Sass & Serendipity

by Ziegler, Jennifer

  Yet that was just it. His endorsement didn’t count for much. For one thing, it was rather backhanded. He might as well have said “So you’re a hag. So what? I’m still here.” But also, it was silly that he used his spending time with her as evidence, since it wasn’t as if he had a lot of other choices. Neither of them had a social life beyond each other.

  Mule gestured toward her. “See? Now you’re pissed.”

  “I’m not. I’m just … Crap. I don’t even know why I asked you.” She clutched her can with both hands and crinkled the aluminum slightly.

  “Why does it matter, anyway?”

  “It doesn’t. I just let my stupid sister get to me. That’s all. She’s doing it on purpose, too—pulling all this stuff right before Dad comes to visit. As if things weren’t stressful enough. The scholarship application is due in a few weeks and I still only have Bs in calc and physics. And if I don’t get full tuition I’m screwed. Even the maximum amount of loans will cover only so much. I could end up working full-time and going to school. Then I’ll totally lose my mind, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Only instead of an ax, I’ll crack skulls with this textbook.” She lifted her encyclopedia-sized Calculus and Applied Concepts in both hands and shook it for effect. “Then I’ll go to prison and Daphne will become the good, responsible daughter. Then the world will stop turning.”

  Again Mule remained silent, and again Gabby replayed her words. Here she was, going on and on as if she were the only person in the world with problems. And she complained that Daphne was selfish.

  “Anyway. Enough about me,” she said, lowering the book. “How’s your dad doing?”

  Last year Mr. Randolph had injured his back at the processing plant where he worked, leaving him bedridden. Two operations hadn’t improved things much, and Mule had been required to help take care of him, especially at night and on occasional weekends when his mother worked her nursing shifts at the county hospital. That was another reason he didn’t have much of a social life. Or a job.

  “He’s okay. He’s gotten hooked on a couple of talk shows, which is no big deal except he’s starting to take more of an interest in my life. Asking me how much gluten I eat, suggesting I try breathing exercises. This afternoon he saw something on prom fashions and asked who I was going to take.”

  Gabby snorted. “Did you say no one? That the whole thing is a big waste of money?”

  “I told him I hadn’t decided. I didn’t want to, you know, crush his spirit or whatever.” He let out a nervous-sounding chuckle. “Do you know what he said then?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘I heard that kids today go with their friends. Maybe you and Gabby should go together.’ ”

  “Man, he really has been watching too much crap TV. Why would we waste hundreds of dollars to have a lousy time among people we can’t stand? We could spend a fraction of that staying home with a movie. That would be infinitely more fun.”

  Mule nodded. He didn’t seem to be agreeing with her as much as marking the beat of an unheard song. His eyes fixed on the moths fluttering around the nearby lamp.

  “Hey, did I tell you Daphne begged and pleaded and cried until Mom said she was allowed to go this year?” Gabby leaned sideways to recapture Mule’s attention. “So typical. Mom and Dad said I couldn’t go till I was a junior, so of course she gets to go when she’s a sophomore.”

  “So? I mean, you hate prom anyway. Why do you care?”

  Gabby felt a little stung. Mule should be upset at the injustice of it all instead of pointing out any mild hypocrisy on her part. “It’s just the principle of the thing,” she explained. “Daphne always gets her way and I always have to do what they say. I’m the do-gooder and she’s the big baby and that’s how it will always be. Forever and ever. I could win the Nobel Prize and they’d probably try to make me share it with her.”

  As Gabby paused to take a breath, she felt the heat in her throat and realized she’d once again commandeered the conversation. What kind of friend was she? She was supposed to be asking Mule about his problems.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it all about me again,” she said. “I guess I am mean.”

