Keeping The Moon(49)

began to flap wildly, billowing out like crazy wings as, before my eyes, she began to fly.

Around the end of the rush that day, the phone rang and I reached for it, drawing a ticket out of my pocket and my pen from my

hair.

“Last Chance,” I said. “Can I help you?”

“Is Colie there?”

It was a boy. I glanced back at Norman—the only boy who might logically call me—to see him sitting by the grill reading a book

about Salvador Dali and eating french fries.

“This is she,” I said. Morgan looked up from her salt shakers.

“Hey,” the boy said, relieved. “It’s Josh. From last night?”

“Oh, right,” I said, leaning back against the coffee machine. “Hi.”

“Hi. So, we’re getting ready to leave here, but, uh …” I could hear noises in the background, people talking and car doors

slamming. “But I wondered if maybe I could call you when you got home. I mean, I live in Charlotte too.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

Isabel came down the hallway, her hair up, ready for work. “Take-out order?” she asked Morgan, nodding at me.

“Nope,” Morgan whispered. “Boy.”

Isabel raised her eyebrows. “Stand up straight.”

“He can’t see me,” I hissed, covering the mouthpiece.

“So we could get together and see a movie, or something. You know, before school starts,” Josh continued.

So did Isabel. “Just do it. And don’t give him your number, even if he asks for it.”

“Isabel,” Morgan said.

“Don’t,” she repeated. “I’m serious.”

“That would be great,” I said to Josh. “I won’t be home till mid-August though, probably.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “You want to just give me your number now?” Someone guffawed in the background--another boy-- and I heard

Josh cup his hand over the receiver.

“Um,” I said, and Isabel narrowed her eyes at me, one hand on her hip, “you know, I just got slammed with a bunch of tables. But

you can get it from Caroline. She lives right next door.”

“She does?” he said. “She didn’t tell me that.”

I bet she didn’t, I thought. Morgan laughed out loud, but Isabel just nodded and got her lunch out of the window.

“Look,” I said, “I should go. But call me, okay? In August.”

“In August,” he said. “I will.”

I hung up the phone and looked to Isabel. Norman had put down his book and was watching from the kitchen. Since he’d come back

from the bazaar he’d acted strange, ducking his head and not meeting my eyes. I didn’t know what his problem was.

“Our Colie,” Morgan said proudly. “Look how she’s grown.”

“You’re still slouching,” Isabel said.

I smiled at Morgan, who sighed and filled another salt shaker. “Young love,” she said. “It makes me really miss Mark.”

“Ugh,” Isabel said, pouring herself a Coke. “Don’t start.”

“It was so nice of him to surprise me like that,” she said for at least the hundredth time. Mark’s unannounced visit had settled

her doubts once and for all and left a perpetually dreamy look on her face: Isabel said it could only be love—or gas. “I want to

do something to surprise him, you know?”

Isabel just rolled her eyes.

“He’s calling me in August,” I said, wrapping the phone cord around my wrist.

“Don’t accept his first offer for a date,” Isabel told me, pulling a magazine out from her stash by the bus pan. “Say you’re

busy at least once. Twice is better. You call the shots, Colie.”

“Right.” I wondered how I would handle things when she wasn’t around.

I heard the kitchen door slam shut. Norman was gone, his book lying open on the prep table. When I looked outside he was standing

by his car, which was packed full with things he’d gotten at the bazaar. Mira’s beanbag chair was stuffed in the back seat, a bit

of orange fake leather poking out the window.

“Sheesh,” Morgan said. “What’s going on with Norman?”

Isabel turned another page of her magazine. “He’s jealous.”

“Of what?”

Isabel looked at me. “What do you think?”

“Not me,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“He likes you. Didn’t you see his face when you were talking to him at the fireworks, Colie? It was obvious.”

“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”

“I am never wrong about these things.” She glanced outside at Norman, who was now sitting in the front seat of his car, fiddling

with the glove box. He slammed it shut; it dropped open. Again. And again.

“Shit!” he yelled.

“See?” Isabel said simply. “He’s jealous. He probably had a whole plan for winning your affection. He probably,” she said,

thinking, “was going to ask you to sit for a portrait.”