Nancy all the time because she was prettier.”
It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s talkingabout, but then I see her staring down at her CD booklet and realize that she’s still on the subject of Heart.
“How do you know all of this?”
“Walt told me about it,” she says. “He knows all about them.”
Meg starts a new playlist, this one also beginning with a Supremes song, and I lean against one window and try to draw what I see through another.
But we pass it all so quickly: the telephone poles and wildflowers and hand-painted billboards for Jesus. The derelict farmhouses, the rusted-out trucks, the signs that tell us how close we’re getting to the next small town. Everything I see is fleeting.
So, instead, I draw the back of Bev’s neck for the seventh time today, and then I can’t look at her any longer.
I dig through my stuff and pull out the calendar. Today and the next six days are filled in, but after that everything is empty. I mark my birthday and my parents’ birthdays. I circle Christmas. Still, every blank square is filled with uncertainty. I find the day we’ll arrive back home.
Unpack
, I write.
Laundry.
But these things are so simple, really more like items on a to-do list. So, on the next day, I write,
Get over this girl
.
A Sleater-Kinney song comes on and Bev leans forward and turns up the volume. She nods her head with the beat in this way that’s kind of nerdy but still gorgeous. I write,
Get over this girl
on the day after, too. And then I keep writing itover and over, until it covers the summer months. Until my plans seem less open.
The bus has fallen quiet. Meg steers us through a turn in the road and, as soon as the curve ends, we are in the middle of a tiny coastal town, with only two short blocks of houses and stores lining each side of the road, most of them old and falling apart. A pink, rusty bike lies in a lot overgrown with dry grass. Next to the bike, four little kids wait at a table, two sitting, two standing, watching the road.
Meg breaks our silence: “Lemonade!”
She pulls the bus over and jumps out. The rest of us follow her into the sun.
“Colby. Bev. We are about to do one of the best things there is to do in life. We are about to buy lemonade from a lemonade stand from grimy little kids who probably didn’t wash their hands before squeezing all the lemons and dumping in the sugar. But we aren’t going to mind because this is how it is supposed to be. And there is no fighting at a lemonade stand. And no sad looks or awkward silences, because all memories of lemonade stands are and forever must be pure and good and beautiful. Understood?”
We nod.
“All right then.”
We cross the grass and gather in front of the table and Meg points to the hand-painted lemonade sign.
“Lemonade sounds sooo good right now!” she says to the kids.
The girl and boy at the table, clearly the leaders, check us out, skepticism in their tan, round faces.
They must be ten years younger than we are. Which makes me, for the first time ever, feel sort of old.
“How much?” Meg asks.
At the same time, the boy says twenty-five cents and the girl says fifty. He blushes. She ignores him, locking eyes with Meg.
“We can swing fifty.”
The boy looks relieved, and when he smiles, I see where a new tooth is growing in, larger than the others. But the girl is strictly business.
“Four orders?” she asks.
We all say yes and nod, and she pours pink lemonade from a plastic pitcher into five Dixie cups. She moves carefully, arms shaky with the weight of the pitcher, careful not to spill.
“Two dollars,” she says, and then all four of the kids stand with their hands extended to take our change.
We dig through our pockets, try to divvy the change among them. Bev is short a quarter.
“My wallet’s in the bus.”
Apparently, Meg’s speech has made me benevolent, because before I realize what I’m doing I’m telling Bev, “I can cover you,” and handing my
It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s talkingabout, but then I see her staring down at her CD booklet and realize that she’s still on the subject of Heart.
“How do you know all of this?”
“Walt told me about it,” she says. “He knows all about them.”
Meg starts a new playlist, this one also beginning with a Supremes song, and I lean against one window and try to draw what I see through another.
But we pass it all so quickly: the telephone poles and wildflowers and hand-painted billboards for Jesus. The derelict farmhouses, the rusted-out trucks, the signs that tell us how close we’re getting to the next small town. Everything I see is fleeting.
So, instead, I draw the back of Bev’s neck for the seventh time today, and then I can’t look at her any longer.
I dig through my stuff and pull out the calendar. Today and the next six days are filled in, but after that everything is empty. I mark my birthday and my parents’ birthdays. I circle Christmas. Still, every blank square is filled with uncertainty. I find the day we’ll arrive back home.
Unpack
, I write.
Laundry.
But these things are so simple, really more like items on a to-do list. So, on the next day, I write,
Get over this girl
.
A Sleater-Kinney song comes on and Bev leans forward and turns up the volume. She nods her head with the beat in this way that’s kind of nerdy but still gorgeous. I write,
Get over this girl
on the day after, too. And then I keep writing itover and over, until it covers the summer months. Until my plans seem less open.
The bus has fallen quiet. Meg steers us through a turn in the road and, as soon as the curve ends, we are in the middle of a tiny coastal town, with only two short blocks of houses and stores lining each side of the road, most of them old and falling apart. A pink, rusty bike lies in a lot overgrown with dry grass. Next to the bike, four little kids wait at a table, two sitting, two standing, watching the road.
Meg breaks our silence: “Lemonade!”
She pulls the bus over and jumps out. The rest of us follow her into the sun.
“Colby. Bev. We are about to do one of the best things there is to do in life. We are about to buy lemonade from a lemonade stand from grimy little kids who probably didn’t wash their hands before squeezing all the lemons and dumping in the sugar. But we aren’t going to mind because this is how it is supposed to be. And there is no fighting at a lemonade stand. And no sad looks or awkward silences, because all memories of lemonade stands are and forever must be pure and good and beautiful. Understood?”
We nod.
“All right then.”
We cross the grass and gather in front of the table and Meg points to the hand-painted lemonade sign.
“Lemonade sounds sooo good right now!” she says to the kids.
The girl and boy at the table, clearly the leaders, check us out, skepticism in their tan, round faces.
They must be ten years younger than we are. Which makes me, for the first time ever, feel sort of old.
“How much?” Meg asks.
At the same time, the boy says twenty-five cents and the girl says fifty. He blushes. She ignores him, locking eyes with Meg.
“We can swing fifty.”
The boy looks relieved, and when he smiles, I see where a new tooth is growing in, larger than the others. But the girl is strictly business.
“Four orders?” she asks.
We all say yes and nod, and she pours pink lemonade from a plastic pitcher into five Dixie cups. She moves carefully, arms shaky with the weight of the pitcher, careful not to spill.
“Two dollars,” she says, and then all four of the kids stand with their hands extended to take our change.
We dig through our pockets, try to divvy the change among them. Bev is short a quarter.
“My wallet’s in the bus.”
Apparently, Meg’s speech has made me benevolent, because before I realize what I’m doing I’m telling Bev, “I can cover you,” and handing my
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