Ramona Blue

by Julie Murphy

  “No way. It’s still raining.”

  I lean back against the seat, resigned. “Watch out for the potholes.”

  And he does, but the uneven pavement still jolts us to my front door.

  “This is me,” I say. “And thanks again for your help with the cake.”

  He nods. “See you at school next week?”

  “Yeah.” I almost forgot that we’re in the same grade. Freddie and I are late summer babies, but a year apart, making him eighteen and me seventeen. Different school districts have different rules, I guess.

  Next week feels so far away. And this random bit of hope I hadn’t even realized I was housing in my chest begins to wilt. Freddie will go to school and he’ll make friends. Of course he will. They’ll tell him that I’m the white trash lesbian from the trailer park and that I’m so far down the social food chain that even the bottom-feeders are above me, which is why, unlike Ruth and Saul, no one really made a fuss when I came out. No one’s really concerned with the sexual identity of a girl from a local trailer park.

  He pops the trunk and I run around to get my bike.

  My still-damp clothes are soaked again in an instant, but instead of racing inside, I knock on the driver’s-side window. “Come to Hattie’s party,” I shout, talking as fast as I can so the interior of Agnes’s car won’t get too wet. “Well, it’s her boyfriend’s party, but she’s planning it. Tomorrow night. Boucher’s after hours.” Maybe it’s a desperate attempt to hold on to him and show him who I’ve become before anyone else at school can do that for me.

  Freddie smiles. “Okay. Yeah.” Rain splats harder against the leather interior, so he starts to roll the window up. “Should I bring anything?” he shouts through the cracked window.

  “Just that panty-dropping charm,” I call.

  Even through his fogging window, I can see him blushing.

  FIVE

  That night as I’m falling asleep, my phone rings—loud and shrill. I never actually talk on the phone, so it catches me off guard.

  Grace, the caller ID says. My heart presses against my ribs like it’s a bird caught in a cage. My alarm clock reads 11:50. I clear my throat and pick up.

  “Hey.” My voice is too low, like I’m trying to sound sultry.

  All that answers me are screams and laughter and music so loud it makes my speaker crackle.

  “Grace?” I can barely hear my own voice. “Grace?”

  I listen for a minute or two, trying to decipher voices. I recognize her laugh, but my heart immediately plummets.

  I hang up and text her.

  think you called me by accident. just making sure everything’s okay.

  I am trying hard in this moment not to feel like she’s moved on from me so quickly. Grace is allowed to go to parties and laugh and have fun, but it still feels too soon.

  Now I’m awake. It’s too late to call Ruth or Saul, and Hattie’s actually sleeping in her own bed, so waking her up would only mean sharing mine.

  I reach under my bed for my Whitman’s Sampler chocolate box.

  If my house was on fire in the middle of the night, I know I could grab this box and everything would be okay. The box itself hasn’t held chocolate in years, but instead the contents include the closest things I have to important documents and a life savings.

  The top layer of the box is folded-up pieces of paper Hattie and I played MASH, our absolute favorite game, on when we were kids. Beneath that is a picture of the three of us one Christmas at Grandma Cookie’s when she was still alive. She bought us green long-sleeved velvet dresses that our dad made us wear even though it was eighty degrees outside. Hattie’s cheeks are flushed and she is visibly annoyed, while I’m sitting in my dad’s lap, eyes ringed red from some tantrum I must have thrown just moments before. But my dad is grinning, wide and genuine.

  Beneath that are a few magazine cutouts of Olympic swimmers. There’s even a folded-up pamphlet from the swim camp the YMCA ran every summer when I was a kid. These, I guess, are my important documents.

  Under all that is my disaster fund. Every penny I have to my name. Money my dad has always said I should spend on something foolish. I should probably open a bank account, but the idea of having a bank account makes me sad. It’s not like I have a car or nice clothes that I can look at and be reminded of how hard I’ve worked over the last two years. So there’s something therapeutic about laying out all my cash and being able to place an actual value on myself. It’s like finally having an answer to a question you’ve wondered about your whole life.

