“Don’t you mean attractive?” She snorts, and I’m over being annoyed with her for nagging me last night about what happened on the Fourth. Shea’s got eyes the color of sunlight through brown sea glass, and his hair’s maybe three shades darker, a little long on top so that it falls over his brow when he isn’t wearing a hat, which isn’t often. Today he’s wearing a washed-out denim shirt with the sleeves ripped off and a pair of dark Wranglers, and if it weren’t for the fact that I know he’s got a personality to match one of those black pincher bugs that crawl out from under our back steps, I could almost forgive myself for the mistake I made on the Fourth of July.
Nobody has extra gloves. I suck it up and keep raking, but I’m losing ground to Mags, and that stings worse than the blisters on my palms. My hands will callus and toughen up eventually, but not before quitting time tonight, and that means money slipping through my fingers. Mags fills her fifty-third box and starts on the next. I haven’t filled forty yet.
Jesse blows out early, getting the okay from Mr. Wardwell with that wicked charm of his. At five o’clock quitting time, we girls are getting ready to leave when who should come barreling up the road in his truck but Jesse. Boy’s got balls coming back here when he’s supposed to be at the doctor’s or wherever. Mrs. Wardwell stares at him like she’d like to drag him around by his ear, but it’s quitting time, so there isn’t much she can do but bark at her husband to start loading up.
Jesse idles in front of us and rolls down his window. “Here.” He tosses something out the window to me. It’s a pair of yellow work gloves; they’re beat-up and too big, but I grip them to my chest like they were made of spun gold. “Knew I had an extra pair at home somewhere.” He nods at me and drives up to get Shea and Mason before I can thank him.
None of us speak as we get into Mags’s car, and the silence is heavy. I want to gush about Jesse Bouchard, how everybody has him all wrong, but Nell speaks first. “Those things aren’t even new.”
“God, Nell.” I jerk around and give her a between-us look that makes her shrink back against the seat. “Don’t be rude.”
Mags turns right onto 15, heading toward the east side of Sasanoa and home. “Listen to you. ‘Don’t be rude.’ Didn’t know I had the Queen of England riding shotgun.”
Heat comes into my face. Sometimes Mags is so much like Mom it makes me crazy; they both have a way of cutting through bullshit. A natural-born bullshitter like me doesn’t stand a chance in this family.
Nell and I sulk as we cruise down Main Street, passing the post office, Gaudreau’s Take-Out, the Irving gas station, the Hannaford supermarket, and a dozen quiet streets where little kids have marked up sidewalks with pastel chalk and dogs snooze in porch shadows. Sasanoa’s sleepy, all right. Sometimes you want to check to make sure it’s still breathing.
Running parallel to Main Street is the wild and woolly Penobscot River, and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge spanning it. Of the thousand or so construction workers who built that thing, our dad was the only one who died, all because of fifty dollars and a tinsel Christmas star. Hardly a place in town you can’t see the bridge from, sunlight gleaming off the concrete support posts during the day, red safety lights blinking at night.
Tom Prentiss was a crazy man, though; wasn’t a chance that he wouldn’t take, Mom says. Which, Libby always adds, is why he didn’t live to see forty. If you want to get Mom talking, ask her about Dad. Ask her about midnight rides on his old Indian motorcycle when he was three sheets to the wind, or brawling at the Bay Festival truck pulls, him bleeding at the mouth, spinning one guy around by his shirt collar with another locked under his arm, laughing all the while.
Mags turns up Second Street. She doesn’t say a word; she doesn’t have to. I start grinning. Nell leans between us, realizes where we’re going, and whoops right in my ear. “Last one in the water buys at Gaudreau’s!” She drags her shirt off over her head, hardly noticing when a guy on a bike sees her and almost takes a spill into a blue hydrangea.
FOUR
THE QUARRY ROAD is dirt, winding up through the woods until you reach a cable blocking the way with a sign reading Prvt Prop. Ours is the only car, so we race out into the clearing, stripping off our clothes.
Mags and Nell stop at their bras and underwear, but I take it all off, ignoring their catcalls as I scramble down the granite ledges to the dark, oily water and cannonball right in. It is cold—kids like to say the Sasanoa Quarry has no bottom—and I keep my eyes squeezed shut until I surface, gasping and pushing my hair back.
The girls follow me, and for a while all we do is swim and splash and sigh as the sweat and field grit rinses away. It’s like floating in a deep bowl down here, listening to birdcalls echo off the rock walls and shouting, “Hell-o,” just to hear your voice bounce around. Even though the sign says private property, lots of us party here, lighting bonfires and daring each other to jump from the highest ledge.
Nell climbs out first, wringing her hair and picking her way along the ledges as Mags and I tread water. “Are you going to keep those gloves?” She watches her feet as she walks, arms out for balance. Her underwear is sensible, her bra white cotton with a tiny rosette like you’d see on a little girl’s undershirt. Anybody who was opening the front clasp would have to touch that tight satin swirl, have a second to think about what they were doing, and then keep right on digging. I swallow bitterness and tell myself I won’t think about that. I promised myself I never would.
“Yeah,” I say. She purses her lips and shakes her head, saying mm-mm-mm. “What’s your problem? Jesse’s never done anything to you.”
“He’s nasty.”
“He is not. Name one nasty thing you’ve seen him do.”
“I don’t mean he picks his nose. He’s not good enough for you.” She keeps her gaze down, like she knows that if she looks at me, she’ll have to remember our secret, and realize that she’s got no place tearing the wings off what I got going with Jesse.
“Half the girls in school could tell you if he’s a boxers or briefs man,” Mags says.
I mull it over. “Jockey shorts.”
“Forget it, Nellie.” Mags climbs out of the water. “She won’t be happy until she’s felt him all over to make sure he isn’t missing any parts, and then she’ll ask us why we didn’t try to talk her out of it.” I’d never say this out loud, but Mags is built like Libby: five foot ten and full-bodied, her breasts and hips straining against her sports bra and boy shorts. I’m smaller and curvy like Mom, but I’m strong.
Nell walks in a careful line, swinging one arm at her side. She stops, positions herself, and says, “I want to thank you all so much,” in a big, clear voice.
Mags grins and heads up to the car to grab something for us to dry off with. I swim to the ledge and fold my arms on it, playing my part as I pretend to talk into a microphone. “How does it feel to be up here in front of all these people, Miss Michaud?”
“Like I’m with my friends. I can’t say how much your votes mean to me. I promise to do all I can to make my town proud.”
“And how do you plan to use your scholarship money?”