Jessica stuck out her lower lip, pouting. “Last Sunday, I had to dig around in my mother's storage unit for hours.”
I picked up the cheerleader uniform delicately, as though it might turn to dust, like a mummy in an old horror movie.
“It looks smaller than I remember. Are you sure this one is mine?”
“Your name's on the label,” she said. “I'm sure it still fits. Maybe it'll look even better, now that you have more curves to fill it out.”
“I'm worried my curves are in all the wrong places.”
“Maybe you should lay off on the gas station hot dogs.”
I gasped in mock horror. “Is this about how my jeans keep shrinking in the laundry?”
She gave me a motherly look. “Funny how we used the same detergent and washing machine, yet my jeans haven't been afflicted.”
I dropped the uniform back on the bed and clutched my chest as though fatally wounded. I fell onto the bed next to Jeffrey, who opened one sleepy green eye.
“What do you think?” I poked his tummy. “Should we go on a diet together?”
He closed his eyes, yawned, and stretched into a croissant shape.
“You don't need to diet,” Jessica said. “Just stop eating carbs after dark and your jeans will fit again.”
“Everyone knows carbs taste twice as nice after the sun goes down.”
She sat on the bed on the other side of Jeffrey. “Or don't worry about it. You're beautiful, and you have a perfect figure.”
“You're a bad liar.”
“But I'm not lying. You do look great, and I love how you're not neurotic about your appearance. I'm trying to be more like you. I'm trying not to project my issues onto you. Please forget everything I said about the gas station hot dogs.”
“No, you do have a point.” I patted my waistline self-consciously. According to the scale, I had gained a number of pounds in a short amount of time. At first, I'd assumed something had happened to the scale while I was using it to weigh garbage, but the fit of my clothes certainly corroborated the theory that some of my parts were getting fluffier. I'd had a single day of panic in which I thought I might be pregnant, but that theory was quickly ruled out.
“You're perfect how you are,” Jessica said.
“I could try to cut back. But if I don't eat the gas station hot dogs, that leaves the nachos with the melted cheese.”
“Can they even legally call it”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“cheese?”
“You're making me hungry, and we just ate.”
She held up both hands. “Not my intention at all.”
I leaned over and grabbed Jeffrey's rear paw, caressing his dark-rose-hued toe pads. “What's this? It looks delicious. I could eat these little jelly beans.”
His ears twitched but he didn't react, not even when I pretended to put his paw in my mouth.
Jessica and I played with Jeffrey for a few minutes, until he suddenly jumped up and ran off as though he'd just remembered he had an important business meeting.
“No more stalling,” Jessica said. “Put on the cheerleader uniform or don't. Your choice. Either way, we should get going so Quinn doesn't make us do laps for being late.”
I checked the time. “Dimples should be here any minute.” The doorbell rang.
“Timely,” I said.
Jessica arched one eyebrow. “I love it when that happens.”
Chapter 38
The three of us piled into Kyle Dempsey's car. He'd volunteered to be our designated driver so that Jessica and I could partake in adult beverages. Jessica sat in the passenger seat, and I took the back. Kyle kept glancing in the rearview mirror and then looking away.
I told him, “Take a picture, it'll last longer.”
“You just look so different,” he said. “You've got legs.”
I tugged at the hem of my pleated cheerleader skirt. “So does Jessica,” I said. “Why don't you look at her legs for a while?”
“She wears dresses all the time,” he said. “I've seen her legs plenty.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jessica said, laughing. “You and Mitch must have gone to the same charm school.”
Kyle brought the car to a complete stop at the first major intersection. I usually treated that corner as a yield, not a stop, but the young man was a cop, through and through. A cop in a deep V-neck T-shirt. Tonight's selection was an azure blue that brought out his dreamy eyes. Not that I had noticed.
Kyle glanced over at Jessica before turning right. “What's going on there, anyway? Mitch has been walking around with a long face for the last week. He thinks he screwed things up with you. What exactly did he do?”
“It's more like what he didn't do,” Jessica said.
My ears perked up. I'd been trying to get Jessica to open up about her stalled romance with the firefighter, but Kyle had gotten further in two minute than I had in two weeks.
Kyle gave her a dazzling grin. “What didn't he do?”
She twirled one of her red pigtails. “The whole thing seems so stupid now. We went out for pizza and drinks, and I paid for the meal, and then he didn't thank me.”
“That's all?”
“I don't know how to explain it, but he sort of acted like he'd paid for it. When he dropped me off at home, he said I could treat him next time.”
“Did you pay for the pizza right in front of him?”
“No.” She twirled her pigtail again. “I went up to the waitress station while he was in the washroom. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“Mm hmm.” Kyle checked over his shoulder, turned on the signal blinker, and carefully changed lanes. “Did you happen to notice Mitch dropping a pile of cash on the table as you were leaving?”
Jessica was quiet for a full minute.
Kyle explained, “It's just that Mitch usually pays cash. At least he does at the Loose Moose, when he's picking up a round. And he never has to wait for the bill because he's really good at adding up drinks, food, and tip in his head. I've never met a guy who's so good with numbers.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“There's a surprising amount of math firefighters do in the field. There's calculating friction loss based on the hose length and diameter to adjust pump pressure, and then all the geometry. Do you know what a chain is?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “It's a metal rope made of links.”
