Secrets of Southern Girls

by Haley Harrigan

  Nell had just hired Jules’s cousin, Toby, to drive the delivery van. I’d tried my best to talk her out of the idea, but she didn’t want to hear it. A favor to Molly, most likely, but Nell knows how volatile Toby can be. He and Jules can hardly stand to be in the same room together, and he makes me feel uneasy too, in a way I don’t really understand. Something about the way he looks at people, like he can see their secrets. He’s flat-out gorgeous, but he can’t be trusted. Jules had no idea that Nell had hired him, and I knew she would be absolutely livid when she found out.

  I couldn’t wait to go back to school. I love it all: the learning, the structure, the feeling of being surrounded by knowledge and teachers and people who know things, and books that tell me how the world is supposed to be. Feeling like I know something today that I didn’t know yesterday.

  I was hoping that once school started back, Jules wouldn’t want to spend every weekend at Southern Saddle, but it was likely that she’d want to keep it up, even though it’s no secret that I don’t like to go. The noise, the alcohol, all of the insincere men showering us with attention because they want things from us. Is it so terrible to hold out for something genuine? Outside of the fact that my daddy would kill me if he found out I was there. I should have told Jules I wasn’t going back, but have I ever told her no? Most of my life, she’s been pulling me along, and I’ve never really minded. I’m grateful for it, even. And play practice meant that she might not even have time for Southern Saddle. Jules would get the part, of course. Is there anything Jules wants that she doesn’t get?

  When I saw him, finally, I had the feeling that he had been there for a while. I stood up, and he was closer than last time, crouched again in the tall grass, camera to his face.

  I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just starting running toward him, skirt held up around my knees so it wouldn’t catch in the weeds. Maybe I should have been afraid, but my curiosity won out. I knew the moment he realized I was coming after him, because he stood up straight. He was taller than me (but everyone is), and his skin was deep brown, which was much more alarming than his height, if I am the girl my father raised. He turned to run.

  I thought of all the things my daddy has tried to teach me, all of his warnings. I should have turned back around, gone inside like a good girl, probably called the police to alert them that a black man was doing suspicious things behind Nell’s shop. I know I should have. But I thought of Jules, of what she would do, and I knew she wouldn’t have thought twice about confronting this stranger. And so I kept going.

  “Stop!” I called after him, when I knew he could hear me. But he kept running toward the thick trees.

  “Wait!” I yelled again.

  I don’t know what finally made him stop, but he did, just before he reached the trees. He looked at me, and I kept running and running, still calling out for him to stop even though he very clearly had stopped already.

  “Hi,” he said, when I stopped in front of him, gasping for air. I looked down at the ground and back up slowly, my eyes pausing at the big camera, silver and black and hanging on a long strap around his neck.

  Finally, I took in his face. “You,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say and the silence felt elastic, like it could stretch on indefinitely.

  “Um…me,” he said. He was young, probably around my age. His hair was dark and cropped close to his head with a hint of a curl forming at the ends, and his eyes were like the night without a moon, mysterious and intriguing. I was at eye level with his throat, and I watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down, pressing against the tender skin there when he swallowed. I could feel myself blush.

  “You’re taking pictures of me,” I said. “Why?” I took in the rest of him, the muscles of his arms exposed beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. I put one hand on my hip and tried to look intimidating.

  “You caught me,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. He had a dimple in his left cheek. “It was the flash last time, right? That’s what gave me away.”

  “What?” I wiped a hand across my forehead.

  “The flash. On the camera. The flash in the middle of the day. It was an accident. I know better.”

  “Why are you taking pictures of me?” I asked him again.

  “Because the ones from last time didn’t turn out,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The flash.”

  “Who are you?”

  He was silent, looking at me with that same lazy smile.

  “Fine. Maybe I’ll go call the police and let them know that some crazy…boy is trespassing and taking strange pictures.” I turned around without any real intention of calling anyone. Was I flirting? Is this how it’s done?

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, come on. Look, I’m into photography. It’s what I do.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Not just you. It was that shop at first. Flowers, right? The way it looks from back here. So interesting. And then I saw you. It’s harmless, okay? They’re just pictures.” He studied me. “I’m August.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I looked at it a long time before taking it, my hand small inside his.

  “Hi.” That first touch, his hand warm and soft, gave me a tiny thrill, and I felt excited and sad at the same time.

  “Hi…” He trailed off, and it took me a moment to realize that he was waiting for me to introduce myself.

  “Reba,” I said. I saw that our hands were still linked, so I dropped mine quickly.

  “Reba,” August repeated. “Interesting name. Nice to meet you, Reba.”

  “Short for Rebecca,” I said. “Why don’t I know you?” I couldn’t believe how rude I sounded, but Lawrence Mill is so small, and he seemed close to my age. Even if we wouldn’t naturally spend time in the same groups, I should still know his face.

  “Do you know everybody?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, or if maybe he was flirting with me too.

  I shrugged. “Sort of.”

  “Well,” he said. “I just moved here. I’ll be starting at Lawrence High School next week.”

  “Oh.”

