Breakfast Served Anytime (20 page)

“Oh yeah,” Cal said. “I was talking about my family. My parents aren’t convinced I should take that scholarship. I mean, what’re you guys gonna do?”

Chloe groaned. “The scholarship, the scholarship. I’m so sick of it. Can’t we worry about that later? Can’t I just please enjoy my senior year for a second?”

“I think I’m going to take it,” Calvin said. He studied his corn, which he was eating in methodical, tidy rows. “Study agriculture. Get the degree. Once I earn it, nobody can ever take it away from me, you know?”

“Cal,” I said, “you are the smartest person I know. You’re going to have scholarships coming out of your ears, and not just from UK. Keep your options open.”

“I want to be near the farm. That’s what I know for sure. That’s the only option for me.”

I felt it again: that twinge of jealous awe at somebody having it all figured out. “Is the farm what
you
want for you, or what your parents want for you?”

“Are you kidding? My parents want me to go to Harvard and become a doctor.”

Mason groaned. “Join the club.”

“God, I think you need math for that,” Chloe said. “Go with the farm, Cal. That place rocks.”

“The good news is, they said I could keep Holyfield.”

“Well, of course they did.”

Holyfield seemed pleased.

Riiing.

The sound of the pay phone was so foreign to my ears that it may as well have been a siren. One of the Egg Drop’s chief charms was that in so many ways it was a relic of a bygone era; I mean, there are probably something like, what, seven pay phones still in existence across the globe? The Egg Drop had the monopoly on not one but two of them: one on either side of the entrance. Mason was standing at the left one, patiently holding the phone to his ear. “Are yall going to pick up or what?”

“I can hear you from right here,” Chloe said, stating the obvious. Mason ignored her, and the phone on the right continued to blare its dinosaur ring. Calvin gave me a pointed glance, so I eye-rolled my way to the receiver and picked up.

“Egg Drop Café, may I help you?”

“Yes. May I speak to Gloria Bishop, please?”

I flipped Mason the bird. “Speaking.”

“Gloria! How’s it going?”

“Um, super. How’s it going with you?”

“Lemme talk to Chloe for a sec. Put her on.”

Chloe and Calvin had just settled down to a pint of fresh-picked blackberries. “Tell him my mouth is full,” Chloe said over her shoulder.

“Her mouth is full.”

“So are we going to take the bus or hitch a ride with X? What’s the plan?”

I had almost forgotten: We and the rest of the Geek Campers were supposed to be field-tripping it to Louisville for a riverfront concert and fireworks display. I’d been dreading it, fearing the inevitable collision of my at-home world and my hallowed Geek Camp existence. I could just imagine running into Sophie Allen, some tedious person like that, and she’d be all,
How’s your summer? Have you started
Beowulf?
Did you hear about what happened last weekend at Jordan’s house?
And then the veil would just come crashing down all over the place, and the spell — the incandescent bubble, the Grecian Urn, you get the point — would be broken. Louisville was the last place I wanted to go.

“I think we need a new plan.”

Mason squinted in the sun. “What kind of plan?”

“I say we go rogue.” On the surface of the pay phone, scrawled in what looked like lipstick, was yet another invitation to Call Ike for a Good Time.

“Put Cal on.”

I held the receiver out to Calvin, who in turn proffered the blackberries. The corn was sunshine; the blackberry was summer itself, that singular achy sweetness. Later, when I would think back on this day — and I would, often — it would taste like Calvin’s blackberries. Maybe it’s ridiculous to pin a memory on a piece of fruit, but it was another thing I knew I wouldn’t forget, ever.

“Do I have to talk on that germy phone?”

I shrugged and twirled the receiver around by its unwieldy cord. “We’re concocting a plan. It seems an appropriate way to get the scheming done.”

Cal played along, albeit reluctantly. “This phone smells like feet.” He held the receiver a couple of inches away from his ear. “Calvin Little, at your service.”

“Calvin. Bro. So how far away is this farm?”

