Eddie looks at me and looks down before looking at me again. “Hey, Violet, you want to—”
“Violet, Violet!” Tootsie runs down Melissa’s porch steps and across the walk.
“Tootsie-Tutu!” I yell. I swoop her up and swing her around.
“Do it again!” she says when I put her down. But I grab her hand and go up the walk.
Lottie pops up. “Violet!” She smiles and starts for the steps.
Then I see Melissa’s gooseneck pop up. Well, what can you expect? She does live here and all. Her chest heaves with a big sigh when she sees me. That’s okay. I don’t say hi to her either. Then she looks past me and smiles at Eddie.
Lottie jumps down the stairs and hugs me like she ain’t seen me in a year. A good feeling goes through me, and it gets even better when I notice the jealous look on Melissa’s face. I’m glad she’s not part of this, and I’m glad she knows it.
Lottie leans around me. “Hey, Eddie.”
“Hey.” He leans forward on his handlebars. “You guys want to go to the cave?” he asks. “We could pick up cups on the way.”
I’m about to say yes, a BrainFreeze would sure be good on a day like this, but Lottie speaks up before I do. “Not me. I’m looking at magazines with Melissa.”
Eddie turns to me. “Violet, you want to come?”
I’d love to squeeze into that cave and hear that whooshing sound again. And suddenly a root beer BrainFreeze is just what I got a craving for. But when I look at Lottie, her eyes ask me to stay.
“Naw, I think I’m going to stay here for a while.”
He doesn’t say anything back, just turns his bike around and heads down the road.
“Wait till you see the autographs Melissa’s got!” Lottie says as we climb up the porch and sit on the floor by Melissa. Tootsie sits on my lap.
Those stupid letters. “I seen them before,” I say. Already, I am regretting not heading down that road with Eddie.
Melissa huffs. “Not all of them.” She spreads out a pile of those plastic sheets, talking without looking up. “Walked here with your boyfriend, huh?”
I sneer at her. “He ain’t my boyfriend.” Then I roll my eyes at Lottie so’s she can see how stupid Melissa is. As if Eddie and I would ever act all googly-eyed and stuff.
“Whatever.” Melissa busies herself with her letters. “He looks kind of like this guy,” she says, flashing a plastic-encased photo.
I can see the resemblance, dark hair and blue eyes, but I never thought of Eddie as one of those fancy Hollywood types. Eddie is a real person.
Lottie leans over and looks at the picture. “You’re right. He does kind of look like that guy.”
Oh, my Lord. I can’t believe I’m sitting on this porch wasting time over these pictures. My legs drip with sweat and I push Tootsie off my lap. Then I remember about swimming and I look over and see Lottie’s bathing suit tied up under her shirt. “You guys want to hook up a sprinkler?” I ask, then turn to Melissa. “Or you got a pool we can fill up?”
Tootsie jumps up and down and claps her hands. “Sprinkler!” She runs into the house. I hear her yelling for her bathing suit, but it comes out as “babing boot.”
“I’ve got makeup on,” Melissa says. “We weren’t planning on running through the sprinkler.” She acts like she’s embarrassed I said such a thing.
I look at Lottie. “Why you got your bathing suit on then?”
Lottie’s face burns a slow pink. She looks at Melissa. This makes me mad, something secret going on between them.
“What?” I cross my arms.
Melissa sighs. “If you must know, she’s in training.”
“Training?” I ain’t heard nothing about a swim contest. “For what?”
Lottie looks down.
Melissa shakes her head and smirks. “She’s in training for a bra. I can’t believe you even had to ask. You’re so dense.”
That last comment stings. Lottie doesn’t even raise her head or stick up for me. A hardness covers my heart.
Tootsie flings open the door waving her bathing suit. “I need help!”
I stand up and stop near the top of the porch stairs. “You can put that suit away, Tootsie. They don’t want to go swimming. They don’t want to go to the cave. They don’t want to do anything except look at boring old magazines.”
