Storms 01 - Family Storms

has made you more mature than they are, I’m sure.”
    “I didn’t see much more than poor people struggling to eat, Kiera.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    I didn’t, but I didn’t disagree with her. If she wanted to believe those things about me, fine. Right now, it looked like something of an advantage to have her think that way about me.
    “But you can’t keep going to school dressed like a character in
Alice in Wonderland
or something,” she continued. “I’m going to give you more of my things to wear. My mother has to realize you’re not a ten-year-old, and boys won’t take you seriously if you look like you just walked off
Sesame Street.
”
    “Ricky seems to like me,” I said.
    “He’s one of us. Besides, he’s only one boy. You don’t want to become dependent upon one boy this early. That’s the whole point of our club. Girls get into this frenzy to have a relationship. Heaven forbid they not be asked out on a date or not have a date to the prom or something. We’re free of all that anxiety and pressure.” She smiled. “And it drives the boys crazy because we act so indifferent. We’re in more control of our own destinies. You see the point, right?”
    “Yes,” I said. I did see the point. What she was saying made me feel a little better about what I had just sworn to do and to be.
    Luckily, Mrs. March wasn’t home when we arrived. I didn’t have to greet her with my face full of deception immediately. We went right up to our rooms, but Kiera wanted me to come into hers after I settled in so she could choose some clothes for me to wear to school. That was where Mrs. March found us. Kiera had at least five outfits laid out on her bed.
    “What’s all this?” she asked as soon as she entered Kiera’s suite.
    “Clothes I’m lending Sasha, Mother. She doesn’t have anything really fashionable. Alena’s things are just not right for her now,” Kiera said.
    “Fashionable? I hardly think the clothes you wear to school are what I would call fashionable, Kiera.”
    “They are to me and to my friends, Mother,” she said with what I thought for Kiera was remarkable control. She even smiled at her. “You just forget what it was like to be ateenager. I’m sure your mother complained about the things you wore.”
    Mrs. March stepped closer to examine what was on the bed. “I don’t remember you wearing these things.”
    “Why am I not surprised?” Kiera said, rolling her eyes. “Sasha likes them,” she added.
    I hadn’t really expressed any opinion yet, but Mrs. March looked at me as though she had caught me in a betrayal and then relaxed her shoulders like someone accepting defeat.
    “How did the audition go?” she asked.
    “Neither of us was thrilled with it,” Kiera said. “We’re rethinking it.”
    “Why?”
    “Mother, will you ease up a little? Sasha has enough pressure adjusting to a new school, making new friends, learning the clarinet, and everything else.”
    Again, Mrs. March turned to me for a reaction. I was silent.
I’m already deep in a lie,
I thought, and felt trapped.
    “Very well,” she said. “I’m meeting your father at Palmeri for dinner. Don’t give Mrs. Duval or Mrs. Caro any grief.” She left.
    I knew Mrs. March was very upset with us, but Kiera looked as if she couldn’t care any less about it. She continued pulling clothing off hangers and tossing what she liked onto the bed with cries of “This will look great on you! This is perfect!”
    She stood back from the clothes. “You need some jewelry, too, and I have a watch you could have. Here,” she said, taking the watch off her wrist and handing it to me.
    “But it’s your watch.”
    “I have more than twenty, silly.”
    “Twenty?”
    “Those are real diamonds in it, by the way.”
    I put it on my wrist.
    “Looks nice on you.”
    She dumped a box of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces onto the bed beside the clothing she had laid out and began putting the outfits together with the jewelry. She had so much I thought she could open her own jewelry store.
    “Is any of this very expensive?” I asked.
    “It’s all very expensive. I don’t buy junk, and I don’t let my parents buy me junk, not that they would. You have nothing here that would make you ashamed to wear,” she said.
    “I don’t mean that. I don’t want to lose anything expensive. It makes me nervous.”
    She laughed. “First of all, Daddy has some kind of insurance policy on our jewelry, and second, I could