  His eyes were so dark and mine so light, and I couldn’t help but think of how funny it was that we were looking at each other and seeing someone so opposite, right down to the eyes.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I’m working. Nell will be looking for me.” Silly thing to say, like he knew who Nell was.

  “Well, nice to meet you,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you around. I’d like to.”

  “Maybe.” I started walking away.

  “Hey!” he called after me. “Do you want to see them? The photos of you and the shop? I could stop by your house or something…show you, if you want.”

  I thought about my parents, and what they would do, my daddy in particular, if this black boy who was very nearly a man showed up on our doorstep, looking for me. Especially these days, when he is holding a grudge against what seems to be the entire black population of Lawrence Mill. A teensy, tiny part of me found the idea of August even more appealing because my daddy would lose his mind if he ever found out, but having him come to my house would be reckless, even by Jules’s standards.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But, maybe I will see you around.” It sounded more like a promise than I intended it to, and I was running back to the shop before he could respond.

  I heard the soft whisper of my name before I’d gotten very far away, and I don’t know if he was really saying it, or if it was only the sound of his voice, lodged already in my head.

  That’s how I remember it all happening, at least.

  24

  The bell tinkles behind Julie as she leaves the flower shop, and fresh, grassy air fills her lungs. After adjusting to the perfumy smells inside, the light, clean air tastes toxic, makes her feel light-headed. Or maybe her own confusion has her feeling
that way.

  She has to fight the urge to run back inside and confront Nell, to find a way to force her to produce the diary. Because Julie would bet any amount of money that Nell has it. If she didn’t, the news that there was a diary would have been as shocking to Nell as it had been to Julie when she first heard about it. A bombshell. A revelation.

  Why doesn’t Nell want her to have it? If Julie were still a headstrong teenager, she wouldn’t have been able to sit there and play along while the woman who’d been like a mother to her told her the biggest lie Julie had ever heard. She tells herself that she’s smarter now, that she’s calculating her next move, and that’s the reason she didn’t demand that Nell hand over the diary. But the truth is that she was stunned, too surprised to even speak.

  She was stupid to have thought that Nell would welcome her back after so long, that Nell would have wanted her to have the book. That Nell would still be the same person after all this time.

  When Julie and Reba worked at the flower shop as teenagers, Nell kept a small safe tucked on a shelf in the back room. She kept the cash from each day’s purchases locked away there until she could get to the bank, but the safe also housed an array of items of sentimental value that Nell would pull out and look over from time to time: a decades-old newspaper clipping of her when she was crowned Cotton Queen in high school, a black-and-white photo of her parents, the first dollar (in a ziplock bag) she’d ever made at the flower shop.

  If Nell had Reba’s diary, would she keep it locked away with her other treasures? The way Nell had glanced in that direction, like she couldn’t help but give herself away, makes Julie think maybe she would. Does that safe even exist anymore? When Julie was sitting in that shop, she’d felt certain that the diary was there, right there, just out of reach. Would it be valuable enough to Nell that she’d keep it hidden in her safe?

  Or, were those words simply so shocking, so scandalous, that they had to be locked away?

  Julie is driving away from Nell’s shop, her mind on that book when she sees, down the street, the entrance to the subdivision where she and Reba grew up. Despite her desperation for the journal, the impulse to visit her old neighborhood is too much to ignore when she is so close, and she swings the car onto the narrow, sidewalk-lined street. But then finds herself intentionally slowing down, forcing a fascination with trees on the front lawns. The thin twists of branches, the frail light-green of new leaves. Ten, maybe twenty more yards, and there it is: Reba’s old house, like something lived in by dolls, the paint on the wood siding still white as a wedding cake. Children play in the yard, little girls, one barefoot in a white dress.

  Reba’s family is long gone from this place.

  Aunt Molly’s old house is right next door, green like a dark, mossy pond, the house still somber and solitary compared to the cheerful home next door. Julie steers her car to the curb and idles, looking to every window, thinking of what was beyond those glass panes, how it used to be—the confinement of her room in the upstairs corner. Toby’s room right next to it, where his music was always thumping, and Molly’s room on the opposite end of the house, as far away from both of them as she could get while still under the same roof, on the same floor.

  Julie never dared explore Molly’s room, even while her aunt was away. Not even the indulgence of sneaking, with some boy, between the stiff sheets of Molly’s tightly made bed. No. Julie’s lovers, if you could really call them that, young and inexperienced as they were, never even stepped through the doors of Molly’s house, and the woman’s bedroom remained not so much a mystery (because mystery implied intrigue, wonder) as a sealed-off place existing on another plane entirely.

  The living room was where Molly spent most of her time. After her night shifts at the hospital, she changed into sweats and wrapped herself in a blanket on the sofa. She would fall asleep there instead of in her bed, the new morning sunlight streaming in through the closed slats of the blinds and the TV humming without volume, its bright pictures flashing colors onto Molly’s face as she snored. Julie saw her that way on a hundred different mornings, would stop briefly in the doorway of the living room on her way out for school and watch her aunt, her breathing heavy but even, and the expression on her face peaceful. Julie was almost able to imagine Molly as a different person, the person Julie’s mother had loved, had been close to. But only then. Only when Molly was sleeping.

