I wiped my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? I mean you’re just so good.”
I laughed. “No I’m not.”
But he didn’t laugh.
He went on. “I have all kinds of crap problems with school and my parents and I’m always grounded and I lied to you. I’m not an FBI agent even though I should be. P.S. I lie about a lot of things and I was getting in all this trouble and when I met you, it was bad. It was so bad. Like I don’t have a phone and I’m not allowed on the computer hardly ever and my mom makes me go to aerobics with her. I have to go.”
“So it’s not for training?”
He shrugged. “It is really good exercise. Anyway, everything was so bad and the worst part is Grant. I kept wondering why my mom would date him. He seems so boring and weird.”
I laughed. “He mostly is weird.”
“I just want my mom to be happy and she’s always dating these dumb losers. I just want her to find someone who will love her.”
I nodded.
“I didn’t think he was good for her and she said I didn’t know what I was talking about so then I decided I’d show her. I’d get evidence.”
“So you came to Sunny Pines.”
“Yep,” he said. “And I met you.”
I smiled.
“And I found out he is what I thought but also he loves her and also, maybe there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He laughed. Then he got quiet. “I want to tell you something,” he said.
“What?” He looked serious and my heart started up again. What was he going to say?
“I,” he paused. “I . . . I made you a pie.”
“A pie?”
“I knew you’d come. I knew it. And I wanted to give you something special. So I made it.”
I laughed.
Then he said, “I thought we could eat the pie on top of my house and we could watch the sunset and I would say I’m sorry that I lied to you about Grant and I’m sorry that your dad is a butthead and that I’m so glad you’re my best friend.”
His best friend.
His best friend.
His best friend.
“It’s apple brown sugar and caramel on top.”
I laughed more now.
And he said, “It’s better than McDonald’s.”
At Bart’s house we ate dinner.
We walked to the backyard just as Grant was taking burgers off the grill and when he saw me he said, “Holy crap,” and almost dropped the tray.
I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Hi? What are you doing here?”
He seemed mad at me, which was weird.
He wanted to know where I’d been.
Bart’s mom made us sit down.
“I wasn’t gone that long,” I said.
“You were gone for hours, Olivia. Everyone thought you were just going to cool off but then you didn’t come back.”
Bart’s mom made me a plate. She made one for Grant, too, but he didn’t seem to feel like eating. Instead he kept asking me things. Telling me how irresponsible that was.
“I’m going to call your mom right now,” he said.
And I said, “Can’t we eat?”
He looked at me. “Olivia. She’s really upset.”
I put down a Dorito. “I know, I know. I let her down.”
He stared at me. “You let her down?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You didn’t let her down. You scared the earwax out of her is what you did.”
I ate the Dorito. “She doesn’t care.”
“She doesn’t care? Are you kidding me?” he said. “She’s been a wreck. She made your dad leave. Screamed at him.”
My heart started thumping. “She did?”
“Oh yeah. It got ugly.”
I thought about that. Mom never yelled at Dad. Ever.
“Why?”
“He kept telling her to calm down. That it wasn’t a big deal and she went ballistic.”
My mom. Going ballistic. About me. To my dad.
“And he left?”
“He said he’d find you on his own and took off.”
I swallowed. Mom made him leave. She did it.
Then Grant said, “We’ve all been looking for you.”
I looked at the ketchup bottle. “Who?”
“All of us. Me. Bob. Melody. Delilah. Paul. Randy. Jerry. Carlene and Tandi and Lala and Chip. Even Sydney. Baby George. Everyone.” He paused for a second. Then he said, “Your whole family.”
That’s when I really started crying.
I rode to Sunny Pines Trailer Park in Grant’s truck.
It smelled like dog and armpit and piña colada thanks to the scent tree hanging from his rearview mirror.
“You nervous?” he asked.
I was watching the houses go by. In every single one, people lived there.
People who talked to each other and fought with each other and ate macaroni and cheese with each other.
People who watched TV and went on bike rides and braided each other’s hair.
In every single house there were things that were good and things that were bad. And there were families. All kinds of families that tried their best to hold each other together.
“I’m okay,” I said.