Lottie stands up. She looks hurt.
Good. Now she knows how it feels.
“Are you leaving?” she asks.
Her voice sounds small, but I’m too mad to care. “If I’m lucky,” I say, “I can catch up to Eddie and do something fun.”
Melissa jumps to her feet. “Yeah, catch up to Eddie. We all know you have a crush on him!”
Lottie’s hand flies up to her mouth.
“Do not!” I holler.
“Do too!”
I yell louder. “Do not!”
Melissa waves her hand like she’s shooing away a mosquito. “Go on, now. Run to your loverboy.” She starts laughing.
“Don’t go, Violet, she’s just teasing,” Lottie says.
I look from Lottie to Melissa. I can’t stand the smirk on Melissa’s face. “I’m leaving.”
I stomp down the stairs, smashing the good feelings I had with every step. I reach the bottom and it only takes a second to realize I must turn left to my house instead of right to where Eddie went.
I don’t have a crush on him.
17
“Momma, what made you fall in love with my daddy?” I’ve come for lunch on an especially good day—Momma’s made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, special order, but there were two extras. I’m almost finished with mine.
Momma sets her fork down. She’s eating her cupcake with a fork so’s not to disturb her lipstick. She smiles. “Now why are you asking me that?”
I make the exact opposite of a smile. Some people think that’s a frown, but they’re wrong. The exact opposite of a smile is an I-don’t-care face, like I make now. “Just wondered.” I take a bite out of my cupcake.
It works, ’cause she looks past me and I can tell she’s looking through the memories in her head. Her face gets all soft and, for a moment, she looks younger. “I’d seen your daddy around church and in school. All us girls knew who he was—”
“How? Was he class president or something important?”
Momma laughs softly. “No, he was never president or anything like that. He just—it was just the way he was.”
Well, this is no help at all. “If he wasn’t anything important, how’d everyone know who he was?”
“Your daddy played guitar in church. I guess that’s how the other boys knew who he was. And us girls, too—he looked just like Elvis Presley up on that platform. He was so good looking, and bashful too. That made us like him even more.”
I wrinkle my nose and pull my head back. “You mean you had a crush on him?”
“I think everyone had a crush on your father. Me and my best friend joined the choir just to be near him.”
I nearly fall off my chair hearing that. “You started singing so’s you could be near a boy?”
Momma laughs. “Oh, yes! I just wanted to be near him, anything just to be with him. I couldn’t believe it when the pastor put us up front to sing together.” Momma’s eyes are wet with sad-happy tears. “He said we had perfect harmony.”
“So did everyone start teasing you ’bout you and daddy?”
“Actually,” Momma says, “I think they were a little jealous.” Momma’s face begins to focus and I can almost see the memory evaporating like a cloud. “Why?” she asks. “Are people teasing you ’bout someone?”
I quickly put on the I-don’t-care face, but it’s too late. I can tell by the way she waits on my answer she’s seen my real face.
“Kind of,” I say. I shrug. I don’t want this to be a big deal. “They’re teasing me about Eddie. Melissa thinks he’s cute.”
“He is a nice-looking boy.”
I rise halfway out of my seat. �
�I don’t have a crush on him!”
Momma looks startled. “I didn’t say you did.”
“Yeah, but you said he’s a nice-looking boy.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yes, you did,” I say and scoot my chair back. “You think I have a crush on him just like they do.”
Momma looks confused. “Violet—”
“Well, you’re wrong.” I slam my chair into the table.
I know she can’t follow me ’cause she’s still on the clock. The air conditioner hits me as I walk through the electric doors, the last breath of cool air before I go into the heat.
18
Lottie’s getting especially hard to track down these days. I walked all the way to Melissa’s only to find out that Lottie was at her own home. At least I didn’t run into old gooseneck herself.
Mr. Townsend is carrying lumber from his truck when I come up the drive. “Hey, Vi.”
“Hey.” I feel a couple of sprinkles. Seems too early for rain. “Mrs. Gold said Lottie was here.”
