Signed, Skye Harper (4 page)

“Winston Churchill,” Steve said, his voice smoky as the room. “You were in
my
pool. How’s that for breaking the law?”

I looked away. Breaking and entering into a private pool. Wouldn’t look good on my record.

Thank goodness I hadn’t made that bologna sandwich.

“Fine,” I said, and turned away.

“Why’re you in here, anyway?”

I raised the watering can, which wasn’t easy seeing my own arms had a tight grip on my body. “Watering. I’m
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watering. Plants.” The words came out like a bit of wind. I saw my mouth move in the section of uncovered mirror. Steve is so tall I couldn’t see his face in the glass. Ozzy Osbourne’s head was where Steve’s chest should be instead.

He moved past me (not Ozzy, Steve) toward a drawer, where he pulled out another T-shirt, brushing my elbow. It felt like a bee might have stung where we touched. He put on the shirt, then took a sort of leap and landed on his back on the bed. Water sloshed this way and that. Blood rushed to my head and for a moment I felt dizzy. I looked back at Ozzy.

“There are no plants in here,” he said, “unless you count this.” He opened his bedside table drawer and took out a rolled cigarette. Nanny’s brother, Uncle Buddy, coulda taught Steve a thing or two about rolling something to smoke. “Just a little weed.”

“Weed?” I gripped the handle of the can so hard my knuckles felt like they might snap like chicken bones.

Steve laughed. “Want to smoke with me?”

Wait a minute.

That’s why there was all this smoke.

And wait another minute.

I knew . . . I knew what he was talking about. Drugs. Without an answer, I turned and left, left the whole house. Down the long staircase, through that massive foyer, and out the front door.
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Past the garages, past a brand-new motor home that looked bigger than our place, up that driveway that seemed to grow longer and longer like something from
Alice in Wonderland
.

What in the world were the Simmonses doing leaving a pretty boy like Steve here, alone? It was obvious he needed help cleaning his room. And that he had a severe, severe problem with illegal drugs.
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35

Surprise 5

“Where you going, Churchill?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Steve beat me to the end of the driveway. Well, he knew the house better than I did. So? So? Sew buttons on your underwear.

Were there buttons on his underwear?

I couldn’t bear to think about it in the broad light of day. I’d have to save underwear-button thinking for later on tonight when no one would see my face color in the late afternoon air.

I marched back toward Leon’s, with a half-ish mile to go; my ponytail jumped in the breeze. Thank goodness we were so close to the ocean. The smell cleared my head. I wanted to march harder, move faster, but I could only go so quick because of my freed bosoms. It’s hard to book it when you have your arms folded across your chest.

Wait! Wait!

No!

Steve cut in front of me and walked backward.

“I said, where you off to?”

I didn’t look at him. My mouth took off on its own.
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“No you didn’t,” I said, staring straight ahead. “You said, where you going.”

“Churchill,” he said.

“What?” I pretended to look at him by glancing at a palmetto tree off behind Steve’s shoulder across the street.

My bra. Oh, my bra. Nanny warned me about putting it in the freezer, but I never listen.

Now I couldn’t think.

“I said your name, too,” he said, and his voice was so sweet I had to look him in the eyes. Eyes blue as the ocean. He almost smiled. We both stopped walking.

“That’s not my name. It’s Winston.”

“I know that,” Steve said. “Winston
Churchill
.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Why’re you carrying that watering can?”

What? That too? “Uh.”

“Here. I can take care of it.”

“No,” I said, but he wrestled it from my hand.

It was only half-full of water. Somehow I had slopped the rest down my leg. I noticed, for the first time, my flip-flop was wet.

“I can take that back,” I whispered.

“Naw,” Steve said, then threw the can high over a coquina-rock wall and into another rich person’s yard. He took a step closer to me, and I tightened my arms over my bosoms. He was so pretty I couldn’t stand it. We stood there
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close enough that if I had crept forward even a bit more, we would have been touching.

A Volkswagen roared past, stopped short, and snaked back to where Steve and I gazed at each other. The car went up on the sidewalk, and Benjy Aufhammer stuck his head out the window.

Ick.

More football players. Too many crammed in a Volkswagen. If I hadn’t been so horrified to be caught out on the street in dirty clothes, with gravy in my hair (or had the pool water washed it out?), my bra in a stranger’s freezer, and with the boy I was in love with, I would have smiled at Steve
and
at Benjy, but my lips were as frozen as some of my apparel was.

“Simmons, let’s go,” Benjy Aufhammer said. “We done stopped at your place and you weren’t there.”

Smart,
I wanted to say, but I kept quiet.

Someone let out a whistle from the backseat, and someone else said, “Dammit, Creed. There’s too many of us in here for you to be doing that. Now I’m deaf.”

Benjy revved the motor.

And just like that Steve Simmons, the boy of my dreams, kissed me full on the lips.
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36

Taming

The biggest, longest, most taming kiss ever.
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37

Boys

Somebody laughed as I let my hands flop like two eels at my side. I touched a bit of fabric from his shirt.

Steve pulled away and looked me so hard in the face when the smooch was over I thought I might end up a puddle of melted butter on the sidewalk.

“See ya,” he said. His voice was low. So soft I might have made up even hearing it. Steve ran around the car, looked at me over the top of the Bug, then slid in through the passenger window.

Benjy drove off, leaving black tread marks on the concrete, Steve’s legs dangling out the window from the knees on down.

I wiped at my lips, a weak protest on my tongue.

I blinked.

That was the sweetest kiss I’d ever gotten. The only kiss, yes. But the sweetest, too. Did the weed make Steve taste like that? Like milk chocolate? Or was this his natural taste? Did all boys taste so sweet?

