The Serpent King(2)
You could set your clock by Lydia’s being twenty minutes late. And it was no use trying to trick her by telling her to meet you at a time twenty minutes before you really wanted to meet. That only made her forty minutes late. She had a sixth sense.
Lydia leaned over and hugged Dill. “You’re already sweaty and it’s still morning. Boys are so gross.”
The black frames of her glasses creaked against his cheekbone. Her tousled smoky-blue hair—the color of a faded November sky streaked with clouds—smelled like honey, fig, and vetiver. He breathed it in. It made his head swim in a pleasant way. She had dressed for Nashville in a vintage sleeveless red gingham blouse with black high-waisted denim shorts and vintage cowboy boots. He loved the way she dressed—every twist and turn, and there were many.
Dill buckled his seat belt the instant before her acceleration pressed him into his seat. “Sorry. I don’t have access to AC that makes August feel like December.” He sometimes went days without feeling air as cool as in Lydia’s car except for when he opened the refrigerator.
She reached out and turned the air conditioning down a couple of clicks. “I think my car should fight global warming in every possible way.”
Dill angled one of the vents toward his face. “You ever think about how weird it is that Earth is hurtling through the black vacuum of space, where it’s like a thousand below zero, and meanwhile we’re down here sweating?”
“I often think about how weird it is that Earth is hurtling through the black vacuum of space and meanwhile you’re down here being a total weirdo.”
“So, where are we going in Nashville? Opry Mills Mall or something?”
Lydia glared at him and looked back at the road. She extended her hand toward him, still looking forward. “Excuse me, I thought we’d been best friends since ninth grade, but apparently we’ve never even met. Lydia Blankenship. You are?”
Dill took advantage of the opportunity to take her hand. “Dillard Early. Maybe you’ve heard of my father by the same name.”
It had thoroughly scandalized Forrestville, Tennessee, when Pastor Early of the Church of Christ’s Disciples with Signs of Belief went to the state penitentiary—and not for the reasons anyone expected. Everyone assumed he’d get in trouble someday for the twenty-seven or so rattlesnakes and copperheads his congregants passed around each Sunday. No one knew with certainty what law they were breaking, but it seemed unlawful somehow. And the Tennessee Department of Wildlife did take custody of the snakes after his arrest. Or people thought perhaps he’d run afoul of the law by inducing his flock to drink diluted battery acid and strychnine, another favored worship activity. But no, he went to Riverbend Prison for a different sort of poison: possession of more than one hundred images depicting a minor engaged in sexual activity.
Lydia tilted her head and squinted. “Dillard Early, huh? The name rings a bell. Anyway, yes, we’re driving an hour and a half to Nashville to go to Opry Mills Mall and buy you the same sweatshop garbage that Tyson Reed, Logan Walker, Hunter Henry, their intolerable girlfriends, and all of their horrible friends will also be wearing on the first day of senior year.”
“I ask a simple question—”
She raised a finger. “A stupid question.”
“A stupid question.”
“Thank you.”
Dill’s eyes fell on Lydia’s hands at the steering wheel. They were slender, with long, graceful fingers; vermilion-colored nails; and lots of rings. The rest of her wasn’t ungraceful but her fingers were affirmatively and aggressively graceful. He relished watching her drive. And type. And do everything she did with her hands.
“Did you call Travis to tell him you were running late?”
“Did I call you to tell you I was running late?” She took a turn fast, squealing her tires.
“No.”
“Think it’ll come as a surprise to him that I’m running late?”
“Nope.”
The August air was a steamy haze. Dill could already hear the bugs, whatever they were called. The ones that made a pulsing, rattling drone on a sweltering morning, signaling that the day would only grow hotter. Not cicadas, he didn’t think. Rattlebugs. That seemed as good a name as any.
“What am I working with today?” Lydia asked. Dill gave her a blank stare. She held up her hand and rubbed her fingers together. “Come on, buddy, keep up here.”
“Oh. Fifty bucks. Can you work with that?”
She snorted. “Of course I can work with that.”
“Okay, but no dressing me weird.”
Lydia extended her hand to him again—more forcefully, as though karate chopping a board. “No, but seriously. Have we met? What was your name again?”
Dill grasped her hand again. Any excuse. “You’re in a mood today.”
“I’m in the mood to receive a little credit. Not much. Don’t spoil me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“In the last two years of school shopping, have I ever made you look ridiculous?”
“No. I mean, I still caught hell for stuff, but I’m sure that would’ve happened no matter what I wore.”
“It would. Because we go to school with people who wouldn’t recognize great style if it bit them right on their ass. I have a vision for you, planted in rustic Americana. Western shirts with pearl snaps. Denim. Classic, masculine, iconic lines. While everyone else at Forrestville High tries desperately to appear as though they don’t live in Forrestville, we’ll embrace and own your rural Southernness, continuing in the vein of 1970s Townes Van Zandt meets Whiskeytown-era Ryan Adams.”