She laughed. “I did, as a matter of fact . . . but I mentioned to him that you loved this sandwich so he sent one to you. Calvin said any friend of mine was a friend of his.”
I tossed my arms around her midsection.
“Thank you, James!! And Calvin,” I added belatedly. But really James because who was I kidding? He hadn’t gotten this sandwich for me; he’d done it to impress James.
She gave me a look. “Well I didn’t do anything. But I’ll pass your sentiment on to Calvin when I see him again.”
“And when will you be seeing him again?” Odie asked, raising an eyebrow at James.
“On Tuesday in class,” James said lightly.
“Oh, don’t give me that! You can’t tell me that boy hasn’t asked you out.”
James shrugged. “Calvin is my study buddy. I’m not going out with him.”
“Does he know that?” Odie asked.
“I don’t know, Odie, but if he ever asks me on a date I will tell him!” James snapped.
“Unngghh.” Odie growled in the back of her throat.
“James!”
“What?”
“It’s not right to take advantage of someone’s niceness just because you can! You’re going to break that boy’s heart. If you’re not interested, don’t lead him on. You saw what just happened to poor Dai—”
Her words died before she finished.
Humiliation I’d considered long dead flared and then simmered.
“I’m sorry, Daisy! I—I shouldn’t have said that.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. I was led on, and it did hurt. Folks shouldn’t do it. But I don’t think that’s what James is doing.”
Odie made that strangled sound again. “She shouldn’t accept things from him or . . .”
“Odie, James isn’t responsible for her looks. Neither are you, neither am I. And we certainly can’t control how other people react to those looks. To my knowledge, James hasn’t given that boy any reason to think she’s interested in him.”
James nodded her head in agreement.
But I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easy.
Then I turned to my devastatingly gorgeous friend. “Odie has a point, you know. He does like you. And because he likes you, you should make it perfectly clear that he has no chance with you. That is—if you haven’t already done that. And if you’re spending time with him just because you want to get free stuff out of it, then you need to quit that too.”
She shook her head. “I’m not, but I see what you mean. Calvin is nice, but he’s my study buddy, full-stop. He knows we’re just friends.”
Odie changed the subject and the mood lightened as she caught James up on our afternoon excursion. I made them both laugh by doing a dramatic reenactment of Odie seeing all that money fall out of the cards.
“Hey, I was broke. I really needed that cash.”
“I hear you. I’m running low on cash myself.” I laughed.
James shook her head defiantly. “Neither of you will know broke until you walk a mile in my shoes. At least you came to school with money—I came here with lint in my pockets.”
She smiled and then looked away like she’d said too much.
“What would you buy if money was no object?” Odie asked from her spot on the bed as we lay on the rug.
“Easy,” said James. “A Canon F-1 and all the film to go with it.”
I knew James was interested photography. She’d mentioned once that she had been in the photography club in high school and that they’d lent them cameras to use. She sounded like she missed it a lot.
“James, if you love photography so much why aren’t you majoring in it?” Odie asked before I could get the words out.
James laughed. “Because I need to be employed—stably employed—when I graduate. There’s always gonna be newspapers, so journalism is a better bet.”
Odie nodded as if that rationale makes sense.
“But couldn’t you take photographs for the paper?” I countered.
James shrugged noncommittally. “Yes, I suppose I could. But that’s not the type of photography I love. I don’t want to snap people when they’ve just been pulled from their burning house or whatever tragedy has befallen them that day. Besides, I really do like writing too—it’s not a hardship.”
I wanted to argue with James that tragedies were not the only types of photographs printed in the papers, but I didn’t because I realized that was beside the point. I bit my tongue. I had no right to encourage James to act recklessly when it came to financial preparation for her future. Even if I felt like she was giving up on her dream.
Odie piped up, “I’d hire a person to help me get as thin as you and James.” Before either of us could interject she added, “And I’d buy yarn.”
She said the word yarn with such deep longing I wondered if I was missing out by not knowing how to knit. “I hardly ever get new yarn at home, so I take apart old projects and reuse it.”
“That’s so resourceful,” James said diplomatically.
James was right. It was resourceful, but it too made me sad.
The distance between how my friends and I were raised—no, not how we were raised, how we were provided for—and how that had shaped our dreams for the future felt acute.
Because the first thing that came to my mind when Odie asked me what I’d buy if money was no object was the ten-acre lot off Route 40 that would be the perfect spot for my eatery. My friends wanted cameras and yarn. I wanted a business.
The moment I’d been dreading came, “What about you, Daize?”
By divine intervention, I was struck with an idea. An idea so brilliant I blurted it as soon as it popped into my mind. “James, I think I know how to help you get your books!”
James looked to Odie, bewildered.
“What?”
“You can’t afford them, right? That’s why you haven’t gotten your books yet?”
James bristled and I realized I was handling this wrong. Odie shot me a wide-eyed “What the hell are you doing?” look and I rushed to finish.
“Please don’t be ashamed—like you told me: this isn’t charity, we’re friends.”
