When It Rains*
Powder groggily woke up and pushed back the covers. She stretched her arms above her head and looked up at her ceiling, but the shoddy patchwork job was still there. With a blink, she looked around her room and only found her suitcase and moving boxes in the places she had left them.
She was home.
She picked up her doll and looked it over again, frowning.
Putting the doll aside, Powder absentmindedly scratched her hand but was startled when she didn't feel the same stinging pain. She looked at her hand and saw the red rash was gone. Her skin had healed over completely.
"It's gone. My poison oak! It's gone!" she exclaimed.
Powder hopped out of the bed in her pajamas and excitedly ran to the top of the staircase but stopped short when she heard urgent voices down the hall. Mylo and Claggor were scrambling in and out of their room, carrying things out. In the hallway were boxes of comic books, and a lamp, and a stool with a black instrument case – inside of which was her brother's saxophone, although Claggor didn't play it much these days.
Why are Mylo and Claggor taking their stuff out of their room?
"Just when we needed another reason to hate this place!" Mylo snapped, throwing a wet comic book aside in a trashcan, pages so waterlogged the paper ripped apart.
"Mylo, calm down! No one cares about your stupid comic books right now!" Vi snapped in return, trying to breathe and calm down herself.
"Calm down?! Easy for you to say! Your room wasn't even touched!" Mylo retaliated.
"Guys! Please!" Claggor got in between them, covering his ears.
Just then, Powder felt the steps shake a little as Vander, already dressed in his jeans and white T-shirt, walked up the staircase. His mere presence was able to cut the tension in the air and the teenagers fell silent, even if they still glared daggers at each other.
"What's this all about?" he asked calmly.
No one wanted to answer at first, but Vi pointed through the door into the boys' room. From her vantage point, Powder couldn't tell what her sister was pointing at. Vander entered the room with Vi following him. Mylo and Claggor hogged the hallway.
"This is going to take forever to fix!" Mylo complained.
"Hey, Clag, see if you can find the yellow pages," Vi directed.
He nodded to her, then turned to try to squeeze past Mylo in the narrow hallway. At the last second, Mylo threw up his hands.
"Forget it! I know where it is!" Mylo grumbled, unnecessarily shouldering past Claggor at the top of the staircase.
Powder ducked out of his way as he plodded down the stairs. Claggor grunted, sharing an equally exacerbated look on Mylo's face, before descending the staircase himself.
Alone, Powder approached outside her brothers' door, leaning her head inside, a bit hesitantly. She found Vi and Vander inside. Mylo and Claggor's bunk bed was shoved away from the wall. Powder didn't like the look on Vi's face, scrunched up and irritated, glaring at the floor with her hands on her hips.
"Hey? What's going on…?" Powder asked slowly.
Vi blinked when she saw her sister in the doorway. She sighed and pushed her hair back, out of her face.
"Hey, monkey," Vi said, tiredly, her attempt at a smile not worth the effort to keep up for very long this morning. "When it rained last night, a lot of water must've gotten under the roof. It leaked into Clag and Mylo's room."
Sure enough, Powder looked where Vi gestured at the upper corner of the room and saw the wet stain on the ceiling, discolored and seeping like a waterfall along the wall too, drooping the soggy wallpaper with wrinkles. Pink and yellow lilies looked more like washed out watercolor.
Vander was on one knee by the large puddle on the floor, frowning at the warped wooden floorboards and the soggy wall and the stained ceiling.
"Well, it's not good," he admitted, rubbing his neck as he stood up. "This could be a problem." Glancing over his shoulder, he asked the girls, "Did your rooms leak last night?"
Vi answered right away, "No."
But Powder felt rooted to the spot under their gaze, as though she was lying to them. She swallowed and shook her head.
Vander shrugged. "Well, that's a relief," he said as his attention was drawn down to his vibrating cell phone. "Hold on."
He answered the phone, putting it to his ear.
"Yeah, hi… Look, Benzo, I'm sorry I'm going to be late… There was water damage at my house… Yeah, I know…" He took the conversation with him as he moved past the girls and exited the room.
Alone, Vi and Powder looked to each other, the same mystified look on their faces.
What should they do?
Vi bit her lip but lifted her chin and ushered Powder out. "Come on, let's go."
When they were in the hallway, Vi closed the door behind her and put her hands on Powder's shoulders.
"I'm gonna go find extra towels," she said, her eyes glancing around as though thinking of something for Powder to do. "Just… stay out from their room for now. It could be dangerous," was her answer as she moved around Powder and hurriedly headed downstairs.
