Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine Page B

Barbie spaghetti shapes (a handbag, a high heel, a heart, some lipstick). I snapped at him. I said I had no idea where his money came from, but I didn’t have enough to give her a taste for TV tie-in junk food. I said all we had was what Dad put in the account every month and I had to make it last.
    â€œJust kidding around,” he said, holding his arms in the air like I was threatening to shoot him. He came back with some budget toilet paper to make up for it and said, “I saved it, by the way. It’s mine.”
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œMy money. I worked for three straight summers dragging rocks and burning leaves and mowing lawns. Since I was fifteen. I didn’t take a break and I didn’t spend a cent. I earned it all.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I’m in a bad mood.”
    Harper said, “It’s OK.” He paid for Stroma’s gingerbread people himself. “I’ve checked them.” He grinned like a Cheshire cat, like a kids’ TV presenter. “They’re product-placement free.”
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    Sometime that day I got three texts from Bee. A WHERE R U and a U OK ? and a CALL ME . I found them when I went, too early, to bed.
    When I phoned, she was at Waterloo station, on her way back from somewhere with Sonny and Carl. I didn’t ask where. I could hear announcements and the sounds of infinite people moving around her. I was angry with her. I didn’t want to be and it was making me more angry.
    â€œHow are you?” she asked.
    â€œFine,” I said. “You?”
    â€œIs Stroma OK?”
    I said, “Yes.” Just yes.
    â€œHow was your day?”
    â€œWe need to talk,” I said.
    She couldn’t hear me. I could tell she was walking. I pictured her in a crowd, keeping up, weaving in between and past other bodies. I had to say it again.
    â€œTalk?” she said. “OK—when?” She didn’t ask about what. I noticed that.
    â€œTomorrow,” I told her. “As soon as possible.”
    â€œIs everything all right?” Bee asked.
    â€œNo idea,” I said, and I must have sounded more like I didn’t care.
    We arranged to meet at the shop. The shop where Rhea worked, where it started, where I first met Harper. I couldn’t sleep that night for the hope it would all come to nothing.
    In the morning we were late because Stroma left this drawing behind that she wanted to give to Beeand we had to go back and get it. My saying it wasn’t that important was apparently one of the seven deadly sins, which made us even later. I didn’t want to take her with me. I couldn’t see how this talk would amount to anything with Stroma there, but I didn’t exactly have a choice. We were rushing up the hill, four of Stroma’s footsteps to every two of mine.
    I heard the ambulance before we could see it, the growl of its woolly engine getting closer until it drove up alongside us and Harper called out, “In a hurry?”
    We stopped walking, got our breath back. I asked if he was stalking us.
    He said, “God, no, I was going to Portobello. The guy over there is stalking you,” and he pointed at an old man in a straw hat and made Stroma giggle. He said to me, “Have you done it yet?”
    I said, “No, that’s what I’m late for. You couldn’t give us a lift to Regent’s Park Road, could you?”
    We drove slowly up the street, toward the shop. I saw Bee waiting for me outside. She was sitting at the picnic table with her back to the road, sipping something hot from a takeaway cup. Little clouds of steam rose up as she breathed.
    â€œThere she is,” Stroma said, and then she yelled out the window, “Bee!”
    Bee turned and waved and smiled. She said something I couldn’t quite hear, pointing inside the shop,and then she picked up her cup and her bag and went in through its yellow door.
    Harper had stopped to let us out. He