South of Sunshine (6 page)

“Let me get this straight—you want me to be the third wheel on your first date with Bren?”

I throw my arm over my face again. “When you put it like that … yes. Just hang with us. Let me get past this … whatever,” I beg. Van sighs. “Please?”

His second sigh is more resigned.

“If you do this, I promise to watch an entire afternoon of Johnny Depp movies without complaining.”

He points his finger at me. “That means no gagging when I comment on how talented he is, and no rolling of the eyes when I replay a scene.” I nod vigorously, and he says, “Okay.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” I sit up, clapping. “Oh, wait. We can’t do it tomorrow night. Sarabeth asked me to sleep over and finalize float plans.”

“It’s fine. I have a date anyway.” A sly grin spreads across his face.

“Ooh, what’s his name?” It’s a simple question—one I should have asked long ago but never did. The freedom to talk openly now seems to deepen our friendship to a whole new level.

“Arthur.”

“Arthur?” If my scrunched up face didn’t speak for itself, my skeptical tone did the trick.

A stray couch pillow whacks me in the head. “Oh, because ‘Bren’ is such a hot name.”

“Oh, but it is. It just rolls off the tongue and makes you want to visit Costa Rica.” My phone beeps, pulling me back from the tropics. “It’s Mother. She wants to know if Hot Flix has ‘turned into an Econo Lodge.’”

“Tell her that if Hot Flix decides to change businesses, we would be a five-star resort, not some cheap-ass motel.”

“Yeah, let me get right on that.” I text her back, telling her I’m stopping by Sonic before I head home. “Because that’ll make her love you more.”

“Well, she can’t love me any less.”

“True. But I better go. So, Sunday works for you? Or do you have another hot date?”

Van walks me to the door. “Sunday … you, me, and Long and Tall.”

I smile. Bren does have some great legs. I just hope I can keep my nerves in check long enough not to look like an ass.

Chapter 9

“I don’t get why you’re always hanging out with that boy,” is the first thing out of my mother’s mouth when I get home. I don’t go for the bait. “Why didn’t you do something with Sarabeth tonight?”

I let out a big sigh. I put my keys on the entry table by the giant Holy Bible. It’s always laid open to Psalms. “Friday night. Football season. She cheers.” I’ve explained this to my mother a thousand times the last few years.

“You could have gone to the game.”

“I don’t want to be the lone dork, sitting all by myself in the stands.” I toss my Sonic sack on the oak table and fix myself some iced tea.

“What about Misty or Melissa? Can’t you sit with them? They seem like good girls.”

If she had any idea how many boys they were macking on at the party, she wouldn’t be saying that. But their family owns the local dry cleaners, so they’re obviously “good girls.”

I really don’t want to have this conversation again. I sit and smooth the nonexistent wrinkles on our checkerboard tablecloth. “Mother, I don’t know why you have such a problem with Van,” I say, but I really do know. But if she’s not willing to call a spade a spade, then I’m going to make her dance around it. “He’s a good kid. His parents are nice as can be. His mother runs the Ladies Ministry group over at their church.” I bite into my cheeseburger.

“I didn’t say I had a problem with Van. I’m just saying if you keep hanging out with him, you might start acting—”

My deer-in-the-headlights expression cuts her off. Just how is she going to finish this? I know she knows about me and Charlotte’s soap opera reenactments. Ms. Veda’s good Christian self had to tell her. And I got a serious talking-to from it, all about what the Bible had to say on the matter, but I always assumed Mother wrote it off as experimenting kids being silly. Now I’m not so sure.

“—Tomboyish,” she finishes. It’s a political answer, dodging.

I don’t comment because she and I both know that I do not act like a tomboy. Maybe my favorite color isn’t pink and I can’t stand shopping and high heels, but I love other girly stuff. Like collecting butterflies and watching the babies at the church nursery.

Mother busies herself cleaning the kitchen while I finish my burger and fries in silence. “Oh,” Mother says as an afterthought, “some girl named”—she squints to read the paper—“Bren called. Why didn’t she call your cell?”

My entire being freezes. Why is Bren calling me? Is she home from the football game already? While I’m trying to control the panic/freak-out building inside my body, I gulp, gulp, gulp down the rest of my tea. Mother waits for me to finish. Calmly I put the glass in our dishwasher, thankful we are the only McCoys in Sunshine’s tiny phonebook. “She’s new. The Dawsons’ daughter. She doesn’t have my cell number,” I say, snapping the dishwasher shut.

Casually, I grab the slip of paper from Mother’s hand with Bren’s number on it.