He stacks the lumber on a pile by the porch, takes off his baseball cap, and wipes his forehead with his arm, which I can see is scraped up from all his work. “She went to the store with her mother. She’ll be right back.” He points to a far corner of the porch. “You can wait with Melissa if you want.”
A raindrop plops right into my eye as I look at her, sitting like a cat on the banister.
She spreads out a fake smile while saying something different with her eyes. I fake-smile back. I wish I had fangs. Mr. Townsend gets back to his work, not even knowing the darts that have just been thrown right in front of him. I ain’t sitting on the porch with her. I settle on the steps.
Finally, their car crunches up the driveway. Lottie bursts out practically before Mrs. Townsend’s even got the engine off. Her face is shining and she looks different. Same haircut, so it’s not that. Shirt looks different, but, yeah, I’ve seen it before.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Mrs. Townsend yells after her. “How about helping with these bags?”
Lottie shakes her fists in front of her so’s only I can see. I pop up from the stairs and go with her for the bags. Rain comes down a little harder. Melissa runs from the porch to help and we all dash inside.
I ain’t been inside this house since the lightning strike. I almost drop my bags when I glance around the kitchen. Whole sections of walls have been tore into. I can see straight to the inside bones and wires of the house. My eyes well up with tears. There’s scorch marks everywhere.
Even though Mr. and Mrs. Townsend have been cleaning up, chunks of drywall litter the floor. I smell mildew and charred wood. I set the bags down and drift into the living room. Lottie and Melissa follow. The living room’s been hacked up too, and the carpet feels squishy.
“Oh, my gosh,” Melissa murmurs.
“Is it like this upstairs?” I whisper to Lottie.
She nods.
I lean on the couch but lift myself away quickly. “It’s wet.”
Lottie shrugs. “They had to spray.”
The living room is as far as I can go. I don’t want to see no more of this.
When we go back into the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Townsend are real quiet. She’s staring straight at him. “What do they say?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyebrows lower as he keeps reading a letter.
“What’s wrong?” By the way her voice cracks, I can tell that letter’s got bad news in it.
He looks at her like there’s no one else in the room. “Insurance isn’t going to pay,” he says. “They say we’ve been delinquent.”
“We’re criminals?” Lottie says.
“Means late,” I say. “Delinquent also means late.”
Mrs. Townsend’s face goes slack, and she leans against the counter.
Mr. Townsend wipes his face with his hand and closes his eyes for a second.
Fear rises in me.
Lottie steps closer. “So? What does that mean?”
Mr. Townsend stares at Mrs. Townsend. “We don’t have the money to fix everything.” He swallows hard. “We might have to sell.”
My body goes rigid. My heart pounds in my ears. “Sell?” My voice comes out quiet. “But you live here.”
“You dummy,” Melissa says and snatches my arm. “They can’t live here if they can’t fix it.”
Lottie clenches her teeth and turns on us. Her eyes glitter. “Shut up! Just shut up, okay?”
I feel like I just been slapped. Tears well up in my eyes.
Lottie says, “I’m sorry, you guys, okay? I just—”
Mrs. Townsend turns to us. Her eyes are moist and her voice cracks when she speaks. “Girls, this isn’t a good time right now.” She rubs her eyes. “Maybe you should go home.”
I stumble down Lottie’s steps like a blind person, my eyes are so blurry with tears. It’s raining good now, but no thunder or lightning.
Melissa blocks my path and leans into me. “This is your fault,” she hisses. I imagine horns on top of her head.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “It was the antenna! Lottie said so herself.” I wipe the rain from my cheeks.
Putting her hands on her hips, she gets in my face and says, “Of course she said that. She doesn’t want you to feel bad.”
It wasn’t my fault. I would die if it were my fault. “Florida’s the lightning capital of the United States,” I shout. “Eddie told me that.”
She smirks. “Oh, yeah—your loverboy.”
I can’t take no more of it. I clench my teeth and push her.
