The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (12 page)

“Check this out,” Sally said as they made their way up the long winding driveway to DeThomas Farms, having been let out by the mailboxes to walk to the house. “Gregorio, he’s the guy that drove us, is teaching me Spanish curse words so I can level Taylor. Want to hear some?”

Lindsay had initially been nervous climbing in the truck being driven by the Mexican guy who had to be at least twenty. Then Sally hung halfway out the window and waved, and suddenly it seemed like this might turn out to be the best day of her life. “Why say anything?” she asked. “Just ignore her.”

“It’s called psy-ops, Lindsay,” Sally said, pulling a sprig from a rosemary bush and placing it under Lindsay’s nose so she had to inhale the perfume. “She’ll go nuts trying to figure it out.”

Lindsay thought it was a bad idea. “What if you just go see Ms. Haverfield and tell her all the mean things Taylor’s been doing?”

“She’ll just assign us to mediation. Gregorio thinks the curses will shut her up. He’s cute, isn’t he?”

Lindsay pictured Sally leaning across the café counter flirting with Gregorio, saying
te amo
and
bésame mucho
while Ricky Martin music played in the background. She couldn’t imagine wanting to be with a boy. It wasn’t hormones that made her get mad these days; any hormone that wanted to come her way was more than welcome. She had no breasts and no hair down there and probably she would never start her period, which was economical but also worrisome. “I think English would be better considering how she keeps saying that stuff about your skin color.”

“Good point,” Sally said as they came into view of the sprawling farmhouse. “But from now on I’m collecting stuff like that. I’m writing it down in my notebook so I can use it later. That’s what a writer does.”

Lindsay heard the screech of a parrot, a barking dog, and someone yelling. Shortly thereafter, a brown-and-white rat terrier flew out the dog door, followed by a little girl so blond Lindsay wondered if she might have been dipped in bleach. “That’s my cousin, Savannah. The biggest crybaby in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Sally,” she whimpered. “I can’t find Uncle Andy and if I can’t I lose at hide-and-seek and I don’t want to lose.”

“Jeeze Louise, Vanna,” Sally said, lifting her cousin into her arms. “How many times do I have to tell you he always hides in the freaking barn? Where else can he go in his wheelchair?”

The little girl snuffled. “I’m scared of the barn. There are cats and owls in there. They might scratch me. Will you take me there?”

“Might as well or we’ll never hear the end of it,” Sally grumbled. The three girls continued down a flagstone path where Irish moss grew between the rocks, green dotted with tiny white buds.

“Those are fairy flowers,” Savannah told Lindsay. “Don’t step on them. The fairies only come out when you’re asleep.”

Lindsay tried to imagine what it would feel like to have a cousin. “I’d like to see a fairy. When do they show up?”

“At night,” Savannah said, stepping carefully on the flagstone in her tiny sneakers.

“What time?”

“It depends.”

Sally tickled Savannah and made her walk by herself the last few feet to the barn. “That’s what we ought to do our project on, the nocturnal habits of fairies. Okay, Vanna, look. Do you see the stack of hay bales? Look carefully at the one on your right. What’s that hunk of metal behind it? Here’s a hint: It’s round and big and someone can sit in it and even do wheelies.”

“A wheelchair!” Savannah cried happily, and raced into the barn.

“Brilliant she’s not,” Sally said.

“How can you know? She’s only six.”

“All I know is that when I was six I could go in a barn without having a nervous breakdown. She’s afraid of everything!”

Lindsay didn’t want to admit that there had been a time in her own life when dark corners and animals larger than her invoked that same kind of fear. Even now she set up her bed so she could reach the cord for the light. Sometimes she lay awake in the dark wondering about the noises she heard, which weren’t at all like the condo. In the past, whatever science couldn’t explain, Allegra could vanquish. That was until the leukemia diagnosis, four weeks ago. It turned out that it wasn’t the big things to be afraid of at all, it was the microscopic stuff that could cream you in broad daylight.

“Leave your backpack on the porch, okay? I want to show you the greenhouses.”

Lindsay did not want to go into the greenhouse. Greenhouses were humid, which would make her sweat. Sweat gathered in her scalp and frizzed her hair out to freak-show level, which would cause Sally to call Gregorio to drive her back home.

