Where I Want to Be (6 page)

Danielle sighs like she wants to laugh but is too tired.
“You shoulda been there, Lily. There was more green beer than the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.
So
insane. Only now I feel like death.” She seems to cringe from the comment as she cuts me a look that lasts only a millisecond. But I pick up on it. Death equals Jane. And it’s pretty likely that Danielle’s got way too much information about my sister. Jane makes good gossip, and Danielle has enough pals here who’d be happy to give the juicy details.

The thing is, knowing about Jane and knowing Jane are two hugely disconnected things. Every day, I want to explain that to Danielle. Every day, I can’t.

Instead I say, “Caleb had to work double jobs yesterday. He was too tired to go out after.”

“Oh, Eeyore, it’s always something.” Georgia does her Pooh imitation as she waves away my excuse. Eeyore is her pet name for me for whenever I blow off stuff that seems potentially fun. “Lemme guess. The two of you stayed in and ate tofu and watched
Attack of the Giant Caterpillars
on cable.”

“Something like that,” I admit.

“You better come out tonight.” Georgia opens the register and starts to recount the bills in the till. “Alex Tuzzolino is having people over. And she’s got the volleyball net set up in her pool.”

“Maybe.”

“Listen to her.
Maybe.
What else are you gonna do? Sit at home and sprout roots?” Georgia looks me over critically.
“Besides, I need a ride.
Somebody
can’t pick me up because she’s got a hot date tonight and wants her privacy.”

She rolls her eyes at Danielle, who looks away, chewing at her coffee straw as she frowns out over the parking area. “This’ll be an easy day,” Danielle predicts, pointedly changing the subject. “Suh-low.”

“No argument there,” says Georgia with a sigh. “Whole month has crawled, even compared with July. Nothing you can do.”

It’s true. It’s too hot and the fields have been picked clean. We’re not pulling in even a third of the money that we did in June. Georgia says it’s the natural curve of the season and who cares, anyway, since it’s not like we work on commission. But I like it when there’s a little more hustle.

We get down to the prep work, assembling the shallow cardboard baskets, restocking the sodas from the storage bin to the vending machine, and filling the golf cart with gas from the pump by the supply shed. Lastly, Danielle and I’ll hop in the cart for that morning’s sweep of the fields. Double-checking that there’s no litter, no traumatizing dead voles for kids to pick up by the tail and throw at each other.

Even in the swamp heat of August, this job is pretty simple. Basic duties involve assigning pickers to different rows, tagging their empty baskets, and watching for flags. When a basket is full and ready to be brought in, the picker waves a white flag. A red flag is a call for the first aid kit.
Or, as Georgia puts it, “whine alert.” More than once I’ve sped the cart breakneck out to the middle of the field, only to have a grouchy mom or dad ask me to take their kid back to the bathroom, or to demand stuff we don’t sell, like sunblock.

Danielle and I are always field marshals. Georgia, who’s finishing her fourth summer working here, is manager. She’s also the one who has to take the most back talk from peeved pickers, and can do the best imitations of them later. “These aren’t the ones my kids picked! Annit took all afternoon to fill this itty-bitty carton! So how ’bout I’ll pay half price?”

Jane had worked at Small Farms last summer. At the end of the school year, when I was so raw with shock that I hadn’t even begun to think about what I’d be doing through these months, it was Georgia who’d approached me in the lunchroom cafeteria and asked if I wanted in.

“Seeing as there’s a space open,” she’d explained in her plain-talking, well-meaning, Peace Dale-y way. “It might make you feel, y’know. Closer to her.”

My reaction must have warned her off saying any more, but a week later I called her and took the job.

Only Georgia was wrong about one thing. Working here hasn’t really made me feel closer to Jane. I hadn’t felt close to my sister since we were kids, so I have no idea why I believed it would be any different now. Instead, it was Georgia I got closer to.

“You know this is my last week, Lily, don’tcha?” Georgia asks as she hands off the remaining flat stack of cardboard cartons for us to assemble. “Except for a final load of laundry and unplugging my phone, I’m packed. Five days.”

