“Well, I’d like the same,” I say, looking from him to the saw.
“B, if something were going to happen between you, with either of them, I think it would have happened already. They live on one planet. You live on another. You should find someone who is your equal.”
Either of them? He’s not jabbing at me like Fifty. Not making a sexual comment just to make one. He’s flinging open two doors instead of one. It’s not something I can respond to yet. It’s too fresh. I thought when he said he wanted to tell me something, it would be about him. “Why do you care if anything happens?” I say with more bite than I intend.
“I don’t,” he snaps back in a way that screams I do.
He called me B, the letter racing from his lips. I like that he sees the differences between them and me. But I have never thought myself unequal.
Half a football field away, Woods and Janie Lee round a bend in the trail, come into full view. His unruly hair falls so he has to brush it out of his eyes; hers, a straightened black drape, frames a heart-shaped face. Her arm’s casually looped around his elbow; he’s bent slightly, listening intently. They are a homecoming poster. I have to find something else to see.
Woods yells a greeting, which we ignore. Perhaps because they’ve interrupted something. Perhaps because we’re hell-bound to remove the saw. They’re still trumpeting out a pop song that will lodge in my head all day. They’re louder. They’re happier. They’re coming closer with each step. Frustrated, I grab the wooden saw handle and plant both feet on the tree and pull.
“That’s a bad id—”
I fly backward through the air. I’m flat on my back in the middle of the trail, saw in hand. Sudden laughter tumbles from my belly. Davey throws himself down next to me, hands balled around his mouth like a child from cackling so hard. It takes us a moment to grow still and quiet. His head lolls toward me. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I roll sideways and lay my temple against the soft pillow of earth to see the apology in his eyes. They are blue—piercing, sorrowful—blue. “I am too.”
He doesn’t blink. “You know I meant you’re better than them?”
I sidestep this compliment. “And you know you can trust me with unpopular opinions.”
“She likes him and he likes her and you like them,” he says, as if it’s a mystery.
I flatten myself against the ground, wishing this were quicksand and I could disappear. His pinkie taps the ground. I feel the reverb. Cream and butter beams of light illuminate the tree we abused with the saw. I slip my hand into his and stare through the tinted lenses of my sunglasses. “She doesn’t like him,” I say. “She thinks she loves him. Maybe.”
“And you’re confused.”
“Because . . .” Does he know?
“You can’t tell which of them you love most anymore.”
I hide my face inside my shirt. “Let’s not use the love word, okay?”
“If that’s what you want.”
He’s compliant because I asked, not because I’ve changed his mind. He sounds sad. And I suppose he is. A preacher’s daughter should be comfortable with the L word.
He says, “I think there’s a place where love equals history and a place where love equals the future and a place where love is just love and it doesn’t go away no matter whether you get it back or not. Figuring out the difference—”
“Is impossible,” I finish.
The singing is now nearly over the tops of our heads. Carefully, without discussion, we unclasp our fingers. There’s no way to know from Woods’s expression if he sees or not, because he’s too busy busting our balls about lying down on the job. “We’re slaving away out here and you two are making forest angels.”
I say, “Being reprimanded by two people singing show tunes who haven’t broken a sweat doesn’t make me hop to my feet.”
Davey and I separate enough to claim our own pieces of ground. We swing our legs and arms about wildly until we’ve moved the brush as if it were snow. While I’m still moving, I argue, “We’ve already done some serious work.”
Woods looks at Davey, glares at me. Looks at Davey, scowls at me. “Oh, I can tell.”
The tone warrants raising my sunglasses and a flash of my lizard eyes. Davey tenses. The staredown ends with Janie Lee’s totally obtuse statement. “Aw, Billie, you look really happy.”
Part of me takes flight and lands spritelike on a limb far above the forest, keen to observe the truth.
There is Woods. There is Janie Lee. There is Davey. There is me.
I do not know what type of love we are—history, future, or infinity—but we are love all the same. Welded strangely together like something in my garage. Like Guinevere or the unicorns. And we are just as unfinished.
9
With the semi-success of Operation Service Project, Dad offers me a short reprieve. Janie Lee is invited to a dinner of Cheetos, pizza, and Mom’s very un-southern tea. When Mom and Dad start debating church politics at the table, Janie Lee and I escape to my room.
She takes the desk chair and opens her violin case. I settle on the bed with a box of Legos. For an hour, she plays, I build, and we are happier than two baby goats chewing on the same chunk of grass. We’ve always done silence as a deep conversation. In that span of time, I don’t think of the future, or the past—I let myself breathe present air.
We are here, and I am comfortable.
Then, we are temple to temple watching Saturday Night Live. Neither of us is a fan, so we flip the channel until we find Betty White.
And we are here, and I am comfortable.
At eleven, Mom knocks, and tells us not to stay up too late. “Church tomorrow, girlies,” she reminds us. “Want me to flip the light?”
We do. The alarm clock’s blue glow illuminates Janie Lee’s shadowy image. She’s wearing large-frame glasses, and pajamas I detest with holy passion. I smell honeysuckle—her face cream—that reminds me I am not particularly clean after a day of hard labor. I carry myself off to shower and return to find her still awake.
I grab a blanket I call the Sheep and toss it over her. Skip this step and experience says I’ll wake up stripped of covers and shaking. I bury myself next to her, and she says, “You remember sophomore year?”
Sophomore year refers to one day in particular. My twin bed seems like a king. “Hey,” I say warmly, and then her head, her tears, are on my chest. “No one thinks about that anymore.”
The Tuesday after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, thirty-five Otters Holt students found Marie Miller, Janie Lee’s mom, on a desk in first-period chemistry. Naked. With Mr. Klinger. Also naked. The formaldehyde pig, Tog, was also a casualty. As were two Bunsen burners.
“Why are you even thinking about that?” I ask.
Janie Lee finds words. “Because she’s why I don’t date. Why I’m afraid of asking Woods to the dance. Afraid of everything when it comes to relationships.” She has never said these words before. Nor the ones that come after. “What if I’m like her? What if I miss out on someone like him because I can’t—”