Powder felt a bit deflated but stayed away as her sister asked.
Shrugging, Powder saw the bathroom was open and decided to brush her hair and teeth now, since it was unoccupied. With only the one bathroom to share among her siblings, Powder learned quickly not to let the opportunity go passively.
…
When she got dressed, Powder headed downstairs. She didn't see Mylo or Claggor around. She almost stepped into the kitchen but stopped short when she heard the urgent tone in Vander and Vi's voices. From what Powder could hear, they were evidently alone and talking as though they were keeping their voices down.
"I can do odd jobs for the neighbors again, like in Michigan!" Vi argued, standing behind a chair, gripping it at the shoulders. "It won't be a problem. I can ask around. I could earn –"
"Vi, I appreciate you helping," Vander answered her, as slow and patient as a stone giant, "but you really don't have to –"
Not waiting to be discovered this time, Powder decided to walk in, nonchalantly. "Morning!" she said, bouncing into the kitchen. "What's up?"
Vi almost jolted, turning around in surprise, her shock terribly masked. Vander, on the other hand, smiled serenely – and a bit tiredly – leaning back against the counter, coffee mug in hand.
"Not much. Just talking business," he replied.
And Powder knew that was all the explanation she was going to get out of him and Vi.
Powder blew a raspberry, "Boring!" then crossed the kitchen and grabbed a chair to stand on.
As she reached up into the cabinet to retrieve cereal and a bowl, she swore she saw Vi and Vander in the reflection of the glass bowl. They shared a look with each other before they continued to get their own breakfast.
"We'll talk about this later," sort of look.
Breaking up the tension, Powder spoke first.
"You're not going to believe it. I had this crazy dream last night!" Powder went on to explain, "I dreamt there was this, like, whole other world behind the little door!"
Shaking off her surprise, Vi seemed more relaxed. "Oh, really? The little door in here?"
"What door?" Vander asked.
The girls glanced at each other, like deer in headlights.
Vi spoke up first, blunt and honest, "Powder found a door in the drawing room. I unlocked it."
"Huh," was his only reply. "Did it go anywhere?"
Powder shook her head. "No, just a brick wall. But! In my dream, there was this tunnel..."
Then Powder went on to explain in great lengths about the weirdness of the other world. In the middle of the story, Vander answered his phone again and went outside.
"It was incredibly real, Sis. Only Mom wasn't really herself. She said she was my other mother."
"Buttons for eyes, huh?" Vi said as she cleared the dirty dishes from the table into the sink.
She gave the growing dirty pile the stink-eye, then looked out the window and saw Vander standing on the lawn, phone to his ear, shoulders slumped.
"Well, I'm glad you slept well. But, Powder, you only dreamt you ate all that chicken. Here. Take your multivitamin, at least," Vi said, passing her a bottle of vitamin gummy bears.
Powder rolled her eyes and plopped two in her mouth.
Claggor came into the kitchen then, holding the yellow phonebook in his hand. "There's a Talis Plumbing company in town."
"Great! Are they open?" asked Vi.
"Not since 1983," he answered.
Vi sighed, "Well, it was worth a shot. Thanks for trying."
Claggor looked so sad that Powder felt bad.
"You were in my dream too, Clag," Powder lied.
"What?"
"You had wild-looking pajamas and orange monkey slippers."
Claggor laughed, "Orange? My monkey slippers are blue," lifting his foot and showing off his blue flipflop. "Psst," he whispered behind his hand, "Can you get me some of that magic mud you were talking about? Because I have a terrible case of writer's rash on my –"
"A-hem!" Vi cleared her throat with one eyebrow raised. "If the real Claggor Lane wants his summer papers looked over and his hair cut, he better wrap them up ASAP."
Claggor shrugged and walked away, taking an apple with him. Vi put the milk jug away and closed the fridge door.
"Powder, why don't you go visit your friend?" Vi said.
"Please, no!" Powder groaned at the idea of seeing awkward Ekko again.
"Then why not visit downstairs?" Vi suggested. "I bet those, uh… actresses would love to hear your dream."
Powder frowned, not liking that idea either. She remembered how Vi said she met the elderly pair that lived downstairs. Before too long, Powder knew her sister would be roped into baking cookies for them and promising to give them rides to the theater.
"Miss Spink and Forcible? But they're old dingbats!"
"Mm-hmm." Vi nodded. "The nice kind."
Vi gave her a wink before zipping up her sweatshirt and walking out the side kitchen door, to the outside of the house.