Page 3 of And Now, Back to You

“Because you have trust issues!” immediately floats down the stairs. “Something to discuss with your therapist!” she adds.

“I have! At length!” Another number ticks forward on the glowing neon clock beneath the microwave. “If you’re not down here in thirty seconds—”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she manages, breathless, her feet pounding down the stairs. A head of blond hair appears, cropped to just above her shoulders. When she was ten, she decided she wanted to be different from her twin. That manifested with a self-administered haircut in her bedroom closet that had them both crying for two weeks afterward.

She blindly picks up her backpack off the floor, her nose glued to her phone.

“Penelope. You know the rules. No phones before school.”

She holds up her hand. “There’s a reason.”

I grab my messenger bag and loop it over my shoulder. “If I have to listen to another podcast about whether you’re Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, I’m going to lose my mind.”

She spares me a quick disgusted look. “That’s because you can’t handle being wrong.”

“The only reason you’re Team Jeremiah is because of their on-screen chemistry,” I say, fired up all over again. Listening to that podcast in the car on the way to Ocean City was the worst decision I’ve ever made. Neither of us talked to each other for a full day. “If you paid attention to the damned books, you’d be Team Conrad.”

Penelope quickly shushes me as Adeline tips over to get a look at the screen. Her eyes widen.

“Oh, shit,” Adeline says. “I didn’t realize that was today.”

I begrudgingly try to look over both of their shoulders, but the phone is angled down and two heads of blond hair block my view. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”

“The turtle,” they say in unison.

“What turtle?”

Adeline reaches over and turns up the volume on the side of Penelope’s phone. A familiar feminine voice fills the kitchen.

“Welcome back, Baltimore. We’re having a shell of a time down at the National Aquarium as we await the arrival of Domino, a green sea turtle who is ready to make a splash in Charm City.”

I’d know that voice anywhere. In the dark. In the startling light of day. In my very limited sleep. In my nightmares. Clear and bright and infused with an unflagging sense of optimism, it is my own personal harbinger of doom.

I try to grab the phone, hell-bent on tossing it out the window, but Penelope shifts to the left without bothering to look up. Adeline moves with her, plucking the phone out of her hand and giving me her back, neither of them turning away from the broadcast on the screen.

I sigh in defeat. “Why are you watching Delilah Stewart?”

“Because of the turtle,” Penelope says. “And because I like Delilah Stewart.”

“You do not like Delilah Stewart,” I say, irritation making my throat feel tight. It’s one thing for all of Baltimore to be in love with the reporter from YBAL News. It’s another thing entirely for my sisters to fall under her spell.

Adeline fixes me with a look. “You’re still on that kick, huh?”

“It’s not a kick.” A kick implies something fleeting. My stance on Delilah Stewart has been long-standing and consistent. I scarf down the rest of my cruffin and chew aggressively. “She has no respect for the weather.”

“What does respect for the weather look like?”

“She uses too many puns,” I say. “And props. No self-respecting weather reporter uses props.”

Delilah Stewart approaches the weather report like a kid in a candy shop. Everything is wonderful. Nothing is an inconvenience. Unexpected thunderstorms? Not a problem. Humidity so thick it feels like you’re walking through Jell-O? Delightful.

She appears on the six o’clock news with her pretty, chestnut-colored hair and sunny smile and no one even cares if she’s right or wrong. I bet she doesn’t get six-page-long emails from Cathy over in Dundalk about how a misguided weather report caused her Buick to flood because she didn’t close the sunroof.

Never mind that Cathy in Dundalk never should have left her sunroof open in the first place.

I have a perfectly justified, professional dislike of Delilah Stewart and her methods.

“I think you’re still mad Delilah spilled pudding all over your favorite shirt,” Penelope offers, not looking up from the phone. “And because she scratched your car door.”