The Sisters of Nowhere

t h i r t e e n : s h o u t i n g

Marigold was up to something and Birdie knew it. What Marigold was up to escaped her.

Marigold had started volunteering to run errands more often than not and would sometimes disappear to the clearing.

Birdie suspected it had to do with Wyatt, which was a different problem entirely.

The thing was that Wyatt fit into their family like a puzzle piece. Somehow, for a reason Birdie could only imagine and would never admit out loud, he belonged with them.

But Birdie still wasn't sure about him. She'd only seen his skeleton once, which still left room for suspicion. There was something about the way he could be honest that made her think he wasn't being entirely honest at all. The way he volunteered information so he didn't have to sacrifice it.

Because he had secrets. And secrets were fine with Birdie, but if he was going to become part of their family, secrets were dangerous.

For now, though, she'd made peace with the fact that he was in Nowhere and that he was with the Penny family.

He accompanied them to church, NiNi's soda shop, and for dinner.

Whenever they had free time, Wyatt and the Penny girls trekked into the woods in search of blackberries, jumped into the big lake just outside of town and had to scrub the orange clay out of their clothes before returning home, and helped Ophelia build sets for her upcoming play.

On one of their escapades searching for blackberries, they happened upon a rope swing that arched over the deepest part of the lake.

Wyatt nearly had a heart attack when the girls started undressing without offering a warning.

He spun around to face the trees, muttering, "At least warn a guy before doing...that."

"We have underclothes on," Marigold scoffed. "We're already done, it's safe."

Wyatt turned back around with a scowl, relieved to see the girls dressed in linen shorts and shirts that hung off of them like potato sacks.

"He's blushing!" Ophelia cackled.

Birdie poked Ophelia in the stomach and said, "What? Have you never seen a pair of knobby chicken legs before?"

Marigold took the pins out of her hair and placed them carefully on a nearby stump. "He's used to seeing California girls, anyway, we're much less impressive."

Wyatt shook his head. He'd never had sisters and sometimes he was increasingly grateful for it. "I'm not used to any type of girls--California, Georgia, or otherwise. The people I associated with kept their clothes on because they were respectable company."

This made them all laugh, which he considered a victory.

He took off his sweater vest and carefully folded it up--he only had a few left after the others kept getting ruined by mud or cow manure--and placed it beside Marigold's hair pins.

When he stripped off his shirt, he noticed that the girls were the ones averting their gaze then.

He snickered. "It works both ways, you know." He mimicked Birdie's teasing voice when he said, "What? Have you never seen a pair of twig arms before?"

"Twig is an overstatement," Birdie sniffed, then cast a teasing glance at Marigold. "But I'm guessing Marigold would disagree, eh?"

Marigold was the one to blush then, which was as rare as the sun setting in the East. "Shut up," she muttered. "Let's just go swimming."