Chasing Jupiter (11 page)

I
t was just after twelve o’clock, and the sun was already making my skin melt and my dress stick to my back. I fanned myself with a napkin I’d found lying around and squinted down the road. No sign of Frank.

Cliff was sitting on the ground with a pad of paper and a pen. From time to time, he’d hold it up and show me what he was working on. It was usually an elaborate spaceship of some kind.

“Peter Pan is going to be my copilot,” he said out loud, furiously coloring in the sparks beneath the rocket. He glanced up and frowned. “Or would it be co-astronaut? Are astronauts called pilots sometimes?”

“I don’t know.” I pressed my lips together and looked again toward the direction of Frank’s house. Nothing.

We could technically head back into the house anytime we wanted. We’d been selling pies since nine, and we only had one left. Plus, we had agreed in the beginning that we wouldn’t stay out too long in the heat. Georgia afternoon heat waves can be killers.

But Frank hadn’t showed up yet. It didn’t make any sense. He was always there by nine. Ten, at the latest. Here it was quarter past twelve and no sign of him.

I squirmed in my seat and stared at the pie sitting in front of me. Flaky bits of crust clung to the red gingham tablecloth covering
the stand. I scraped a bit of peach goop off the side of the pie and stuck my finger into my mouth. A weird mixture of salty sweat and sticky sugar.

Maybe he found out about my conversation with Mrs. Greene last Friday. I racked my brain to think if I’d seen him since then. I hadn’t. He’d left the party saying something about a boating trip his family was taking this week, but he’d assured me that he’d be back in time to sell pies today. That was eight days ago. What if someone told him since then about what I said?

Who else would know?
That was a comforting thought. No one else was nearby, right? There was no way he would know. It was between me and Mrs. Greene.

There was a loud ripping sound as Cliff tore his picture off of the pad of paper and handed it to me. “Here you go! We can put this by the sale sign. Then, if anyone comes, I can explain to them about how this is Peter Pan and this is Captain Cliff and we’re going to Jupiter together.”

But if he didn’t know, why else would he not come?
I scratched at a bug bite on my leg.

Maybe Frank was getting tired of us.

It made sense, in a way. It’s not like we were the most stimulating people to be around. Cliff was in some kind of delusional world ninety percent of the time, referring to himself in third person and chastising me in a weird mixture of English and Spanish. And I certainly wasn’t as pretty or interesting as Juli.

My stomach sank. He was sick of being around us. Now that Juli had noticed him, Frank probably realized he could attract the attention of much more fascinating people. After all, part of our deal had been I would introduce him to my sister.

I looked back down the road one more time. No more cars or people, which made sense. We’d always told customers that we were closing at twelve, before the day got too hot. Usually we took a break
between twelve and three and then reopened at four when the air was a bit cooler.

“Come on, Cliff.” I stood and stretched trying to seem as nonchalant as possible. “Let’s go in the house. We’ll bring this pie out this evening and see if we can sell it.”

He scampered to his feet and pulled together all of his drawing supplies. Then he proceeded to talk my ear off about Jupiter and Peter Pan all the way back up the driveway.

Not that I was really listening. I was walking, one foot in front of the other, toward the house with only one thing on my mind: Frank.

I wasn’t even that upset that he didn’t care for me or didn’t want to be with me. It was more than that. Frank was the only person who had ever seemed to look past our eccentricities and labels to see the
real
Cliff and Scarlett. I’d never known him to think that we were weirdos or oddballs like everyone else seemed to. He saw our flaws and quirks and still liked us in spite of them.

Well, at least, I
thought
he liked us. I thought he was our friend. Friends are supposed to be steady, dependable but I hadn’t heard from Frank in over a week. I knew he and his family were home—I’d seen their car when I biked past there yesterday. But something was keeping him away. And I was determined to find out what that was.

“You go on into the house,” I told Cliff. “I’m going to ride over to the orchard and pick up some more peaches.”

Cliff’s face lit up. “Oh! I want to come! I can’t wait to tell Frank how—”

“No!”

