He aimed a thumb over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “She always this polite?”
Isobel gave him a weak smile. It faded quickly, and she squeezed his arm. “What did Mom say?”
He nodded as though he’d been expecting the question. Then he lifted his mug to his lips again, taking another small sip of the steaming liquid before answering.
“She said we’d better dress warm.”
“UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, HUH?” GWEN asked after taking a noisy slurp of her cocoa. Leaning forward out of her chair, she reached across the table and grabbed a handful of peanut M&M’s from a green-and-red-striped candy dish. “I’d have thought you’d want to go somewhere a little bit closer to home.”
Sitting next to Gwen, Isobel opened her mouth to respond, but it was her mom who cut in, glancing up from her stack of newspaper coupons. “Isobel’s just going to look,” she said. “She hasn’t decided yet.”
Isobel shut her mouth again and returned to stirring her own cocoa with a long-handled spoon. Every now and then, she glanced at the box that held the necklace Gwen had tried to give her. Isobel had set it on the clear wooden space between their holly-decorated place mats in an effort to communicate to her friend that she had by no means agreed to take it.
“Hey,” Gwen said. Perking up, she aimed her half-eaten candy cane at Isobel. “In that case, you should come with me to look at U of K in the spring. And University of Louisville, too. They’re close, and they’ve both got killer athletics departments. Right, Mr. Lanley?”
“Mm,” her dad mumbled into his mug.
“I’m pretty sure I’m goin’ to one of those two,” Gwen went on, waving the candy cane back and forth with one hand, fishing for more M&M’s with the other.
Isobel’s dad gave a low grunt. Pushing away from where he’d been leaning against the kitchen sink, he swiveled and poured the dregs of his cocoa down the drain. “This Maryland joint’s starting to sound better and better,” he muttered.
Isobel’s mom shot him a glare. Then she turned to Gwen, who now held the handful of M&M’s close to her pursed lips. She sucked the candy into her mouth one piece at a time, with a high-pitched whistling noise that cut off into a quick, loud spurt of crunching.
“Do you know what you want to major in yet, Gwen?” her mom asked.
“Criminal justice. I’m thinking about becoming a lawyer.”
“Ha!” shouted Isobel’s dad. Her mom sent him yet another disapproving scowl.
Gwen chuckled. “Just kidding, Mr. Lanley,” she said as she chewed through a widening smile. “I knew you’d get a kick out of that.” She turned back to Isobel’s mom with a shrug. “I’ll probably go for a double major in business and costume design.”
“Double major. Wow,” her mom said. “Why costumes?”
“I like to design clothes and sew, but I’m not much of a fashion guru.”
“Could have fooled me,” her dad commented.
Gwen went on, pretending like she hadn’t heard. “I like more extravagant things. Stuff you wouldn’t normally wear.”
“Really?” Isobel’s mom said. Smiling now, her attention snagged, she crossed her arms over her spread of coupons and leaned forward.
Isobel thought about the frilly pink dress Gwen had altered for her and made her wear to the Grim Facade. She remembered that Gwen’s reasoning behind the pink had been to make it easier for Varen to spot her in the sea of black-clad bodies. Currently, the tattered garment lay hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, bloodstained and covered in ashen grit. Isobel hadn’t had the heart to throw it away. Instead, like Varen’s jacket, she’d entombed it beneath layers of less conspicuous garments. It lay sleeping in its compartment, preserved yet unseen, a constant reminder of where she had been, what she had faced, and who she had left behind.
“What kind of shows do you want to design for?” Isobel heard her mom ask.
“Hopefully I’ll be doing movies one day,” Gwen said. “As far as staged shows go, though, I’d like to do stuff like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Alice in Wonderland. Plays that leave a lot of room for artistic interpretation.”
“Any musicals?”
“Omigosh. My Fair Lady. The embassy ball is a costume designer’s dream.”
“Oh, that is a good one.”
Until this moment, Isobel had only been half paying attention to the conversation. Now, though, as she looked between Gwen and her mother, Isobel had to marvel at the way Gwen operated, how she could spin any given situation in her favor. How she could play the innocent card right along with that brash attitude and still win every time.
“Actually,” Gwen said, “now that I think about it, the horse-race scene would be even better.”
“Oh! That’s my favorite part!” Isobel’s mom said, giggling out of nowhere. “When she starts yelling at the horse?”