“A chain is the basic unit for measuring distances in fire-control work. It's equal to sixty-six feet. There are eighty chains to a mile.”
Jessica was quiet.
I piped up from the backseat. “Now you're just showing off,” I said.
Kyle flashed me a grin in the rearview mirror.
“Mitch thought he paid for dinner,” Jessica said. “Because he did. We both did. That lucky waitress got a huge tip.”
“You probably made her night,” Kyle said.
“I'm so stupid,” Jessica said.
In unison, Kyle and I both said, “No, you're not!”
I reached forward between the seats and squeezed her shoulder. “Tell Mitch what happened. He'll probably laugh.”
“He probably will,” she said grimly, as though having him laugh at their misunderstanding would be unbearable, because it would feel like him laughing at her.
“Tell him anyway,” I said.
“I'll think about it,” Jessica said.
Her answer seemed to satisfy Kyle, because for the rest of the drive he didn't bug her about it. But I knew that Jessica's I'll think about it meant that she had no intention of doing so. The thing about her insecurities was she would paint herself into a corner, and rather than admitting her mistake and walking out, she'd stand there until the paint dried and everyone else's attention moved on to something else. She'd stand there forever if she had to.
The other thing was, I couldn't say for sure that she was wrong to do so. Her older brothers loved her, but they'd been merciless in their teasing. Any weakness she admitted to—any vulnerability—would b
e exploited by them. Many of her boyfriends had been the same way, mocking her inability to handle money and joking about taking her paychecks and putting her on an allowance, for her own good.
Jessica often played dumb because then people weren't so quick to jump on her when she did make a mistake. She was careful about who she let into her heart, who she trusted enough to be herself around. She took rejection so personally, more so than other people. Sometimes I wished I could go on the internet and order her an extra-thick suit of skin to wear as protection. But I couldn't. So I tried to be a positive person in her life by doing other things, such as wearing my old high school cheerleader uniform despite feeling utterly ridiculous in it.
The sweater was awfully tight, and worst of all, it was made of a polyester blend that didn't breathe. I reached for my purse to get some tissues to use for mopping up some of the sweat, but my purse wasn't next to me. I'd left it at home, along with my phone and everything else I regularly carried. Suddenly, I felt naked and exposed. Jessica had locked up the house, and then since Kyle was driving, I hadn't needed my keys so I forgot the whole kit and caboodle. And now we were halfway to the Baudelaire farm.
I settled back on the seat and fanned air through the sweater as best I could.
We weren't late, but the hootenanny was already in full swing by the time we arrived at the Baudelaires' old farm. The family hadn't lived on the premises for a long time. For the last decade, the family had been renting out the surrounding farm fields to an adjacent farmer, a Russian man who'd been trying to get them to sell the land to him for years.
Kyle filled us in on the gossip while he drove along the bumpy road, following the chain of lit tiki torches and signs directing us where to park. The Russian, whom everyone simply called “the Russian” rather than using his actual name, had been either the object of or the source of several nuisance calls to the local police department. It sounded rather juicy. Kyle promised he would fill us in on more details some other time, when we had an entire evening to kill.
Jessica asked him, “Is it safe to be here on this land like this?”
“The old farmhouse and the barn are not part of what the Russian is renting. After some recent disputes between the Baudelaires and the Russian, it has been clarified.” Kyle chuckled. “Without a single shot fired.”
“You're not filling me with confidence,” Jessica said.
“Don't you worry, ma'am,” he said with an authoritative tone. “I'm here to preserve the peace, to enforce law and order over this fine land.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “And dance.”
We climbed out of the car and headed into the party.
Kyle Dempsey wasn't joking about the dancing. As soon as we walked into the barn, he hit the dance floor with Jessica on his arm. They kicked up bits of hay as they twirled around to the folk music.
The music was of the folk variety, and it was as loud as it was live, played by a band of at least seven members, including one person with an enormous stand-up bass.
The folk band's fiddle player stepped forward to play a solo piece. It took me a minute to recognize the star fiddle player as Chip McCabe.
Once again, I was completely surprised to witness another facet of the man I knew mainly as my father's mail carrier.
Chip was wearing, as usual, a pair of shorts, but instead of walking shoes he wore pointed-toed western boots. With his chubby knees, the outfit gave him the look of a little boy. His shirt was also a western style in a dark burgundy, studded with rhinestones. The other six band mates wore matching shirts.
On the drummer's bass drum was the name of the band: Rain Nor Heat.
I had to smile at their cleverness. Surely the band was comprised entirely of mail carriers, and the name was taken from the unofficial creed of the USPS: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Rain Nor Heat was upbeat and cheerful, perfect for a hootenanny, and from what I knew of folk music, professional quality.
Since my two companions were on the dance floor, I headed over to the punch bowl, scanning faces and waving hello as I walked.
