The compliment floated unclaimed over the table.
“So, hey, listen, I meant to tell you guys this earlier, but…” Joey breathed in, stiffed up, moved the tray out of view. “Uh, it’s clear that the Blyton Summer Detective Club is back. This is not just a reunion; you guys are here on business.”
Kerri and Nate and Tim looked away, two in modesty, one in genuine indifference.
“And I just wanted to say that…I mean, I know you guys are a man down. I read about Peter Manner. Real shame.”
“Didn’t know my obituary made it into Tractor Drivers Weekly,” Peter quipped, rolling his eyes.
“And, well,” Joey went on, “all I wanted to say is, if you guys need an extra hand, you can count on me. I don’t have your experience, but…I have wheels. And a boat!” he remembered. “My dad sometimes goes fishing downriver; we can truck it to the lake. So…there’s that.”
Kerri and Nate eyed each other, deciding who would go this time.
“Uh…we already have a car,” Kerri said.
“I know, I know, it’s just…Look, I know you guys and I weren’t best pals. I mean, fuck, I know I was a pain in the ass. But…I respect what you used to do here. Shit, without you patrolling the streets Blyton Hills’s gone to hell. So, anything you need, okay?”
He was looking at Kerri now. And Kerri was looking back. For more than two seconds straight. More than four.
“Gee. Thanks, Joey.”
“NO!” Andy capslocked.
All heads turned toward her, and Andy stared back at them as the only speaker for sanity at the table usually does.
“No way! What the fuck, man, you think you can come thirteen years later and brush it all aside with ‘I know we weren’t best pals’? You abused us! You went for any low blow you could! You picked on Kerri for being a nerd, on Nate for being a wimp, on me for being butch and dark-skinned and a girl—you were an obstacle to every single case we worked! And now you think everything’s cool because you got over it? You’re over it because you were on fucking top in the first place!”
Kerri and Nate sat through this speech, neglecting the state of their mouths. Tim ducked under the table.
Joey stuttered, defenseless, before fighting back with surprising strength. “Shit…Andy, I’m sorry! I really am, but…I wasn’t on top! You were the good guys, I wasn’t! I envied you; I handled it badly! Jesus, I was a kid!”
“How is that an excuse?!” Andy howled. “Why do all bullies think they can get away with ‘I was a kid’? Guess what: I was a kid too, and I didn’t make other people feel like shit! You were not a kid, you were a cunt!”
Peter hollered, covering his mouth as if someone who mattered could hear him.
JOEY: Okay, I was! I was a cunt, I’m not anymore! I grew up! Have you grown up too, or do you want us to fight like kids all our lives?
(Andy grabs Joey’s apron, pulls him down, sinking his face into the lunch special.)
The others got up at that point, Nate to dodge the splashing beans, Tim to eat what had landed on the floor, Kerri to spare her parka and stop Joey from retaliating if he tried, which he didn’t.
“Right, time to go,” Kerri said. “Joey? We appreciate the offer, okay? Don’t call us, we’ll call you. (To the others.) Let’s go.”
She put a ten on the table and they left, pulling Tim away from the free meal.
“Okay,” Joey called, rice snowing off his nose, under the restaurant’s unsympathetic stare. “Any time.”
—
They were pulling over at Kerri’s five minutes later. Tim jumped for land like the silence inside the station wagon was too thick to breathe. Andy came out right after him, and didn’t feel any better. The same static filled the air around them, not so much a storm brewing as a nuclear airstrike waiting to happen. It felt cold and yet she was sweating; air was still and yet it spoke in her ear. She could sense the firs and pines eyeballing them warily as they walked up to the little house.
The inside had barely grown accustomed to human presence. Kerri dropped the keys and headed upstairs.
“Hey, guys,” Nate said, “we gotta talk about—”
“Give us five minutes,” Andy cut him off, tailing her.
“But—”
“Nate!” she threatened/implored. “Five minutes, please!”
She ran upstairs, where the door to Kerri’s room had just slammed.
Peter plopped down on the sofa.
“Sure, take all the time you want,” he called after her. “Whatever. I mean, we were just talking about Nate bringing a warlock back to life, but please, go deal with your girly business; make sure we move that subplot forward. Do your girl things, talk through it, hug it out, try on each other’s bras.”
(He and Nate stay there, eyes fixed on the upstairs balcony.)
PETER: Do you think they’re actually doing that?
NATE: Shut up!
Tim stood to attention, wondering, Sorry, was I speaking?
—
Andy knocked softly on Kerri’s door and pushed it a couple inches.
“Hey.”
Kerri was sitting on her bed, orange hair humming brightly in the twilit room. The wardrobe was still blocking the window.
Andy didn’t dare to walk in uninvited. “Are we okay?” she asked.
Kerri looked up, caught off guard, and gave a yes just as automatic and hollow as such a question always engenders. Then she took some time to think, searched her heart, and gave the second answer.
“Yeah, we’re okay. Come in.”
“You want me to move the wardrobe back?”
“No, it’s fine there.”
Andy sat down beside Kerri. The sight of the paisley quilt alone comforted Andy more than anything else. That room worked miracles.
“You shouldn’t have been so quick to smite Joey,” Kerri said.
“We don’t need him.”
“We’re a man down. Joey’s got a boat. And he can shoot. His father used to take him hunting. He’s familiar with guns.”
“That…that is the last quality you’d look for in anybody!” Andy protested. “You hate guns!”
“Yes, I do. There’s a one in a million chance I’d want to hang out with a gun freak. And this is that one situation.”
Andy considered the point, and in the meanwhile said something else. “I don’t want to replace Peter.”
“Me neither,” Kerri said. “But you know one thing Peter could do that none of us can? Shoot.”
“I can shoot.”
Kerri drew a blank.
“I can,” Andy insisted. “I did air force basic training, remember? I learned how to shoot.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because you don’t like guns.”
Tim wandered in, sniffed the carpet, the foot of the bed, the magic in the air, and chose to lie down.
Kerri had frozen at the childish, self-evident straightness of that last answer. She scoffed, looked down, all while Andy stared like a six-year-old.
“Do you always drop lines on women like that, or am I just silly for walking under them?”
Andy doubted for a second, then quickly stated, “You’re not silly.”
“Right,” Kerri said. “If I start to retrace our conversations this week, will I find many moments like this?”
“Please don’t,” Andy begged. “Please, please don’t.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “I won’t. Just for truth’s sake, you’re smoother than Peter.”