Famous in a Small Town(41)

“The one in the red.” She had porcelain-white skin and deep-red lips pursed in a Mona Lisa kind of smile. “Obviously. Look at her. That’s some sinister shit right there. You move, she moves.”

I huffed a laugh.

“Did you have any creepy murder dolls when you were little?” August said a few booths down as we poked through a box of old black-and-white photos.

“Nah. Flora got one from her dad when we were pretty young, but she wasn’t allowed to play with it. Probably for the best—Brit definitely would’ve destroyed it.”

We flipped through the pictures in silence for a moment. Photos of two young women with cat-eye glasses. A man and a woman standing in front of a truck. A baby in a little playsuit and shiny black shoes.

When August spoke, his voice was striving for neutral. Casual.

“Did you ever know your dad? Like your birth dad?”

“No.” I didn’t think often on the man who was my father, because he wasn’t, really. My dad—the one who had carved pumpkins with me, taught me to skate, braided my hair badly but painstakingly when I was a little kid—he was the only dad I’d ever known. Dad prime. All-time Dad.

“He left before I was born,” I said.

August turned away from the pictures, moving toward a shelf of knickknacks. “Doesn’t that make you mad, though? Like … not even at him, because screw him, but like … at the universe, you know? Because why should you have to be left alone like that?”

This was as close as we’d touch to the Saint Louis trip—standing at the gas station, August’s shoulders shaking.

“I’m not alone, though,” I said carefully. “I never was. I’ve always had my mom, and my dad, and Ciara. And anyway, it happened. It’s already done. There’s nothing I can do to change it. So why would I spend time feeling shitty about something I can’t change?”

It was quiet for a moment. “I knew you’d say something like that,” he said. “Since you’re a good person and all.”

“I’m not any better than anyone else.”

“But you care about people. Like … more than most people do.”

“How do you know?”

“You make Cadence mac and cheese on the stove.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“The microwave kind is so much faster. The kind from the box means you have to boil the water and cook the pasta and make the sauce and mix it together. It takes longer and it tastes a thousand times better and that’s the kind you make for her, because you care. You do what’s better, even if it’s harder.”

“Easy Mac isn’t hard,” I murmured. “It literally has ‘easy’ in the name.”

“You know what I mean,” he replied.





twenty-nine


Sophie:

What should we do first when you get here?

Ciara:

Can I call you right now?

Do you have time to talk?





thirty


Friday night found us back at Tegan’s house—inside this time—sitting around talking about band stuff, which I easily navigated into talking about Megan.

“I think we should probably get tickets soon for her concert at the state fair,” I said. I had been compulsively checking every few days, just to make sure they were still available. “So we should figure out who’s going.”

“Well, Dash’ll drive, so there’s one,” Brit said, settling down next to him on the couch with a newly filled cup.

Dash looked up from his phone. “You know, everyone always assumes I’m gonna drive. What if I have plans?”

“Do you?”

“I could.”

“I’ll drive,” I said.

“I’ll do it, I’m just saying,” Dash replied, tapping out something on his phone.

Brit leaned into him. “Tell your man we say hi. Tell him you say—” She started making kissing sounds by Dash’s ear.

“Can you not?” he said.

“Did you get all that?” She made several more kissing sounds.

“Anyway,” I said, before she could do any more Foley work. “It’s on the seventeenth. So just let me know. If you want to go.” I glanced at August.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“In Springfield.”

“How far?”

“Like two and a half hours?”

“So the radius of how close she’ll come to Acadia is max two and a half hours.”

Terrance nodded. He had settled on the floor as well. “She couldn’t declare the state of Illinois entirely dead to her, or else she could never play Chicago.”

“You know, I’ve been doing some reading—” I began.

“Of course you have,” Brit interjected.

“Old articles and stuff, and watching videos, going way back. It just seemed like she loved it here so much, before everything. Like before she actually got famous. I just don’t get why she wouldn’t want to come back.”

“Yeah because if it were up to you, we’d all just stay in Acadia,” Brit said.

“Because Acadia is the best place in the world.”