“Wait. You have to meet my horse first.” Next to the barn Savannah was terrified of were corrals with metal fences. Sally climbed up. “This is Soul Man,” she said, hanging over the top rail and scratching the massive neck of a solid black horse. “Isn’t he gorgeous? That’s Penelope, my POA. That stands for Pony of the Americas. I let Savannah ride her, but she’s mine. You can ride her if you want.” She exhaled. “I’m already tired of this year, aren’t you? I wish it were summer all year round. I could get on my horse in the morning and not get off until dinner. I’d ride bareback to the creek, and let Soul Man splash around, and omigod, you know what? We have three horses now counting our ancient gelding, Leroy. You can ride along with Vanna and me! Won’t that be fun?”

Lindsay looked at the horse’s nostrils, flexing and pumping in air. He was as tall as a Humvee, and his hooves looked like if he got mad he might use them to stomp a person to death. No way could she get on a horse. She had to confess. “Actually, I’m afraid of horses.”

“Stop it! You are not. Horses are like big, friendly dogs. You could ride Leroy no sweat. He’s a freaking antique. If you lit a bomb under him the most he’d do is yawn. If you know how to cue them they mind and you won’t get hurt. Besides, I’ll teach you everything. And don’t forget the science project. It’s going to be so much fun. Something we’ll remember all our lives. I love that line, ‘all our lives.’ I’m trying to find where I could put it in my novel. When it’s done, I’ll let you read it first.”

She jumped down off the fence and took Lindsay’s hand. That was the moment Lindsay knew that no matter what happened to Allegra, she was going to survive it. Sally would be there. Her friend. She would show Lindsay how to paint or sculpt or whatever horrid thing they were required to do next in art class, and she’d force her to ride a horse. They’d be friends always. They would instant message each other when they couldn’t be together and she would introduce Sally to the tree-of-life cypress and Sally wouldn’t laugh. “What’s it like, having a stepdad?”

“Andy? It’s great,” Sally said. “He’ll play games with Vanna until Aunt Nance yells at him to stop. Part of it is because he can’t have any kids himself, but it’s hard to figure out why parents love kids, don’t you think? I try to be nice and grateful and all, but sometimes I feel like I’m in a cage, you know? I just have to rattle the bars or else go mental.”

Until recently Lindsay had never felt that way. Now there were mornings she woke up wanting to scream and break every rule and have nothing for breakfast, and when her mom pushed cereal she imagined cussing until she ran out of breath. What good did it do to admit feelings you could do nothing about? The pony dropped a steaming pile of hay-riddled poop, and Lindsay said, “We could do our project on how animal waste affects the water table.”

“Give me a break,” Sally said. “Isn’t it torture enough to have to clean it up every day?”

“But it’s a legitimate inquiry.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it’s too safe. We need a topic that borders on dangerous, and I’ve already thought of one.”

“What do you mean, ‘dangerous’?”

“You know,” Sally said, weaving between rows of corn that held a few drying ears. “A hot topic. Something people like to argue about. And for sure something that leaves Taylor, Avril, and everybody else’s projects in the dust.”

“Well,” Lindsay said, “I do have this one kind of radical idea.”

“Me, too,” Sally said. “But tell me yours first.”

“Do you promise not to laugh?”

She held out her hand. “I pinky swear.”

They linked little fingers. “Okay, you know how my grandmother has cancer?”

“Yeah. It’s really sad, Linds.”

“The chemotherapy makes her really sick, and she’s worried that even with insurance she’ll probably never pay off the bills completely. The insurance company already sent her a letter about her rates increasing. But the thing is,” Lindsay said, “she doesn’t want to eat. It’s from the medicine. The doctor gives her pills, but they don’t work. She’s lost twelve pounds since they found out she had it and she was skinny to start with.”

Sally pushed open the door to the greenhouse and Lindsay felt the damp heat loosen her pores. “So what are you saying? We investigate health insurance? Or chemotherapy’s effects on middle-aged women?”

Lindsay shook her head. “According to the internet, the one thing that can really help cancer patients get over their nausea, well, it’s marijuana.”

Sally smiled. “I like it. Continue.”