  “Hey.” Mule reached over and jabbed her shoulder. “You aren’t mean. You’re just … venting. It’s what you do. You bitch and moan and call people names, and then you’re better. At least, for a while.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sounds like loads of fun for you.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Gabby stared at him. Mule was smiling that sideways smile he reserved just for her. Half amusement, half annoyance, with just a touch of a smirk. It never failed to make her feel better. Yet something about that grin seemed different today. Looking more closely, she realized that it wasn’t the smile that had changed, but the face it sat on.

  After years of waiting, Mule had been so proud when he finally got facial hair that he refused to groom it. Unfortunately, it grew in sparse little patches on the sides of his mouth and tip of his chin, giving him a sleazy, Fu Manchu sort of look. Today, though, Gabby noticed he was clean shaven, and his cheeks and jaw were more angular than she remembered. She also saw that his skin had almost completely cleared up, and his shoulders even looked a bit broader. When had all that happened?

  Probably months ago, but she was only now getting around to noticing. Because she was mean.

  “Mule …” She took a deep breath. “I know this sounds cornball, but thanks for … for being you.”

  Mule’s head jutted forward, as if her words somehow upset the balance of his skull upon his neck. “Uh … sure,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s what I’m good at. I’m good at being me.”

  Gabby winced. She was not expressing herself clearly—more proof that she wasn’t all that skilled at being nice. “I mean … thanks for being the only sane person around. The whole town is going nuts about prom. Daphne’s all gaga over some new guy. Thank god you’re smart enough not to buy into that true-love crap.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know …” Mule scrunched up his eyes. “Are you saying there’s no such thing as love? At all? Ever?”

  Gabby squirmed in the metal chair. Once again she seemed to have said the wrong thing. “No. I mean, I think people love their families and their best friends and their dogs. And I do think there’s such a thing as, you know, attraction. But the idea that there’s someone out there who completes your soul, blah, blah, blah, that’s just a big illusion people buy into. Like believing in the Easter Bunny.”

  Mule kept looking at her, chin in hand, forefinger tapping his mouth—the same expression he wore while figuring out superhard math problems. “Okay, just playing devil’s advocate here, but … why is it so wrong to believe in true love?”

  “Because,” Gabby began. Then she paused. The word dangled lamely in the air between them. Why had she even brought up the topic? She’d wanted to be nice, but somehow it had backfired. “Because it’s stupid. And dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Mule repeated, his eyebrows flying high on his forehead.

  “Look, just forget it. We’ve got work to do.” Gabby quickly opened her book, the heavy cover making a gonglike sound against the iron tabletop.

  She kept her focus on page 274, trying to block everything else out. But she could tell Mule was still peering at her as if she were a particularly baffling lab specimen. It made her feel fidgety.

  It was sad, really, when calculus was easier than conversation.

  “Wha-a-a-a-at?”

  Gabby lay in bed, sleepless and frustrated, tormented by her racing brain and the call of a nearby frog. It seemed to be chiding her, doubting her every thought.

  “Wha-a-a-a-at!”

  Meanwhile, her sister lay in deep slumber, her thick lashes faintly fluttering, round cheek smushed against the pillow, mouth slightly open. Once in a while she’d make a cooing sound and shift positions, but otherwise she seemed completely at peace. Daphne looked so young when she slept—not much older than the days when she’d s
ucked her thumb. It made it hard to be mad at her. Although Gabby still was, kind of.

  The study session had been going along fine until Daphne had started playing the sound track to Wicked at a ridiculous volume. Gabby had gone inside to complain and they’d ended up in a squabble that led to Mule’s excusing himself to go home. And Gabby had still needed his help on two sets of problems.

  Now she couldn’t clear her mind and fall asleep. It wasn’t just the math or the bickering or the loud, melodramatic music that troubled her. She also kept replaying her earlier conversation with Mule, and each time she did she found something else to kick herself about.

  She’d sounded mean. She’d sounded stupid. She’d hogged the conversation way too much.

  It was true what he said about her need to vent around him. There was something about Mule’s safe, loyal omnipresence that allowed her to lower her defenses. All he had to do was ask how her day went and suddenly all her pent-up stress would come spewing out like the contents of a punctured aerosol can.

