“What’s the shaking season?” Jess said.
“That’s how we get the nuts out. Shake the trees. Used to be we whacked them with big sticks. Now we have a tractor with a long mechanical arm, although last season it kept seizing up and we went back to sticks.” She shrugged. “Something’s always needing to be fixed around here. It’s a long season. The buds will break soon, in April, and we’ll be busy making sure they stay healthy and grow right. In the fall and winter, we’ll start staying open late on the weekends, selling bags of nuts and pies for the holidays. Sundown at the Orchard, we call it. I’ll definitely need your help then.”
Jess walked behind Iris through the trees, almost skipping to keep pace with the bald pinball woman. She tried to determine the smell: a lemony tang, combined with wet dirt and sun-heated grass. The buds will break soon. The shaking season. The words flitted through her mind, and goose bumps rose on her arms.
On Jess’s second weekend working at the orchards, as she addressed envelopes for the monthly sales flyer, a young man in a tank top and nylon shorts jogged past the office window. Paul Overton, she guessed. He was tall, several inches taller than her, as Iris had said, and whip-thin. He had dark curly hair, unruly as a fern and hanging to the middle of his neck, now plastered to his sweaty forehead and cheeks. As he passed the window, he lifted the hem of his damp shirt to wipe his face, and Jess glimpsed his lean, muscled stomach. The sight made her mouth soften, a nervous flick in her belly. She remembered the Boy, his warm flesh against hers, the flare of his hipbones under her fingers, before she tamped down the memory.
About a half hour later, Paul came into the office. He’d showered, his mass of wet hair dripping onto a dry T-shirt and shorts. He lifted a hand in greeting.
“You must be Jess,” he said. “I’m Paul. My mom said you started working here.”
“That’s me,” she said.
“How’s it going so far? Do you like it here?”
“The orchard? Or Syc-to-my-Stomach?”
He laughed. “We call it Suck-a-more.”
She grinned back. “Noted.”
The bell on the office door dinged, and Jess turned to greet the customer. Dani Newell stood in the doorway. Jess blinked, confused. What was Dani Newell doing at the orchard? She had started to call out a greeting when Paul grinned. He stepped forward and pulled Dani toward him, lifted her right off the ground and almost to the ceiling, her tiny feet dangling, her giant glasses knocked askew.
Jess looked away from their embrace, trying to hide her surprise. Dani Newell was his girlfriend? In ten million years, she never would have guessed they were a couple. Caught up in his hug, Dani laughed, red-cheeked, so different from the wound-tight girl who sat across from her, avoiding eye contact. Even her hair had loosened, the sides falling around her face.
Paul dropped her to the ground, and they whispered to each other. Jess pressed a stamp on an envelope and smoothed its ridged edges.
Dani said, “How are you?”
Jess looked up, and Dani was staring straight at her. Me? she almost said. She sat up straighter. “Fine.”
Dani said, “I hear you scared the hell out of Marci Tennant.”
Jess rubbed the stamp, wondering if this was a trick of some kind. She gave a tentative smile. “I don’t know. I guess. She definitely hates my guts.”
“She’s an idiot,” Dani said. She shook her head, pushing her glasses up her nose.
Jess smiled for real then. “Blithering,” she said. “She and her wicked scrunchie minions.”
Dani nodded, the corner of her mouth quirked. As Paul took her hand and led her toward his house, she turned and waved at Jess. “See you at lunch then.”
Jess waved back. “See you.” A lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard on it. Seeing. To be seen. She pressed her thumb hard on the stamp.
The next day at lunch in Ms. G’s classroom, Dani sat at her desk again, wrapped up in her reading, and for a moment Jess thought nothing had changed. She moved toward her usual seat.
Dani spoke without lifting her eyes from the book. “There’s a chair here.” She pointed at the desk next to her. Jess saw then she’d angled the desks. So they could talk.
Jess said, “Sure.” She slid into the desk and dropped her bag.
Ms. G watched them and nodded. “About time. Thought I was going to have to issue a written invitation.” She smiled and returned to her grading.
Dani kept reading, and Jess peered over at her book.
“Maus? For Mr. Manning?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Me, too.” Jess pulled the books from her bag.
“I figured. What do you think?”
“About the book? It’s great,” Jess said.
Dani looked up, her eyes large and serious behind her glasses. “No, don’t be facile. What do you think?”
Jess tilted her head and leaned back in the desk, stretched her long legs. She shrugged. “I think it exposes the largeness of the evil through the smallness of the detail, through its attention to moments. I think it doesn’t flinch. I think Art Spiegelman is a genius. Does that meet your approval?”
Dani smiled her hooked smile. “Fucking A.” She launched into her own analysis, gesturing with her hands, her owl eyes bright. As she spoke, she held out a baggie full of chocolate chip cookies. Jess reached out and took one. Biting down on the cookie, she wished she had something to offer in return besides a handful of browned apple slices and some crumbled pretzels. She chewed, content not to speak, to listen, to hear the happy thump of her heart.