“That’s disgusting,” Leeda said, dropping her chin on one hand.
Murphy ignored her. “I think this is the best peach I’ve ever had.”
“Of course it is.” Birdie grabbed one and gnawed on it. “Some peaches taste flat. Or they get too stringy. Or oversweet. The fuzz gets too thick. Our peaches are the best. I’ve already had seven today,” she murmured. She too let the juice drip all over.
Leeda eyed the round circle where she’d bitten hers twice. She pushed it back into her mouth and took a ragged, uneven bite, the front of her teeth scraping against the pit. The juice and the flesh of the peach tore and filled her mouth, and she flattened it down with the roof of her mouth, really trying to taste it, like she had never done with anything, like she was getting to know it. It tasted somehow like orange and green and dizzyingly sweet, but like Birdie had said, not too sweet. The taste was so rich it made her lips purse. It was different on different parts of her tongue—the tartness hit the tip, the sweetness tingled at the sides and at the back.
This time she let the juice run down her fingers.
“Now you know how to enjoy,” Birdie said in a perfect Poopie accent, waving her arms in the air in a giant dramatic gesture and taking Leeda enough by surprise that she snorted peach juice into her sinus cavity. Birdie had two bits of peach skin sticking out of her teeth like fangs.
“Great, now I’m gonna get a sinus infection,” Leeda said, even though she was still laughing.
“Damn, Birdie, you are full of hidden talents,” Murphy said. “Brown-rot queen. Impressions.”
“I don’t think I wanna be a brown-rot queen,” Birdie said earnestly, making Murphy smirk.
“What’s your hidden talent, Leeda?”
Leeda slurped, still slightly self-conscious about the juice running down her chin. “I make great lists,” she said darkly, giving Murphy a look to let her know she knew this wasn’t a talent at all.
“That’s good,” Murphy offered. “I couldn’t make a list if I tried. Seriously. It’s chaos up here.” Murphy tapped her forehead.
“Whatever.” Leeda knew Murphy was uncommonly smart. “Oh, I’m also an excellent shot,” she added.
“Leeda’s good at everything,” Birdie said. Leeda eyed her quizzically. She couldn’t think of anything Birdie had ever seen her be good at.
“Well, you’re definitely not as much of a loser as I always thought,” Murphy added.
“Oh, thanks.” Leeda wanted to be offended, but actually, she felt warmed up with pleasure. Flattered. And she felt something tiny click into place. It made her whole body relax. It was like they had settled it. They weren’t strangers again. It had just been decided.
The sun had just dipped low enough to shine into the shade of the barn and it hit her face, but she decided not to worry about UV rays giving her freckles and premature wrinkles. She’d never felt her body relax so completely, resting from the hard work and loosening up in the company of the two sitting next to her. She felt liked. Leeda was liked by a lot of people, but usually for things that didn’t matter. She felt she was liked by Birdie and Murphy for no reason at all, and that made the experience, for however long it might last, more real.
Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next. In the movies they always made it look permanent, and for a long time Leeda had expected to find friends like that. But there was always some gap that developed; there was always a glitch.
She didn’t really know Murphy, or even her cousin, at all. But for that tiny space of time, savoring the taste of her peach, feeling the sleepy laziness of someone who’s earned it, it felt like Birdie and Murphy might turn out to be friends like that. Even though they had nothing in common and there was fuzz stuck under her fingernails and the juice was drying in a sticky mass on her arms, Leeda was happy.
The moment slipped away, but because it wasn’t perfect, it was the most perfect one she could remember having.
On a July evening in 1993, synchronous lightning bugs were discovered on the Darlington Orchard property, lighting up the night like blinking Christmas lights. These obscure insects were known among nature enthusiasts for their unique ability to light all at once, unexplainably in sync with thousands of others of their kind. They were known to reside in only a few places on earth, none of which were anywhere near Bridgewater. That week entomologists from far and wide descended on the orchard to see them, but within days they had disappeared, never to be seen in the region again by more than a select few.
