By June the scratched-glass skies in Sycamore seemed larger than oceans. Time, too, stretched wide. Unlike most kids from school, who went to Peck’s Lake with twelve-packs smuggled from the Circle K, Jess, Dani, and Paul spent their days off at a mellow river spot on the Overton property, a clearing under a giant sycamore with a rope swing hanging from one of its large limbs. They started calling themselves the Onlys—a club of only children, but only for the three of them, fuck you very much. They carried an assortment of sandwiches and chips, sodas they cooled in a shallow part of the river. They hauled along a crappy tape deck that sometimes ate their cassettes, making them cuss as they pulled out the shiny entrails and rewound them with pens and pinkies. When they got hot, they grabbed the rope swing, climbed to the top of a small hill, and hurled themselves over the bottle-green water, angling their bodies away from the submerged shin-breaking boulder.
The first time Jess did this, when she let go of the rope, she seemed to fly upward and hang suspended, a moment wholly wild and without name. She learned to leap midair, to slow time by kicking her feet up and arching her back. When she fell and hit the water, smacking the soft skin of her inner arms, the cold stole her breath. She swam with jerky strokes to the muddy shallows, the stones slick under her bare feet. She smelled of fish and moss, minerals and silt, her hair tipped the color of butter.
Dani and Paul would take their towels and sneak into the far end of the trees, and Jess would put on her headphones—it was bad enough to be a third wheel; she for sure didn’t want to hear any of it—and lie down with her eyes closed. The music pulsing in her ears, she would fall into a drowsy state, somewhere on the cusp of sleep, and in those moments, she understood what people meant about the golden haze of youth. Out here, drying off on a towel atop the warm dirt, she didn’t think about the divorce or her dad’s new life or her mom sleeping like the dead or the fast-fading Boy. She stopped worrying about what it meant to exist, about what awaited in the wide, wide world. Wrapped in that languid heat, she stopped thinking altogether. Here, she simply was.
At the orchard, Jess spent her days outside now too. The pecans were no longer the strange pods of earlier spring, with their furry sea-anemone tufts. Now the pods were round and green and soft, protecting the inner shell where the nut formed. Jess had learned from Iris that the outer shell, the husk, was called the pericarp, and the hard inner shell was the endocarp. Prefixes, again: peri, around, endo, internal. She loved learning that. She loved knowing how fierce and tough the pods were, how many layers grew to protect the tiny nut. Her new knowledge brought a rush of pleasure that reminded her of how it felt to skip a stone: a perfect flat rock bouncing across water, defying gravity.
Dani had gotten a job at the HealthCo as a cashier three days a week, and Paul worked with Jess at the orchard, though they were often on their own. Iris put Paul on larger maintenance tasks, such as painting the shed and repairing equipment, and he handled the riding mower and weekly supply runs to Flagstaff. Jess would catch glimpses of him up on a ladder, or in the rows of the orchard, an arm, a leg, a shaggy hank of hair. They’d wave at each other through the trees. Over lunch, they talked about the orchard or college—he wanted to go to Arizona State if he could get a track scholarship, or to California, where Dani wanted to go, though he wasn’t sure about his grades for Stanford. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to study. Journalism, maybe. He liked working on the school paper. Jess told him she hadn’t decided, either—if she even went, which her mother insisted she would. You’re not making my mistake, J-bird.
When Dani didn’t have to work, she’d come and hang out at the orchard with a book, lounging on the deck in a broad straw sun hat. When she could get it to start, she drove her Squareback, its paint the deep blue-green of an aloe vera stalk, its polished chrome bumpers and tire rims reflecting the sky. She gripped the wheel tight, a pillow tucked behind her hips. Driving made her nervous—all those morons out there, racing around, heads up their butts. Fixing up an old car had been her dad’s idea. He thought they’d work on it together, hoping she’d get more comfortable if she knew the car’s mechanics, but it ended up being just him, late at night or when he had time, and really, Mr. Juarez did most of the work at his shop. Her father tinkered, Dani said with a wry shrug. He was a mad genius with Turtle Wax. A car for Dani was matter-of-fact: As long as it worked. As long as it got her from point A to point B.
When Jess rode her bike home alone, the bleeding citrus sky at her back, she couldn’t decide what she envied Dani the most for: her nonchalance about having a car; a father, working on a project for her; a boyfriend who climbed inside with her, heading off together; or the car itself, its goofy, sweet shape, its rattle and hum, its stink of oil and gas. But her envy was brief, a quick sting, like lemon juice on chapped lips.
In mid-June Jess installed a line of irrigation at the orchard. She loved digging the trench, chipping away at the hard-packed dirt with the shovel, the impact sending a jolt into her arms. The only digging she’d done before was in garden pots with her mom or tunneling in the sand at the beach in Mexico. By the end of the day, she had sweated until her shirt and the brim of her canvas hat were soaked through, and she’d drunk a gallon of water straight from a jug. As she wound a garden hose to return to the shed, she could smell the must of dried sweat on her skin. Her stomach growled, and she remembered she’d be on her own for dinner. Her mother was going on a date—with Angie’s dad, Mr. Juarez, with his mop of white hair. When her mom had told her, Jess had hugged her hard, feeling protective, happy, and bereft all at once. But happy, mostly. What if this meant she and Angie could be friends again? (Or, oh my god, sisters!) At the very least, her mom deserved a night out. Jess’s stomach grumbled again. She would make herself a giant pile of egg noodles and butter, eat it straight from the pot.
Jess glanced up to see the Squareback coming up the driveway. She smiled, hefting the coiled hose to her shoulder. Dani must have gotten off work early.
But it was Mr. Newell who climbed out of the driver’s side.
“Hello!” he called to Jess. He wore a long-sleeved oxford shirt and tie and shiny black shoes. A yellow pencil stuck out from behind his right ear. “I’ve brought Dani her car. I’m a little early.”
Jess shook her head. “Dani’s not here. She’s at work today.”
He slapped his forehead. “That’s right. I’m supposed to meet her at the HealthCo. We’re meeting here tomorrow, for dinner with Paul and his mom. It’s been one of those weeks.” He shook his head, knocking loose the pencil, which bounced on the ground. He bent to pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. He smiled at her. “You’re working hard,” he said, nodding at her dirt-streaked clothes, at the hose on her shoulder.
She dusted at her shorts and shirt with her free hand. “I installed a line of irrigation today. All by myself.” The skipping stone feeling again, though this time it was her skidding on the water, sending ripples outward. She remembered her mother teasing her on the day they’d arrived: I had a thought. What if we like it here? She grinned and shrugged.
“That’s great,” Mr. Newell said. “A budding botanist, perhaps. Or horticulturist.”