Thirteen Plus One (21 page)

Cinnamon frowned.

“In a bike race. Actually, she said she could
easily
beat you, without even half trying, because you’re a big weeniebutt. I think those were her exact words—right, Dinah?”

“Exsqueeze me?” Cinnamon said.

“Go, Dinah!” I cried. “While you’ve got a head start!”

Dinah
eek-
ed and leaped into action, taking awkward hitch-steps to turn her bike around.

Cinnamon struggled to get away from me.

“Hurry, Dinah!” I yelled, giggling. “I can’t hold her much longer!”

The gatehouse door creaked open. “Girls?” said the guard. “Y’all got some sorta problem?”

“No, sir,” I said as Cinnamon twisted her arm like a snake. “We’re just here to pick up a package. For Virginia MacKinnon?”

“Oh, thas right,” he said in his thick drawl. “Th‘missus saved some chicken necks on account’a she knows how Virginny ‘preesheeates ’em.”

“I’m sorry ... what?”

“Ah reckon they’re for you kids. Hold on one second.”

He shuffled back into the gatehouse.

“Did he say
chicken necks?”
I asked Cinnamon.

“Yep,” Cinnamon said, wrenching free. She loped to her bike.

“Hey, wait—where are you going?”

She threw her leg over the frame. “See you back at the house,
sucka!
I’ve got a race to win!”

She pedaled hard, closing the distance between her and Dinah.

The security guard returned with a plastic grocery bag. A
dripping
plastic grocery bag, with lumpy things weighing down the bottom. The smell was awful. I wrinkled my nose.

“Stinks to high heaven, don’t it?” the guard said. “Them necks’ve started to rot is why. Jes the way Virginny likes ’em.”

He thrust out the bag. My stomach roiled, but I took it. A drop of ...
something
sploshed onto the toe of my sneaker, making a dark spot.

The guard shielded his eyes and looked down the road. “What happened t’yer friends?”

Another drop of disgustingness dribbled from the bag.

“Well”—I checked his name tag—
“Earl,
they are bad, bad, bad-bad girls, and it appears that they have left.”

Earl squinted at me. “Stuck you with all them chicken necks, dint they?”

“They sure dint,” I said. I shook my head. “I mean
did.
They most surely and sadly did.”

 

The chicken necks were for going crabbing, Virginny said. I mean,
Virginia.
She stored them overnight in a cooler, and then, the next day, hauled twine, stakes, nets, and a five-gallon bucket onto the deck and called everyone to join her. Cinnamon wasn’t around—she’d gone swimming with James—and Alphonse and Erika were out checking cages, but the rest of us got comfy in the deck chairs and listened up.

“Tie the raw chicken to the string,” she said. She lifted the string to show us. “Then tie the other end to a stake.” She lifted a stake. “Then throw the baited end into the water and stick the stake in the ground. Then you wait. That’s all there is to it.”

“What do you mean?” Brooklyn asked. She chomped on a piece of gum.

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Virginia said.

“You said, ‘Then you wait.’ For what?”

“Till you catch a crab,” Virginia explained. “When you see a line go taut, you slowly pull it in and net the crab. And tonight, we eat them.”

Brooklyn made a face. “Will they still have raw chicken in them?”

“I’m sorry?” Virginia said.

“If
they
eat the raw chicken, and then we eat
them...”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Brooklyn,” Virginia said.

“Can’t raw chicken give you salmonella?” Dinah whispered to me.

“It’s not just raw,” I whispered back. “It’s rotten. You should smell it.”

Dinah blanched.

“Guys,” Virginia said. She regarded us as if we were a bunch of city slickers. “We’ll cook the crabs. You won’t get salmonella.”

“We’d still be eating rotten chicken,” Brooklyn pointed out. “Even if it’s cooked.”

“Stop worrying about the chicken,” Virginia said. “If there’s anything to worry about, it’s the alligators—which, actually, you do need to keep an eye out for any time you go crabbing.”

“Alligators?” Dinah repeated, her voice ratcheting up a notch.

“Bet they go for that raw meat,” Ryan said.

“Duffenetly,” Mark agreed. “Dem gators love dat stuff.”

Ryan shoved him. “Oh, yeah? How would you know?”

