September Lessons (A Year in Paradise Book 9)

by Hildred Billings

  Oh. My. God.

  If there were a God, he’d be in Heaven, laughing at Carrie. Because what was funnier than catching her cousin making out with a girl she had hit on a few days ago?

  Carrie curled her hands around her steering wheel, staring at the unfathomable sight of Christina and Dillon making out in the front seat of his car. I’d recognize that ugly sweater anywhere now. Christina’s hands were no longer hiding in her sleeves, though. They were all over Dillon’s unshaved face.

  Puke. Gag. Carrie almost forgot to put her latte in a cup holder before pulling out. Hope he remembers to… never mind! She was going to make herself sick. She was also going to get herself into an accident if she didn’t look where she was going as she pulled out onto Main Street and drove back to her aunt and uncle’s house.

  The smell of spaghetti wasn’t enough to revitalize her appetite after she stepped through the door. She threw herself in her room, where she bided her time before her aunt called her in for dinner.

  Why am I so upset… it’s not like I really wanted to go out with her… Was it the fact she was making out with Dillon, the firebug who was barely the same age as her?

  Dillon was a junior! Seriously! What was Christina doing, making out with pond scum like him? Leigh-Ann said she and her friends went out with any boy they found mildly interesting. Carrie knew that the school was small, but were Christina’s choices really that dire?

  So he gets to implicate me in the barn fires… and gets the girl? I don’t think so.

  Carrie’s renewed sense of purpose made her grab her phone.

  Chapter 14

  LEIGH-ANN

  How in the… what am I doing here?

  Leigh-Ann plopped down into the corner of the barn, where a generous amount of straw gave her butt a place to comfortably sit. Carrie sprawled on a patch beside her friend, eyes glued to the rafters above them.

  This wasn’t what Leigh-Ann thought she’d be doing with her early Saturday afternoon, but when she got a text from Carrie the night before, how could she say no? “You keep telling me about this hill and these barns. Why don’t we go check some of them out?” Leigh-Ann thought it was a joke. Or, at least, it was an excuse for Carrie to climb Wolf’s Hill to say she had done it. Yet when Carrie admitted she wanted to hang out in one of the few remaining barns around town, Leigh-Ann thought of something very different.

  “I didn’t bring any beer,” Leigh-Ann said. “Couldn’t smuggle any out of my parents’ cooler.” Her parents never missed the occasional beer when they restocked for the fortnight. Leigh-Ann was a pro at stealing about one a month, at first to say she could do it, and then because she found out her parents had great taste in beer. “Sorry.”

  “No worries. I couldn’t score pot.” Carrie held up her small bag containing a few snack-sized chip snacks and a couple drink containers. “So it’s pop and chips from the pizza place.”

  Leigh-Ann accepted a Coke and a bag of potato chips. “You didn’t…”

  “Steal them?” Carrie scoffed. “No way. I need to keep my job and not end up in jail, thanks. That’s a great way to get expelled again.” She settled back in with a Diet Coke and some barbecue chips. “Would be breaking last year’s record. Supposed to get my diploma this time.”

  The crinkling of the chip bags drowned out Leigh-Ann’s voice. She had to wait for crunching to overtake crinkling before saying, “You never told me what happened. To get you expelled, I mean.”

  Carrie continued to stare up at the rafters, chips slowly passing her lips and snapping between her teeth. How she did that without choking on her chips? Leigh-Ann had no idea. She had all but given up on getting a response when Carrie put down her bag and said, “If I tell you, you have to promise to not tell a soul.”

  Leigh-Ann shrugged. “Who would I tell? I ain’t got anything to gain from that.”

  “Guess that’s true. Sorry. No offense.”

  Leigh-Ann hadn’t thought about how that could’ve been construed as offensive until Carrie said something. Right. Because I have no other friends. Because I’m a weirdo. Leigh-Ann was used to people thinking there was something wrong with her because she didn’t have a group of friends or a large, extended family to keep her amused. She was that girl who, since mucking things up with Christina, had become a sort of teacher’s pet, although her grades weren’t amazing. She kept to herself. Didn’t go to parties (even if invited,) volunteered at a B&B with the English teacher, and rode her bike aimlessly. Although people rarely gave her crap to her face, she knew what they were saying. She also knew how she was supposed to feel about it.