My word cut through the air like a knife, stopping Cliff mid-sentence. He frowned, his brows drawing together. He opened his mouth then slowly shut it. “Okay,” he mumbled, trudging up the steps.

Standing alone on the front porch, I wrapped my arms around my chest. Suddenly, the ninety-five-degree heat didn’t seem so warm anymore.

The wind kissed my cheeks as I pedaled toward Frank’s house, making my hair fly behind me. The air slid down the back of my dress, cooling my skin.
At least I won’t show up in his orchard with a sticky back
.

For a glorious four and a half minutes, it felt like I was flying. Georgia sped past me, the neighborhood houses as well as nearby orchards and farm houses blurring in my side vision. It was close to mid-July, and many crops were reaching full ripeness, leaving a mingling of sweet Southern laziness and overflowing fruitfulness in the air.

I closed my eyes for a second and imagined that wings pulled me through the air. I felt weightless, happy, free.

Mrs. Greene’s words rang in my ears.
“You can stay perched in your birdcage forever. Or you can fly.”

Fly
. The word was so appealing. Sometimes, I knew exactly how Cliff felt when he dreamed about flying to Jupiter. Out of this world, away from this mundane life. For me that meant being free from the responsibilities and pressures of growing up. Able to smooth out the tangle of thoughts and fears that always seemed to jumble up whenever I talked to Juli or Frank or Mrs. Greene.

My thoughts came tumbling down as I pulled into the Leggetts’ driveway and skidded to a stop. Our family seemed so cracked lately. And I was the only glue keeping us together. Juli was defiant; Grandpop Barely was erratic; Cliff was … well,
Cliff
; and Mama and Dad seemed dangerously close to breaking.

I was nowhere near being ready to fly.

Dropping my bike by the fence, I brushed off my knees and looked up. The Leggetts’ pickup truck was sitting in the driveway.
I guess that means they’re home
. That didn’t really give me any indication of where Frank might be, though.

Why did I care about him anyway? I didn’t, that’s what.

I untied my basket from the front of my bike and headed toward
the peach orchard. Frank had said that we could pick peaches anytime we needed to. We just had to let him know later.

Well, I’ll let him know the next time he actually shows up to something. I’m not going to go out of my way to find him just to let him know I picked a few more peaches. Besides, I have to get home and get a few more pies made before this evening anyway
.

I turned just in time to see Frank climbing over the fence and into the orchard with a fluffy white cat in his hands. He shook his head, confused. “What are you doing here?”

“Peaches.” I held my basket up dumbly, wanting to snatch the word up and shove it back into my mouth. Obviously, I was getting peaches. This wasn’t a baked-potato orchard, for heaven’s sake.

“I saw you from the house.” He nodded toward where his home sat on top of the little hill, flanked by peach trees in every direction.

“Oh.” I kept my gaze low. It felt awkward to look at him and talk to him in light of last week’s sudden realization.

But Frank didn’t seem bothered. He sat down at the base of one of the peach trees and stroked the white cat. “This is Monica,” he said, rubbing her head. She ducked and rubbed her nose against his neck, clearly infatuated. “A family who lived about five minutes down the road recently moved away. They asked me if I’d take care of her, so I said yes. She’s only been here about a week, but she seems pretty happy.” He chuckled, tickling the cat under the chin. His golden eyelashes brushed his cheeks before glancing up at me.

I pressed my lips together and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Why ‘Monica’?”

“Why not?”

He had me smiling then, so I sat next to him and rested the basket of peaches on my lap. It was cooler in the shade, and the flies were more preoccupied with the fallen fruit than our skin. So it was nice.

“Besides,” Frank said, “Cliff wasn’t around to throw out any Spanish names.”

“I bet he could have come up with some good ones.”

“Yeah. No doubt about it.”

I rested my head against the bark of the tree and picked up a peach. Turning it over in my hands, the pink fuzz tickled my skin. I gave it a little squeeze.
Just ripe enough
.

“Oh, darn!” Frank sat up straight, startling Monica. She jumped out of his lap and flicked her tail, trotting away.

Frank glanced at me nervously and ran a hand through his hair. “I completely forgot about the stand today, Scarlett.”