There were many familiar folks in the crowd, but I kept peering around. I was looking for one person in particular: Harper. Sunday night on the phone, she'd assured me she would be here tonight. Should I have offered her a ride? I wished I'd thought of it sooner. I had been looking forward to picking her brain about her bosses, the Sweets. Harper might have let it slip to someone that Michael hung out at their empty house listings to spend quality time with himself. If she was friends with someone who was also friends with Trigger Canuso, that would explain how Trigger might have discovered Michael's whereabouts the day he was killed.
Talking to Harper was a long shot, but experience had taught me that long shots paid off on occasion.
I spotted two young women who also worked at the Olive Grove and went over to talk to them.
“Do you know if Harper's coming tonight?”
They were both so distracted by my cheerleader uniform that it took them a minute to answer. One looked at the other and asked, “Doesn't she have that bad sinus cold that's going around?”
“She'd better have it,” the friend replied. “She was going to take a few of my shifts for cash, but then she backed out at the last minute and I had to miss my sister's shower.” She looked at me with a pained expression. “Baby shower, not wedding shower. Much to our parents' horror.”
“Congratulations,” I said anyway. “It seems like so much fun to be an auntie.” I glanced around, trying to come up with more small talk. I had nothing, so I cut to the chase. “Are either of you friends with Trigger Canuso?”
They gave each other a look, and then the first one wrinkled her nose. “Not really. I mean, we know who she is, and we don't have a problem with her, but...” They looked at each other again.
“Never mind,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know about Harper. Maybe I'll stop by her apartment tomorrow with some chicken soup.”
As I walked away from the girls, I could hear them whispering my name and giggling. My body felt heavy, and I suddenly wished I was at home, or anywhere but a barn dance. I wouldn't normally have cared about people talking about me behind my back, but wearing my high school cheerleader uniform must have put me in touch with some of my youthful insecurities.
I headed toward the refreshments table. Another familiar face popped out of the crowd: my trusty employee, Brianna. Was I ever happy to see her. I scooped myself a cup of pink juice from the punch bowl and went to join her.
Brianna looked like a stylish farm girl, in denim shorts and a plaid shirt tied above her navel. She'd styled her hair differently for the occasion—two pigtails. Before she saw me, she'd been twisting the pigtails around to cover her ears, which she felt stuck out too much even though they were perfectly adorable.
“Hey, Brianna,” I said. “Are you getting lots of new source material for your web comic?”
She stared at my cheerleader sweater and then my skirt. “Stormy? Is that you?” She lifted her red plastic cup of punch to her nose and sniffed it. “Don't drink the punch,” she said. “There must be magic mushrooms in here because I'm trippin' balls. I swear you're wearing a cheerleader uniform.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “It was all Jessica's idea, but something tells me Quinn put her up to it.”
“Sounds like Quinn.” She patted the sleeve of my sweater. “Where did you get this sweater? It looks so real.”
“It's real. This is mine. From high school.” I could tell she didn't believe me. “Brianna, once upon a time, I was a cheerleader.”
“Sure you were,” she said with wide eyes. “Tell me another one.” She followed up her sarcasm with a hiccup.
“Go easy on the punch,” I said.
With exaggerated slowness, she replied, “Oooookay, boss.”
Rain Nor Sleet finished their song, and the crowd of about two hundred people applauded. Brianna and
I didn't have anywhere to set our red cups, so we shouted Whoo sounds, as one does.
The next song started up, at an even more upbeat tempo than the last one.
“Your cousin Chip is quite the fiddle player,” I said to Brianna. “Is the rest of your family as musically talented?”
“Sort of. My mother and the other white McCabes are into folk and country. My father's side is more about classical piano and violin.” She grinned. “Stereotypical Chinese Americans, I know.”
“What do you play?”
“Video games.” She hiccuped again and waved to someone across the way.
I followed her gaze across the crowded barn to her parents and her grandma, Lily, on her mobility scooter. They saw me and waved excitedly, so I waved back. Brianna's mother was blond, like many of the other McCabes. All three Changs were laughing and clapping along with the music.
“This isn't their first hootenanny,” I observed.
We watched the band and the action on the dance floor as we finished our drinks. I offered to refill Brianna's red cup. I gave myself another serving of punch and filled hers with half punch and half ginger ale.
When I brought her the cup, she said, “Do one of your famous Irish toasts!”
“Just for the two of us? Sure.” I rattled off the first one that came to mind. “May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.”
Brianna grinned with delight, and we clinked red plastic cups.
We watched the band play a few more songs. They took a break and switched over to DJ music, with the volume turned down so people could socialize more easily.
The cavernous barn filled with the sounds of conversation, seeming even fuller than it had been moments before. The soft lighting from strings of white lanterns crisscrossing overhead was universally flattering. I looked down at my bare legs, pleased to see that the little bruises and imperfections didn't show at all.
The din of conversation rose up around us. Snippets floated over to my ears. Several people were talking about the upcoming filming of the Hallows series, and young Quinby's role. There would be many opportunities for locals to play extras; it would be an economic boon for the town. Even my gift shop would benefit. All of this news certainly added to the festivity of the annual event.
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