Chapter Fourteen
Leeda started staying for dinner. The workers always invited her to share, and it was pretty obviously connected to the fact that she’d actually started to really work. At first Leeda resisted out of politeness, but the food was just too delicious.
Every night she was shocked by the many uses of peaches. The women knew how to make anything out of them—peach-and-pecan soup, peach salsa, peach-and-onion fritters, peach-and-amaretto jelly. They combined them with the produce of their vegetable garden, which lay behind the men’s dorm. When the men cooked, it was less creative—burgers, sometimes steak. But there was always corn on the cob, cucumber-and-parsley salad with cider vinegar, beans, mild white cheese crumbled on tortillas and cooked over the open fire.
And being outside with the tight-knit group of workers, smelling the grill and listening to all the talk afterward, was so much better than sitting around Uncle Walter’s table, which was cool and comfortable, but dreary and dead.
The nights changed too. For the next week, which slumped hotly into July, the girls snuck down to the lake every night. Once they’d started going, it was impossible to stop. At the end of a long day, the thought of the cool water and the cool wet grass and lying around in the dark, out of the heat of the dorms, became too enticing to resist. One girl would show up in the doorway of one of the others, looking at her with raised eyebrows like someone might proposition someone who might turn them down, and then the two would move unsurely on to the last girl and look at her with the same raised eyebrows. But then it became a non-question, and there was no need to even ask, and nobody raised their eyebrows at all.
Though the other women in Camp A seemed to be on to them, they never said anything. But Leeda felt that since they’d started, she and Murphy and Birdie oozed secret excitement, like the fire ants and their pheromones, and that everyone caught the scent, and it lit up the rooms of the dorm a little more.
Leeda hardly spoke with Birdie or Murphy during the day. Birdie said her dad would probably pull her out of the dorms if he knew they were having too much fun, and if he found out about the lake, he would definitely lock her up, fun or not. When Leeda asked how she knew, Birdie directed her to the expression that had planted itself permanently on Walter’s face. It was definitely antifun.
It was like they had double lives, separated distinctly into night and day. But Birdie was the first to break that when she told them about the cider house.
The afternoon was too hot to be real. The white dirt drew the heat in and the trees made a blanket that trapped the smell of the ripe peaches and the ones already rotting on the ground. It made the orchard feel more closed in than ever, like the air caught between the trees was pinning it to the ground and holding it there. Leeda knew she must be on the verge of sunstroke because it had actually started to feel romantic to be so sweaty, and to look around and see the red cheeks of the workers, and to feel how slow and heavy and relaxed her limbs had become. She was wiping the sweat off her neck in a long, languid gesture when Birdie appeared out of nowhere, her big brown eyes on Leeda sympathetically. She didn’t appear to be suffering from the heat at all.
“Did you find my note yet?” she whispered.
Leeda squinted at her, her heavy hands sinking to her hips. “Note?”
Birdie raised her eyebrows comically and jerked her head to the left, to a tree Leeda had just picked.
There was a tiny white piece of paper tucked into a crotch of two limbs.
Leeda smiled. She widened her eyes and nodded back at Birdie, in mock conspiracy, and waited for her to turn and walk away before shaking her head at her cousin and how goofy she was. She pulled the note out of the tree and unfolded it.
Cider house. See you there. Fifteen minutes.
Leeda kicked a smushy, rotting peach out from under her feet and got a head start.
About half an hour later, she, Murphy, and Birdie were sitting on the cool, smooth concrete of the cider house floor. When they’d met at the door, holding their notes, Murphy and Leeda had teased Birdie about what a kid she was. Murphy had said, “Birdie, do you like me? Check yes or no.” But Leeda was grateful. The cider house, as it turned out, and as of course Birdie knew, was the coolest spot in the whole orchard. It sat up on a hill that overlooked the rest of the orchard, where it got a breeze, and it had the most delicious concrete floor Leeda had ever put her butt on.