  Of course, no matter how blabby she got around Mule, there were a few things she could never tell him about—which meant she couldn’t tell anyone.

  For example, no one knew about the time when she was five and gave herself a pet. Her parents wouldn’t let her have a dog (no fenced-in yard) or a cat (allergies), so one day she caught a small brown toad behind their house and decided to adopt him. She named him Hoppy and placed him in an old mop bucket too high for him to escape from, along with a dish of water and some pulled-up grass. Only she’d forgotten to keep him out of the sun. The next day she’d found his withered, half-baked carcass next to the empty water dish, with black ants crawling all over him. She still felt too guilty to tell anyone about that.

  Also, no one knew that she occasionally had the same dream. In it she’s trapped at the bottom of a deep hole, and a nameless, faceless guy pulls her out and kisses her—a tender, soft, slow kiss that makes it seem as if she’s melting into an oozy puddle. She’d be too embarrassed to tell anyone about that. Not just because it was cheesy, the type of fantasy Daphne probably entertained all day every day, but because she was pretty sure she knew who her nameless, faceless rescuer was.

  And that was the third thing she could never tell Mule or any other living being in the universe about: her secret time with Sonny Hutchins.

  Gabby felt a chill and snuggled down into her covers, making the old mattress groan. At night everything seemed harsher. Noises. Shadows. Memories. A pain welled up in the center of her body, dull but familiar, like an old injury reasserting itself.

  It had happened when she was thirteen. Her mom and dad had talked her into joining a kickball league, convinced that all that team spirit would make her more social, less serious and uptight. Only it had ended up being a disaster.

  Her offensive game was fine. She could run well, and her kicks were fairly decent. But no matter what her position in the outfield, she couldn’t manage to catch the ball. Every time it flew toward her, she would close her eyes and shield her head with her arms, and no amount of training could break her of this reflex. The more athletically gifted girls seemed to take her shortcomings personally and froze her out of all conversation. So instead of finding new friends, Gabby had ended up more alienated than ever.

  Eventually she just stopped going. But rather than argue with her parents about it, she made sure she went somewhere else during that hour and a half she was supposedly at team practice, to prevent them from growing suspicious. She would wander out of sight behind buildings, looking for loose change scattered on the pavement. Or she’d climb the big live oak in Monroe Park and read.

  One day Gabby had been following Chandler Creek, searching for fossils and keeping an eye out for water moccasins, and she’d ended up roaming farther than ever before. The noises of town gradually faded and the brush grew higher around her, forcing her onto the bank. After a while she came upon a clearing she’d never seen. A gently sloping grassy bluff that provided a scenic view of the nearby hills. She wandered into the field and, for some bizarre reason, lifted her arms and started twirling about like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Even now, she shuddered a bit at the memory. How unlike her. She must have gotten stoned off the stagnant creek-water vapors.

  She’d continued spinning and staring up at the sky until a voice called out, “You aren’t going to dance off the edge, are you?”

  Gabby stopped midwhirl and began scanning the vicinity for her onlooker. She felt as if she’d been intruded upon, but in essence, she was the interloper. She had been the one who showed up second.

  “Let me guess … Julie Andrews?” came the voice again.

  This time she spotted him. It was Sonny Hutchins. He’d been leaning up against a tree, watching her, partially obscured by shadows and branches. Sonny was two years older and went to a private school, but she’d known who he was. For one thing, he was kind of famous. He came from one of the oldest and most well-connected families in town, and his relatives were always leading parades and running for office. But also, every summer their fathers were tapped to judge the annual chili cook-off.

  What was he doing there, sitting under a cypress in the middle of nowhere, away from all his friends and fancy relatives?

  She must have stood gaping at him longer than most sentient beings would have, because he asked again, “So was I right? Channeling your inner Julie?”

  Gabby had nodded and then he’d smiled. She could still see it in her mind—the way leafy shadows played across his face; the way a tiny gust of wind lifted a few strands of hair on the top of his head and they danced about, waving in all directions like insect feelers.