My heart plonks like a stone into mud. Here it is. The first, unmistakable proof that summer is ending. Georgia is heading off to her freshman year at Northwestern University in Chicago, a city I’ve never seen that makes me think of blues clubs and detective agencies. Neither of which seems to jell with perky Georgia.

“Have you heard from your roommate yet?” I ask.

Georgia pauses in her carton hauling and grins. “
Finally
. She wants to color-coordinate our room, and she sent me a whole photo file of decoration ideas. It got me all revved up to get out there.”

“Who’ll be taking over your hours here?”

Georgia laughs. “Who cares?”

“Actually, the farm’s cutting to half days by the start of next week,” interrupts Danielle.

I turn. “How’d you know?”

Danielle tries to look nonchalant. “Heard it from Jonesy.”

“Jonesy Small?”

“Yeah.” Danielle’s voice has a dare in it. Jonesy Small is the son and heir to the thirty acres of Small Farms, which also grows corn and peaches. His parents are retired to a condo way out in Jamestown, leaving Jonesy in charge. In his biweekly trips to the farm, Jonesy’s relentless flirting is
as pathetic as his attempts to boss us around. He isn’t twenty-five years old yet, and Jonesy’s already been through one marriage, one stint at Cumberland House rehab, and one night in jail after a bar fight. Jonesy’s also the kind of guy who calls all females from age eight to eighty “babe.” I’d heard all about him from Jane, who despised him. Georgia can do this great imitation of the way Jane used to say Jonesy’s name. Half shocked and half disgusted. “Jonesy Small!”

“Why’d you just say his name like that?” Danielle glares at me.

“Because…” Oops. I hadn’t meant to speak out loud. “Just because I’m surprised. I haven’t seen Jonesy around here much.”

“What if I said we went out to lunch the other day?”

“You went out to lunch with Jonesy Small?” My nose wrinkles in a reflex reaction. “Why? Did you know he used to be married?”

“Why not? Of course I know. So?”

“And he’s old,” I say.

“Six years’ difference,” retorts Danielle, “is the same age span as my parents.”

“Besides, you can’t count that first marriage,” Georgia says. “Sasha Bell and Jonesy were high school sweethearts. Everyone said they went through with the wedding only because they’re Catholics and,” she drops her voice, “it was a pregnancy scare.”

“Okay.” I draw out the word skeptically.

“Anyway, last I checked, your boy Caleb was kind of an acquired taste.” Danielle whips off this insult so fast, I’m floored. “People who live in glass houses, right?”

“Wow, hang on a minute. Caleb is my
boyfriend
,” I answer, once I’ve taken the three seconds I need to recover. My body feels all hot with annoyance. “He’s not just some last-week-of-the-last-month-of-summer fling. I mean, you can’t even compare—”

“All right, folks.” Georgia uses her two pointer fingers to make a mini time-out. “I think I spot a Range Rover. Prepare for the first unloading of screaming beasts.”

I’m quick to give Danielle a last, vicious look, which she matches with quite a snotty little skimmer expression of her own.

“Hey. Check it out,” Georgia says. She holds up a deformed strawberry, long and crooked as a chili pepper. “Poor old thing. I just found him hiding behind the register.”

My heart skips a beat. Jane would have freaked. She would have believed that this strawberry was a warning. A sign of worse things to come. Stupid, of course. But Jane had always been on guard for signs and superstitions. Lord help her if her sneakers came untied more than twice in an hour. Or if she skinned her knee. Or if she was served any food that was square shaped, dill flavored, or burned. Though some warnings were more obvious. Once
we had to end her birthday trip to Mystic Seaport because a bird pooped on Jane’s shoulder.

“That’s not a warning of bad luck,” I’d tried to explain to her. “Don’t you think that a bird pooping all over you
is
the bad luck?”

But Jane wouldn’t listen to reason. We’d ended up having to celebrate her birthday the next week, once the whole messy incident was well behind us.

I should know better than to think “warning sign.” Fighting with Danielle Savini
is
the bad luck, I remind myself. There is no such thing as a bad strawberry omen.

Still, my eyes stay with Danielle as she tosses her head and walks away from me, prepared to stick to her point and hold her grudge. My skin tingles with something that feels close to apprehension. And when nobody’s looking, I can’t stop myself from brushing Georgia’s ugly, chili-pepper strawberry to the floor. Then I squash it flat beneath my sneaker. Just to be safe.

