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  Lila grinned but stayed quiet. That was one of the things she loved most about these two people who’d taken her under their wing. They didn’t pry. They knew if Lila said she didn’t remember something, it meant that she didn’t want to talk about it.

  It had taken Annie a long time to catch on to that. She always pressed Lila for answers and sometimes Lila would get exasperated with her, but she had to admit, she did tell Annie things she’d never tell anyone else. She knew that Annie would keep her secrets, even from David.

  One evening the phone rang and Lila was the one closest to it, so she picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Guess what?” Annie said.

  “What?”

  “We’re moving!”

  Lila felt her stomach clench. “Where to?”

  “Louisbourg!”

  The relief was instant. “That’s not so far.”

  “Dad is in charge of maintaining the ships that come in to the harbour. Now that the war is on, it’s really busy.”

  “Won’t you be sad to leave your old house?”

  “I’ll miss it, but it’s exciting to be in a new place.”

  Lila couldn’t fathom that concept. She was a little envious of Annie, always being able to adapt to change. Sometimes Lila wished she was like her. Annie never worried about anything, and Lila never stopped.

  “The house we’re going to is right on the edge of town and it’s pretty big. You’ll be able to stay for weekends.”

  “Or you could come here.”

  “Lila, there’s nothing to do in Round Island, in the winter anyway. There’s so much more to do in town. I met my next-door neighbour Erna Jean and she’s really nice. I think you’d like her. She was telling me that on Monday nights there’s Girl Guides and Tuesday there’s Junior Orange Lodge, Wednesday is choir practice, Thursday night is Young People’s Fellowship and Friday night is party night.”

  For the first time, Lila realized that Annie wasn’t exclusively hers.

  “It sounds very busy. You’re giving me a headache.”

  Annie laughed. “Oh Lila, you never change.”

  Lila didn’t say anything, because she became aware of a cuckoo clock ticking in the background. “I know you’re listening, Mrs. Thomas.” There was a soft click and the ticking was gone. “That woman listens in on everything.”

  “Then I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll make plans to run away and say we’re going to steal money from our parents and hop on the next train out of town.”

  “Annie, you never change either.”

  Lila did go to spend the weekend with Annie late in February. Louisbourg had an outdoor rink that had real sides and a clubhouse with a pot-belly stove and music to skate by. Lila knew that Annie couldn’t wait to show it to her.

  Annie’s parents were so pleased to see her. They always made her feel welcome and wanted. They were the only other adults that Lila was attached to.

  “Look at your hair!” Annie’s mother cried. “I love it.”

  “Why do I have hair that looks like a fuzz ball and she has hair that looks like that?” Annie grumped.

  “What you lack in the hair department, you make up for in other ways,” her father chuckled.

  “In what ways?”

  “They’re too numerous to count.”

  Annie showed Lila the new house. It looked a lot like the old one. Annie’s bedroom window looked out over the harbour.

  “After dinner we’ll go skating. I want you to meet all my new friends. There’s Erna Jean and Bernice, Edie, and Myrtle.”

  “You’ve only been here a couple of weeks,” Lila marvelled. “You have that many friends already?”

  “You know me. I’m not shy.”

  Lila sat on the bed and took a deep breath. Annie sat down beside her. “But none of them will be my very best friend. That will always and forever be you.”

  Annie always knew what to say.

  They sat down at the kitchen table and Abigail served them big helpings of corned beef and cabbage. It was delicious. Just as Lila forked in another mouthful, David came in the back door, chucking his skates and hockey stick in the porch. “Am I too late for supper?”

  “Look who’s here!” Annie cried.

  For a moment it looked like he didn’t recognize her. “Oh. Hi, Lila.”

  Lila didn’t speak; she had a big lump of meat in her throat and she didn’t want to choke. She nodded her head but that was it. David turned his back on her and washed his hands at the kitchen sink. She never would have known him from the back. He’d filled out and was a lot taller than she remembered from last summer. When he sat back down at the table, he didn’t say very much, and seemed to concentrate on his dinner. As everyone talked around them, Lila had the feeling that he was annoyed with her for some reason, and that got her back up. So she ignored him right back.

  He left as soon as supper was over, and didn’t wait to walk with them down to the rink. As they hurried down the main road of Louisbourg, Lila almost had to run to catch up with Annie. Annie had always walked too fast, but lately it was very noticeable as Annie had grown several inches and her legs were the longest thing about her. She seemed older and wiser than Lila, too. When did all these changes happen? Why couldn’t people just stay the same? Lila felt her breath become ragged so she stopped for a minute. Annie turned around and saw that she’d fallen behind. She ran back.

  “You okay?”

  “Why is David mad at me?”

  “Mad at you? Why would he be mad at you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Annie dismissed it. “He just thinks he’s a big shot now that he’s fifteen. All boys are lunatics at that age. You don’t know that because you don’t have a brother, but trust me. They’re completely out to lunch.”

  Somehow that explanation helped. By the time they got to the rink, Lila had forgotten about David. It was the most exciting thing in the world to skate outdoors at night with music playing, and she didn’t want to miss a moment.

