I did the fish face, her favorite—cheeks sucked in, flapping my hands by my head like fins. If it were just me and her in her room, I’d dance around in a circle and go “glub glub glub” to really complete the scene, but as it was, I just wiggled silently in my spot. Her face split into a smile, and she made a happy sound.
The guy grinned down at Harper, and then he followed her gaze to me.
I froze mid-flap.
Kyle sidled up beside them then, putting his phone away.
“Hey, Sophie!” he called, slinging the diaper bag over his shoulder and reaching for Harper. “Nice face!”
I lowered my hands and schooled my expression into something other than fish face as they approached. The guy’s grin had faded into something neutral.
“Don’t think you two have met yet,” Kyle said, gesturing to the guy. “This is my brother, August. August, that’s Sophie, she watches Cady and Harper.”
“Nice to meet you,” August said.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I replied.
One corner of his mouth ticked up.
Kyle adjusted the strap on the diaper bag. “Still on for Tuesday night? Heather’s gotta take Cady to a dance thing, so it’ll just be you and this one.” He smacked a kiss to Harper’s cheek.
“Yup, sounds good.”
“Awesome, see you then!”
They headed inside. August grabbed the door for Kyle and Harper and glanced back at me as they passed. There wasn’t enough time for me to make another funny face or to smile devastatingly—not enough time to decide between the two, if I was even capable of the latter—so we just sort of looked at each other for a second.
And then he was gone.
Brit came back out clutching a brown paper bag a few minutes later. “I’m not sharing,” she said, while simultaneously extending the bag toward me.
I reached in and grabbed a handful. “Did you see Kyle in there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t know he had a brother.”
Brit shoved a few fries in her mouth and chewed unceremoniously. “Yeah, neither did he, apparently.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Just something I heard.” She wiped her hands on her shorts. “So it’s Friday. What do you think? Should we go to Tropicana? Gutter balls and matching shoes?” She sang the last part, which was customary. It was a line from the one and only song ever written about our hometown. “Gave You My Heartland” by Megan Pleasant outlined a series of activities in Acadia day by day—Mondays at Miller’s for beers, Tuesday by the lake, so on and so forth. Fridays were bowling, and although I did love the Tropicana— “It’s actually Saturday.”
“Fuck, really?”
I nodded.
“Guess that’s why I got fired,” Brit said, and grinned, not nearly as sheepish as she should have been.
two
Ciara:
You know, no one here understands the Yum Yum Shoppe
People are like, if your town had a McDonald’s why didn’t you just go there??
Mcflurry blah blah blah
Vanilla cone blah
I feel like you can’t comprehend the Yum Yum Shoppe until you have experienced the Yum Yum Shoppe
Its tacky wooden decorations
The window display
Mean Kim the manager
Sophie:
The weird sodas
Ciara:
YES
Do you want Dr Pepper? You’re out of luck TRY SOUR CREAM AND ONION SARSPARILLA INSTEAD
Sophie:
Don’t forget the 14 flavors of ice cream
Ciara:
Oh the 14 flavors
How could I?
They were so carefully curated
So hotly debated around town
Sophie:
We have to go when you’re back from school
Dad can do that thing where he considers every
flavor and then orders vanilla
Ciara:
“It’s a CLASSIC, you can’t DENY a CLASSIC”
WELL THEN MAYBE START BY NOT DENYING THE CLASSIC, DAD
MAYBE SAVE US THE DELIBERATION
Sophie:
If you could pick a 15th flavor for the list, what
would it be?
Ciara:
Something really niche
Like chewed up gum
Sophie:
Mothball
Ciara:
Old hat
Sophie:
Would new hat taste better than old hat?
Ciara:
No old hat tastes better
Like felt and history
Sophie:
What if the flavor wasn’t a flavor at all?
What if it was a feeling?
Ciara:
Ooh okay. Like the feeling when you’re little and you start a brand new box of crayons
Sophie:
Night before Christmas excitement
Ciara:
Ineffable sadness
Sophie:
Lolololol
Ciara:
COME TO THE YUM YUM SHOPPE FOR EVERYONE’S FAVORITE SEASONAL FLAVOR: INEFFABLE SADNESS
Sophie:
It pairs great with old hat
“Ready?”