BAMBOOZLING X was ridiculously, embarrassingly easy. I mean, I almost felt bad about it. Almost. We put Calvin in charge, since Cal had Holyfield on his side.

“X, this dog needs to run. When I took him out to the farm this morning, he went berserk. The farm sits on the highest point in Clark County — we’ll get the best fireworks show around. Can’t you exempt us from the field trip? Say it’s class related?”

The catch was this: X and Kathryn and Juliet would be traveling with us. I balked at that arrangement until Mason pointed out the obvious, which was that we needed a ride. Kathryn deigned to risk her — and her offspring’s — life in the Mystery Machine, and the whole unlikely lot of us arrived at Calvin’s farm in time for supper.
Supper
. The very word felt like nourishment in my mouth. The sun was still high in the Fourth of July sky as we sat around this huge table — handmade of reclaimed barn wood by Cal’s dad, who had also installed solar panels on the roof — and put away the most delicious meal I’d had in years: some kind of lasagna at the heart of which was something called Swiss chard — it was straight from the garden and, like the berries and the corn, seemed proof of the rightness of words like
wholesome
and
goodness,
words that TV commercials love but that usually don’t apply to whatever they’re trying to sell.

Chloe was right: Mr. and Mrs. Little — Jamison and Dot, they told us to call them — were awesome. The day was turning into a regular Mom Shopper’s dream. Dot had this absentminded way of touching the back of Calvin’s head whenever she passed him, and she called all of us “darlin’,” as in
Chloe darlin’, would you like some more sweet tea? So Mason darlin’, Cal says you’re an actor; is that right?
I couldn’t decide which mom I loved more: Dot or Kathryn, whose new-mom fatigue seemed to have been replaced by a mysterious grace. Her hair was wound in a loose braid that trailed across her shoulder, and she seemed totally at ease there on the porch swing, laughing and talking, nursing Juliet beneath a baby blanket that appeared to be made from stitched-together pieces of neckties. Dot had produced the blanket from a trunk of things that used to belong to Calvin and Luke when they were babies.

“Far as I’m concerned, ties’re for weddings and funerals, and still people want to give them at Christmas all the time,” Jamison said. “Told Dot I didn’t know what else to do with them, so when Luke came along she whipped a batch of the old ones into that baby blanket there.”

“Cal and Luke both, back when they were babies, they used to love to rub that silk on their ears — helped them get to sleep,” Dot said. “Lord, Calvin, you especially. You toted that thing around everywhere.”

“Mom,” Calvin protested.

Dot snapped out of her reverie and switched gears. “Now why don’t yall take that dog outside and run him? Scoot, all yall. Daddy and I will tend to Mr. and Mrs. Xavier and this darlin’ baby girl, bless her heart.”

It was the only teeny thing I could hold against Dot — not a big deal, but still: I made a mental note to never, ever call my husband (assuming I one day had a husband, which maybe I wouldn’t, whatever)
Daddy
. That right there is the kind of thing that can signal the beginning of the end, if you ask me.

“From the top of that hill, you can see for miles,” Calvin said, leading the way. The sun hung low in the sky, drenching the treetops in its scarlet glow. We paused for a second to watch it take its slow-motion bow beneath the horizon: going, going, gone.

“Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen that happen,” Mason observed. “Where have I been?”

“Playing Street Fighter,” Chloe said. “Hey. I brought stuff for s’mores.”

“Up here’s where we usually build the campfires,” Calvin said. “Come on.”

Calvin took off, Holyfield barking at his heels. Chloe followed them, laughing as she stretched both arms wide and pirouetted up the hill. Her raven hair against the slow melt of the sky, the pinwheel of her skirt as she spun: She looked like a bird taking flight. My mind snapped a picture of her,
click
.