James fidgeted with her hands and then nodded once curtly.
“I think we should have a bake sale!”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized it was a colossally dumb plan.
Odie stared at me.
James stared at me.
It was like someone had made that whoopee cushion, balloon deflating sound in the silence and that someone was me.
I felt compelled to explain the direction in which my brain had been headed. “I’m sorry! I just have had a hankering for some cookies. Then I remembered the night I did make cookies and how folks were stopping me for days after Diana and Ruth told them how good they were. And y’all kept asking me to make them. I thought I could just make a bunch of cookies since I have access to the home ec building . . . but I see that this . . . is a dumb plan.” Even if I could figure out how to move the cookies back and forth it would bring too much attention to my dorm room and I’d get caught.
Odie was squinting her eyes and scrunching her nose at the same time. “No. It’s not a dumb plan, but it is one that needs a bit of ironing.”
To my surprise, James appeared to have her thinking cap on too.
“How much you think we can sell those cookies for, Daisy?”
“I-I don’t know. Maybe three for a dime, or quarter. But we can’t …” I looked at my friends confused. This was a patently bad plan.
“Jamesy, how much do those books of yours cost all totaled?”
James dropped her head in her hands. “One hundred forty-eight dollars and seventy cents.”
Odie whistled. “That’s a helluva lot of cookies.”
James laughed. “Yeah, but I think . . .” She squinted back at Odie. “That we might be able to pull it off.”
“Y’all can’t be serious! I just told you it isn’t possible.”
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“What if we used a password?” Odie suggested.
“What do you mean?” This from James.
“Folks could only buy cookies if they knew the password.”
“It still wouldn’t work. You heard how much money we need to raise. It would just be too many folks coming in and out—password or not. Besides, selling something out of your dorm room seems like the best way to get caught.”
“Okay well, how should be do it, Daisy?” James looked at me expectantly and so did Odie.
“What? We shouldn’t do it! I told you all it was a bad plan. There is no fixing it.”
“Fine then, I guess Jamesy here will just fail all her classes,” Odie said with sass.
“Hey!” James and I yelled in unison.
I bit my lip and began talking through the plan, absurd as it was. “If we could figure out a way to let folks know to come to one of the three of us when we’re out and about on campus . . . then maybe it would work. But that would mean we would have to carry cookies all the time and that would be a pain.”
My friends and I went back and forth discussing various aspects of my idea but we couldn’t get past the impractical nature of having to carry a bunch of cookies along with all our books and personal items.
It was James that finally solved the problem.
“Let outs! All we have to do is show up to a few parties as they’re ending and sell the cookies there. It will be late, most things will be closed, and everyone will have been drinking and will be hungry . . . and then BAM! We show up like the cookie fairies.”
I ignored the way her words made my heart skip a beat as I remembered Trevor telling me that I looked like a fairy with my sunshades on.
I blinked away the memory and refocused. “Okay, that part is solid, but we still have one big problem. We’re broke. Even Odie with her sixty bucks doesn’t have enough money to buy all the flour and eggs and butter and chocolate chips that we’d need to get started.”
“You don’t have that stuff in the home ec building? Don’t y’all cook in there?”
“Yes, but not to this scale. In order to get as much of each item as we’d need, we’d need access to like, an industrial kitchen . . .”
James and I turned to stare at Odie, obviously having the same thought.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Odie demanded.
James looked at her imploringly. “Odie. We need access to an industrial kitchen. This plan depends on us getting access to the things in that kitchen. My education depends on it. I’ve been getting by but having books would make things a lot easier.”
“Okay, I got that but—”
“Who do we know who has access to the university kitchen, Odessa?”
Odie looked between the two of us and I could see the moment comprehension hit. She closed her eyes, dropped her head in her hands, nodded once, and whispered, “Dammit.”
Saturday morning we headed to breakfast and Odie repeated the same litany she’d been echoing all that night. “James, you owe me. You owe me so big for doing this. I don’t even think you know how big you owe me. Anything. Anytime. Anywhere. James, I’m serious.”
“Okay, Okay.” James laughed. “I said yes!” Then she added, “I mean, if you want, I can ask Lucy to ask her brother.”
Odie glared at her. “You leave Lucy out of our cookie capers. It’s bad enough that I’m going to have to keep this from her.”
I realized immediately that Odie was right. Asking Lucy’s little brother to steal from the university kitchen probably wouldn’t go over well.
I bit my lip again.
We probably shouldn’t go through with this.
Even though the plan had been mine, I’d been trying to talk us out of it since it had first come out of my mouth, but James and Odie were committed to it.
The last time I’d suggested we drop the plan James looked at me and said, “I know I should’ve said something earlier but I didn’t because, I don’t know . . . I was too embarrassed and too proud and didn’t want to burden you all with my problems. But Daisy, I really need these books. And this plan can help me get them.”
After that I’d dropped it.
It wasn’t until we were leaving breakfast that Odie made her move. Charlie was bussing a table as we approached. When she said his name, he dropped a hard plastic cup he’d been holding. It slammed into the floor and broke into two pieces with an ear-splitting crack.