She trips backward. Her eyes go wide open, then she gets her balance back and her meanness too. “Are you going to pull my hair now?”
My feelings are swirling around and I can’t fight good right now. “Shut up!”
She snorts. “Nice comeback. What else did you learn on the playground?”
It’s too much. I lunge at her, but she’s onto me this time and slips out of the way. Without a target to hit, my body swings out of balance, my arms spin like windmills, and my legs tangle. I fall in a heap.
When I get up, Melissa has a superior look on her face. On a good day, I could wipe that look off in ten seconds, maybe nine. But this ain’t a good day. I get up, brush myself off, and stalk past her through the rain to my house.
Usually, I like sun showers, but I can’t see no rainbow in this one.
19
I’m on my porch, two doormats away from the fattest dragonfly I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know what I’ll do if I catch him.
“Violet!” Lottie’s voice.
At first, I flick my eyes up without moving, but then I see Melissa with her, so I straighten up and act like I was just waiting for them to come down the road. The dragonfly takes off. My shoulders slump and I plop down on our porch swing.
They get to my front walk and climb up the porch steps.
“What were you doing?” Melissa asks snidely.
“What were you doing?” I ask back in the same voice.
She huffs and rolls her eyes.
Lottie sits on the swing beside me. There’s enough room for Melissa, but she don’t sit down. Lottie says, “We’re going to search for shells by the bridge. Want to come?”
’Course I do. “Let me just close up the house.” I wonder if Lottie had to ask special permission from Melissa to invite me. Suddenly, I’m glad I let Melissa come to the cave with us that day.
I go in, and as soon as the door swings shut, I hear Melissa talking. She don’t know the windows are open. I hide real quick behind the sheer drapes in case anything gets said I should know about. They can’t see me, but I can see Melissa’s face and the back of Lottie’s head.
“Do you think she’ll find out today?” Melissa asks.
Ooh, I’m so glad I’m catching this secret.
Lottie waits for a second before answering. It must be something important.
“No, because Chad is still in a coma, remember?”
What? Who’s
Chad? I know everyone Lottie knows, and I sure haven’t heard about no Chad in a coma.
“Oh, yeah,” Melissa says. “I can’t believe they ended the program like that. I can’t wait to see what happens today!”
Oh, my Lord, they’re talking about that stupid Paris Heights. I’m about to walk away when Lottie changes the subject.
“I still feel bad about your mom last night. I know she was trying to help.” Lottie tucks her hair behind her ear. “It’s just that Tootsie’s only three, and she’s used to being at home with our mom.” Lottie’s voice crumbles on that last part.
“Yeah, that’s what my mom said too.” Melissa sighs. “Poor Tootsie! I’ve never seen anyone cry like that before, and every night! My mom thinks she’ll be all right, though; she’ll get used to being at our house.”
I try to picture Tootsie in Melissa’s house, but I can’t do it. I can only imagine her in her and Lottie’s room—Tootsie-Tutu and her dolls, Tootsie and me and Purple Eyebrows. It crushes me to think of Tootsie crying every night. My eyes get big and wet but I don’t blink.
I hear a ragged breath and when I look back out, Lottie’s head is bent. Melissa slips onto the swing next to Lottie and puts her arm around her. “Don’t cry, Lottie,” she says. “Your dad will work it out. He’s on the phone with the insurance people every day.”
“I know,” Lottie says. “But . . .”
She don’t say nothing else. Then they just sit there, swinging.
My throat aches something awful. I stand there, not because I am a slow-moving statue, but because a heaviness has filled me up. Waves of sadness wash over me. I quietly move away from the living room and close up the other rooms.
When I walk back up to the front, I make a lot of noise; I don’t want to hear anything else I’m not supposed to. But when I push on the front window, it don’t budge. It’s stuck open. Gritting my teeth, I stand on my tiptoes and haul the window down with all my might. Blam! Melissa startles at the noise, but I don’t get no pleasure out of it, that’s how bad I’m feeling.
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