The Deavys Read Free

“We’ve been working with it for hours !”
    â€œYou mean playing with it. If it isn’t homework, it’s play.” A dresser whipped past his head, forcing him to duck slightly to one side. “Call it off. Call it off now!” Taking a deep breath, he assumed his sternest Big Brother pose. “Or I’ll tell Dad when he gets home. Besides, there are important things to talk about, and I’m not going to keep shouting above this wind.”
    â€œOh, all right!” Pivoting in midair, Rose cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “N/Ice, Simwan says we need to talk! Turn it off!”
    A third figure appeared, borne by the howling winds on the other side of the storm. It looked just like Rose and Amber: blond curls, slender pre-adolescent figure, and peaches-and-cream complexion. There was one way to differentiate between the three girls. N/Ice had eyes of glacier-blue, while Amber’s were golden-brown and Rose’s were the exact color of Gramma Deavy’s lavender bath soap.
    The last Deavy sibling to arrive was wearing a plain green dress with a too-short hem and sandals with high straps. On her left arm was a tiny temporary tattoo of a peculiar yet handsome humanoid accompanied by the words “Joey Entropy, I luv u” alongside a small heart that was disintegrating as bits of it fell into the accretion disk of a black hole. Her mouth flashed a slash of pale pink lipstick. N/Ice always had been partial to too much makeup, a habit that had forced Melinda Deavy to remonstrate with her sometime daughter on more than one almost occasion.
    Coming toward them, N/Ice halted in the center of the storm. Absolutely motionless in the midst of deafening chaos, she hovered perfectly still, spread her arms, and tilted her head back until it was almost touching her shoulders. Rose and Amber did likewise.
    â€œ Memnez tessray sordonn hellephant! ” N/Ice sang out, adding for good measure, “I love you, Joey Entropy, wherever you are!” While Simwan doubted this last bit had much of anything to do with tornado talk, it did seem to add a little spice to the roaring cyclonic convection that was dominating the room.
    There was a sharp crackling on a descending note, as if all three girls had opened a box of aluminum foil and were balling up pieces of it with their fingers. The tempestuous howl slumped to a moan, fell to a whoosh, and crashed to a whisper. As the winds decreased, room decor found its way back to where it belonged: the three beds to their places under the windows that looked out over the woods, the dressers back against the far wall, toys and pictures and TV and stereo and miscellaneous objects settling down in the exact spots where they had been situated prior to the frantic meteorological invocation.
    Then all was still—but with two-and-a-half twelve-year-old girls in the room, only for an instant. Rose jumped up onto her bed, landing with a contented thump that caused the mattress to bounce her several times. It was a friendly mattress, delighted to bounce. Simwan had tried it himself, several times, much to Rose’s displeasure. Amber settled herself nearby: half her attention on her brother, the other half on some teen music magazine. The pages turned without being touched as she studied them avidly.
    Rose glared irritably at the third member of the trio. “C’mon, N/Ice—quit flexing in and out!”
    On the bed next to hers, a third shape lay on her stomach with her feet in the air and her chin resting on her hands. Simwan kept blinking at her because sometimes he found himself looking right through her.
    â€œIn and out of what?” N/Ice teased.
    â€œYou know.” Rose sighed. “Reality.”
    â€œAm not,” N/Ice objected innocently. “I’m always in reality. It’s just not always your reality, nyah, nyah!” She stuck her tongues out at Rose. All three of them.
    â€œLook,” muttered Simwan