Calliope nodded and ducked out of the room. She stood just outside the door, trying to catch her breath. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t an envious person. She didn’t get jealous or angry over what other people had, and yet hearing her friends laughing about their happiness and joy at being in love physically hurt. Negative emotions only clouded reality and set one on the wrong path. She should be rejoicing in her friends’ good fortune at finding love, not wishing for it herself.
Not when she knew it would never be hers.
Tears she didn’t realize she’d shed dotted her cheeks and she swiped them away, then shook her head to clear her thoughts. She was being ridiculous. She didn’t need what they had. She did fine on her own. Just as her grandmother had. These weeks were meant to be a celebration of life, of love and the promise of all that was good in life. She would not dwell on what she couldn’t control.
She padded down the hall toward the lobby, where she found Charlie and Stella curled up in the bay window seat, a book clutched between them. “Girls? Time for your fittings.”
“Oh, wow.” Stella’s eyes went wide and a smile spread across her face. “You look so pretty! That dress! It has butterflies on it!” She leaped off the seat and dashed around Calliope again and again. “Oh, do you think mine looks like this? Will I have butterflies? And the color!”
“Why don’t you go in and see. Go on.” Calliope pushed her toward the hall. “Charlie?”
The little go-getter seemed quieter than usual. “Everything okay?”
Charlie shrugged. “I guess.” She made as if she was reading, but Calliope wasn’t fooled. Postponing her tea run, Calliope took the seat her sister had abandoned and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m just sad.”
“I spotted that.” Calliope nodded. “For any particular reason?”
“Simon said my ideas for the sandcastle gingerbread house won’t work and I told him that we were a team and a team means we do this together. I didn’t call any of his ideas stupid.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Calliope assured her.
“My ideas aren’t stupid,” Charlie twisted her mouth until it was as crooked as her pigtails. “But boys are.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s fair.” Movement flashed out of the corner of her eye. Xander was sitting on the other side of the window. His gaze landed on Calliope’s even as she struggled with the whole concept of competition.
“So I told him,” Charlie went on, “if he didn’t want to share ideas, then he could start his own team. Then he said it doesn’t matter anyway because we can’t find an adult to be our supervisor and that the whole thing was stupid. But you know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s afraid we won’t win. But I don’t care if we win. I just want to try. I have this really cool idea for the moat, to keep the water inside and around the castle, but Simon’s right. It doesn’t matter ’cause no one will help us.”
Calliope offered Charlie a weak smile and swallowed the unfamiliar lump of guilt. The entire event had slipped her mind. “Why haven’t you or Stella asked me to help?”
Charlie frowned. “Stella said you wouldn’t do it. She said you don’t like things that put people against each other.”
“That’s true. But in this case I could make an exception, seeing it’s the two of you.” Since a competition didn’t usually involve two of her favorite children arguing. Never mind the fact that by doing so they were proving her point about competition, she had it in her power to help the situation. Whether she agreed or not shouldn’t matter.
“Charlie—”
“You know what?” Xander stood up and came around his chair to join them. He stooped down in front of Charlie and brushed a gentle hand across Calliope’s knee. “My grandfather used to tell me that intention is the most important thing when it comes to competition.”
“Xander,” Calliope warned.
“Stay with me here.” He grinned. “If all someone wants is to win, then they aren’t really paying attention to the real task, which is to build a great gingerbread sandcastle. All they’re focused on is the end result. That gives you an advantage, Charlie.”