  Was Carrie that much different? She may be more outgoing and more confident than Leigh-Ann, but she had to be, given her situation. New Southerner in town who had been kicked out of her old place and had to start senior year over? God, she better be tough. Because people talked.

  “I promise,” Leigh-Ann said. “You can tell me anything. We’re friends, right?”

  Carrie stopped munching on her chips long enough to give Leigh-Ann a curious gaze. Was she sizing Leigh-Ann up? Thinking of how to inform her that, no, they weren’t friends?

  “I got caught with the principal’s daughter.”

  Leigh-Ann had to replay that in her head before she gleaned Carrie’s meaning. “Oh. Oh. You and her were, uh…”

  “We were having an affair, yeah.”

  An affair? That was one way to put it. Ms. Tichenor might approve. It certainly made Carrie sound like a mature adult. Isn’t that one of the reasons I kinda like her? Leigh-Ann was attracted to bold personalities like Carrie’s. She needed someone who took care of themselves and was willing to take care of her, too. Few were willing to do that, though. Definitely none of her straight friends. A lesbian friend? It would have been great, except Leigh-Ann was already confused enough about her own sexuality. She figured out that much when she remembered that travesty of a thesis statement she turned in to Ms. Tichenor the day before.

  “When you say affair…” Leigh-Ann began.

  Carrie folded her hands behind her head as she continued to stare up into the rafters. “I mean she was married. I mean, she was barely twenty, but you gotta understand the whole reason she got married at like seventeen is because she got knocked up by her boyfriend. Back where I’m from, you get married when that happens. Especially if you’re the principal’s daughter.” Carrie blew some crumbs onto the front of her shirt. “Guess who was unhappy in her marriage to some nineteen-year-old guy who dropped out of community college and wouldn’t finish his plumbing certification?”

  “How do you meet somebody like that?”

  “Like I said, she was basically our age when it happened. I knew from school. She was only a year or two older than me. We had a small thing before she got with the boyfriend. Resumed the thing a while after the baby was born. Got caught.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Dunno. Last I heard she was divorcing the slob and moving to Montgomery.” Carrie shoved her empty chip bag into the bigger bag. “None of my business, really. It wasn’t a real relationship going anywhere. We were fooling around. Except I fooled around with the wrong girl, I guess.”

  “They really expelled you for that, huh?”

  “Principal’s daughter. Principal’s married daughter. It would’ve been one thing if I was a guy, I guess, but I dunno, he might’ve gotten booted too.” She sniffed. “But I had to go and put a gay scandal on top of everything else. I wasn’t in the closet, really, but I wasn’t super out, either. It’s not like here. I’m still getting used to telling everyone I’m a lesbian without worrying about them picking a fight when I least expect it.”

  Leigh-Ann nodded, not that she understand that. I understand being embarrassed about attention… but I’ve never feared someone thinking I’m… like that. She knew her hometown was an exception, though. The town with the Wal-Mart wasn’t as progressive or populated with the type of citizens Paradise Valley boasted. They often looked down at the weekly shoppers wit
h short haircuts and rainbow-themed clothing. Did anybody say anything? Not outside of the occasional protestor standing outside the store, but if there was one thing Leigh-Ann learned about her hometown, it was that Oregonians preferred to not “start a scene,” even if they disagreed with everyone in the room.

  “You’re really lucky, you know,” Carrie said. “I wish I didn’t have to move here to finish school, but I lucked out having an aunt and uncle who lived in a place like this. Luckier they agreed to take me in.”

  “So that’s how it happened?”

  “Yeah. My aunt is my mom’s sister. Everyone’s from Alabama, but after they got married, my uncle took a job in Portland and they later ended up here.” Carrie shrugged. “They ain’t bad. My cousin, though… I hadn’t missed him.”

  “Dillon Musgrave, right?”

  “Ooh, yeah. Dillon Freakin’ Musgrave.” Carrie gnashed that name between her teeth. “Real winner of a young man. Let me tell you.”

