore. For your information. And I can’t be late. I have a math test first period and Miss Hewitt doesn’t care about birthdays. She doesn’t care about anything but algebra.” Stella had tumbled out of bed and immediately began to search through a rumpled pile of clothes on the floor.
“Would you like me to iron that?” Jenny asked when Stella’s disheveled school uniform had at last been unearthed and pulled from the tangle of jeans and underclothes.
Stella eyed her uniform, then shook out the blue skirt and blazer. “There,” she said, with the hot edge of defiance that had surfaced at the start of ninth grade. Stella had skipped a year of school, passing directly from fourth to sixth grade. She’d been so quick, such a good reader, naturally they’d been proud of her abilities. But now Jenny wondered if they hadn’t made a mistake, if Stella hadn’t somehow been rushed into something she wasn’t ready for.
“All better,” Stella said of her clothes. As she turned, she caught her mother staring at her. Yet again, and this time with a sour expression, as though in studying her daughter, Jenny had happened upon head lice or fleas. “Is there something wrong with me? Is that why you keep looking at me that way?”
“Of course not.” At least there was no green light, no calling frogs, no fork in the road that would surely lead to disaster. “Although you might want to brush your hair.”
Stella peered at herself in the mirror. Too tall, too thin, with teeth that weren’t quite crooked enough for braces and hair that looked like straw left out too long in the rain. She scowled at her own reflection, then turned to face her mother, still defiant. “My hair’s fine the way it is, thank you.”
Last night, Jenny had counted backward through time until she reached Rebecca Sparrow, the lost girl who was their first recorded blood relation. Stella, she’d realized, was the thirteenth generation in their history. That ominous, unlucky number. Why, some people wouldn’t keep thirteen dollars in their pocket, some architects passed directly from the twelfth to the fourteenth floors, insuring that no elevators would stop at that ill-fated destination. And now here Stella was for an entire year, stuck with that number, trapped by her own destiny. Thirteen, no matter how the years were counted. Thirteen, until the next twelve months had passed.
“How about a present?” Jenny brought forth a gift box. She had shopped carefully, trying to pick something Stella might like, but such an endeavor was hopeless. Jenny wasn’t surprised at the disappointment that showed on Stella’s face as soon as the cashmere sweater she’d chosen had been unwrapped.
“Pink?” Stella said.
Nothing Jenny did seemed right; that was the only thing they could agree upon lately.
“Do you even know me?” Stella carefully folded the sweater back into its box. True enough, everything in Stella’s closet was black, navy blue, or white.
Something had begun to go wrong between mother and daughter around the time Will left last summer, or maybe it had begun in those last few months of their marriage, when all Will and Jenny could do was fight. They had sunk so low that Jenny had flung a glass of milk at Will after finding a woman’s phone number in his jacket pocket. He’d responded by smashing her favorite platter on the floor. They’d stopped to look at each other then, panting, surrounded by broken crockery and white puddles of milk. Then and there, they knew the marriage was over.
Will had packed up that night. He’d gone off, even though Stella had tried her best to hold him back. She’d begged him to stay, and when he wouldn’t, she ran to the window to watch as he waited for a cab.
“He won’t go,” Stella had whispered hopefully, but hope faded when the taxi pulled up. When it was clear Will was leaving, as it should have been for several years, Stella turned on Jenny. “Call him back.” Stella’s voice was perilously high. “Don’t let him go!”