The best thing about Davey in this moment: he doesn’t expect me to say anything else. We pack the rest of our stuff and reemerge as if nothing has happened.
We are annoying as hell on the way home. We honk the horn, which sounds like a dying mule. Twice, Woods pulls the Suburban over, and we run laps around it like hooligans. When he reaches town and drives into Molly’s parking lot, he makes us take a picture saluting her. We are idiotic, happy. I’d like to drive too fast or run through a cornfield with my arms in the air. I am alive and weightless.
“We should bottle this,” I scream.
“No,” Woods says. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“We should share it,” we say together.
“You two are fucking annoying,” Fifty says, pushing at Woods’s head and rolling his eyes. “We’re gonna have to do some new project, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, you are. And I know just the one,” I say.
And there we are, back in my garage, everyone pressed around tables, tearing pages from old, destroyed books, like I did for Belle. Mash straddles the chair backward and whispers, “I gotta get a girlfriend so I stop getting drafted for this shit.” I tell him we’d just draft her too, so he should get right on that.
He pops a Dorito into his mouth, smiles like he knows who he has in mind, and starts folding papers according to my example. “You ever think you maybe have an oral fixation?” I ask. He must have the metabolism of a hummingbird.
His lips search for the straw and he whispers, “You ever think you’re fixated on my cousin?”
I deserved that.
I lean in to Mash’s ear. “Did you know he was straight all along?”
Close to us, everyone is folding paper. We could so easily be overheard, but he is careful, angling his mouth where no one will read his lips. “Are you straight, B?”
“I’m complicated,” I answer.
“Yep,” Mash says, his shoulders already falling before they ever got totally into the shrug. “Guess I knew that already.”
“Secrets. Secrets,” Woods calls, not wanting to be left out.
Mash handles that straightaway. “I was asking if she had more chips in the house.”
Here’s a thing about Mash. He’s everyone’s secret keeper. When he does choose a girlfriend, he’ll have her for the rest of his life.
Here’s a thing about Fifty. He always asks the obvious question. “So are there?”
“Are there what?” I ask, dumbly.
“More chips, asshole,” he says, scoffing.
“I’ll go see.”
“I’ll come with you,” Janie Lee says.
This is the first time she is voluntarily placing herself near me in front of my parents. We have to start somewhere. Mom and Dad are watching/not-watching TV in the living room. Janie Lee flips them a strange wave, and I announce that we’re getting chips.
“What are you all up to out there?” Dad inquires, and Janie Lee blushes.
“Hexagon things,” I say.
Dad, who is in a jovial mood, snuggles closer to Mom and says, “Please do not burn the garage down.”
“There are two things for sure in this world. One, I’ll die in these boots, and two, I will never hurt the garage.”
“There’s my girl,” Mom says.
“Your girl,” Dad repeats. “Yep. But she’s my girl tomorrow for KickFall.”
I am her girl when I’m burning things. His girl when I’m winning. At least they’re excited about the game. No amount of excitement keeps him from watching Janie Lee and me too closely, suspiciously.
All we have are those colored veggie-stick things that taste like air. Mash won’t care, but everyone else will. “Popcorn?” Janie Lee asks, and I agree. We wait on the microwave to ding. As the kernels heat and pop, she says, “Was I weird just then?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay.”
“We’re okay?” she asks.
The microwave dings. “I am if you are,” I say. And then, I don’t know why, I say, “I kissed Davey. I’m telling you because I didn’t want to lie about it.”
She backs toward the dishwasher, grips the counter behind her. I am studying her expression, and she says, “Are you saying I lied about something?”
“No. I just want to level. Because we’re us.”
“Oh. Okay.” The oh is painfully spoken; the okay shows some recovery. “Thank you. I’ll be glad to be us again.”
I wonder which us she means.
She takes the veggie sticks, and I snag the popcorn, and we gift the Hexagon with these spoils. Fifty’s napping on one end of the Daily Sit. He snarls only a little, either at waking up or my lack of flavorful provisions. He goes back to sleep and the rest of us fold and tape for hours.
I did the right thing in telling her, but that shocked look plays in a loop. When I walk her to the car, she asks to play her violin to me over the phone when she gets home. That tells me her state of mind: keyed up. The Lindsey Stirling piece she plays is flawless. That tells me the state of her heart: aching.
When she picks the phone back up, and thanks me, she says, “Billie, you looked beautiful this morning as Belle. Thank you for inviting me to the Con.”
I tell her I’ll meet her the next morning at the elementary school, and she says good night. I don’t think either of us sleeps.
31
There are so many cars in the elementary school parking lot we have to park them in the outfield. Woods has dressed Fifty in an orange vest and handed him a flag to direct traffic. Everyone in walking distance leaves cars at home. People line the sides of streets because the town doesn’t have sidewalks except in front of the school. Mothers hold small sticky fingers and tote Cheerios and sippy cups. Fathers hoist toddlers up to rest on their shoulders and bump strollers along the road.
The weather is gorgeous. There’s wind coming in off the lake so crisp and strong you can practically smell the fish being caught and cleaned. Mash cut the grass one last time this morning, and the smell of alfalfa clippings rises to my nostrils, tempting me to believe it’s spring instead of fall. Everything is fresh and vivid. We sold eight hundred tickets in advance. Woods swears we’ll get two hundred more at the gate. Maybe three hundred.
My family lives nearly half a mile away, but the three of us walk over.
Mom whistles. “A great turnout, baby.”
“Your mural is amazing,” I say. She has spent the last week making her own special addition to the elementary school brick wall. Sixty-five years of Harvest Festivals are represented in various ways. The scene is amazing. Norman Rockwell meets Shepard Fairey. I would like to examine all the small details, but as we near the field, Janie Lee begins to play the national anthem on her violin, reminding me we are a little late to the pregame festivities. I pivot toward the flagpole, hand over my heart until the last note.