Brave Warrior by Ann Hood Read Free Book Online

going sailing,” she said brightly. “With Bruce.”
    His mother had on a baseball hat, and her hair, pulled back into a ponytail, popped out the back of it. She was not a person who wore baseball hats.
    “Where’s your sister?”
    “In her room. She threw up.”
    “Oh, dear. I’d better take her temperature.”
    Felix shook his head. “She thinks Dad has a girlfriend.”
    His mother averted her eyes. “Uh-huh.”
    “Wait. Does Dad have a girlfriend?” Felix asked.
    “He has a close female friend, I think, maybe, yes.”
    “Is that the same as a girlfriend?” Felix demanded.
    His mother finally looked up at him. “Yes,” she said. “But honey, that’s what happens when people get divorced.”
    “So I’ve heard,” Felix said, feeling weird. In his mind, even though his parents had been divorced for almost a whole year, he still pictured them together somehow. He knew that was dumb, but he couldn’t help it. They were his
parents
. They belonged together.
    “I guess she’s not going to go swimming, then?” his mother said.
    “Neither of us are,” Felix told her. “Great-Uncle Thorne uninvited us. He wants this to be a date or something.”
    “A date!”
    “Yeah,” Felix said, heading to his room to think.“Apparently everyone is in love around here.”
    “Well,” his mother said brightly, “it is spring, you know.”

    Bitsy Beal lived in a mansion almost as big as Elm Medona. It had been built in 1898 by Lorne Allan Adrain, a railroad tycoon, and his wife, Zuzu, who was herself extravagantly rich. Zuzu decorated the house with more gold leaf and marble than any other mansion in Newport. Then, bored with it, she had Lorne build her another mansion right next door, and decorated that one entirely in orange, her favorite color. Bitsy’s father, who was an oilman from Texas, bought the orange mansion for his first wife in the 1980s and the one next door for his second wife ten years later.
    When Maisie learned that, she’d said, “Isn’t it totally weird to live next door to your ex-wife?” But now that her own parents were dating other people, she wasn’t so sure it was weird after all. Maybe the kids from that first wife were just relieved to have their father nearby, even if it did mean having to live next door to a new wife and Bitsy.
    Maisie looked over at the orange mansion whileshe and Felix waited for someone to open the door to Bitsy’s. Inside that house were Bitsy’s stepsisters, who were in high school and had somehow survived their own parents getting divorced and dating and remarrying and even having another kid. She tried not to imagine having Bruce Fishbaum’s hockey-star kids as her stepsister and stepbrother, but the thought crept into her brain, anyway, and made her shudder.
    “No one is going to understand your costume,” Felix told her for the millionth time.
    He had on a bright yellow tuxedo jacket and blue bow tie and an oversize green top hat. Maisie was certain just about everybody was going to be the Mad Hatter. But she would be the only one clever enough to dress as one of the March sisters from
Little Women
. She smoothed her long dress, which was also green but a pleasant shade, like moss, and had dozens of tiny buttons down the front. Her shoes also had buttons. She’d found them in the trunk in her closet, too, along with a little hook to button all those buttons.
    “They will when I explain it to them,” Maisie said. “March Madness.”
    Felix shook his head, disgusted. He’d been meanto her all afternoon. If Maisie didn’t know better, she would have thought he didn’t even want her to come to the party.
    As soon as they walked inside, Felix slipped away from Maisie. He made his way through the crowd of kids in the room called the Gold Room because it had more gold leaf than any other room, so much that it absolutely glittered. When he found Lily Goldberg, who was dressed as a tulip, he joined her at the buffet table. It was filled with miniature