I shrugged.
Hopefully, this comes across as nonchalant, rather than stinging of injured pride
. “It’s fine. We were fine.”

“No, it’s not. I promised you I’d be there.” He picked a twig off the ground and poked at his arm. His skin was so tan from the summer sun that it nearly matched the brown of the wood. “I was filling out college applications, and I just lost track of the day and time.”

“College?” My voice came out squeaky, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah. I’m applying at Georgia Tech and Boston University.”

“Boston?”
Boston?
As in the Massachusetts kind of Boston? All the US geography maps I’d memorized in grade school came rushing back to me. That was a completely different part of the country.

Frank’s smile had faded. He was poking at his arm more energetically now, hardly grimacing at the tiny marks the twig left in his skin. “They have an incredible track for aspiring veterinarians. It would be amazing.” He sighed. “But I doubt I’ll even get accepted. And I know that my parents want me to go to Georgia Tech, and that’s where I’ll probably end up going, but still.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to say this, because I wanted him to stay in Georgia forever, but I swallowed and pressed forward. “Frank, what do
you
want to do?”

He tilted his head down. “I don’t know if that matters all that much. Dad wants me to be a businessman. To own peach farms and
real estate like he does. Or go to law school and be a lawyer or doctor or something.” He shrugged. “Anything that will make me rich and bitter in the end, I suppose.”

The way his brow furrowed and his shoulders slumped made my heart break. My chest ached to find the right words to say to make him smile and laugh. Instead I sat beside him silent, like a tongue-tied fool. I didn’t know much about law school or owning peach farms, but I did wonder how Frank could become a doctor with his grades. I guess he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted, no matter what scores were on his tests. He looked me in the face. “Sometimes I just feel so trapped here. I don’t want to grow up and live my whole life in this one little town. And everyone—my mom, my dad, my teachers—everyone seems to want to stick me in some kind of … I don’t know …”

“Cage.”

“What?”

“They want to put you in a cage,” I said, my voice soft. “They’re afraid to let you fly.”

“Yes! That’s exactly how I feel!” Frank shook his head, as if I’d just said the most incredulous thing. He bit his lip and nodded. “I don’t want to have to stay in this cage forever. I don’t have anything holding me back. Why can’t they just let me fly?”

I certainly had things holding me back. Cliff, Grandpop Barley, Juli, Mama, and Dad. My whole family.

For a split second, I felt green with envy. If Frank was in a cage, it certainly wasn’t one that would hold him for very long. He could easily pack up and move to Boston if he wanted to. No one would be able to keep him grounded.

But that wasn’t the case for me. I could leave Georgia tomorrow, put all my belongings in a suitcase, and hop on a train headed north. But I’d never be able to live with myself. I’d never put to rest the fact that I was abandoning my family. They needed me.

“You know, that’s what I love about Juli,” Frank was saying, a pleasant look finally spreading across his face. “She’s just so carefree and independent. She wouldn’t care about what college her parents wanted her to go to. She’d just go wherever she pleased and be happy about it.”

Again with Juli
. My chest panged.

“I’d care.” I placed the peach basket on the ground next to me and pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “I’d care what my parents thought.”

“What do you mean?” Frank’s voice was soft.

“It would break my heart if I did something that hurt my mother. If I left her.” I bit the inside of my cheek. The sun was blazing through the leaves of the peach trees and shining in my eyes. “At the end of my life, it doesn’t matter what college is on my diploma. Or what state I’m living in or what job I’ve retired from.”

I took a deep breath. “If my family falls apart, everything else does too. And I’d never be able to fall asleep at night with the memory of walking away and leaving them behind.” My voice grew small. “I need them just as much as they need me.”

Frank blinked at me. Silence spread between us in the muggy air. He leaned forward until his face was less than a foot away. Then he licked his lips and whispered, “You’re nothing like Juli, are you?”

“No.”

Frank let out a breath and straightened. “I guess you’re right. Come on.” He climbed to his feet and brushed off his jeans before helping me up. “Well, I think it’s getting too late to make those extra pies. Why don’t you stay for supper instead? I’ll ask my mom, but I’m sure it will be okay.”