“Yes, yes, yes. The Dawsons. That’s right, her mother came into the store the other day—she looks a little Hispanic or something but really put together. I hear her husband is right handsome. Larry Beaudroux is paying him a lot of money to replace Rally Tools. If he can keep the factory jobs here, all of us shop owners won’t go out of business.” Mom turns to me just before I close my bedroom door, nodding her head. “You should call this Bren girl.” As if the brilliant idea just came to her. “See if she wants to do something.”

“I think I will,” I say. She glows at the idea. “Maybe we can do something after church on Sunday.” This tickles her pink. I close my bedroom door and rest my entire body up against it, letting the message sink in.

“Yes!” I leap from my door to my bed. The brass headboard claps against the wall. I refrain from dancing around the room, singing, “Bren Dawson called me.”

It’s not easy.

“What am I gonna say?” I whisper to myself. Ten different scenarios of how the conversation could go fly in my head at once. My fingertips drum over my lips. She could just be calling about an assignment. But why call
me
when I’m not in any of her classes? “You’re not asking her on a date, Kaycee. You’re just asking her to hang with you and your good ole buddy Van, and if she wants to make out, that’s okay too.” I squeal and do a manic wiggle-dance in my bed.

I arch my back and dig my hand into my pocket for my cell phone. My finger pauses on the first number. What if my mother’s right? What if after all these years of hanging with Van, I act like a tomboy? I clasp the phone to my chest. Does Bren like girly girls? Because I’m most definitely not Chelsea Hannigan. But I’m not Charlotte Wozniak either.

Headlights from the cul-de-sac behind our house light up my room with a yellow glow. The butterfly collection on the left wall screams girl, unless it also screams bug-collecting boy. For the record, I have never murdered a butterfly. I’ve only picked them up off the ground or out of a car’s front grill, which does not sound feminine in the slightest. Photos and images of accidental heart shapes cover my bulletin board. Girl. Just below that on my dresser sits a vintage ammunitions box filled with my love of American history, including mini-balls for muskets, Civil War buttons, and miscellaneous military trinkets my grandpa found with his metal detector. Boy. Plum purple duvet. Girl. Blue walls. Boy. Seashells from Florida. Girl. Pocketknife that I don’t carry on my person but still own. Boy. My eyes roam around the room labeling every item girl or boy, and the end result is fifty-fifty. Gah. How frustrating.

I’m sure Sarabeth has some boy crap in her room. There’s pink and lace and teen male posters, and oh, oh, oh! There’s a Muscle Machines auto magazine on her nightstand, which is probably Andrew’s, but since I don’t know for sure, it’s Sarabeth’s—because yeah, she has a secret muscle car fetish I don’t know about.

I’m stalling.

Breathe.

Dial.

It’s ringing.

“Hello?” Bren’s voice is sleepy and husky. So cute. Wait, did I call too late? My digital clock reads past eleven.

Breathe.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Bren. It’s me, Kaycee. You know … Kay-c-double e.” I’m going for the remember-you-said-I-was-cute angle.

“Oh, hey,” her voice perks.
Score.

“Did I call too late? I can call you later.” Though I’ve spent all my courage on this one phone call, so it may be a while.

I hear shuffling on the other end. “No. No. I just crashed early. Shot some hoops after school, then went for a run before the football game.”

Gah, I knew I should have gone. “The game, cool. Who’d you go with?” Jealous, much? “And how’d they do?” I hurriedly add. I already know they won. Chuck the Buck honked and screamed their victory in the Sonic drive-in tonight.

“They massacred them, forty-two to six. I felt sad for the Dixie Opossums. You should have heard the crowd. There were a few rabid fans who kept screaming things about roadkill.”

“You should hear them when they lose. It’s brutal,” I add. She laughs. I make a mental note that she didn’t say who she went with. “My mom said you called tonight?”
Please don’t be about school, and for God’s sake, don’t ask me what Chelsea’s number is because it’s 555-never-gonna-tell-you.

“I, um,” she starts. Did she just sigh? “Was just calling to see if you wanted to do something, sometime.”

Yes! I hammer my fist in the air.
Can you feel that, Chesty?
That seals it for me. She’s not interested in going out with Chelsea, not if she’s calling me. Maybe Chelsea was annoying Bren this week. The library. I thunk my hand against head. Maybe Bren was trying to ask me out in the library this afternoon, but I was so busy pouting I blew her off.
Stupid, Kaycee
.

Stop, stay in the moment, and reel in the crazy. Bren only asked to “do something.” I can “do something” with my mother, but that doesn’t mean it’s a date.

“Is that a no?” Bren mistakes my silence.