  I lay each bill out carefully and add in my tips from Boucher’s and set aside enough money for Tyler’s cake. When I add up what’s left, I write it down on the scratch piece of paper where I keep a running tally of how much I’ve got in the box. It’s a lot, but not really enough to start fresh somewhere or go on a summer backpacking trip.

  I’ve definitely almost drained it a few times. Mainly to help Hattie out. Well, always to help Hattie out. Like that one time she egged her ex-boyfriend’s house and ended up cracking both his bedroom windows. (She was arrested for that one.) Or the time she borrowed a friend’s car and backed it up into a ditch. (The police were involved that time too.) Then there are the handful of times we’ve bought morning-after pills and the times she lost her phone in the ocean or dropped it in the toilet of a dingy club.

  For a long time now, I’ve felt like my head was scraping the ceiling here in Eulogy and this little box of cash would somehow take me and Hattie both away. But here I am—thinking of how many diapers this will buy and how expensive cribs are. It would be so easy to leave and let Hattie figure this all out on her own, but my mom already left the both of us. I won’t make my sister go through that again.

  SIX

  The next night, during my shift at Boucher’s, my phone buzzes.

  GRACE: butt dial!

  That’s it.

  An ache tears through my stomach, and I think that maybe she meant more to me than I did to her. My fingers hover over the keyboard, but then my pride says to make her wait. I force myself to put my phone away.

  As quitting time draws closer, everyone is quick to close out their tables. When the last customer leaves, Saul dims the lights (except for the string of twinkly lights strung above the bar) and sets out all the booze people have brought from home while Hattie makes a spread of all the leftovers from today that can’t be saved for tomorrow. As I wipe down the tables, Ruth walks by every few minutes to knock her hips against mine.

  I find Saul staring out the window behind the bar into the dark parking lot.

  I give him a poke in the side. “Waiting on someone?”

  His lips twitch before giving in to a grin. “No,” he says. “No one at all.”

  I’m tempted to press him for more info, but behind us Tommy wearily backs out the side door and yells, “You break it, you buy it! Don’t forget to set the alarm before you leave!”

  The moment the door shuts behind him, Saul cranks up the brass band music that’s been playing all day as much as the speakers will allow. A few nonemployees trickle in through the back door, and then the party starts without anyone having to say so. It’s not that everyone at Boucher’s much likes Tyler, but none of us can say no to a party—or rather, none of us can say no to Hattie, the real wizard behind the curtain of more than one Boucher’s employee party.

  Tyler wasn’t even Hattie’s boyfriend until she told him she was pregnant. To be honest, he’d been playing Russian roulette with almost every straight girl in town, and Hattie happened to be the one who lucked out. When his mom heard he’d gotten a girl knocked up, she kicked him to the curb. Now he’s either being faithful to Hattie out of sincerity or because he needs a place to crash. It’s hard to tell which.

  Hattie doesn’t see that. All she sees is a future with her baby girl (she’s sure it’s a girl) and Tyler, who is unemployed and sleeps more hours a day than Mrs. Pearlman’s Maine coon.

  But all I see in my future is Hattie and me ta
king care of the baby while Dad works himself to death, trying to make ends meet like he always has. Except with a baby, there will be more bills and more mouths to feed.

  I shuffle back to the kitchen to hide Stella’s cake and when I return, I find Hattie crouched behind the bar pouring red wine into a sippy cup she bought at the grocery store last week, which I had assumed would someday be for the baby.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper-spit at her.

  She tugs me by my wrist so I’m below the counter with her. “The internet says I can have two glasses of wine a week, okay?” She hands me the bottle of wine. “And don’t look at me like that.”

  “You don’t even like wine.”

  “Hey,” she says. “I’ll take it where I can get it. But don’t tell Ruth. She’s all over my ass about caffeine and deli meat and Caesar dressing and all kinds of crap.”

  She would be. Ruthie wants to be a doctor, and she’s going to be a damn good one. “But what’s the deal with the sippy cup?”