  Julie fights the urge to spin the steering wheel and drive away. Home is a question mark, confusing. Is Lawrence Mill home? It never felt that way, back then. Still, she idles, the car in Park, and stares at those two houses for a very long time.

  • • •

  Julie was five years old when her parents died, and Aunt Molly and Uncle Ted came to New York to claim her like a stray piece of luggage. It’s hard to remember her parents now, but she has never forgotten the car ride from the airport with those strangers, her aunt and uncle. Uncle Ted, still around then, loaded Julie’s small suitcase into the trunk, and she crawled into the backseat. When he cranked the car, Molly turned the radio off, and they traveled in silence for the hour that it took to get to Lawrence Mill from the airport.

  She stared out the back window at the lush emerald trees racing past. In Mississippi for the first time in her life, she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling of being stranded in the middle of nothing but forests and land.

  A car accident had killed her parents, though they didn’t even own a car. Their rental had gotten bashed and beaten when an eighteen-wheeler hit them.

  Years later, Julie stumbled upon photos of the wreckage, photos that Molly kept hidden in the attic—for insurance purposes, maybe. The car was so battered that Julie couldn’t tell the make or model. She looked at those photos and thought that she should feel something. But there was nothing except the strangest, softest sorrow for the broken shell of a vehicle, the craters in the metal like bruises.

  That same day, Julie found the black-and-white photo of Uncle Ted and her mother as teenagers, embracing with carefree smiles on their faces. It had to have been before Molly and Ted ever dated, certainly before they married. Julie understood then why Uncle Ted had always been so soft and caring to her, and Aunt Molly mostly hard and reserved.

  The irony was that Julie and her parents had been on the way to Lawrence Mill the day of the crash, to visit Molly and Ted and Julie’s cousin, Toby. She had never met any of them; her mother hadn’t seen Molly in years. So, they rented a car for a road trip. Julie thinks that her father was particularly excited about it, although maybe she made that part up. It isn’t as if there is anyone around to contradict her. The accident happened before they even made it out of New York State. Killed instantly, her mother and father both. But Julie was in the backseat, and so small, and tucked against the floorboard behind her mother’s seat. She thinks that she remembers the scratchy, felt-like curls of fabric from the back of the passenger seat rubbing against her face and arms when the EMTs pulled her from the car.

  Julie’s mother, Margo, had left Lawrence Mill two days after her high school graduation. Her parents and her older sister, Molly, were so infuriated with her decision to leave that they refused to drive her to the airport, as though refusing her a ride might stop her from leaving altogether. A friend drove her instead. Julie often imagines her mother waving an exuberant good-bye to Molly, who would have stood in the driveway with her arms crossed and her mouth a firm, straight line.

  In New York City, her mother was a dancer. Before she married Julie’s father, she’d actually been a Rockette. (This was more impressive to Julie once she moved back to New York as an adult and saw the Rockettes for herself.) Aunt Molly had photos of Julie’s mother dancing, and these Julie took with her. In the pictures, her mother wears a big, red-lipsticked smile and glamorous sequined outfits with elaborate headdresses. In some of the photos, she is alone, but in others, she has her arms wrapped around other women who wear identical costumes. They must ha
ve been her friends. Julie’s father was an entertainment reporter for the New York Times. She would never know how they met, but she imagines her mother—long, dark hair, heavily lashed eyes, plump lips—seducing her father. In the only photos she has seen of them together, he is wearing button-down shirts and ties, but her mother’s arms are thrown passionately around his neck, her face nuzzled against his. They look blissfully happy.

  Aunt Molly and Uncle Ted were their only family, the only people to call when Julie became an orphan.

  Riding into Lawrence Mill, five-year-old Julie saw the old buildings, the mill, Nell’s Flower Shop, observed things as any outsider might. Ted drove the speed limit. They turned into the neighborhood where Ted and Molly lived and drove past houses, some of which were still being constructed. The driveway they turned into led to a two-story house, pea-green with gray shutters, a mailbox enclosed with decorative bricks.

  Julie started to cry.

  Uncle Ted opened the car door and scooped her out of the backseat, but when he put her on her feet, she sat down right there in the driveway, her face stinging with tears. Through her blurred vision, she saw a little girl playing in the yard next door, in front of a white house with a blue-painted door. The little girl had long, light curly hair and wore a white dress with streaks of grass stains across the front. She played alone, skipping and singing and seemingly lost inside a world of her own creation. When she saw Julie, she stopped, and they looked right at each other across the expanse of yard between them. The girl had a sunny, yellow dandelion in her hand.

  “Come on now, Julie,” Ted urged. “It’s going to be all right.” He saw her watching the little girl next door. “Hey,” he said. “See that girl? That’s Reba. She’s your new neighbor. I bet you guys are going to be best friends. Come on, let’s go inside now, and then you can meet her really soon.” He bent down to Julie’s level and waved to Reba. Reba waved back. “See? It’s going to be okay.”