Charlie didn’t even glance toward the cup. “Is Lucy okay?”
“What? I think so,” Odie said shrilly. “Why? What’s happened?”
Charlie shook his head and said, “You’re talking to me is what happened. It caught me by surprise is all and I thought . . .”
“No. Lucy is fine,” Odie said firmly. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Listen, can you meet me outside for a few minutes? I have something I need—we need—to ask you.”
Charlie looked confused for a second then . . . his expression morphed into one that was so hopeful that my stomach bottomed out. We should back out of this plan. Immediately. He likely thinks this conversation is going in a far different direction than it’s headed.
Charlie excitedly agreed and asked us to wait outside for him, promising that he’d join in a few minutes.
When he came jogging out of the building, I teased him to break some of the tension I was feeling. “I can’t believe Mrs. Dot let you go on break.”
He smiled wanly. “She doesn’t work most weekends. Sometimes on Saturdays, but never on Sunday’s because she goes to church. Mr. Jimmy is usually off too. On the weekends, Miss Julia runs the kitchen.” He said it in the same wistful admiring tone a five-year-old boy would use as he spoke about his love for his kindergarten teacher.
“Listen, Charlie,” Odie started, never one for beating around the bush. “I need a favor from you.” She gestured to James and me. “We need a favor from you. We need you to get us some butter, milk, flour, eggs, and cinnamon from the kitchen.”
He stared at us. And stared at us . . . Then Charlie Love laughed and said, “Okay, why did you really call me out here?”
Odie looked pointedly at James, shrugged and said, “Well, I tried.” Then she threw her hands up and began walking away.
“Wait!” Charlie called, sounding desperate, even though James and I hadn’t moved a muscle.
I stepped in and quickly explained the predicament and our solution, leaving James out of it. I summed it up by saying, “In short we need to earn one hundred-fifty dollars.”
When I was finished I asked him, “Will you help us?”
He looked blown away.
Then he surprised me by saying, “I’m not saying I’ll help you, but if I do, why not just use the university’s kitchen instead of moving all this stuff back and forth?”
“Is that an option? I figured you didn’t have a key to the building and that there was likely very little time when the kitchen wasn’t occupied. I’d guess you probably don’t get out until nine thirty or ten on nights the kitchen closes at eight and Mrs. Dot and crew are probably back at four a.m. to start cooking.”
I saw him about to object so I added, “Plus the home economics building is completely unoccupied over the weekend and that part of campus isn’t as heavily trafficked. Whereas this”—I pointed to all the people passing nearby—“almost always looks like this. Someone would see us even if you could sneak us in.”
He agreed with me reluctantly.
“I’m not saying I’m in, but . . . if I do this, what’s in it for me?”
My eyes bugged out. “Charlie man! I just said that we’re broke!”
He shook his head. “I don’t want money.”
“Odie,” he called, and she looked up at the sky like she was begging the Lord to come and save her.
When no crack of lightning came from above, Odessa looked at Charlie and exhaled a long suffering, “Yes, Charles.”
“If I do this, then you have to make a deal with me.”
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nbsp; She looked warier than I’d ever seen her.
“Not them, Odie, you. This is between me and you. And if I get involved in all this it’ll be because of you.” He was looking at her with the intensity of seven suns and Odie was fighting back with every ounce of her being.
Charlie was also not one to mince words. There must have been something in the water down in Charleston.
What the hell happened between these two?
“What do you want?”
“I want you to forgive me.”
“No.”
“Odie, please . . . this is killing me.”
“No. Next.”
A prickle of unease coursed through me as I realized I’d seen this situation play out before . . . only with me and Trevor. Trevor had used those exact same words. This is killing me.
I looked at Charlie who, up until that very moment, I’d always felt a modicum of sympathy for. The question reframed itself in my mind.
What the hell did he do to her?
Because those puppy dog eyes Charlie gave her were suddenly very clearly filled with guilt.
“Fine.” Charlie huffed. Then he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him, “Then I want you to start really eating.”
Odie reared back and her hand flew up as if she was going to slap him, but James caught her arm midair.
She looked at James, blinked and swallowed before saying, “Thank you, James.”
James nodded, stepped back, and let her hand go.
Her words were venom, heat, and little more than a hiss when she addressed him again. “You don’t get to talk to me about that. You don’t ever get to mention that to me.”
She turned her back to him, looked to me and James, and opened her palms placatingly.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
As Odie walked away, James whirled on Charlie, her eyes full of recrimination. “What the hell did you do to my friend, Charles Love?”
He hung his head and then looked up, guilt and shame written all over his handsome face. “I think . . . I broke her. And I have no idea how to fix it.”
In the end, Charlie refused to tell us what he’d done to Odie but he agreed to help us. The only assurance we were able to give him when it came to Odie was that we would try to get her to say hello or acknowledge him, and we assured him that we did see her eat.
Upsy Daisy: A First Love College Romance Page 22