  Leigh-Ann waited for her to “tell her.” When the words didn’t come, Leigh-Ann said, “You don’t get along with him, huh?”

  “What can I say? He’s basically a kid compared to me. And a boy. They don’t grow up much in high school. Not even the nineteen-year-olds who get held back.” She scoffed. “Especially those! I’m an anomaly, I swear.”

  There was something else she wasn’t mentioning. Leigh-Ann wrapped her arms around her legs and waited, knowing that Carrie wouldn’t say anything.

  Then, “I think he might be the one setting the fires.”

  Gasping, Leigh-Ann knocked over her drink and spilled some soda on the straw beneath her. She hurried to clean it up, but was so focused on Carrie that she only made a bigger mess. Carrie didn’t move to help her.

  “What are you talking about? You’re joking, right?” That’s what Leigh-Ann said when she finally had her bearings back. “I mean, what makes you think that?”

  Carrie nonchalantly held up her fingers, counting off the reasons. “He’s a fire bug, for one thing. My aunt and uncle know he’s out in the backyard setting controlled fires. You should see them! There’s this huge patch of burnt grass in the backyard. His uncle makes him put wet stones around the edge so he won’t accidentally catch anything else on fire, and for another thing… I’ve overheard him on the phone when he thought I wasn’t listening. He was talking about the barn fires, sounding mighty proud, if you ask me.” Carrie lowered her hand. “You have, by the way. That boy is trouble.” She gritted her teeth. “He’s also making out with Christina, not that it’s here or there!”

  There was a ton of information for Leigh-Ann to latch onto, but that last bit? That’s what she focused on when Carrie stopped talking. “What? Dillon Musgrave and Christina?” That didn’t compute. Dillon was far from cute – honestly, he and Carrie looked nothing alike – and Christina preferred her boyfriends to at least be on the “somewhat cute” side. I get it… there isn’t a lot of choice, and when you only date guys for a few months, you run out of options… but… still… Dillon? Musgrave? She’s gotta be nuts! “How do you know that?”

  “I caught them making out behind the auto parts place last night. In his car. It was definitely her.”

  “Damn. The world is a messed up place.” Leigh-Ann scoffed. “If what you said about him being the arsonist is true, it might make sense. Christina likes ‘bad boys.’ You can hit every ugly branch on your way out of the family tree – no offense, just saying – but if you’ve got a glint of a bad boy persona in you, she’ll be into it. For a while, anyway.”

  “You would know, huh?”

  “We used to be friends, okay?”

  “So I’ve heard.” Carrie folded her hands on her stomach. “You know what? I told you about why I got kicked out of my old school. You’ve never told me about what happened between you and Christina, your supposed best friend.”

  Leigh-Ann swallowed a lump that no amount of soda could lubricate. “I think I told you we had a falling out over something stupid. Nothing important. Nothing… impressive.”

  “Uh huh. So why are you blushing?”

  “I’m not blushing.” Leigh-Ann totally was. She could hardly stop blushing once she realized Carrie might unlock the biggest secret to hide within her friend’s heart. It’s not like we’ve been friends for that long… we might be hanging out where we shouldn’t, and she’s telling me stuff about herself, but we’re not… super best friends who tell each other everything… Could they be, though? “Christina and I grew apart. That’s all.”

  “Grew apart. For reasons that nobody will tell me about? You guys practically avoid each other at school.”

  “We do not!”

  “Do too.” Carrie grinned. “You guys had a thing, didn’t you?”

  Leigh-Ann couldn’t speak. “A… a…” A what? An affair? Was that what Carrie wanted her to say? She was the worldly one who knew all about getting into trouble with the principal’s married daughter! “A thing? No way.”

  “Come on. You two totally scream that you’re awkward because you knew each other too intimately. In a town like this? I could totally see it.” Carrie leaned in closer, her nose only a few inches away from Leigh-Ann’s arm. “So, what was it? You guys have a fling and she got cold feet? You guys have a lover’s quarrel she didn’t want people knowing about? Come on. You can tell me. If I can tell you all about getting kicked out of my corner of Alabama because of what I did with my body, you can tell me your sad story.”

