“No,” I said. “Is . . . everything okay?”
“Ye—ess,” she said slowly.
“So why aren’t you staying for a month like usual? Is everything okay?”
Bev’s forehead was drawn now. She looked like she was working something out. “Of course. Everything’s fine. It’s only that . . . well, Tess has been saying for years she wanted to go to . . . to camp.”
“Camp?” That word hit me hard.
She nodded.
“Camp. My camp?”
Bev wasn’t meeting my eyes, so I knew I was right.
“What camp, Bev?”
“Camp Whippoorwill,” she said, and it came out funny, sort of breathy.
“Oh.” I said. Then again. “Oh.” I couldn’t find any more than that. My brain was stumbling.
Now her words tumbled out in a rush. “It’s just . . . you always made it sound so wonderful, with the lake and the archery and the plays and everything, and so we booked her early last year, ahead of schedule, thinking you two girls would go together.”
“Sure,” I said. “That would have been . . . fun.”
“And of course, you didn’t go back this year, but Tess was really excited, and so it seemed a shame not to let her . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“That makes sense,” I said. “Sure.” Except that it didn’t.
“I’m so sorry, Leah . . . ,” she said, looking almost pained. “I assumed you and Tess had talked about this. I thought you knew. I hate to be the one to . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “I could see how you’d think that.” In the world where Tess and I were still real friends, where she still talked to me like an actual person, that would have made sense.
“And Leah, I absolutely hate to do this. It’s a terrible time to dash. But I’m afraid I’m running late. I’m just rushing down to the school for a board meeting.”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
Bev shifted her purse on her shoulder, forced a smile. “Well, okay then, Leah. It was so nice to see you, and will you please tell your mom we’re home? She should . . . call me.”
“Sure,” I said.
“We really need to . . . catch up. . . .”
I nodded. “Will do.”
To catch up. Like that was the most normal thing in the world. When I was pretty sure that, until this past year, they’d never gone more than a week without seeing each other, for as long as I’d been alive.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, thanks. And you should write Tess a letter. I’m sure she’d be excited to get mail at camp.”
I just blinked. As she reached down and hugged me tightly, it felt like any other Bev hug, with her chin poking into my shoulder. She meant it, I could tell, but I could feel her heart racing against me, too fast.
Then she ran away. Like, actually ran. Which was kind of funny. It isn’t often you see a grown-up woman run down a street when they aren’t wearing yoga pants and earbuds. I stared after her for a minute before I turned and stumbled off in the other direction. I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I just kept on going, heading to East Atlanta as planned.
It was almost like I was floating along in a fog. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was feeling. I knew I was angry, but I wasn’t sure why. And the anger was mixed with something else. Envy? Sadness? It was all just a big confusing swirl of feelings. I couldn’t help picturing Tess at camp, with my camp friends, in my craft cabin or my bunk. Tess even knew about my special reading place, in the oak tree. I wondered if she’d try to find that and take it for herself, along with everything else.
I drifted, lost in all that, toward the noise and traffic of Moreland, only stopping for the red light. But then, standing at the corner, I glanced across the street and saw a familiar profile at the bus stop. She was sitting on the bench, staring down at her phone.
A cloud of red curls.
My confusion suddenly cleared. The fog lifted. My heart jumped. “Jasper! I shouted. “Hey, Jasper!”
I saw her raise her head at the sound of my voice, but at that very moment, the bus pulled up in front of the stop and blocked her from view. If she got on, I’d miss her.
So I looked both ways, into the crazy traffic of Moreland Avenue. I was never allowed to cross here except with the light. Mom and Dad had lectured me to death about it. Once, a man in a wheelchair had been hit at this intersection.
Cars whizzed past me in three lanes as the bus sat on the other side of the road, blocking the fourth lane. But suddenly, a gap appeared, a magical empty lull. And for a strange hushed moment, there was no traffic at all. It was as if the universe had made a space for me. Exactly the space I needed. So I took my shot and dashed across.