Leeda had ducked back to the dorms and brought her notebook. Murphy lay flat on the ground, her arms and legs flopped out on the cold concrete, one hand holding a magnolia leaf she’d yanked off the tree outside. Birdie sat cross-legged beside her.
Murphy pulled up her knees and clicked her tongue against her cheek a few times. She looked over Leeda’s shoulder. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m writing out ideas for my sister’s bachelorette party.” Leeda had been putting it off forever. Every time she’d even thought about it made her bitter. But August was closer than it seemed—and Leeda was a planner by nature. She fiddled with her pen irritably as she looked at Murphy.
“Ooh. What are your ideas?”
Leeda pulled the notebook closer to her chest. “Just some stuff in Atlanta.”
“What kind of stuff? Read me what you’ve got.” Murphy wagged her feet right and left on the floor.
“Um. Okay.” Leeda looked down at her list, self-conscious.
“Part one.”
Murphy laughed. “Ha, part one,” she slurred, too tired to speak clearly.
“Dinner. I have three options. The Regal Fez in Buckhead. Bistro Bijou…”
“She really likes that crap?”
Leeda stiffened and turned toward Murphy, her gray eyes cool. “It’s not crap. For part two,” she continued, “I’m thinking of renting out a theater at Phipps Plaza.”
“Your sister wants to go watch a movie on the wildest night of her life?”
Leeda sighed. “I can’t get into any clubs.”
“Sure you can. Just flirt with the bouncer.”
“I don’t do that.” Murphy made it sound so easy.
“Well, what did what’s-her-face say she wanted to do?”
Leeda rolled her eyes. She thought about the dinner they’d had at Nikolai’s Roof that had landed her here. “Danay wants to ride the Fur Bus.” She was looking for Murphy to empathize.
“That sounds fun,” Birdie piped in. “Maybe you should just do what she wants to do.”
Even though it had been Birdie speaking, Leeda looked at Murphy as she defended herself. “But then everybody will be getting drunk but me.”
“Why not you?”
“I’m supposed to be in charge of everything,” Leeda replied tightly. “I have to be sober.”
Murphy gazed at her quizzically for a moment. “Oh, I get it.”
“What?” Leeda asked, even though she didn’t want to know.
“It’s all about you. You don’t want anything she wants.”
Leeda snapped the notebook shut. “I’m just trying to make it good.”
Murphy nodded knowingly, her hair rubbing on the concrete while Leeda stared coolly back.
“Why do you hate your sister?” Murphy finally said, so matter-of-factly that Leeda wanted to throw her pen at her.
“I don’t.” Leeda clicked the pen in and out.
Murphy sat up. “Regal Fez sounds like something you plan for someone you hate.”
“Listen, I…”
But Murphy’s eyes had widened. She nodded over Leeda’s shoulder toward Birdie, who was holding a bottle gently on her lap, fondling the label. She appeared to be oblivious to both of them, finally holding the bottle to her face and kissing it.
“Um, Birdie?” Murphy asked.
Birdie jerked, drawing the bottle back down to her lap as she looked at them. Murphy slid the bottle out of her hand and read the label out loud. “Darlington Peach Cider. Fine peach cider—sweet and surprisingly crisp—made from fresh Georgia peaches.” She looked at Birdie. “Why were you kissing it?”
No response. Murphy nodded slowly. “Oh. Oh my. You’re obsessed.”
Leeda was confused. “Obsessed with peach cider?”
“You’re obsessed with the cider guy. Enrico.”
Birdie’s cheeks went scarlet. “No, I’m not.”
Murphy laughed. “Yep. That guy Enrico. You love him. You want to smell his labels. And then kiss them.”
Birdie looked mortified. “No, I…”
Murphy tackled Birdie’s embarrassment the way she had tackled Leeda’s defensiveness a moment before, as if she were oblivious to it. “He’s really cute. You know, I bet he likes you too. I’ve seen you guys together.”
Birdie laid the bottle down beside her with a clink. “Really?” she asked breathlessly.