“A person has to practically be dead to get it medically. And you have to register with the state. Your name goes on a government list, and Allegra says there’s nothing more dangerous than the government having your name on a list. There’re growers all over California who sneak it into their crops and sell it, not like pushers to get kids high, they sell it to people with cancer. But if either one of them gets caught, it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the amount.”

“That’s a completely stupid law, but it’s not a science project.”

Lindsay cleared her throat. “But it could be.”

“How?”

“There’re so many ways. How do the illegal growers plan their crops, farm them secretly, and what does that cost? Then there are the medical effects. Chemically, what does cannabis do to the human body when you have cancer? Is it dangerous the way smoking is? If it’s been proven to help cancer patients or AIDS patients, why can’t it be made legal and easy to get from the private sector? Does insurance cover it, or do they try to get out of it? Viagra had a shorter investigative study than any other medicine besides Minoxidil and now Viagra’s implicated in blindness. The ethics part is that we could look into the costs for drugs that don’t work versus the complications patients have to go through to get it. I know it’s too broad a topic. But if I could do it right, that would be my dangerous project. The scientific and social issues of medical marijuana.”

Sally began to dance in place. “Omigod, it’s like we’re reading each other’s minds. I can’t wait until you hear my idea. Well, I should just show you.”

She pulled Lindsay by the arm through row after row of hanging plants: fuchsias, geraniums, pothos, coleus, and more Lindsay didn’t know the names of. Then they came to the taller plants: four-foot-tall ficus trees, false aralias, and dieffenbachia. In the second to last row, three-quarters of the way down, she showed Lindsay some tall green plants. “Guess what that is?”

Judging by the skunky smell, Lindsay had a pretty good idea. “Where did you get it?”

“Gregorio grows it for his dad who has rheumatoid arthritis. It’s the only thing that helps relieve his pain enough for him to walk. Think of it: Our project is right here, and it’s already been started!”

Emboldened by the presence of the living, breathing thing she had been wondering about, Lindsay began to worry. “What if we don’t have enough time? We’ll need to analyze how long it takes to make it, and the purity of homegrown strains in contrast with government. How much time is there?”

“We have until the end of November, so relax. Gregorio keeps charts on everything. We can use his data as a head start,” Sally said, cackling. “Isn’t it wonderfully dangerous? For one thing, it’s making something political out of something that has nothing to do with votes or hard drugs at all.”

“That’s the part that bothers me,” Lindsay said. “Just for smoking something that helps my grandmother not lay on the bathroom floor all day. How can that be a crime?” Her underarms were damp from the humidity, and she’d forgotten about her hair. “You wouldn’t believe how stupid some people are, Sally. They think you can catch cancer just by touching someone who has it. Which means we shouldn’t use her real name or people wouldn’t come to the café. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too complicated.”

Sally got that look on her face like when she had gotten the better of Taylor. “You are abso-freaking-lutely right it’s complicated! And if we do it together, we’ll win first place and the scholarship. We don’t have to base it all on your gramma. Shoot, my aunt Ness has been HIV positive since before I was born. Her husband died of it. She started this foundation thing in his name and I’m sure she knows some people with AIDS who use marijuana and might be able to give us enough testimony to make our claims unbiased. We’ll just call them Subject one, two, and three. Anonymous.”

Lindsay looked down at the pea-size gravel that lined the greenhouse floor, with its mossy cast, like lichen. “We could get arrested.”

“Who cares?” Sally said. “We’re twelve! Are they going to throw us in jail? Getting arrested would be great publicity. It could only help us. We have to do this as a team. That way we each take half the blame. Gregorio is always starting new crops. He showed me how he charts their progress. So there’s a whole bunch of the work already done. We’ll factor how much electricity and water it takes, and how much medicine one little plant makes. An individual crop for an individual patient. ‘How much does it cost to feel better, not just get high,’ that will be our thesis statement.” She held out her hands as if they were standing in front of a billboard. “What do you think of that?”

“That’s really good,” Lindsay said.

“Good?” Sally said. “It’s freaking great. People will go nuts. And the best part is your grandmother having cancer makes it relevant! We can like
dedicate
the project to her! The judges will freaking cry like babies! It’s so far beyond an A it’s off the charts. This alone will get us into Ivy League colleges.”