Saint Anything(68)

*

“That’s twenty-six forty-two, charged to your card,” I said to the frazzled-looking woman in the doorway wearing sweatpants and a rumpled cardigan. Behind her, several children were jumping on the couch in front of a TV showing cartoons.

Wordlessly she reached out for the two pizzas I was holding. As I gave them to her and she tipped me, one of the kids tumbled off the couch, hitting the carpet with a thud. There was a pause. When the wailing began, she shut the door.

“Five bucks,” I said to Mac as I climbed into the truck. “And I was right: only cheese pizzas means kids, and lots of them. You missed one doing a face-plant into the carpet.”

“Bummer,” he replied. He shifted into reverse. As I went to slide the bill into the plastic cup that sat in the console, he said, “You keep that. You did the work.”

I just looked at him. “I walked to the door.”

“It counts,” he told me. I put it with the rest anyway.

After a few days of delivering together, we had worked out a system: Mac drove and kept up with the orders waiting at Seaside, and I did the legwork, running in to get the food and taking it to customers. He claimed this was efficient, that his time was better spent coordinating the next stop and our return trips to pick up more orders. But I was pretty sure he was just indulging my interest in seeing what was behind each door.

“Sorority girls,” I reported from the next stop, at a big yellow house right across the street from the U. “Should have known it from all the salads.”

“Look at you. You’re like the order whisperer.”

“There is a science to it,” I agreed, sliding the tip in the cup. As I sat back, I realized he was looking at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.

It was only a couple of hours every other afternoon or so, but no matter: this time had quickly become the best part of my week. Layla might have felt she needed to apologize for falling so hard, so quickly. She didn’t realize I was doing the same thing.

Just then, my phone beeped. It was the latest text from Jenn, one of several we’d exchanged while trying to work out a time to get together. With her after-school job tutoring and activities and my new routine with Mac, we’d gone from seeing each other at least once a week to hardly at all.

Frazier at 5? she wrote now. Off at 4:30. Mer can come late.

I looked at my watch. It was four p.m., which left me with another two hours with Mac before I was due home. I thought of Layla, all her apologies, and felt my own guilt for putting my friends second to a boy, especially one who wasn’t really mine. But then I did it anyway.

No can do. Tomorrow?

Gone till Monday, she replied. Next week for sure.

Which meant two more full afternoons without any other obligations. Jenn was a good friend, even when she didn’t realize it.

Definitely, I wrote. XXOO.

The last delivery of the day was in the Arbors, right inside the front entrance. It was for two extra-large pepperoni and sausage pies with extra cheese, and I’d had it pegged as guys for sure, probably ones drinking beer. Instead, the door was answered by a small, very tan woman in tennis whites who called me “hon” and tipped me ten bucks. I was thinking I’d lost my touch until I was heading down the driveway and noticed a sign on the truck we’d parked behind. BASSETT CARPENTRY, it said. DECKS OUR SPECIALTY. When I glanced into the backyard, I saw a group of guys digging into the pizzas. They were drinking beer.

“You’re like Layla with her face thing,” Mac told me when I relayed this to him. “Just be sure you use your powers for good, not evil.”

“I’ll try,” I replied as we pulled out of the driveway. We’d only gone a short way when I saw something. “Hey. Stop for a second.”

He did, and I turned to my window, peering closer. There, just across the street and beyond the sidewalk, was a small opening in the brush.

“What is it?” Mac asked.

“See that clearing? Between the skinny tree and the stump?”

He leaned across me. “Yeah.”

“That used to be the best path into the woods from this neighborhood. You could get on it right here, where the houses begin, and follow it all the way back to where I live. It went for miles. We always wondered who put it there.”

“Probably some kids, just like you.”

“There was this one part,” I continued as a car slowed, then passed us, “where there was a giant sinkhole. Huge. Somebody had managed to pull this fallen tree across it, and everyone always dared each other to walk across.”

“Did you?”

“No way,” I said, shuddering. “But Peyton did. He was the only one I ever saw do it.”

Just saying this, I could see it all so clearly in my head. The bareness of the trees in late fall. Broad blue sky. And me and those older kids we’d come across in the woods that day watching as my brother put one foot in front of the other, slow and steady, all the way across.

“We can go, if you want,” Mac said now. I turned, distracted, to face him. “We’ve got time. You can show me.”

I looked back at the path, barely visible. Who knew how it looked now, what was back there. Part of me wanted to see, especially if I wasn’t going to be alone. But another part, heavier, wasn’t ready. Yet.