What had I tasted like? Gravy? Scallops? The bit of orange lip gloss I had applied this morning?

Did he care?
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Would he kiss me again?

I stood there on the sidewalk, watching that car till it wasn’t the size of a postage stamp, then I walked all the way back to work, my stomach flopping over itself till I felt sick.
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38

Stuck

No watering can, no key, no bra.

A frozen solid bra, truth be told, but not with me.

Now what?
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39

New Plans Needed

I wasn’t even sure how I made it back to Leon’s.

But when I walked in the restaurant, Nanny said, “What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” I said. I felt my whole body turning red from the forehead down. Was my chest blotchy? My bosoms obvious? I knew my hair was pool-straggles even pulled back in the ponytail.

There was only one table of customers. I touched my lips.

I thought Nanny would jump over the bar, where she counted glasses for this evening’s shift. “I said what happened?”

Raul looked out through the kitchen door.

The restaurant grew as quiet as a church.

“Nothing,” I said, and headed to the freezer, where I rubbed crushed ice all over my face till I cooled off.
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40

Found Out, Sort Of

“Who kissed you?” Nanny said, first thing, when we climbed into the Blue Goose. “And did you leave your bra in the freezer again?”

My stomach fell into my lap. She didn’t need details.

“Yes,” I said. “To the bra part.” I stared out the window, knowing she would read the lie in my eyes if I looked at her straight in the face. “Why would anyone kiss me, Nanny?” I said. “People don’t even talk to me during the summer. Patty Bailey is gone, you know.”

Nanny’s voice went low.

“I know that look,” she said. “I seen it on your momma’s face and I saw it plenty on my own. You cannot fool me.”

I turned to my grandmother, pulling in all the fresh ocean air that I could. I looked at her, staring her in the eyes. “I swear to you, Nanny, I haven’t kissed anyone at all.” That was the truth. I hadn’t laid my lips on Steve. He had caught me.

I coulda kept talking. I coulda said,
And I don’t ever plan to kiss anyone, not the whole of my life
. But the truth was all that had changed, and I knew, just knew, if Steve Simmons the First was involved, I would be a kissing fool all the rest of my life.

With or without my frozen bra.
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41

Surprise 6

Thelma waited for us at the front door, grinning from ear to ear.

“Girl,” I whispered, kneeling close and hugging her neck. She had that perfect doggie smell if I avoided her breath. “I got so much to tell you.”

Nanny looked at me from across the front porch, where she dug the mail out of the box then sorted it. She paused.

“What?” I said.

“Another letter,” Nanny said. Nanny waved it to me, like she wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad.

Not a postcard.

A letter.

A letter.
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42

How a Life Turns from Sort of Uncomplicated to Very Messed Up

That night, Thelma in the doorway because there was no storm, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Momma’s second letter nestled under my pillow, folded perfect, lying right next to the first one.

There was no reason to read it again.

I knew what it said.

Mommy, baby Winston,

Come git me,

Please.

Signed,

Skye Harper
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43

One Problem Solved

I decided, if anyone asked, that it wasn’t my bra hiding out in a rich man’s house. No one could prove it. And like that, I fell asleep.
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44

More Dreams

There was Momma again.

She looked like me, only she was clean and could dance. “I paid for my own tap-dance lessons,” she said. She tapped the whole time she talked. And she never got winded, even though she held watering cans in both hands.
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45

Surprise 7

“Hey. Hey. Wake up,” Momma said, all deeplike.
Tap tap tappity tap.

I awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed, my stomach clogging the back of my throat.

The dream had been so real I could hear her voice. I could see Momma’s hair, long and blond, like my own. She had dream-danced faster than Shirley Temple and Ann Miller, both Nanny’s favorites.

I settled back onto my pillow, covering a yawn. The night light in the hall spilled a bit of cream into my room. Thelma was a black blob.

“Churchill.”

Looking toward the window, I saw her. Wait. Here! How? The Lemon was gone. Sold. Momma said so in her first letter. And her voice. Her voice was deep. Like a guy’s. What had happened? I squinched my eyes tight, then opened them wide.

“You awake, Churchill? I’m holding on by my fingernails. Come to the window. I got something for you.”

That
wasn’t Momma.

“Steve?” I almost swallowed my tongue. “What in the
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world?” I pulled the sheet up to my chin. A bit of Steve’s head showed through the screen. The fan took up the rest of the space. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” he said.

“What for?”

Light, thin and watery as early morning can be, pushed in around him. Thelma edged into my room some. I could see her eyes were open. Why didn’t she bark? Alert me? Protect me? Why, I could be fighting for my virtue right now.

Steve let out a laugh, not too loud, and I was surprised at how deep it sounded.

“To talk. Let me in.”

He was crazy. Nanny would jerk a knot in his tail.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” he said, his voice urgent. “I’ve been thinking about that kiss all night.”

Now I hesitated.
I
had been thinking about that kiss too.

“Let me inside.”

I sat up, shaking my head. “Go away,” I said. “You are in dangerous territory.”

“Come out onto the porch then. Your grandmother won’t care. I’ll wait for you.”

Then he was gone.
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46

A Meeting Almost Under

the Cover of Darkness

I flopped back in bed, wanting to smile but knowing better. Nanny might know, somehow, I was feeling happy and wake up, then come check on me and force the previous day out of my mouth.

And she would so care about the whole thing.

Boys at the window. Bras in their freezers. No, that would not be something that Nanny would approve.

I threw the sheet off, kicked it across the room, slipped on shorts and a fresh T-shirt, and ran, light-footed, across the room, down the hall, and into the living room. I peeked through the front window.

Steve sat in our Adirondack chair, my bra dangling from two fingers, like he was an ad for Sears and Roebuck.
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47

Different