“Birdie!” Leeda felt so out of the loop. How had Murphy noticed when she hadn’t?
Birdie slid onto her back, sighing. “Oh my God. He’s so amazing.”
Murphy was grinning from ear to ear. “Have you kissed him on anything but the label yet?”
“Oh nooo.” Birdie shook her head.
“Well, why?” Murphy pressed. “Doesn’t he go back to Mexico at the end of the summer?”
“He lives in Texas.” Birdie said this as if it was the saddest statement she’d ever made in her life. She practically yelped it.
“Same difference. Why haven’t you made your move?”
Birdie swallowed. “I’ve never even kissed anyone.”
Leeda wasn’t surprised at all, but Murphy jolted like she’d stuck her finger in a socket. She was speechless.
“I haven’t even really met anyone,” Birdie explained quickly. “You know?”
Murphy sank back on her hands, rubbing her palms against the dust of the concrete. “Well, we can change that. The thing is, you can’t start on someone you really like. It’s too intimidating.”
Birdie tilted her chin toward her chest, looking confused, and as always, very earnest. “Huh?”
Murphy shrugged. “We’re going to have to find someone you don’t like. We can do it tonight if you want.”
“Do what?” Birdie asked. Leeda was wondering the same thing.
Murphy hopped up and brushed the dirt off her legs. “Go out and get you a kiss,” she said.
Somewhere around midnight Murphy, Leeda, Birdie, Honey Babe, and Majestic piled into Murphy’s dilapidated yellow Volkswagen, Yellowbaby, and took off down Orchard Drive after having first pushed the car backward down the long driveway away from the house (with Leeda steering, of course). The car was full of the scent of Leeda’s perfume, which all five were wearing, Birdie having spritzed both dogs lightly, to their delight. Murphy rolled down her window to clear the air.
Leeda looked around the car nervously. “Is this thing going to explode?”
“It might,” Murphy said.
Birdie couldn’t help but laugh. It had been one thing to sneak down to the lake. But leaving the orchard property felt so daring and so blatant that Birdie was a ball of nervous giddiness.
“Oh God,” Leeda said, leaning her head back against the headrest and holding tight to the handle above the window.
Murphy hadn’t told them where they were going yet. They careened down the main drag of Bridgewater, but kept going, past the edge of town where the Pearly Gates Cemetery was, and then onto Route 75 south.
“How far away is this place?” Leeda asked.
“Oh God.”
They zipped past a sign for hot boiled peanuts, then several billboards for one of the large orchards, then past several for condos and resorts in Florida, just four hours away. Murphy kept her window down, and the wind blew so hard that Birdie had to hold her hair back on either side of her face to see the signs.
Finally the billboards tapered off, and Murphy pulled onto an exit ramp that led them to a dark, two-lane road. By the lights of the occasional farmhouses they passed, Birdie could see they’d come to a swampier area. The air smelled wetter. Bugs smacked against the windshield in droves. A square green sign jumped into the headlights announcing Mertie Creek, 5 Miles.
About ten minutes later, Murphy pulled into a gravel drive and the three of them piled out of the passenger side because the driver’s side door didn’t work. Honey Babe and Majestic stayed behind, curled up on the backseat.
They were in a parking lot, standing in front of a low, wood-lined building with a high slanted roof. About fifty old wooden chairs hung from the front wall and scattered across the porch all around the door. Picnic tables sat in front of the porch under low-slung crisscrosses of round white lights. But from the sound of it, everyone was inside, laughing and shouting above some loud, twangy music.
“I’m not going in there,” Leeda said.
“Well, Bird and I will see you when we come out, then,” Murphy said, reaching an arm around Birdie and sweeping her along. Birdie looked back over her shoulder at Leeda and couldn’t help but grin at the look on her face as she ran to catch up.
Inside, the smoke was so thick Birdie had to wave her hands in front of her eyes to see clearly. The room consisted of a large square bar and a small dance floor with a corner staked out for a country band that was doing a Kenny Chesney cover.
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