I darted around the bus and found that, sure enough, Jasper was no longer sitting on the bench. The bench was empty, except for somebody’s McDonald’s trash, crumpled and abandoned. But the bus door was still open, yawning like a cave, waiting for me.
With no thought at all, I hopped up and on.
All Settled
“Hi!” I said to the bus driver, climbing three very large steps.
“Hey,” he called back as he leaned down to pull some kind of lever that closed the door. “You almost missed me!”
I peered down the length of the bus, at a bunch of strangers who didn’t seem remotely interested in me, and there at the back sat Jasper, staring out the window, craning her neck and looking around. For me?
“Jasper!”
She turned her head, saw me, grinned, and waved. A bunch of passengers stared up at me too. But they didn’t look friendly. Then I realized that while I’d been focused on Jasper, the driver had been mumbling at me. Now he was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.
“Oh!” I said. “Sorry. Can you say that again? I didn’t catch it.”
“I said,” the driver growled, “do you plan to pay me, so we can leave?”
“I—of course!” I stammered. “How much is it?”
“Two fifty,” he said, staring not at me now but through the windshield and out into the street. Clearly annoyed.
I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out the twenty I’d brought with me, held it out to him. “Here,” I said. “I have money!”
“Can’t make change,” said the driver, glancing briefly at the cash.
“Huh?”
“I said I can’t make change. Bus can’t make change. Got it?”
I looked back over my shoulder, past all the other riders at Jasper, who had scooted over to make room for me on the seat beside her. She was waiting, grinning.
“But that’s all my money,” I said. “How will I get home?”
The bus driver rolled his eyes. “Call your mommy.”
It didn’t seem fair at all. But Jasper was waiting, and that mattered more than twenty dollars, or it felt like it did anyway. So I said, “Okay, I guess,” and the driver—still with his eyes on the road, plucked the bill neatly from my fingers.
The bus jerked to life as I made my way to the back of the bus, and when it picked up speed I found myself sort of stumbling and flying toward Jasper. I nearly landed in her lap.
“Hey!” I said, when I slid into the seat beside her. “Fancy meeting you here!”
“Crazy!” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Actually,” I said, “I was just walking into the village . . . but I’ve been wanting to see you. And I’m having kind of a strange day already. So when I spotted you there at the bus stop, I guess I just . . . hopped on too. Is that weird?”
She stared at me for a second. Then she burst out laughing. “Yes!” she said. “Yes, Leah, it is absolutely totally bizarre that you jumped on a bus behind me without thinking about it. But it makes me happy, so who cares if it’s weird? I’ve been wanting to see you too.”
She meant it, I could tell. I sighed and sank back into the seat.
“Well, if you’ve been wanting to see me, why didn’t you come visit?” I asked. “You can stop by anytime.”
Ja
sper shrugged and looked away from me, out the window beside her. “Oh, you know,” she said.
“I don’t, actually,” I said. Now that Jasper was staring out the window, I found myself gazing straight ahead of me, into the back of an old lady’s hat. The hat was purple. “I thought we had fun the other day,” I said, to the hat.
“We did!” said Jasper. “Of course we did, silly.”
“I even left you a note when I went out. I was hoping you’d come by and find it.”
Jasper sighed.
“Sorry!” I said. “I’m sorry. I sound pathetic right now. I don’t mean to. Don’t be mad. It’s fine.”
“Mad?” she said. “I’m not mad, Leah. I just felt like . . .”
“Like what?”
“Like I was the pathetic one. Eating all your food and washing my clothes and watching your TV in your fancy house. You were so nice, and I was the needy one, not you.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Not at all!”
Jasper shook her head. “And then, after you were so generous, there I went, opening that door, and asking you all those questions. About . . . your brother. Like the clumsiest person in the world. I didn’t come back because I was embarrassed I’d been so rude. And because I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of leech. I didn’t want you to think I was using you.”
