Club Storyville Read Online Free Page B

firewood all the time, and, at some point, Nan must have told Ariel why he never came around.
    “When we were kids,” I quietly remembered, “Edward and I had to share everything. After the market crashed, sometimes it felt like we were sharing shoelaces.” I smiled at that, because it did often feel that way, and I never could have imagined it then, but those things Edward and I fought each other so hard over had become some of my fondest memories. “I used to say all the time I didn’t want to be a twin,” I went on as the wind died down around us, making the night less cold and more sympathetic. “Every stick of gum Nan broke in two, I didn’t want to be twin. Every bed we had to share when we stayed with relatives, I didn’t want to be a twin. Then...” My eyes seeking the darkness off the porch, it blurred with the memories of Edward’s smiling face. ‘I’ll be home soon,’ he’d said the day he left, and he had honestly believed it. “One day I just wasn’t anymore, and all I wanted in the world was to be a twin again.”
    It wasn’t the reason I wanted Ariel to hug me, because I quit pretending I could stand what was happening and I was a mess of tears and felt like my world was falling apart, but at least she didn’t hesitate. Her arms wrapping around me, they held on with all their might, and, when I could finally take a deep breath again, I could smell Ariel’s hair and the soap on her skin, and, for the briefest of seconds, somewhere in the midst of all the sadness and worry, I realized I was happy.
    O ne can feel hope dying. It’s not something anyone notices as it happens, because hope is like a star. It takes a long time to fade completely, and it looks bright, even while it’s burning out. When I stopped in the days after Scott left, though, to look for hope, I could actually feel it dimming inside of me.
    Winter wore relentlessly on, and nothing changed for the better. Scott was training to fight a war that felt like it would never end, Nan was growing sicker, Ariel went back to the distance she liked to keep, friendly, but not overly affectionate, and the chores were the same, day after day, week after week.
    There was life happening all around me, but no one was living. It felt as if we were all just biding our time, and for what, I wondered. Until Scott shipped off to war? Until Nan died? Until the war ended and ‘all right’ changed again? In those days, it felt as if hope was something that belonged in storybooks, not in the real world.
    I had read tales of the Roaring 20s, but it was hard to believe I had been around during those years of plenty. Just shy of seven when the stock market crashed, the only life I could remember had been careful spending and rations. I had grown accustomed to the fact we would always have more than most people, but never excess, that there would always be enough, but never more, and that was exactly how life felt. Everyone just existed, no one thrived. We got by on what we had, and stopped dreaming about what we wanted.
    My existence was dishes, and laundry, reading into the nights, helping Mama tend the house, and going to visit Nan’s room, which was the closest I came to escape from monotony. I stopped thinking I might go to college one day when the war was over, that I would get my own apartment in the city and build my own life.
    I didn’t think I would ever do more than what I was doing, I didn’t think things were ever going to change, and I didn’t think I was special to anyone, especially not to Ariel. She was so much more than me, this classy, educated, capable creature who could survive North or South on her own, while I was just terrified of losing anyone else, despite the fact I still had Nan and Mama and Daddy right there with me.
    Though I thought about Ariel a lot, more than made sense, what she was doing when I didn’t see her, what she was thinking when I did, I couldn’t imagine Ariel thought about me at all, that she would