“No. Yes. I mean, that’d be cool. I’d like that. Actually, Van and I are hanging out at the video store Sunday afternoon and watching a Johnny Depp marathon until his mom gets done with the big church revival uptown. If you want to join us …”

“Oh … yeah, sure.”

Does she sound disappointed? “I’m sure he’ll be busy with customers and whatnot.” And what is that supposed to tell her? “We might even take Van’s new twenty-two out and shoot some cans.” I slap my hand over my face. Where did that come from? Well, gosh darn, Kaycee, why don’t you show her how country you can really be? Next thing you know, you’ll be taking her frog gigging or crawdad fishing or snipe hunting.
This is how us rednecks do it, Bren.
I search the buttons on my phone. Is there a rewind on this thing? A do-over button? Something?

“What was that?” I put the phone back up to my ear.

“I said, the only time I ever shot a gun was skeet shooting on a cruise once. I’m game for anything.”

My shoulders relax a bit. No more hillbilly comments, Kaycee. “Great. How about we meet up at Hot Flix just after lunch? You know, it’s the store down from the diner where Mr. Bobby drinks his coffee every day.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Good.”

Guess that’s all there is to say, but I don’t want to let her go.

“It was nice talking to you—”

“What’d you do tonight—”

We talk over each other and then laugh.

“If you have to go …” Bren says.

“No. Not at all.” I revel in the fact that she doesn’t want to get off the phone either. “I, um, hung out with Van up at the store. We just talked shop.” And other stuff.

She asks a little about Van. I tell her I’ve known him since I was four. She comments on his flair for footwear. I share my hearts in nature theory and tell her about how Sarabeth loves the outdoors as much as I do; this seems to always shock people about Sarabeth. I hint that Sarabeth might not be fully clued in on my dating preferences—though I don’t think she’s clueless either. When Bren doesn’t really respond, I ask about her close friends. Most of them she talks with via email or old fashioned snail mail as pen pals, depending on the country, but she’s never settled long enough to have a Van or a Sarabeth. We talk about everything under the sun—basketball, volleyball—and laugh at Charlotte Wozniak’s primate instincts. I say nothing about soap operas. I find out Bren’s terrified of spiders—
wussy
. I tell her about the squirrel phobia I’ve had from the time a baby squirrel living in our attic found its way into our house and attacked me twice in one night.

“Are you joking?” Bren’s laugh is breathy and deep.

I recount the whole story. I can tell by the strain in her voice she’s tearing up with laughter. “It was running across the walls!”

“No.” She gasps in disbelief.

“Yes. The walls were covered in that grass-cloth wallpaper. You know, that textured stuff.” My cheeks are sore from grinning.

“How did you get it out?”

“I whacked it with a broom, of course.”

“You killed a baby squirrel? I’m horrified.”

“That was no innocent creature, Bren. Don’t let their chubby cheeks or fluffy tail fool you. They are the spawn of Satan.” We’re both chuckling now. “I’m serious. I still sleep with my closet light on.” She laughs harder.

I’m amazed at how easy it is to talk to her. Van hates chatting on the phone. Usually Sarabeth and I talk about who said this or that and what we’re doing over the weekend. Not this “tell me your worst nightmare,” or “what’s your favorite holiday and you can’t say Christmas,” kind of talk.

“Earth Day,” says Bren.

“Ugh. You’re such a humanitarian. I was going to say Halloween because of the candy, but I hated dressing up when I was little. I’m going to go with the Fourth of July. I’m a sucker for patriotism and American history. And I don’t care how old I get, fireworks feel magical, you know?”

“Yeah, they do,” Bren says through a yawn.

It’s after two. I don’t want to get off the phone, but it’s hard to keep my eyes open. “I’ll see you Sunday.” I yawn back at her.

“See you Sunday.” She says it like she’s just taken a bite of warm chocolate cake and the flavors are melting in her mouth.

There’s a pause before we hang up, where we can hear each other breathing, then I tap the hang-up icon.

Excitement builds in me like a spring. “Yes! I’ve got a date with Bre-en. I’ve got a date with Bre-en,” I whisper. The light on my phone flashes. Panic jolts me upright, and I double-check to make sure I hung up. It’s a photo text from Bren—a picture of a Chinese lantern. In the background on the wall, the corner distorts the lantern’s shadow into the shape of a heart. I exhale. The phone buzzes in my hand.

This was on my wall after we hung up. Thought of u.


I stare at it a moment longer, then text her back a
<3
and post her picture on Instagram. I put my phone on my nightstand, get up, turn the closet light on, and crack the door.

Back under the covers, a tiny light inside of me refuses to die. It grows a little brighter.