“Folks honor the fallen around here. There's a whole museum dedicated to them.” I didn't mention the Fallen Soldiers was also the scene of my dad's Ridley-induced suicide attempt a few months ago.
I looked over at Liv from behind the wheel of the Volvo. I couldn't remember the last time there had been any girl except Lena in the passenger's seat.
“You're a terrible tour guide.”
“This is Gatlin. There isn't all that much to see.” I glanced in the rearview mirror. “Or just not that much I want you to see.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“A good tour guide knows what to show and what to hide.”
“I stand corrected. You're a terribly misguided tour guide.” She pulled a rubber band out of her pocket.
“So I'm more of a misguide?” It was a stupid joke, my trademark.
“And I take issue with both your punning and your tour-guiding philosophy, generally speaking.” She was working her blond hair into two braids, her cheeks pink from the heat. She wasn't used to the South Carolina humidity.
“What do you want to see? You want me to take you to shoot cans behind the old cotton mill off Route 9? Flatten pennies on the train tracks? Follow the trail of flies into the eat-at-your-own-risk grease pit we call the Dar-ee Keen?”
“Yes. All of the above, particularly the last bit. I'm starving.”
Liv dropped the last library receipt into one of two piles. “… seven, eight, nine. Which means I win, you lose, and get your hands off those chips. They belong to me now.” She pulled my chili fries over to her side of the red plastic table.
“You mean fries.”
“I mean business.” Her side of the table was already covered with onion rings, a cheeseburger, ketchup, mayonnaise, and my sweet tea. I knew whose side was whose because she had made a line between us, laying french fries end to end, like the Great Wall of China.
“‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ ”
I remembered the poem from English class. “Walt Whitman.”
She shook her head. “Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings.”
I should've known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost's poems or twisted them into one of her own?
We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we'd made — Mrs. Ipswich (Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow (Classic Pinups of World War II), which we had given to his wife because he wasn't home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.
“I can't believe it.” I wadded up my napkin. “Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?” I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.
“Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It's a wonderful combination, so —”
“Hypocritical?”
“Not at all. I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?”
“I thought that was a cookbook.”
“Not unless Delilah's cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips.” She waved a fry in the air.
“Fries.”
“Exactly.”
I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn't point out to Liv that Delilah's devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.
“So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?” I changed the subject.
“I'm mad about it.” Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I'd already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketball player at lunch. She didn't seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especially since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.
“So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?”
“I don't know.” I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn't about to share any of them.
“Come on. Everyone has secrets.”
“Not everyone,” I lied.
“There's nothing at all beneath your paper?”
“Nope. Just more paper, I guess.” In a way, I wished it was true.
“So you're rather like an onion?”
“More like a regular old potato.”
She picked up a fry and examined it. “Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry.” She popped it into her mouth, smiling.
I laughed and conceded. “Fine. I'm a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tell.”
Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. “That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah.”
“You caught me.”
“I can't promise anything, but I will tell you that I know the librarian. Rather well, it turns out.”
“So you'll hook me up?”
“I will hook you up, dude.” Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I'd known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.