  She flips the cup upside down. “Spill proof. A hack from my party-girl days.” Her voice is reminiscent of a time that feels far away, but was as recent as early summer. Quickly, she kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks for the cake, sis.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Hattie hasn’t offered to pay me back for the cake, which really wouldn’t bother me much. I mean, the line between what’s mine and hers is invisible if not nonexistent. But the fact that this is for Tyler—Tyler, of all people. Well, it rubs me the wrong way. Hattie’s never been good with money anyway. She thinks money is only meant for spending.

  Hattie shimmies her way over to Tyler, who I don’t think even showered before his own party. His acid-washed skinny jeans are at least one size too small, but I think that’s on purpose. His skin is so white it’s almost blue, and I guess that makes sense if you consider all the time he spends in front of televisions.

  Hattie pulls Tyler from the booth where he sits with his friends and several already empty beer bottles. Reluctantly he follows her to the makeshift dance floor, where Saul is thrusting his way between two rows of shrieking waitresses. When he’s done, he whips around and beckons Tyler. At first Tyler shakes his head, but then, surprising me and, well, everyone else, he hands Hattie his beer and sprinklers his way down the dance line to Saul, who greets him by grinding on his hip. Whatever possessed Tyler to dance in the first place is short-lived, as his friends boo and he returns to his booth.

  “Heteronormative bullshit,” Ruth mumbles as she reaches behind the bar for an empty glass.

  I shove the cork back into the wine bottle Hattie opened and grab an almost empty handle of Fireball whiskey.

  I hope I’m wrong about Tyler. Because maybe if I’m wrong about him, my gut could be wrong about Grace. And maybe—just maybe—Tyler will stick around and be the guy Hattie deserves.

  I head for the outdoor seating, past Hattie and Saul grinding on each other while Ruthie takes video that will someday serve as incriminating evidence of our youth.

  Boucher’s sits on the edge of a long dock, so I settle in with my bottle on the patio and decide I probably won’t be getting much sleep before my paper route. Out here the music is faint, quieted by the wind and waves, like I’m hearing it through an old telephone. I take a swig of whiskey and let it burn all the way down my chest.

  Grace never really mixed with my friends. I think she was sort of intimidated by Saul and Ruth. Somehow making out with a girl was okay, but hanging out with her gay friends? Well, that was taking things too far. And she and Hattie never clicked either. If I had to guess, it was because Grace always wanted us to spend time alone and Hattie isn’t big on privacy.

  “You mind sharing?”

  I turn around to find Freddie framed in moonlight with a bag of chips in hand.

  “Hey,” I say as I drag a chair around next to me. “Sit.”

  He plops down and tears open the bag of chips. “Felt like I should bring something.”

  I reach in for a handful as I pass him the whiskey. “Good thinking.”

  “Sorry I’m late. I, uh, got stuck on the phone.”

  “Who even talks on the phone anymore?”

  He snorts. “Plenty of people. You know, we used to be stuck writing letters to each other and waiting weeks or even months to hear back. The phone is a modern miracle, and now all of a sudden we’re too cool for it?”

  I laugh. “Okay, okay. Calm down, buddy. I didn’t realize phones meant so much to you.”

  He smiles, but there’s none of that easy charm I remember from yesterday morning. He’s stiff and irritable. I know the signs all too well.

  “Girl trouble?” I ask.

  “Something like that.” He sits down and glances around at the empty patio before taking the bottle from me. “Not much for parties?”

  I shake my head. “Not tonight. Just enjoying the view, I guess.”

  “The view? Nothing to see out here.”

  He’s right. All that lies in front of us is a curtain of pitch black with a few flashing lights off in the far distance.

  “It’s good, though,” he says. “I like it. The rhythm is calming. I used to get really scared of the ocean when I was a kid. You remember that?”

  I do, but barely. Way back when my parents were together and my mom worked at the beach-chair rental stand, Hattie and I would spend our mornings coloring and reading books while we sat under the fan in the rental hut. Agnes would come every afternoon with Freddie and take us off my mom’s hands.