It took me a minute to process what she was saying. She’d been nervous? She’d felt weird? She’d been trying to be careful? All that added up to was that she cared.
“This is stupid,” I said. “We’re both being stupid.”
Jasper nodded. “Agreed.”
“Look,” I said, “I am going to tell you the very big true thing, and if it’s too weird, you can ride away into the sunset and never talk to me again, okay? But please don’t laugh?”
“I promise.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Ever since my brother died, I have been lonely and it has been awful and I haven’t known how to make it better. I haven’t had any clue how to begin.”
“Well, sure,” said Jasper. “It sounds incredibly hard.”
“Yeah, but, like, lonely in a really bad way. All alone. Like I told you before, everyone has been weird with me. Even Tess. We’d walk to school each day together like always. Not really talking. We’d eat lunch at our usual table. But only eating. Like strangers. After being friends all our lives. And then my parents . . .” I took a breath.
“I’m so sorry,” Jasper said.
“No, don’t be!” I said. “Really, don’t. Because last week, with you, I had fun, and felt okay, and normal. Normal for the first time in a year.”
“I’m glad,” said Jasper. “That’s good, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Of course it’s good. But the thing is . . . it felt so good that all I have thought about since then is seeing you again. Hoping that maybe I can feel normal more often. Maybe someday, I can even feel normal all the time again. You see? I felt . . . hopeful. Like maybe I wasn’t going to be totally a mess forever.”
Jasper nodded.
“So the truth is that you can come over anytime you want, and I will never mind, I swear. Not ever. You are my favorite person in the world right now, even though I just met you and I don’t even know you.” Then I stopped a moment, because it was like I could hear an echo of my own words inside my head. I don’t even know you.
“Is that sad?” I asked.
Jasper was looking at me now, staring right at me. Intently. “Yes, Leah,” she said quietly. “It is sad.”
I shrugged. “Sorry,” I said.
“No, dummy,” said Jasper, flipping around to face me fully on the plastic seat. “Not sad in a way you should be sorry for. Sad in a way that means I wish you could feel better.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Leah,” said Jasper. “Your brother died. It’s just sad. Of course it’s sad. How could anything not be sad? If you weren’t sad, you’d have to be a crazy person.”
I shrugged again. No one had said that to me before.
“Okay, now, is it my turn to talk?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, if you want to. . . .”
Jasper grinned and took her deep breath. “Look,” she said, “I am the new girl and I don’t know anyone, and I spend all my time alone too. Hanging out with you was the best time I’ve had in forever. . . .”
“I’m glad!” I said, smiling.
“Yeah, I know,” said Jasper. “And I’m grateful you were so nice to me. But it’s more complicated than that, and I’m, well, I don’t have much money.”
“That doesn’t matter!” I said, shaking my head.
“Except that it really does,” said Jasper, staring me evenly in the eyes. “And it makes me feel terrible when people have to help me, and you helped me, and so I didn’t want to see you again.”
“Oh!”
“Only because I didn’t want you to be always helping me, and feeling sorry for me. Get it?”
“I do,” I said. “Or I think I do. But please, please don’t stay away? You can have our TV for all I care. I will never mind sharing or helping. I will never feel like that. I mean it. I know it.”
“It’s nice of you to say that,” said Jasper. “But my situation is . . . more complicated than I can explain.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care. I don’t care at all, whatever it is.”
Jasper stared at me, and there was a long strained pause. I thought she might tell me what the “situation” was then, and maybe she was considering it, but in the end she just gave a quick nod and said, “Okay, deal!” and stuck out her hand.
So I shook it and said, “Deal!”
Then Jasper laughed and said, “Wow, we are a couple of total freaks, huh?” And I was about to agree with her, but at that very minute the bus stopped and shuddered as the door opened at the front, and Jasper glanced out the window and said, “Oh, this is my stop!”
