Chapter 4: YARON

Vee’s house was located close to Longfellow Creek Central Forest. It was a huge property that had belonged to her father’s family for generations. The lush trees completely blocked the entrance, hiding the old building from anyone who happened to be around.

However, the big house was falling apart, and the front yard was so unkempt that it looked like a jungle when you walked through it.

“Here, Yaron. Help me with this.”

Vee placed a roll of tape, a pair of scissors, and a stack of old magazines in my hands. We headed to the back of her house.

The wooden table was littered with markers and clippings.

“What are you doing?”

“A travel diary. For when I leave. I’ve written down places, cheap motels, tips ... don’t you think it’s great?”

We sat down and she showed me the dress she had been working on for the past few weeks. She had sewn it herself, joining pieces of colored cloth with fishing line. She was holding her hair with a red bow.

The diary was an old notebook that Vee had decorated with lots of glitter and stars of different sizes and colors she had cut out from the magazines.

Inside, the pages were a chaos of colors, words, outfits cut from fashion magazines that Alison, the girl who washed hair at the hair salon, gave Vee when they got too old for her clients. To the common eye, it was nothing more than a children’s diary that would end up forgotten in a drawer as soon as its owner grew up a little more.

However, since it was Vee, I knew it was something much more important. It was a dream wrapped in tissue paper. Even more, it was a hope for survival. A chance to be happy to hold on to. On its cover, the title sparkled, covered in blue glitter. I realized that I also had traces of it on my fingers and even on my eyebrows.

“The Extraordinary Life of Vee Noir,” she read aloud.

“Noir?” I asked her.

“It means ‘night’ in French. That’s going to be my name when I become famous. The best fashion designers are from France. Hart is too common, Noir sounds much better. No one will know where I came from. I’ll be a mystery.”

I looked at the crooked letters and frowned. As years flew by, Vee’s fantasies and desire to escape grew, and so did the sadness in her eyes. As she grew up, her expectations of achieving her dreams diminished. She was ceasing to believe. Evangeline Hart, the bravest person I knew, was beginning to falter and let fear and doubts materialize in her head.

I couldn’t allow it. As Barnaby had ordered me the day he showed me his barn, I couldn’t allow it to happen. I needed Vee to continue believing in herself, in her dreams that her life was really going to be extraordinary.

In that moment, I promised myself that I would do everything possible to help her. I was going to miss her when she left, she and Daniel were my best friends, my only true friends, but I would never put any obstacles in the way of her getting everything she wanted.

“It’s very nice, Vee.”

Her smile hid that halo of hopelessness. “How is Piggy?”

“Hungry.”

We laughed. Piggy was the name she had given her piggy bank.

“Here, I have a little more than a dollar for her lunch.”

I took the coins out of my pocket and placed them on the table. Vee looked at me with a sweetness that was unusual in her, usually harder-than-a-child’s gaze should be.

“Thanks, Yaron. Now, cut out Kate Moss’s face.”

I looked at the image she gave me and blushed when Vee laughed at me when she caught me with my eyes fixed on the model’s breasts. “Why do you want me to cut out her face?”

“Because I’m going to replace hers with mine. When I’m rich, I’m going to buy that dress she’s wearing. Look, I paired it with these gloves.”

She showed me a picture of some elbow-length gold gloves. They were so elegant that, if she wore them with that sheer minidress, they looked outlandish.