  Leigh-Ann truly was blushing like a fiend. Did she have a fever? Or was she consumed by the shock of Carrie figuring her out? I’ve never told anyone about that. How could she figure it out so quickly? It wasn’t fair! Leigh-Ann couldn’t control the narrative if an outsider like Carrie was figuring her out before anyone else did! Before Leigh-Ann had the chance to tell her side of things! The way she wanted…

  Feh. She was found out. What was more embarrassing than refusing to own up to it?

  “You’re right,” she whispered, burying her forehead between her legs. “Christina and I were best friends since we were kids. We used to do everything together. Didn’t matter that her mom was the mayor and I lived in the trailer park.” In a place like Paradise Valley, worrying about those things was moot. Everyone knew everyone. That included Mayor Rath personally knowing the Hardys long before their daughters started hanging out at school. “We stayed friends when we went into high school. She was always way prettier than me, you know, and new, more popular girls moved here, but she always chose to hang out with me first. She’s the reason I got invited to parties. People invited her, so she invited me, too.”

  Carrie slowly reached for the empty chip bags. Was she making fun of Leigh-Ann? Acting like she’d find some popcorn to enjoy the story with, as if that were the point?

  “Go on,” Carrie said. “Tell me about the day you said you liked her and she rejected you. I mean…” She shrugged, her sniff of indifference not inspiring Leigh-Ann’s confidence. “If you want to. I ain’t gonna hold a gun to your head.”

  Like Leigh-Ann really had a choice now!

  “It was at a party,” Leigh-Ann muttered. “Her brother’s party, at the mayor’s house. I guess their mom was out of town, and she said they could have a few people over…”

  “Which, naturally, turned into a bona fide high-school party.”

  “If you can call it that. Christina and her brother go through bouts of being huge potheads, and that night wasn’t really different. That’s when he was a senior, too, so it was mostly his friends from school and out of town. Christina and I were some of the only sophomores there, since our other friends got intimidated by the seniors and went somewhere else to hang out once the pot was out.”

  “You smoke, huh?”

  This time, Leigh-Ann’s snort was one of mild merriment. “I asked you to come smoke with me on the hill, didn’t I?”

  “You also implied it was where kids went to make-out.”

  “Ain’t this a place like that too? You’re the one who
brings that up.”

  “Yeah, well… I plead the Fifth, hon. Come on. Tell me about Christina breaking your little gay heart.”

  My little gay heart… Leigh-Ann didn’t know about that. All she knew was that such a suggestion gave her cotton mouth. “We both smoked that night.” Speaking of cotton mouth… “I don’t know what came over me. One minute we were hanging out in her room, and the next… we were kissin’. Not much else to it than that.”

  “Eh heh heh!” That had definitely piqued Carrie’s interest unlike anything else so far. I had a feeling she’d be interested in what it’s like to kiss Christina. Leigh-Ann wished she remembered. The only things dancing at the edge of her memory were the soft lips and the delicate way Christina’s soft hair brushed against Leigh-Ann’s cheek while they kissed. “You get to second base?”

  “What? No way. It was just some kissing.” Second base! Leigh-Ann couldn’t fathom sticking her hand up a girl’s shirt! She got embarrassed thinking about doing it to a boy, and boys didn’t have boobs!

  “So then what happened? She realized she was kissing a girl and kicked you out?”

  “Not quite like that.” Leigh-Ann cleared her throat. “Nothing else happened that night, but a few days later, I had gotten to school and she comes up to my locker to tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore.”

  “Whoa. You just took that? Your best friend!”

  “Yeah. My best friend.” In truth, Leigh-Ann had been too embarrassed to say anything back then, outside of “What, why?” and “You’re kidding, right?” No, Christina hadn’t been kidding. “I don’t really wanna get into it past that. It was two years ago. We’ve moved on.”

  “I’m… come on, Leigh. You’re telling me that your best friend since you were kids gives you a nice kiss and then blows you off for the rest of high school? Even if she were straight and regretted kissing you, you could’ve moved on as friends or…”

  “It ain’t like that, sometimes.” Leigh-Ann picked up some of the dry straw and crinkled it between her fingers. “Sometimes it’s as simple as you two going your separate ways.”