Maybe This Time(56)

“See, here’s the problem. I’m never going to believe that compliment now. You’ve shot yourself in the foot too many times with that one.”

He smiled. “Fair enough. But for the record, I meant it.” He looked around. “So this is your favorite event, huh?”

“How did you know that?”

“You said something like that at the benefit in August.”

“Oh, right. Yes, it’s my favorite.”

Jett Hart was at his booth examining the knobs on a deep fryer alongside Mr. Williams. “Is your dad actually going to fry something tonight?” I asked in disbelief.

“I guess Mr. Williams is making his famous mac-and-cheese balls. He’s teaching my dad.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Well, you’ll have to try them,” I said. “They’re pretty much the best.”

Micah came over in a pair of cowboy boots exactly the same as Andrew’s. She draped her arm over his shoulder and said, “Friends, what are we talking about?”

“Fried mac and cheese,” I said.

“My dad makes the best,” she said.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Andrew responded.

I glanced around at the sprawling grounds. “We should all attempt the maze later,” I said.

Micah looked at the entrance to the maze in the distance. “Hopefully I’ll have time. I have to work more than you do tonight.”

“That’s true,” I said.

She patted Andrew’s cheek. “And Andrew has lots of pictures to take.” She looked over her shoulder. “I better go. My dad needs help.”

“See you later,” I said.

She joined her dad and Jett at their booth, where I watched her unpack gallon-sized bags of bread crumbs.

“Is everything okay with you two?” Andrew asked, catching me off guard.

“Yes … isn’t it?” I turned to him. “Did she say something to you?”

“No, she didn’t. It’s just at the benefit, you guys …”

“Oh, yeah.” I kept forgetting he’d witnessed that. “We made up.”

“Good.”

“Yoo-hoo!” I heard from behind me. “Sophie!”

I took a deep breath and turned around. My mom was waving at me from across the way.

Gunnar raced ahead of her and then around me and Andrew once and then twice before he stopped in front of us and said, “Hi, y’all. Momma said I could do four things tonight so I’m gonna bob for apples, do the pie-eating contest, the ropin’ contest, and of course the maze. Momma said, seein’ as how I just turned eleven, I should do it by myself this year.”

The maze was huge. It covered five acres of the land. “You said that?” I asked my mom when she reached us.

“What did I say?” she asked, picking up her foot and shaking a clod of dirt off one heel and then the other. I wasn’t sure why she’d worn heels to the Fall Festival. She’d never done that before.

“You said Gunnar should do the maze by himself?”

“He’s eleven,” Mom replied. “Of course I said that.”

“The recommended solo age is fourteen.”

“Recommended age?” She stuck out her tongue. “Since when? Everyone is so worried about liability these days that they have to post stuff like that. He’ll be fine.”

I realized that my mom, in all her high-heeled glory, probably just didn’t want to have to walk a five-acre maze with Gunnar this year. “I can go with him,” I said.

“Yeah, you can come with me,” Gunnar said, which let me know that my mom had probably told him that if he wanted to do the maze this year, he had to do it by himself.

“You can’t always baby him,” Mom told me.

“I was going to do the maze anyway,” I said.

“Will you come with us too?” Gunnar asked Andrew.

“Absolutely,” Andrew said.

“Yay!” Gunnar jumped up and down several times.

“You don’t have to,” I told Andrew. I remembered Micah saying something about him needing to take pictures.

“I want to.”

“Sophie,” my mom said. “I have news.”

I turned back to her. “Okay … what is it?”

She threw back her shoulders and pulled an envelope with a jagged edge out of the back pocket of her jeans. “You got the scholarship!”

I blinked, confused. “What? What scholarship?”

“Mr. Washington’s.” She thrust the envelope into my hands.

I still wasn’t following. “I didn’t apply for this.”

“I did,” she said with a beaming smile. “Congratulations!”

“But—but I’m not going to school in Alabama.” I stared down at the envelope. “This is only for Alabama schools.”

She blew air between her lips. “Now you have options.” My mom pointed over to Mr. Williams’s booth. “Oh look, there’s Micah. I’m going to go say hi.”

I watched her walk away. My eyes went back down to the envelope that was addressed to me but that had already been opened. My chest felt tight. No. Someone else wasn’t going to force a future on me that I didn’t want. I folded the envelope once and stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans. I looked up to realize Andrew was still there as a witness to another embarrassing interaction.