I was taking my time getting up the hill. It’d been a while since I’d been surrounded by that much fresh air, that much wide-open beauty, and I felt a little unsteady, like I was treading within the fragile sphere of a dream. I had watched the sun blaze and in the blink of an eye slip away; the happiness I felt in that moment was a heartbeat from tipping to sadness at the knowledge that I couldn’t hold it forever. My old familiar push-pull, my trademark yearning for and resisting joy.

“Hey Glo, come look at this.”

Mason was twenty yards ahead of me, beckoning. I chose joy and let it propel me up the hill.

“There must have just been a hatch or something,” Mason said. “Can you believe this?”

Blue butterflies. Hundreds of them, swooping about us in a frightening and gorgeous Hitchcock-esque swarm. They fluttered on the tall blades of grass, in Mason’s hair, on his outstretched arms. He took my hand, and butterflies poured over my wrist. Their wings were startling and beautiful against my bare skin, and, maybe because in that moment I felt startling and beautiful by proxy, I pulled Mason to me and whispered in his ear, “Don’t forget this.”

As quickly as they had appeared, the butterflies swarmed away from us, all but one. It was perched on my shoulder, wings spread — waiting, I guess, to see how things would pan out. Mason made a move toward his camera, but I stopped him. “I’ve already got it,” I said and, covering his hand with my own, I placed it over my heart. “I’ve got it right here.”

Calvin got the fire going with expert Eagle Scout ease. Fireflies drifted up from the tall grass, rising as if to greet the fireworks that began, all at once, to burst in panoramic splendor all around us. We were so far away and so high up that the sound of the fireworks display never reached us. We were treated to an even more mysterious show: silent showers of red, white, and blue like paint slung on a canvas. Calvin lit sparklers for us, one by one. We wrote our names in the air, great sizzling swoops that left neon autographs behind our closed eyes.

“All right, Cal,” Chloe said. “Give us the Declaration of Independence.”

Calvin shook his head. “Can’t do it on demand.”

“Cal-vin,” Chloe sang, “You know you know it.”

Encircling the campfire were makeshift log benches; Calvin climbed atop the nearest one, closed his eyes, and pressed his right hand to his heart. He recited the whole thing — the absolute
entire
thing — with the same unexpected eloquence that he’d employed when he introduced us to
Nathan Coulter
. Goose bumps pricked up along my arms when he got to the part about
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I mean, those are freaking goose-bump-inducing words right there.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I ask you: What else is there? It all seemed so simple and obvious and clear, and I wondered why the world couldn’t just get with the program.

Chloe jumped to her feet and applauded. “That was awesome, Cal. Your brain astounds. But I still wish I lived in France.”

“What’s in France?” I asked. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

“What’s in Boone County?”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad,” I said. “High school’s not forever. We’re almost done.”

“Easy for you to say,” Chloe said, her voice rising. “I mean, you and Mason go to these performing-arts schools, right? Everybody accepts everybody and it’s all
Glee
all the time.”

“Don’t even talk to me about
Glee,
” Mason warned, “or I will be forced to vomit in your general direction.”

“What I’m saying,” Chloe went on, “is that it’s okay to be different at your schools. In the cities where you live. I mean, it’s more than okay. It’s like
the
thing.”

“Riiiight,” Mason said. “And we’re all so different that we’re exactly the same.” He punctuated this bit of wisdom by offering some exaggerated snoring sounds. Chloe stifled a laugh.

Here’s the thing about my school: There are things I take for granted about it, maybe (such as: diversity and inclusion are so much a fact of life that words like
diversity
and
inclusion
aren’t even necessary in everyday parlance), but it can still provide as hellish an environment as any other public high school in America. I still have to endure calculus and gym and Sophie Allen, whose reign as Head Princess has been in effect since kindergarten. That she’s a future opera star with the voice of an angel doesn’t make her any less of a pain in my ass.

“Chloe,” I said, borrowing from Carol, “there are assholes everywhere you go. Even in Paris.
C’est la vie
.”

Mason crossed over to Calvin’s log and sat down beside him. He knocked gently on Cal’s head. “What else have you got in there?”