Mark shoved him back. “How would
you?”

Virginia smiled the smile of a preschool teacher trying to make her students stop whomping each other with blocks. “Alligators will occasionally come up on land if they smell the chicken. If they do, abandon your line and get away
fast.”

Dinah gawked, and her expression was so horrified that I had to laugh.

“Winnie, it’s not funny!” she said, hitting me. “Has that ever really happened to you, Virginia?”

“Yeah, how big’s the biggest one you ever saw?” Mark asked.

“The biggest alligator I’ve seen here at DeBordieu? Fifteen feet long, probably. It was just slowly crossing the road.” Virginia turned to Dinah. “But the biggest one to ever come after my crab bait ... oh, it couldn’t have been more than eight feet at most.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Dinah said, her voice going high and squeaky.

Ryan and Mark cracked up, and I giggled, too. This was not to say that I wasn’t equally petrified at the thought of a one-on-one with
any
size alligator, because I was.

Milo, however, locked eyes with Dinah from across the deck and sent his silent support. My laughter dried right up, that’s how surprised I was. And delighted. And when Dinah smiled gratefully at him, I thought,
Awwwww!!!

“It’s rare that they’ll come up on shore,” Virginia said, not yet realizing that nothing she was going to say was going to calm Dinah down. Virginia and Dinah were constitutionally different, that’s all there was to it. Raw chicken necks and living, breathing alligators were manageable within Virginia’s practical view of the world, while Dinah’s comfort zone pretty much ended at kittens.

“Usually you see their eyes coming, or their jaws snapping, and you get out of there,” Virginia went on. “Then wait for the alligator to move away from your gear so you can return and pack up. At that point you might as well call it a day, because all the crabs’ll be hiding, anyway.”

“Uh-huh,” Dinah said weakly.

Virginia gestured at the gear. “So, who’s going to go get dinner?”

Brooklyn stood up and said, “I’ll pass, thanks. I’m too young to die.” She strolled into the house. The screen door banged behind her.

“If we do the catching, does that mean someone else’ll cook?” Ryan asked.

“Sure,” Virginia said. “Anyone who goes crabbing is released from dinner detail
and
cleanup.”

Ryan’s hand was up before she’d finished. “Me ! Pick me!”

“Dude,” Mark said to Ryan. “You and me’s got a date with Lia, or did you forget? ” Lia was a young intern working with the park rangers, and he and Ryan thought she was the bomb. Only, they said
da bahm.

“Oh
yeah,”
Ryan said. “She’s gonna take us to the point in her four-wheeler. Someone called in a dead turtle, and Lia needs a couple’a strong guys to haul it in for her.”

“And Ryan’s such a pal, he volunteered to go anyway,” Mark said.

Ryan slapped Mark’s head. “Oh-ho. Always the wisecracker, ain’cha?”

Virginia turned to Milo, Dinah, and me. “How about you three?”

“Uh ...” I said, stalling. Crabbing sounded fun, despite the threat of alligators. But while the logical part of me knew there was no way on God’s green earth that Dinah was going to volunteer, I had to let the situation play out
just in case.
Because if Milo said yes, and Dinah said yes ... How fantabulously romantic would that be?!

Maybe Milo was thinking along those same lines, because he gulped and said, “I’ll give it a shot.” His gaze flickered to Dinah, and I pinched Dinah’s bare leg.

“Ow!” she said.

“I, um, need to take a nap,” I said, my voice coming out louder than I intended. I abruptly stood up. “But you go, Dinah. Really.”

She glared at me so hard that her eyeballs bulged.

“Okay, well, bye!” I said. “Bring home lots of crabs!”

Once in the kitchen, I pressed up against the wall and peeked out the window. Dinah was on her feet, and she was green in the gills, but Virginia was handing her the
net—and she was taking it.

“Yes!” I cheered.

“You’re weird,” Brooklyn said, and I jumped. She was perched on one of the bar stools, lazily eating chips.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I flashed her a smile. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

And Have It Come True (my prediction, that is!!!!! squeee!!!!)

O
FF THE GREEN STAIRWELL, between the first floor where the kitchen was and the second floor where the red and blue bedrooms were, was a screened-in porch with the most awesome hammock EVER.