“Hm?” I looked up from my phone, closing out of the text thread with my sister.
Terrance Cunningham stood before me, backpack on. “I said, are you ready? For. All. Of. This.” He punctuated each word with a robot move, adding a flourish at the end, and a weird hip gyration.
“I’m ready for about half of that.”
“Seventy-five percent.”
“Sixty-three.”
“Eighty or I walk.”
“We’re walking anyway,” I said, pushing up off the front stoop. “And you’re bargaining in the wrong direction.”
“Always bargain up. It’s a good tactic. Throws people off.”
Although school was technically over for the year, Terrance and I had one final bit of business to attend to—the last booster club meeting before the marching band’s hiatus in June. We would reconvene the last week of June to practice for the July Fourth parade, and then there would be band camp, and then regular practices would resume.
Terrance and I were the future vice president and president of the Marching Pride of Acadia Student Fundraising Committee (MPASFC, which Terrance pronounced as “map as fuck” when there were no booster club members around, and we spelled out properly when there were). After this last meeting, we would be the present vice president and president proper, newly minted, and responsible in part for raising the funds necessary to send the Marching Pride of Acadia to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena this coming winter.
“No sweat,” Terrance had said, back when Acadia was preparing their audition for the parade and we first joined the committee—my sophomore year, Terrance’s freshman. “We only need to sell like twenty kidneys if we get picked. There are over a hundred of us. Twenty people should be willing to give up one measly kidney.”
“I mean, you and I would definitely have to step up,” I said. “As student leaders.” I was very into being an official member of MPASFC. It would look good on my college applications, and anyway, I loved the band. I wanted to help however I could.
“You know, if we pick the most hydrated people, we could probably get better prices. Like maybe only ten kidneys, if they’re super-high-quality kidneys.”
“Terrance.”
“Marcy Keane is always chugging those bottles of fruit water.” She was, and she insisted on referring to them as fruit infusions, which made it insufferable. “You know she has some high-quality kidneys.”
“She makes Matt drink the infusions too.” Her boyfriend at the time.
“There we go. That’s like forty-k worth of kidneys right there.”
Kidneys didn’t come up in the booster club meeting this evening. What did come up was the candy sale that just finished up (it raised about what was expected, but not as much as was hoped), and our fundraising strategies for the coming months: the Fourth of July barbecue in conjunction with the Lions Club (a quarter of all proceeds from food sales would benefit the band, and the members would be responsible for cleanup), the school-wide garage sale, the formal dinner, half a dozen car washes, and, of course, the fall festival.
“So twenty percent of fall fest concession and ten percent of games will go toward fundraising,” Mrs. Benson said.
Next to me, Terrance tapped his pencil absently against his notebook as Mrs. Benson talked about concession logistics. Tap tap tap. It started to take on a rhythm—tap tap TAP tap, tap tap TAP tap.
Mrs. Benson paused for a second to glance pointedly in our direction, and then resumed speaking.
Terrance looked over at me, brown eyes full of mirth, and then tapped again.
I grinned.
I had known Terrance my whole life—our moms were both teachers at Acadia Junior High. My mom taught language arts, and Terrance’s mom taught science. They had been friends themselves since high school, had gone off to college together and later came back to Acadia—first my mom, then Mrs. Cunningham, who we called “Aunt Denise.” A plastic-framed photo hung on our fridge showing the two of them in college, posing together wearing matching denim jackets, each with their hand on their hip. My mom had bangs teased to an impressive degree, while Aunt Denise had gorgeous box braids. This is a genuine moment in time right here, Aunt Denise would say when she was over, tapping the picture on the fridge. No, this is a genuine betrayal, my mom would reply, seeing as you never told me how terrible I looked with that hair. Aunt Denise would just laugh.
Mrs. Benson continued about the fall festival: “And then we’ve got the Megan Pleasant contest. Fifteen bucks to enter, but we’ll keep ten and five will go toward the prize.”