So I decided to stop worrying and just embrace the freakiness of everything. “Then I guess it’s my stop too!” I said.
Jasper grinned. “Good!” she said. “That’s all settled. And you can help me carry the groceries.”
Which was a very nice answer. I had never wanted to carry groceries so badly in all my life.
A Certain Amount of Power
As I hopped up to follow Jasper, I realized I had absolutely no idea where the bus had taken us. I’d been so focused on our conversation that even when I’d been gazing out the window, it was more like I was gazing at it. Now, as I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk, I looked around myself and knew immediately where we were.
We were way farther down on Moreland than I usually went. Once or twice a year, when Dad suddenly had what he called “a hankering for a real taco,” he’d drive us this way and order dinner in fumbling Spanish from a bright orange shack. But we hadn’t done that in a long time, and anyway, I hadn’t known there was a grocery store this way. We were miles from the Publix or the Kroger.
As I followed Jasper across the sea of dingy parking lot, she explained the plan. “Okay,” she said. “So the deal is that I try to get things at the Dollar Tree. If they don’t have what I need, we can try the Family Dollar, but those are more expensive, and we have to walk a ways.”
“Makes sense,” I said. I hated to admit that the dollar stores were all the same to me. That I’d never set foot in any of them, even though they were only a few miles from the house where I’d spent my entire life.
As it turned out, they had everything on Jasper’s little list at the Dollar Tree. Peanut butter and granola bars and crackers and applesauce and roach powder and canned vegetable soup and SpaghettiOs and corn and bottles of apple juice and chili and sour gummy worms.
“Your mom sent you to the store to get gummy worms?” I asked, trying not to notice the roach powder.
Jasper laughed. “When you do the shopping, you wield a certain amount of power over your grocery list.”
“Good point,” I said. “We never
buy candy. Maybe I should see if I can help out a little more with the shopping myself.”
“Like you helped with the vacuum and the shampoo that time?” asked Jasper, raising her eyebrows.
“Ha. Fair point,” I said.
As I strolled around the store, I was amazed at what they had there. Fourth of July decorations that lit up and silk flower wreathes for the door and shoes for kids and the big shiny helium balloons my parents had always said were a waste of money. But everything was somehow only a dollar.
“Why do people pay more at other stores if this stuff is all so cheap?” I said, fingering a packet of really cute penguin stickers and wishing I had money to spend.
“You tell me!” said Jasper.
At the checkout, Jasper magically produced two cloth tote bags from her pocket and loaded all her stuff in. Then she handed me one of the full bags and headed straight next door into a giant secondhand shop that looked like it had once been a big grocery store. It was hard to keep up with her. All those cans really weighed down my bag.
“What do you need here?” I asked, as I stepped inside and nearly bumped into a naked mannequin with no head.
“You’ll see,” said Jasper mysteriously, heading off into a rack of clothes.
“Men’s jeans?” I asked, hurrying behind her.
But Jasper wasn’t trying on the pants. Instead she shoved her groceries at me and said, “Here, hold this for a minute,” and then she busied herself reaching into the pockets of each pair of pants, moving down the line quickly.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She didn’t reply and I felt like I should understand, but I didn’t, not until she glanced up at me with a sneaky grin and I saw something flashing in her fingers. A quarter, glinting silver in the weird fluorescent lights.
“Oh my god!” I shouted. “You’re brilliant.”
“Shhh,” said Jasper. “Just look busy.”
As I watched, Jasper went quickly down the rack, nimble fingers pawing at each pocket in turn. When we got to the end of the aisle, we doubled back along the other side of the row. After a bit, I decided to try my own luck, heading over for the winter coats, where I set down my bag of groceries and got to work. I turned up lint and dust, a few staples, and a button or two, but nothing more—until, in the women’s purses, I hit the jackpot. Two crumpled dollars in a hidden inside pocket. I couldn’t keep myself from squealing, just a little. It felt like we were berry picking or on some sort of scavenger hunt.
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