Her grandparents went up to the house, but Jane stayed by the pool. Lying in the grass as the hours seeped into afternoon. Gambler napped under the table, his nose twitching with dreams. The sun made lacy patterns through the tree leaves onto her skin. She watched a ladybug land and crawl from her elbow to her fingertip. A ladybug was good luck, and this ladybug had seven spots on her back. Double good.

Late afternoons at Orchard Way were Jane’s favorite time of day. But they had also marked the end of the visit, when her parents started to make noises about leaving.

Where are your shoes, Jane? Go find your sister, so we can pack up.

Then Jane would have to drop whatever game she was playing, or slip out of Augusta’s dress-up scarves, or find the sandals she had flipped off.

That was then.

The sun receded. Its light slanted and lengthened the
shadows. She dozed. The crunch of tires on driveway gravel startled her awake again. The car’s engine sounded familiar. She blinked, propped herself up on an elbow.

As a matter of fact, it sounded a lot like
her
car.

Cautiously, she rolled all the way up to stand. Gambler rose and joined her, bumping along at her side as she stole across the lawn on the balls of her feet.

“Whaddaya think, Gambler?” she asked, scratching him behind an ear. “Who do you bet that is?”

But Gambler wasn’t talking.

Yes. Her car. Her very own, pea-soup green VW bug had stopped right at the front door. For a single, spontaneous moment, Jane imagined that the car had driven itself to Orchard Way. To be with her.

Then she thought:
Lily.
It had to be. Lily was here.

She watched as the car’s door opened. Music blared and was cut.

Then
he
stepped out, unfolding his six-foot-plus, pale noodle of a body.

Caleb Price. It took Jane a moment to register this.

She watched him stretch. Back and forth, then side to side, then a toe touch. His glance swept the house before he shambled up the porch steps and flattened a hand to the front door. His other hand passed back and forth across his forehead, rubbing it like a genie’s bottle. One of his habits. Jane could feel the flint of memory strike her anger. It caught and sparked inside her.

What was Caleb Price doing prowling around here?

He edged toward the living room windows, cupping his hands and mashing his face to peer through the glass. Then he stepped away toward the dining room window. Of course he couldn’t see her. But the longer Jane watched him, the more she wondered what it was Caleb Price did see. Did he have the same view of Orchard Way that she did?

She turned to examine her car. Secondhand, it had been a birthday gift from her parents last year. Its hood was still marked by the patchwork of an off-colored paint job, but the car had never gleamed like it did now. Jane had preferred it dusty, broken in, with wavy traces of dried raindrops on the chrome. But Lily liked everything to shine.

Or maybe
he
was the one who kept it so clean.

Abruptly, Caleb turned from the house and jogged down the porch steps, then disappeared around back toward the barn where Granpa housed his tractor. Jane stayed where she was. She spied Ganesha, her elephant-head key-chain ornament, in the ignition.

She’d bought Ganesha at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop last spring, during a school day trip to New York City. The little tag that came with him explained that, according to Hindu belief, Ganesha became the God of All Existing Things after he won a contest against Kartikay, his little brother. Jane had kept the tag in her underwear drawer and had read it until she could recite it.

Jane had liked Ganesha because he looked like a lucky charm.

She liked him better after she learned he’d won that contest against his younger brother.

Caleb had circled around and now was back at the front of the house. At the front stairs, he reached down and pinched off a branch of verbena. It hung limp between his fingers like a cigarette as he turned and strolled down the lawn. Jane followed. Gambler, too. His tail and ears perked up taut, as though held by strings.

At the steps to the pool, Caleb peeled out of his tattered shoes and sat. He arranged himself neatly. Legs crossed, spine upright, face tipped to the sky. Jane walked to the other end of the pool where she could keep her eyes on him while also keeping her distance.

He couldn’t see her. She was sure, she was positive of that. But could he see something? Caleb Price had a different awareness. Everyone knew that. Ever since that time he’d almost been killed by that dog, Caleb had lived in a cloud of rumors. Kids said crazy things about him. That he could levitate. That he was a mind reader. That his heart beat only twenty-two times per minute.