Famous in a Small Town(30)

We didn’t venture upstairs, just poked around a bit on the first floor, not saying much to each other. There was nothing with which to really draw a conclusion about Megan or her departure, besides the unfinished nature of everything that spoke of said departure.

When we headed outside again, we sat down by our bikes, looking up at the place. “It is interesting, though,” August said eventually. “That addition is huge. Why would you start something like that and then abandon it?”

It was quiet.

“Maybe she witnessed a murder,” Brit murmured.

“Brit!”

“We’re spitballing!” she said. “There’s no harm in spitballing!”

August grinned. “Does she have a song about murder? Or one that implies having witnessed a murder?”

Brit’s eyes widened. “She does actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. ‘Murder Creek Murder: The Knife Is Behind That Rock.’”

“Okay, you were the one who suggested murder—”

“There’s a follow-up single too,” I said. “It’s called ‘Remember the Time There Was That Murder? I Do, and It Haunts Me.’”

“By Megan Pleasant,” Brit continued. “All rights reserved. People and events represented are entirely fictional, except for the murder—that part’s real.”

“Why do I even—Why do you—” August sputtered, but he was fighting a laugh.

Brit laughed mercilessly, and I couldn’t help but join in.



* * *



Brit parted ways with us on the ride back. It was quiet as August and I dismounted our bikes outside the Conlins’ house.

“So she wrote a song about Acadia,” he said, like he had been contemplating it this whole time. “About loving Acadia.”

I nodded. “‘Gave You My Heartland.’ A different thing to do in Acadia for every day of the week. It was her first big hit.”

“We should probably do it, don’t you think?”

Something in my brain short-circuited. “Sorry?”

“The Megan Pleasant week. Let’s do it. Everything in the song.”

August was proposing we do the “Gave You My Heartland” week. A song that was ostensibly about different locations throughout Acadia, but was also very much about falling in love with someone over the course of a week at said locations. Did he know that? Was he—did this mean—

“Why?” was all I could say.

He looked away, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“For research or whatever,” he said. “To properly inhabit her mind-set.”

I blinked.

“And to get to know the town,” he continued. “It’ll be multipronged.” And he glanced back with a smile that I couldn’t help but return. “Let’s go bowling on Monday and do the hokey pokey on Tuesday and whatever the hell else she says we should do.”

He didn’t know, then. About the falling in love part. “Hokey pokey isn’t one of the things.”

“You know what I mean. Line-dancing on Wednesdays. Pulling a rusty bucket out of a well on Thursday.”

“I’m going to poke you.”

“Tip a cow on Friday. Fuck a bale of hay on Saturday.”

It was hard not to laugh, but I just leveled him with a stare. He grinned, almost sheepish but not quite.

“Okay. I’ll stop.”

I drew the silence out until he looked away, smile faltering with something close to an apology.

“If you listened to the song,” I said finally, “you’d know we fuck bales of hay on Thursdays.”

He grinned.





twenty


On Monday, we went to Miller’s—Monday nights at Miller’s, pitchers for five and a booth for two.

We both ordered chicken tenders and fries. We couldn’t get pitchers for five, not only because we weren’t old enough to order them, but because Miller’s raised the price of their Monday-night pitchers following the fame of “Gave You My Heartland.”

After we ordered, August looked at me, drumming his fingers against the table. “So after we do this—like once we finish the whole week, is the ritual complete? Do we have to cut our palms and dance around a fire and then Megan Pleasant will appear and grant us three wishes?”

“I guess there is something kind of … ritualistic about it. They used to do tours and stuff.”

“For real?”

“Uh-huh. All the spots—here, Tropicana, the bridge, everything.”

“Isn’t one of them out in the middle of a field?”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you listened to it.”

He began opening packs of sugar and dumping them into his iced tea. “Of course I listened. Do you think I’d go into this unprepared? What if there’s something crazy in there, like lassoing a bull, or jumping off a building?”

“Then we’d be lassoing and jumping for the full Megan Pleasant experience.”

“Here’s to that,” August said, lifting his cup. I knocked mine against it.



* * *



On Tuesday, we went to the lake—skipping stones, watching clouds go by.