  It started out with her renting a few chairs, but soon she noticed the two girls cooped up under the counter. It didn’t take much convincing for my mother to let us play with Freddie on the beach during her shifts. Those few hours turned into afternoons at their rental, and soon enough it was a yearly thing. But at the beach Freddie was a wreck, especially when the water was murky. It didn’t seem so weird, though. When I was a kid I was terrified of highways. I would call them “the road” and howl anytime we got near one.

  “My gram,” he says, “she’d make me close my eyes as we tiptoed into the water, and she’d say, ‘Take it one step at a time.’”

  I close my eyes now. I guess he’s kind of right. Just the sound of the gulf. It’s like I’ve broken the world down into little bite-size pieces. And maybe that’s how I can survive without Grace. That’s how I’ll survive Hattie, and the baby, and Tyler. One day. One hour. One minute at a time.

  I open my eyes again, forcing myself back into this moment here with Freddie.

  “I can’t believe you live here,” I say. “And that you’re . . . well, you.”

  “It’s wild.”

  “One summer y’all just didn’t come back.” I was nine, and hanging out with boys was suddenly a big deal to everyone except me. But the summer Freddie didn’t show up . . . that left a hole in my world. One that made me angry. I’d been left. Again.

  “My gramps,” he says. “His head started getting foggy.”

  “Alzheimer’s?” I ask. Walter, our old next-door neighbor before Mrs. Pearlman, had Alzheimer’s for the longest time before anyone knew it. He was always a serious man, but every once in a while he would start talking like his trailer was a submarine and that his kids were Russians. One day my dad caught him using the big Oriental planter pot he kept in his yard for cigarette butts as a toilet. It wasn’t long before his kids moved him out and into a home.

  “Yeah. Yeah, he would do things like take me to swim meets at my soccer field or call my grams my mom’s name.”

  My brain pauses on the words swim meets, but I shake it off.

  “But then it got worse. He got mean. We had to start hiding his keys and his wallet.” He takes a swig of whiskey and laughs. “He bought an aboveground pool from an infomercial one night and had it installed in our front yard when my grams was at work.”

  I laugh, and then catch myself. “I’m sorry.”

  “S’okay. It was pretty hilarious.” And then he adds, “He died of an aneurism the summer before ni
nth grade. In his sleep.”

  His hand sits on the armrest of his chair, and I place mine on top of his for a moment.

  He flips his palm over so that we’re holding hands.

  I’m the one trying to comfort him, but this small bit of human contact feels like aloe on a sunburn. Maybe I miss Grace that much. I’m reminded of all the things Freddie doesn’t know about me. I’m so used to everyone in my life knowing that I’m gay that it almost feels like I’m lying to Freddie by omission.

  “I think my gram was relieved,” he says. “Can’t blame her.”

  We sit there for a minute, until I finally break the silence. “I don’t mean to be an asshole by changing the subject, but you were on a swim team?”

  He grins. “Yeah. Bet that’s a surprise.”

  “I just—you hated the water.”

  “Gram always harped on me about turning my greatest weakness into my biggest strength, so she joined a club and got me signed up for the swim team. I even swam on my school’s team freshman, sophomore, and junior years.”

  I’m awestruck and jealous at the same time. “Wow. You must be pretty good.”

  He shrugs, and turns his head away.

  “Eulogy doesn’t have a team, though,” I tell him.

  “I know,” he answers flatly.

  I think I’ve struck a sore spot. The heavy air around us is cut by my sister’s voice. “Ramona, get your ass in here! And who’s this—”

  Freddie stands to greet her and he flips on that charm like a light switch. I can’t believe the transformation. “Hey, Hattie.” He grins.

  She makes a show of squinting. “Well, shit,” she says. “Little Freddie Floaties?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you, too, Hattie. And I can swim in the deep end now, just so you know.”

  She skips forward and gives him a wet kiss on the cheek. “Puberty was kind to you.” Hattie turns to me. “I’m totally introducing him to Alma, that new waitress. How cute would they be?”