I kept thinking about how he’d kissed my forehead as we said good-bye. It had to be the nicest breakup ever. Not that it made it any easier. But still.
I rolled over and pulled the pillow tight under my head, closing my eyes. I tried to distract myself with other songs: the Beatles, my current favorite CD, old 1980s hits from my childhood. But Dexter’s voice kept coming back, slipping easily over the words I knew too well. I fell asleep with it still playing in my mind, and the next thing I knew it was morning.
August
Chapter Twelve
“Come on! Who wants to KaBoom?”
I looked at Lissa. It was over ninety degrees out, the sun was blasting hot, and somewhere over to my left, a barbershop quartet was singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was official: we were in hell. “Not me,” I said. Again. Two weeks into her job shilling a new sports drink/caffeine jolt soda, and Lissa still couldn’t accept that I didn’t like the taste of it. And I wasn’t alone.
“It’s . . . it’s like . . . fizzy lemonade,” Chloe said delicately, swirling the tiniest sip of it around in her mouth. “With a weird cheap cola aftertaste.”
“So what do you think?” Lissa asked her, refilling the row of plastic cups on the table in front of her.
“I think . . .” Chloe said. Then she swallowed, and made a face. “Eeeech.”
“Chloe!” Lissa hissed, glancing around. “Honestly.”
“I told you, it tastes like crap,” I said, but she just ignored me, piling more KaBoom merchandise—plastic Frisbees, T-shirts, and plastic cups all emblazoned with the same swirling yellow sunshine logo—onto the table. “You know that, Lissa. You don’t even drink this stuff.”
“That is not true,” she said, adjusting her KaBoom name tag, which said Hi, I’m Lissa! Want to Boom? I’d tried to point out that this could be taken in other ways than sampling products, but she’d only waved me off, so self-righteous in her quest to spread the KaBoom message to cola drinkers everywhere. “I drink this stuff like water. It’s amazing!”
I turned around and looked behind me, where a family of four was passing by, hands already full of Don Davis Toyotafaire freebie merchandise. They didn’t stop, though. In fact, the KaBoom table was pretty much deserted, even with all the free stuff Lissa and her coworker, P.J., were giving away.
“Balloons, everyone! Who wants a KaBoom balloon?” Lissa shouted out into the crowd. “Free samples, folks! And we’ve got Frisbees!” She picked up one of the Frisbees and hurled it across the parking lot. It sailed evenly for a little ways before banking off and missing one of the new Land Cruisers by about a foot before crashing to the pavement. Don, who was talking up some customers by a row of Camrys, glanced over at us.
“Sorry!” Lissa said, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Easy on the Frisbees, slugger,” P.J. told her, picking up one of the plastic sample cups and downing it. “It’s still early.”
Lissa smiled at him gratefully, blushing, and I realized Chloe’s hunch about her feelings for P.J. were, in fact, correct. KaBoom, indeed.
The Don Davis Motors Toyotafaire had been in the works for weeks. It was one of the biggest sales bonanzas of the year, with games for the kids, fortune-tellers, Slurpee machines, even one very tired looking pony that was walking circles around the auto bays. And, right this way, in the shade by the showroom, local author and celebrity Barbara Starr.
Normally my mother never did publicity except when she had a new book out, and she now was at a point in her writing when she didn’t even want to leave her study, much less the house. Chris and I had been used to her schedule for years and knew to keep quiet when she was sleeping—even if it was at four in the afternoon—to stay out of the way when she passed through the kitchen mumbling to herself, and to understand that we’d know when she was done when she pushed the typewriter carriage to the left one last time, clapped her hands twice, and let out a loud, very emphatic, “Thank you!” It was the closest she came to religion—this one, final expression of gratitude.