It was a Pawleys Island Hammock, and it had been made in a hammock shop thirty miles up the coast. Its thick cotton cords were supercomfy, and there were wooden rods at each end that the ropes were looped through, and that kept the hammock all stretched out and lovely and meant that you didn’t turn into a caterpillar in a cocoon the second you flopped into it. There was a yummy pillow to rest your head on; it was strapped in place, so it stayed exactly where it was supposed to. A “hammock-pull” dangled from a nearby hook; you could reach up, grab the knotted cord, and give a tug whenever you wanted the hammock to swing side to side. On the porch wall, Virginia had even thought to build in a small shelf, just the right size for a single glass of lemonade.

Cinnamon, Dinah, and I could all three fit on the hammock if we squished, which we often did. It was our favorite chill-out spot ... well, other than the Crow’s Nest and the L-shaped sofas in the main room and the window seat up in the den. (Okay, fine. The MacKinnon-Karrer house had many excellent chill-out spots.) But the hammock was a special favorite, and we’d come up with the brilliant idea that far far off in the future, when we got married, we’d give each other rope hammocks just like this one as wedding presents. We swore to it and everything.

The hammock was where I went after I spied on Dinah and Milo long enough to confirm that they had officially headed off on their crabbing adventure. I was worried Dinah would pull a last second wimp-out, but she didn’t. She marched bravely forth, transferring the crabbing gear into the golf cart Virginia owned. (The golf cart was how we got around the island if Virginia wasn’t available to drive us, and it was made of awesome. I’d lobbied to add “golf cart” to our personal BFF wedding registry, but the vote didn’t go through. I blamed Dinah and Cinnamon.)

Anyway, the golf cart lived behind the house, and by crossing to the window at the back of the kitchen, I’d been able to look down on Dinah and Milo as they loaded up the lines, stakes, bait, and bucket. Then Dinah had climbed onto the small vinyl front seat beside Milo. She let him drive. The golf cart jumped forward when he pressed the accelerator, and she grabbed his arm for balance.

“Why are you so fascinated by your friend and that guy?” Brooklyn had asked, still eating her chips.

“I don’t know,” I replied, not taking the time to give a real answer. “I just am.”

I watched until the golf cart was out of sight. Then I came up here, to the porch. I swayed on the hammock and let my thoughts float as they pleased.

They landed, eventually, on Lars.

I missed him—and yet, I didn’t. I missed his touch, his easy grin, the way his hazel eyes darkened when we kissed. I missed lacing my fingers through his, and how our hands had learned over time to fit together just right, with his thumb folding over mine. Thinking about that gave me a physical pang, especially when held up against Cinnamon’s and Dinah’s tingly new-crush energy. New-crush energy was fun, very much so. But sharing a history with someone was even better ...

... wasn’t it?

What I missed most, I decided, was being
known
by Lars. Known in a way that mattered, and was real, and that twined through both of us. After all, the deeper the roots, the higher the reach, right? That’s what it said on a framed poster that hung in the Starbucks I went to, back in Atlanta. The poster showed a tree with white flowers and red fruit and green leaves, and the branches were engraved with phrases like “a place for you and me” and “the promise of a glance.”

I liked that poster, but I also knew it was cheesy—or at least that it was cheesy to see it in a Starbucks and have, like, an emotional response to it. How many Starbucks, scattered all over the world, displayed that exact piece of “art” over on the wall by the whole bean coffees?

Except couldn’t cheesy quotes be both cheesy
and
true?

Yes.

Was it possible my thoughts had flown to that poster not because of its content, but because of a less pleasant association?

Well, maybe. It was
possible,
I suppose.

And did it go back to my birthday, and Lars’s gift to me, and the awful possibility that Lars didn’t know me as well as I thought?

Um. No comment.

And that was why I missed him in such an aching way, because the ache stemmed from more than being physically apart.

In fact, the ache might not go away even if Lars were right here next to me. Even if I could snap my fingers and make Lars miraculously appear, there was a chance—a strong chance—I would
still
feel lonely ... which was incredibly depressing to consider.

Because I wanted to be known, but wasn’t. Not in a way that mattered, and was real, and that twined through both of us.

I groaned, and not two feet away, someone said,
“Now
what?”