  That was another thing Sonny was famous for: his looks. Delicate, almost pretty features. A lopsided grin. Blond hair that he somehow managed to keep fairly long, in spite of his superpowerful, superconservative parents. A guy so attractive, it was intimidating—even though he seemed friendly enough. Every festival he would chat with Gabby a bit and make witty observations about the various entries. Meanwhile, she would barely manage to squeak hello and probably turned redder than Eddie Hardee’s celebrated batch of Crying Marine Chili con Carnage.

  She assumed Sonny didn’t recognize her, so she nearly lost her balance when he cocked his head and said, “Gabby, right?”

  Once again, all she could do was nod.

  “Thought so,” he said. “Come over here and look at this.” He held something in his right fist.

  She’d gone right over to him. It still made Gabby shake her head. Older guy she barely knew. The seclusion of trees. Too far away for anyone else to hear or see her. But she trusted him. She hadn’t even stopped to think—she’d just walked straight to him as if pulled by an invisible tractor beam. Then she sat down beside him and peered into his cupped hands.

  He’d been holding a caterpillar. Soft and plump, about the length of his pinkie finger, with thin yellow, black, and white stripes along the width of its body. The larva of a monarch butterfly.

  “I found it on one of those leaves,” he said, nodding toward a clump of lush green plants. Gabby thought it was sweet the way he stroked the creature’s back with the tip of his forefinger as it slowly inched up his palm.

  “That’s milkweed. It’s their food. This area is part of their breeding ground,” she’d said, ever the good student.

  “I always knew you were smart,” he said.

  Gabby felt her face flush. “What do you mean ‘always knew’?”

  He shrugged. “I noticed how your dad has you tally the score sheets while he does the tasting at the cook-offs. Plus, I’ve seen you around. You’re always reading and coming in and out of the library.”

  Her breath seemed to run out. Sonny had noticed her? He’d wondered about her?

  “Of course, I always thought you were pretty, too,” he went on, smiling crookedly into his lap. He seemed almost bashful. “I was planning to ask you out when I got my license.”

  She made a gasping noise—partly from
shock and partly because she hadn’t inhaled in several seconds. Sonny noticed and glanced up. He didn’t look shy anymore.

  “I remember you telling your dad you preferred seafood,” he said. “So I thought we’d go have scampi. Then maybe come up here.”

  “Up here?” she repeated, finding her voice.

  “You know what this place is, don’t you?” he asked.

  Gabby shook her head.

  “It’s Make-Out Ridge.”

  As an unpopular eighth grader with only one friend to speak of (Mule, skinnier and shaggier, and scarily obsessed with Dr. Who at the time), Gabby had only heard of the spot where high schoolers met to hook up. Looking around, she could see, logically, why it had been chosen. Even though it was just a few blocks from the town by foot, it was still rather remote by car, lying at the end of a winding dirt road. Cedar and mesquite trees bordered the field, obscuring the nearby homes and gas stations.

  She watched as Sonny gently set the caterpillar onto a stalk of milkweed. “So,” he said, grinning at her. “Would you like to make out?”

  She probably should have said no. A reasonable girl would have been shocked and offended. Coming from any other guy, such a question would have been laughable or even disgusting. But Sonny made it sound sweet.

  For the first time ever, she wasn’t stupefied by him. Gabby found herself smiling and nodding, and then scooting near enough for Sonny to wrap his long arms around her. To this day she wasn’t sure why she did that. There was just some quality about Sonny that made her trust him—and want to get closer.

  Hormones, Gabby told herself, changing positions on her lumpy mattress so that she faced the window. She’d fallen victim to biochemistry, that was all. It was astounding how primitive urges could have such a hold on a person. The passion she’d felt as a thirteen-year-old was understandable. Just intense curiosity and an excess of glandular activity. But sometimes even today, four and a half years later, the memories of his mouth against hers created little warm spots all over.