When we pulled in, to my surprise, there was a huge WELCOME HOME, OLIVIA sign and an elephant and a helicopter throwing out confetti and a TV camera and forty-five dancers from the hit TV show So You Think You Can Dance doing a modern number about love and reunion and a hundred boxes of Totino’s frozen pizzas.
~
But really, there was Berk in the middle of the street. And Mom. And Melody. And Carlene.
And everyone.
And I ran to Berk and I held her and I said, “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
She just hugged me and hugged me and hugged me and I hugged her right back.
And then I hugged Mom and she hugged me and she said, “It’s going to be okay,” and I said, “I know,” and then I hugged Melody and Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson and Delilah and Paul and Grant and Carlene and Tandi and Chip and everyone. I hugged everyone because I was home.
On a summer night in the middle of June, the moon big in the sky and the sun, too, Sunny Pines Trailer Park had its first annual CIRCUS UNDER THE STARS FOREVER YOURS!!!
Berk made up the name.
There were lights everywhere thanks to Melody and Harry, who was back for now, and a cotton candy machine and a dunking booth that Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson donated the money to rent.
Delilah brought sweet rolls and doughnuts and leftover cupcakes from the bakery.
There was a real live stage that Earl Bowen built and none of us even knew he was a carpenter and even was in the army for ten years and then he lived in Papua New Guinea (!!!!!), he built a real live stage with a curtain and a background that me and Carlene and dumb-bum Bonnie, who thought it was stupid but then did it anyway, the three of us painted and it was actually kind of fun.
There was music and a microphone thanks to Grant and Bob.
Jerry Smith got to bring home some exotic pets from Petco for everyone to look at, like a bearded dragon, and a gerbil, and a big huge boa constrictor snake.
Berk had a new golden leotard and she and Sadie and Jane did the opening number where they danced and then yelled in their loudest voices:
WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS UNDER THE STARS FOREVER YOURS! PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR PHONES AND ANY OTHER MOBILE DEVICE! WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE SHOW!!!
And then Bart came out wearing a top hat and his baggy jeans and he made jokes and everyone laughed and he was the Master of Ceremonies.
And soon, the acts started.
&n
bsp; Melody rode her unicycle and Paul lifted a couch with three people sitting on it and Carlene and Bonnie performed a lip sync to a One Direction song that wasn’t too bad.
Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson did a ventriloquist act with her doll named Agatha and people weren’t sure whether to laugh or be serious, but then Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson and her doll named Agatha started laughing so then everyone was laughing.
Randy walked across the stage on his hands and Berk did her tightrope act and only fell twice and I juggled Sprite bottles and sang Yankee Doodle at the same time, thank you very much.
And then, this really happened, Grant belly danced! He belly danced wearing these spandex pants and gym shorts over them and no shirt and some sort of mask and me and Bart we could not stop laughing, and Roxi, Bart’s mom, kept telling us to shush but she was so red in the face you could tell she was trying not to laugh, too, and Mom was laughing the hardest.
Tandi did a front handspring, which who knew she could do that? Even Carlene had her jaw dropped. I bet she couldn’t do that and Chip drove down the street in his truck.
Delilah told a story about a monkey’s paw that about made me pee my pants and even the Conways came out and the dad told a few jokes.
The whole neighborhood.
~
And at the very end, Mom. My mom. She got up and sat on a chair. All by herself with a guitar.
She looked beautiful and small and in her white flowing dress again. The one I thought was for Dad. But maybe it was for her.
She was going to Mountainland Applied Technology at nights. She was seeing a therapist person that we got for free through the government and sometimes we went, too. And she was finally asking people for help.
She got up there and smiled.
“This is for my girls.”
And then she started to sing, her voice filling up the night.
No one moved, no one breathed, the notes were so full and real and everywhere, like a dance all their own.
And then, Berk, she crawled up on my lap and the three of us, Mom up there, me and Berk on our lawn chairs, we cried.
And cried.
And cried.
We could do it.
We didn’t need luck or seven million dollars or hot-air balloons.
We could do it.
I looked around at everyone sitting there, loving my mom and loving us, too, and I knew it was true.
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