to Penny and Lucy’s shared bedroom just as another squeak peals from the violin. I pass the bathroom, where Eleanor is sitting on the bath mat, starting to paw through my makeup bag.
“No,” I say, snatching it away.
She screams. “Lucy said I could!”
I reach over her head and grab Lucy’s makeup kit off the counter and hand it to her. She lights up. With the exception of my vivid lipsticks, Lucy’s makeup, with its sparkles and an actual eyelash curler, is definitely preferable to mine or even Mom’s. At least according to the four-year-old of the family.
With her own bedroom being used as the ear-torture station, Lucy has set up shop in our parents’ room. I open the door and find her sprawled out on the bed, her cell phone to her ear.
“Where are my headphones?”
“Hold on,” she says into the phone, before holding it against her chest. She shoots me a hateful look. “What?”
“My headphones. Where are they?”
“How should I know? Go away.”
“This isn’t your bedroom.”
“Mom doesn’t care.”
Anger is boiling under my skin now. Is it so hard for her to answer a simple question?
“Lucy, you always take them without asking. So where are they?”
“I don’t know!” she yells. “Check my backpack!”
I spin on my heels. I’ve barely stepped back into the hallway when I hear Lucy griping to her friend, “Seriously, my sisters are such pains.”
And yeah, maybe it’s hypocritical, given that I did just complain about this exact same thing only a few minutes ago, but at least I had the decency to keep the thoughts to myself. Either way, I’ve reached my limitation on goodwill.
I pause just outside the door and squeeze my fist shut.
“Hello? Jamie? Hello?” says Lucy, her voice rising. Then she lets out an exasperated groan. “Great. And now my battery is dead. Thanks, family!”
I poke my head back into the room with a serene smile. “That must mean you have time to look for my headphones.”
She finds them in her backpack and hands them over with an icicle glare.
I’ve just returned to my bedroom and gotten settled into my bed when I hear the front door open downstairs.
“We’re back!” Dad yells. “And we come bearing gifts of food!”
Mom follows this up with her own shout, as if Dad had needed a translator. “Girls, it’s dinnertime!”
Ellie squeals and dashes down the stairs, which must mean that Dad and Jude were going out to get something good, because usually it’s nothing but griping when she gets called to the dinner table. Penny, Lucy, and I follow with less enthusiasm. Lucy is still scowling.
Penny seems oblivious that there’s been any conflict at all. “Ooh, Blue’s Burgers!” she says when we reach the kitchen. “Yes!”
Mom and Dad are at the counter, gathering napkins and pouring drinks. Jude is pulling baskets of french fries and cheeseburgers from a collection of white paper bags and setting them out on the table. “Wow, Ellie,” he says, with a genuine Jude smile. “You look like a movie star.”
She beams, showing off the streaks of sparkly purple eyeshadow around her eyes and cheeks. She actually looks like she’s been in a bar fight with a fairy godmother, but she seems so pleased with herself I can’t bring myself to say so.
“Thought we should do our part to support one of our community staples,” says Dad, sitting down and taking one of the burgers from Jude. “They sure have been getting a lot of bad press lately, with all those billboards getting tagged.”
My eyebrows rise as I take my seat. “More than one?”
Dad nods. “Five or six, I think. Someone wrote Lies on a bunch of them and drew sad faces on the cows. I guess there’ve been rumors going around that Blue’s is getting their meat from some awful farms where the cows are all crammed together and fed slop or what have you. All I know is that Blue’s Burgers has been around since the sixties, and they are just as delicious now as when I was a kid. Don’t know why anyone would go after them, of all places. It’s hard enough for a little family-owned place to stay in business without people trying to tear them down.”
“Honestly. What’s wrong with some people?” Mom asks as she hands out paper towels.
I unwrap my burger, overflowing with tomato and pickles and Blue’s mind-blowing secret sauce. My mouth is already watering. But something gives me pause. I think about what Quint said, how Morgan was petitioning to have the government look