  Annie introduced Lila to her friends, and she was right. They were nice girls. Lila felt brave enough to talk to them because Annie was there. As her skates slid over the ice with that satisfying whoosh, Lila felt free. She didn’t have to think anymore. For the first time ever, she felt she belonged in a crowd. She was in sync with the people around her.

  But the moment didn’t last. Too soon she found herself bone weary and told the others that she would be in the clubhouse. Going from ice to a wooden floor was jarring. With her skates on, her legs were heavy and she was grateful that there was an empty spot on a bench by the stove, and not by David, who was also warming up. To sit and stretch her legs out was a relief. She leaned against the wall and rested for a while.

  Two boys came up and stood in front of her.

  “You must be new in town. I’d remember a face like yours,” said the first one.

  “How old are you? You look old enough to kiss,” said the other one.

  David answered for her. “She’s twelve. Bugger off.”

  The two boys moved away when David approached them. With his skates on, David looked imposing. Her heart beat a little faster when he came near her. That had never happened before.

  He sat down beside her. “Don’t let guys talk to you like that.”

  “How am I supposed to stop them?”

  “Growl.”

  Lila laughed.

  “No, the thing you have to do is pretend you’re Annie. She dares the boys to say something to her and they keep away.”

  Lila looked over at her friend screaming with laughter on the ice as her friends whipped her around. “I’ll never be like Annie. She’s special.”

  “So are you.”

  David left her there on the bench and went off with his friends. Lila watched him from the doorway as he crossed his skates over each ot
her around the turns, gaining momentum with that effortless speed and grace that hockey players had.

  Lately she was noticing boys more, and she had to admit that David was very good looking. She wondered why she had never realized that before.

  That summer the Macdonalds arrived at their bungalow, but David was missing. He wanted to stay in Louisbourg with his dad so he could hang out with his friends. Lila was a little disappointed at first, but Annie was allowed to bring Erna Jean and Bernice as guests and it became the best summer of Lila’s life. The four friends swam all day and lay out in the sun. On rainy days they stayed in and made chocolate or brown sugar fudge, eating every bit of it. They even had a taffy pull and made quite a mess, but the cleaning up was fun. While the candy cooled they’d work on jigsaw puzzles and play games.

  On the occasional gloomy day, they’d hole up in Lila’s upstairs bedroom and have a picnic lunch that Aunt Eunie prepared for them. Lila knew Aunt Eunie loved to have the girls around and hear their laughter and nonsense, so they made sure to spend some time with her.

  With the wind howling and the rain hammering against the windows, they’d tell each other ghost stories. Annie would inevitably pinch someone in mid-sentence and the resulting screams from all of them would startle the cat.

  “But the strangest thing I ever heard,” Annie said, “was about my mom and dad. It was before they were married. Dad and Mom’s brother were friends and they sometimes got up before dawn to go fishing. Mom got up and made them breakfast before they left. They told her they were going to take the boat out to Port Morien. Mom went back to bed and she had a dream that she could see both men in the water and Dad was holding up a radio. She got so spooked she called someone she knew in Morien and asked them to go down to the wharf and see if they could see a boat, and sure enough he saw the two of them floundering in the water, my dad with the radio held over his head. He went out and rescued them and they were nearly blue with cold.”

  “Is that true?” Bernice asked.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die. Ask Mom. She’ll tell you. She can sometimes sense things.”

  “I can sense things,” Lila said.

  “How?” Erna Jean said.

  Lila hesitated. “Sometimes I know what a person is going to say before they say it.”

  “We all do that,” Erna Jean said. “It’s called being observant.”

  “And sometimes I see colours around people or animals or things.”

  “Do you see a colour around me?” Bernice asked.

  “I can’t do it all the time. It just happens when it happens.”

  “I believe her,” Annie laughed. “She’s always been odd.”

  Lila threw her pillow at her.

  The rest of the time they burned their noses and shoulders picking berries on hot August afternoons, and then ran down to the beach and hurled themselves into the cold salty water to cool off. They had a bonfire almost every night, marvelling at the Big Dipper and the Milky Way in the vast and unknowable sky. They lay in the field one night and counted fifteen shooting stars.

  Only very gradually did Lila become aware that her energy was starting to wane. She tried to keep up, but more and more often, she’d beg off if Uncle Joe offered to take them to the store for treats, or the girls would head out for a hike around the point. She didn’t like letting Annie down, though Annie never showed her disappointment.

  The day Annie and her friends were going back to Louisbourg was a low day for Lila. She and Freddy walked across the field, Lila taking time to hug the big tree by the brook that ran past the Dillons’ barn. It was a touchstone, a comforting ritual. When she listened hard enough, she could hear the tree’s heartbeat.

  Annie and Erna Jean and Bernice were helping Annie’s mom pack up the car, but when they saw Lila approach, they headed straight for her. The four of them hugged each other, all of them snivelling, except for Annie. She told them to smarten up. They weren’t leaving for Timbuktu.

