Pixie Piper and the Matter of the Batter by Annabelle Fisher

Author:Annabelle Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ye Olde Story of Pip

After Rain left, Pip punched the mattress. “I hate it when anyone leaves!” she exclaimed.

“Does it happen often?”

“Every August when everyone goes home except Wyatt and me.” Pip turned Rain’s bracelet around and around on her wrist. That’s when I noticed the bruises on the inside of her arm. They were black-and-blue marks about the size of a nickel.

I touched one with a fingertip. “How’d you get these?”

She pulled her arm away. “Just some friends fooling around.”

That didn’t seem very friendly to me. But I’d been hit in the face with a softball by someone I thought was a friend. Sometimes things were more complicated than they sounded.

“Do you know Wyatt and I have been living here most of our lives?” Pip asked. “Our mother died when I was three days old and our father had to go back to the navy. He knew that he was somehow related to the Goose Ladies—he remembered meeting Aunt Doris once when he was a kid. So when she showed up and said they would take care of us while he was away, our dad was relieved. Then his ship was lost at sea.”

My stomach dipped the way it did when my mother talked about losing her parents. “I’m sorry, Pip,” I whispered.

She shrugged. “It’s okay. When we were little, we were happy enough. But now it’s lonely being the only kids around here for most of the year.”

I nodded. All I could see out the window were fields and trees. They were beautiful, but there wasn’t another house around for miles—which meant there were no neighbors. “Didn’t you go to school, though?” I asked.

“At first the aunts tried to homeschool us. But they were really busy baking everyday cakes and wishing cakes. Wyatt got ornery and I cried a lot. They figured out that we needed friends. So they decided to send us to Buttercrunch Elementary and Middle School. When school got out, we used to stay in town until Aunt Doris could pick us up.”

I nodded. “At Garrie’s Grocery.”

Pip’s eyebrows rose up. “You know Garrie?”

“She was here last week when everyone was out delivering cakes. Aunt Esperanza didn’t seem too happy to see her.”

“Well that’s no surprise,” said Pip, shaking her head. “The Aunts have always been really careful about not being seen in public or letting anyone near Chuckling Goose. That’s why they’ve got those signs on the road that say ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ and ‘NO TRESPASSING’! They never even let a school bus come here.”

“Taking a school bus is overrated,” I said. “Some days it’s like riding with a tankful of sharks.”

Pip smiled. “When we were little, Aunt Doris would drop us at Garrie’s Grocery. It’s not far from school, and Doris delivered cakes there anyway. She arranged to give Garrie five extra cakes a week in return for her taking us the rest of the way to school and picking us up. We stayed at the store until Aunt Doris took us home. I didn’t mind.

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