“Oh,” said Ginger. “I understand. I always want more flowers.” She gestured around her property, already crammed with garden beds and groupings of small trees and shrubs. “Is there a lot of sun in the yard?”
“Just along that side of the fence,” said Rachel. “The rest is blocked by the trailer house and the trees.”
“Jake,” said Ginger. “I trust you have a notebook on you.”
Ginger knew Jake all too well. He removed a small sketchpad from one of his khaki pockets, and a pen from another, and Ginger began to dictate a list. He made sure the sketchpad only opened to the last third of pages, the blank ones—there were secrets to be kept.
* * *
On Monday mornings, the Ben Franklin in Ellis was thick with housewives. The garden supplies had been arranged out in the parking lot, in small huts made of clear plastic.
Jake and Rachel filled the cart with five bags of soil, two trowels, four pairs of gardening gloves, and three flats of flowers, neatly divided like black ice-cube trays. They picked out the healthiest looking Johnny-jump-ups, echinacea daisies, and vines of clematis. Rachel bought two trellises, per Ginger’s instructions.
“Can I spray-paint them?” Jake was a big fan of spray paint.
“Of course,” said Rachel.
They added six cans of gold spray paint to the cart.
They returned to Quinn, and Jake scooped out the rest of the dead leaves and dragged the trellises out into the driveway to paint.
As they dried, he returned to the garden beds, and Jake and Rachel knelt along the fence line, clearing spots for the clematis, shaking out the contents of the heavy bags of soil, stirring it in with the old dirt.
They finished planting the daisies just as the sun went down.
Jake asked for permission to have dinner at Rachel’s house. Krystal noted all of the black earth that stained Jake’s knees and shirt, and seemed pleased. He was dirty, like any other normal twelve-year-old boy. Jake nearly ran into his bedroom to change clothes.
Rachel made beans and rice and homemade tortillas, while Jake fussed over the gold spray paint on his hands.
After dinner, Jake insisted on doing the dishes. They could hear the thunder, and then the rain drummed on the roof of the trailer.
“I have an idea,” said Jake. “But I need to go home first.” He dried his hands carefully on a dish towel as the thunder boomed again.
“What if they don’t let you come back?”
“I’m sneaking in. Do you have a ladder?”
Rachel and Jake stood in the pouring rain, as she propped Bucky’s stepladder against the wooden fence. He climbed over and snuck in the back door. He raced back to Rachel’s house through the rain, as it had turned into a deluge, the sound roaring on the metal roof.
“Get your boom box,” he demanded as he stood in her living room, dripping. “And some scarves.”
She followed his commands, and he plugged the stereo into the living room outlet. The scarves she offered up were gauzy and purple. He switched on the lamp he had given her, and draped the scarves over the shade.
“Turn off the rest of the lights,” he demanded, and as she walked to the kitchen, Jake put a cassette tape in the boom box and hit the rewind button. The living room was cast about with their shadows, the light in the room as deep purple as the sky outside.
“Now what?”
“Close your eyes,” he said. He pushed play. “Open them! Dance party!”
Rachel stared at him, until the strings kicked in.
“It’s wonderful!”
“It’s Madonna!”
Jake framed his face with his hands, stood perfectly still. He waited for a moment, and then twirled those hands above his head and stopped again in midpose. “Vogue” blasted throughout the house, the volume shaking the objects on Rachel’s brick altar.
When the music played, Jake forgot he was a twelve-year-old boy who lived in a trailer house. This was the sound of supermodels. He always thought that he resembled Linda Evangelista anyway, although he was much, much shorter.
The light from the lamps shone on the gold paint that remained on his hands as they twirled glamorously, so fast that they seemed to be on fire.
“Pose!” He pointed at her, and she marched forward, gave a few -run-way stomps, and stopped, looking behind her, as if she had dropped something. This was Naomi Campbell’s over-the-shoulder smolder. Rachel knew her supermodels, and that made Jake love her even more.
And they danced, as the trailer shook with the storm and their choreography.
The Flood Girls versus the Boyce Beauty Stop
Laverna loved night games, how the bats would swoop down from the sky at the balls, and how the dark made Red Mabel even more frightening to the other team. Laverna knew this game would not be marred by fisticuffs or catcalling. Tonight they were playing the Boyce Beauty Stop, her favorite team in the league.