The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,64

Thalia said. “With this blouse and your casserole and brownies for props, I bet I can get invited down the rabbit hole.”

“You mean we can get invited,” Laurel said. “We, Thalia.”

Thalia sat up, too, the laziness dropping out of her body. She was suddenly all business. “Not to regress to junior high, Buglet, but may I remind you that Bunny likes me best?”

That was true. Thalia had always been a big hit in Victorianna, mostly because Laurel had asked her to be.

When she and David had first moved in, the homeowners’ association had assigned Trish Deerbold and Mindy Coe to stop by with the traditional muffin basket. Laurel, freshly married, hadn’t started dressing David. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that he wouldn’t mind or even notice if she threw out most of his clothes and replaced them. That day he’d been wearing the big black shiny clodhoppers that Laurel called his grampa shoes and a frayed pair of khaki high-waters he’d probably had since high school. His hair had stood up in wild tufts. He’d wanted to carry in his computer equipment himself, but the movers wouldn’t let him on the truck. Something about insurance. He’d practically yanked himself baldheaded, watching them unload his components. The moment one of his boxes had cleared the ramp, he’d made the movers hand it over until he had them all piled up on the driveway. When Trish and Mindy had arrived, he’d been toting them down to his basement lair one by one. Laurel, nervous and slightly queasy, had to physically step in his path to get him to stop long enough to say hello. He’d hardly spoken three words, but it had been enough for them to hear New Jersey in his accent. Then he’d gone back to muttering and dragging boxes.

Laurel, pregnant, tired from the long move, had meant to say, “Those are for his job. He wants to move them himself,” but she’d accidentally said “hisself,” like Daddy did. She’d blushed and corrected herself.

Mindy had put a friendly hand on her arm. “Pregnancy brain! I remember those days. How far along are you?”

Trish Deerbold had leaned all her weight onto one hip and eased herself back a step, as if bad grammar might be catching. She couldn’t get away fast enough to tell her friends about the new neighbors, the Autistic Yankee and his wife, Illiterate Trash.

After, Laurel had been rolling the word “bitch” around in her mouth, readying to release it the moment Trish Deerbold was out of earshot.

David had spoken first, saying, “Nice neighbors. Do all the muffins have nuts?” with no irony.

So she’d swallowed it and then ended up crying, only for a minute, that night on the phone with her sister. Thalia, who already had plans to come over and see the new house, immediately wanted to escalate. “I’ll black out one of my front teeth and put up pigtails. I can mow your lawn in Daisy Dukes and high-heeled sandals. We’ll see how Trish the Dish likes that,” she’d said.

Laurel had scrubbed at her eyes with her free hand and made a noise halfway between a sob and a giggle. “I almost wish you would. But don’t. I think that other woman could become a real friend, and she’s right next door. Try to blend, okay? You can make people like you when you try.”

“Do you want me to make them like me? Or do you want to make me like them?” Thalia had asked, edgy, but Laurel had been too pregnant and too weepy to suss out double meanings and snipe back. She’d sniffled into the phone, and Thalia had at last said, “You win, Pitiful Pig, but only because you’re breeding. I’ll blend.”

Being Thalia, she’d perversely set out to dazzle the very woman who’d been unkind to Laurel. She’d gone to neighborhood bunko costumed in elegant sandals and a clingy knit dress that made her look like a length of dark ribbon. She’d stationed herself by Trish Deerbold’s elbow and tossed off sotto voce one-liners about every other woman in the room, cruel but accurate and blackly funny. Trish Deerbold and her coven had eaten Thalia up with spoons. Watching Thalia shine them on was like seeing a devious peacock peck and coo its way into the center of a smug flock of fat-breasted pigeons.

Barb Dufresne wasn’t part of what Thalia had dubbed the “Deerbold Bitch Triumvirate.” Barb wasn’t close to anyone, as far as Laurel knew, not unusual for a closet