  Lila walked back to the cottage with them to say goodbye to Annie’s mom. That’s when she noticed that David had come with his dad to pick everyone up. He was leaning against the car with a stalk of grass in his mouth and gave her a lazy smile. It made her skin tingle.

  “I see Annie Oakley and her deputies haven’t killed you yet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you going to do when my sister leaves?”

  “Miss her.”

  “Do you ever miss me?”

  “Every day.”

  He laughed at her unexpected answer. Trouble was, ever since that night in Louisbourg, it was true.

  After more goodbye hugs, the Macdonalds and friends piled in the car and with a honk of the horn set off for home. Lila ran through the field waving at them. Once they were out of sight, Lila fell to the ground and lay on her back. Freddy came up and licked her face. She rubbed behind his ears, and he sniffed her pockets for treats.

  “It’s no fun being alone, is it? Maybe we should walk over and help Ewan with his chores.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A week later everyone was back at school and wouldn’t you know, Annie got in trouble on the first day after she yanked a skirt off a girl and locked her in the broom closet. “That’ll teach you to steal my skirt off my very own clothesline!”

  Girls used Annie’s antics to come up to David and ask him about her. It was a way of being close to him. David had his share of stolen moments with the girls in school, some more obliging than others, but what made it so damn difficult was that the only girl he wanted was Lila. He tried every which way to stop himself from thinking about her and when he couldn’t, he’d get angry and go chop wood or run to the lighthouse and back, anything to get rid of his frustration.

  It didn’t help that Lila occasionally came to spend the weekend with Annie. When she’d sit across from him at the table he did his best to ignore her, but who was he kidding? He drank in everything about her. The first time she arrived with her hair cut short, it was a jolt. To him, Lila was the lost little girl with golden curls he met on the porch steps, the one he wanted to protect from bullies like Mrs. Butts.

  With her hair short, he could see the soft curve of her neck, the wave of her hair behind her small perfect ears, the chin that quivered whenever she was unsure. But he had no business wanting her. She was his sister’s friend—though Annie, with her bony everything, still looked like a young girl. Lila was a young woman, completely unaware of her own power.

  All he could do was wait. He would be her friend, her protector, her sidekick, until that day sometime in the future when she would be more than that. The only thing in his life that he knew for sure was that he loved her. There was no getting around it, or over it, or under it. This was something he’d have to deal with forever and he wasn’t sure if he had the strength.

  David was bright, so bright that his teachers almost fawned over him, and he knew that ticked Annie off. All his conversations with teachers usually ended with, “I wonder who your sister takes after?” or “If only your sister was as focused.”

  David felt like telling them that his sister, despite her foolishness, was better than anyone else he had ever met. There was no one else he’d rather have a heart-to-heart with. She saw things and instinctively knew things before they ever occurred to him. And the thing he loved most about Annie was her loyalty and devotion to Lila. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for that girl. Which was lucky for Lila; Annie teased her friends and was merciless to her enemies.

  One day David waited outside Annie’s classroom just before the dismissal bell rang to give her a message from their mother for Annie to go over and pick up a swatch of fabric from Bernice’s mother and bring it home.

  Annie’s teacher, Mr. Hershel, always packed up his belongings to be out the door before his students. His routine never wavered. He’d pick up his briefcase, grab his hat from the coat rack,
slip on his shoe rubbers, and leave.

  David saw Mr. Hershel pick up his briefcase, grab his hat, and slip on his shoe rubbers. But he didn’t move. He just stood there, and then bellowed “Annie!”

  She had nailed his rubbers to the floor.

  Annie ran out of the classroom lickety-split and grinned at David as she flew by. She was gone before he could stop her. Everyone came pouring out of the classroom in gales of laughter. Mr. Hershel pried his rubbers loose and walked out, closing the door behind him. He saw David and shook his head, a big smirk on his face. “To know her is to love her.”

  David went to Bernice’s house to pick up the fabric. It looked like Bernice was going to faint when she opened the door.

  “David! What are you doing here?”

  “I came to ask…”

  “If I’m free on Saturday night? Yes!”

  “Uh…I need to ask your mother something.”

  Her disappointment was clear. “Oh. Come in.”

  So David stood in the hall while Bernice’s mother arrived, found out what he wanted, and went upstairs to retrieve the fabric.

  Bernice regained her composure. “Do you like oatcakes?”

  “Sure.”

  She ran down the hall and appeared a few moments later with a handful of warm and crumbly oatcakes. No bag, just the oatcakes. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to put them in his pocket or eat them on the spot. Bernice looked so enamored that he figured he better eat one, so he took a big bite.

  “Mmm.”

  “I can give you more, if you like.”

  Bernice looked like she was about to disappear again so he quickly shook his head and tried to talk with a mouthful of dry oatmeal. “No, no. This is good.”

  Fortunately Bernice’s mother showed up and he was free to go. He tucked the cloth under his arm, put his bag over his shoulder, and left with his handful of cookies. Bernice waved goodbye until he disappeared.

  The minute he walked in the door at his house, he knew something was wrong. His mother and sister were at the kitchen table and they looked worried.

  “What’s the matter?”