Stay Sweet(11)

The girls jump up and down. Amelia, too, is excited. They’ll likely be the last people in the world to ever eat Molly Meade’s homemade ice cream. Amelia has a feeling in her chest that this is exactly what Molly would have wanted them to do tonight.

After clicking open the padlock, Cate hands Amelia back her key. Now that it’s in her hands again, it suddenly feels like something she should keep.

A car passes on the road.

And then another, but this one slows down slightly. Or maybe it just seems that way.

From behind her, Amelia hears one of the girls whisper, “What if we get arrested?”

“Don’t worry. Cate will get us out of it,” another answers.

And though Amelia believes that is very likely true, she decides it would be best to get in and out of the stand as quickly as possible. “I’ll run in and get the ice cream,” she offers as Cate pulls open the door.

But Cate is already ushering all the girls inside, telling them to take one last look at the place. And Amelia thinks, What’s the harm? This is their chance to say goodbye too. Every one of the girls has her own memories, her own experiences, her own friendships because of Meade Creamery.

They don’t turn the lights on. Instead, they use their phones to see. Even in the dark, Amelia remembers so clearly where Molly’s body was, and she’s careful to step around the spot. Maybe it’s a good thing that the stand is closing. Amelia doubts she can ever come here and not think of that moment.

“Ooh! I want to take a milk bottle!”

“Grab one for me, too!”

Amelia spins around and watches Britnee try to climb on Bernadette’s shoulders. The rafters are full of these bottles, relics from the old Meade Dairy days.

Back then, the Meade family’s primary business was milk, and their dairy was open year-round. But production stopped long before Amelia was born, the cow pastures left to grow in wild and shaggy. Molly continued making her ice cream though, sourcing her ingredients from Marburger Dairy, and selling it only a few weeks each summer.

Sometimes Amelia finds the original Meade Dairy milk bottles on garage sale tables for twenty-five dollars, an inflated price jacked up for vacationers who might never come back. None of the locals buy them; they don’t need to pay twenty-five dollars for a piece of Meade Creamery history as long as the stand is around. Though maybe now that will change.

Cate tells the girls, “No. We only take ice cream.” Amelia is grateful. She’s not sure who this stuff belongs to, but it’s definitely not theirs. “Grab however much you want, Amelia.”

Though it had crossed Amelia’s mind to take a drum of each of the four flavors Meade Creamery offers, because they’re all special in their own way, it feels suddenly too greedy. There’s no way the eight of them are eating twelve gallons of ice cream tonight. So Amelia opens the walk-in freezer and settles on a single drum of Home Sweet Home.

Mansi calls out nervously, “Yo. There’s a bunch of lights on up at Molly’s.”

Everyone runs to the office and stares through the window up at the farmhouse. There are, indeed, lights on. A dark figure steps out of the brightness of the front door, stands on the steps, and appears to look down toward the stand.

“Shit,” Cate says, but her eyes are bright and excited. “Run!”

They make for the stand door at once, a stampede. The last to go, Amelia quickly closes the lock. A million fears grip her, the girls getting arrested, Cate losing her scholarship to Truman.

It would be because of her.

The girls hurdle the parking lot chain, dive into their cars, and speed back out onto Route 68.

“Who was that up there, do you think?” Amelia asks, turning around in her seat to look out the passenger window.

Cate’s breathless and gunning it, her old truck straining. “Maybe the police?” she muses giddily.

“Why would the police be up there?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s those companies who clean out dead people’s houses.”

“This late at night? Plus, who would have called them?” ?Turning back around, Amelia sinks low and glances at the side-view mirror to see if they’re being followed.

Thankfully, they aren’t.

“Put the ice cream down there,” Cate says, pointing to Amelia’s feet. “It’ll melt faster on your lap.”

*

Ten minutes later, they arrive at an unmarked path splitting the dense piney woods. Cate drives down the sandy stretch and parks her truck. There’s another swimming area on the other side of Sand Lake, one with a proper parking lot and picnic tables and a paved path to the beach, but the spot on this side is used primarily by teens.

The cove is horseshoe shaped. The shore is sandy, like the ocean, and by the time it gets thick with underwater plants, most people can’t touch the bottom anyway. The water in Sand Lake is crystal clear, though it’s too dark to see that now.

The girls build a fire with sticks from the woods, one bigger than they would make at the end of the summer, because tonight the air still has a bit of that late-spring chill. The girls smooth out the blankets they brought, the blue-black lake gently lapping the shore. Amelia tips her head back. It’s as if every star in the galaxy has come out for them.

They sit in a circle. Amelia hands out plastic spoons while Cate pulls the cap off the drum of ice cream.