School doesn’t seem that important anymore, not with Marcus still in the hospital and me running every night with Aaron. But my mom says I’ve got to go. So I do. The pain hasn’t gone away, and it hurts, but it’s a pain I know. One that’s just there. Like a cut that can’t close, a broken bone that won’t mend. At least now I’ve gotten over that first slice, that first break.
I’ve started sitting with Monica and Tash at lunch. Aaron still sits where he’s always sat, at the football table, but I see him watching us, and I wonder if he wants to sit with us. I didn’t think Tash liked me very much, but she’s nice. Nicer than I expected her to be. She’s good with Mon too. When Mon starts crying out of nowhere, her tears falling into her French fries, getting them soggy and saltier, Tash will rub her back and position herself so people can’t really see that Monica is crying, and she’ll kinda croon to her like Mon is a baby who doesn’t know any words yet. This happens at least three times a week. Whenever it does I stare down at my sandwich till Monica’s breathing gets back to normal and she blows her nose and then she starts talking about something totally random like did we see that there’s a new baby elephant at the Atlanta Zoo or did we know that in England the Thames River is pronounced “Tems.”
Today is a crying day. Monica’s sniffling, Tash is rubbing her back, and I’m staring down at my peanut butter sandwich. I’ve been bringing peanut butter sandwiches because money is so tight I can’t afford to buy lunch. No jelly, no honey, just peanut butter on plain bread.
“Wing?” I look up and wonder what Marcus would say if he could see Monica’s puffy eyes and red nose. He’d kiss her and make it better, I know he would.
“It’s apple-picking time,” she says, and I nod, even though I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, because this is the kind of thing she says after she cries.
“Marcus and I used to go apple picking,” she says, and Tash’s eyebrows shoot up under her thick bangs. This isn’t how after-crying conversation goes, we don’t start talking about Marcus again, and she glares at me like it’s my fault, like I brought him up, when all I’ve been doing is sitting staring at my peanut butter sandwich and thinking about running. And Aaron. Aaron and running. One thought always leads to the other and back again and round and round until I remember Marcus and that thought stops all my other thoughts.
Monica is still talking. “Marcus and I would bring back apples for Granny Dee and she’d make pie. I was thinking, maybe we should go? You and me? And maybe Aaron?” She turns to Tash, whose eyebrows are still hidden. “You can come too, of course,” she offers, but Tash is shaking her head already, shaking her eyebrows back down to their normal place on her face.
“Just y’all should go,” she says. “It’ll be good for all y’all.”
On Saturday, we end up going in Aaron’s car. Monica’s car is bigger, but she doesn’t want to drive that far. She doesn’t want to drive at all now unless she has to.
The leaves in the trees along the road are fluttering in the wind. I’d say they are straight up showing off, making themselves look like red and orange and yellow butterflies. We drive and drive, and I don’t know who does it first, it might have even been me, but we start singing Marcus’s favorite songs.
By the time we get to the apple farm, we’ve been singing for over an hour, and my face feels funny from smiling so much, like my face muscles forgot what it felt like. We tumble out of the car, and I stretch my legs, which are tense from sitting so long. Monica is staring out at the fields and trees of Whistle Apple Farms, and she’s biting her lip as the wind whips her long hair all around her. I grab her hand and squeeze. She squeezes back. Aaron is next to me, holding my other hand, and I know we probably look like we’re on a poster for superheroes, but standing there, all together, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel strong.
“Welcome to Whistle Apple Farms,” says an apple-cheeked old woman from inside the squat red farmhouse. “Y’all been here before?”
Monica swallows and nods. “I have,” she says in a fragile voice.
The old woman looks at me and Aaron, eyes resting on me for just a moment longer, trying to figure out what kind of box I go in. “First time for you two?” We nod. She smiles at us as she hands us our wooden basket, telling us that we pay for what we pick on our way out. She also gives us a map that explains where all the different kinds of apples grow and what they’re good for.
“Some are good for pies, others for juicin’, and some…” She leans toward me, eyes sparkling in her wrinkled face. “Some are best right then and there.”
It’s hard to know where to start. The orchards go on and on and there are too many trees to count, each one bejeweled with fat, shiny apples. All different shades of red and green and yellow. I didn’t know apples come in so many colors.