“Can I get a peanut-butter milkshake, please? And French fries.” I knew they’d be soggy, but I was hungry, and they were better than a burnt burger.
“You surely can.”
I paid for my order and took a seat at one of the booths. A few minutes later, Edna brought my food out to me. “I brought some extra ketchup packets for you,” she said. “And let me know when you’re done…. There just might be a dessert waiting for you. On the house.”
“You don’t gotta do that, Edna,” I said.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t gotta, but I can.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Enjoy your meal, all right?”
“Thank you.”
I’d just ripped open one of those ketchup packets when the bells over the door jingled again. I glanced over my shoulder and had to bite my lip to keep from gasping. It was Andy, Peter, and Canaan. They were being loud — laughing and shoving at each other the way boys do. They didn’t even say a word to Edna, just went straight to a booth and sat down.
“Can I get y’all anything?” Edna called to them from behind the counter.
“We’re still thinking about what we want,” Andy said. “We’ll let you know.”
I kept my head down, focusing all my attention on the soggy French fries in front of me. I wanted to be mad at Canaan. I wanted to walk right over to that booth, take him by the shoulders, and shake him. I wanted to scream and yell and ask him what the heck he was thinking, hanging out with boys like that.
But I couldn’t. I remembered Sarah and what she’d said about Mr. Swift — that they were living together, that they might get married. When I remembered that, all I could feel for Canaan was sorry.
I could feel the boys’ eyes on me. It made me squirm, but I still kept my eyes down. Then I heard one of them moving toward me. When I looked up, Canaan was sliding into the seat across from me.
“So you hang out with Teddy Ryan now?” he asked. He sounded angry. There was a sharp, mean edge in his voice.
“Sometimes,” I mumbled. My cheeks were starting to burn, and that sickening feeling crept into my stomach.
“We’re supposed to hate him,” Canaan said. “He’s a brat — a jerk.”
“He’s being nicer to me than you are.” I didn’t snap or yell. My voice stayed low because I couldn’t make it do anything else. I was too nervous. Too upset by the anger in his voice. But I also knew I was right.
“So what? Is he your boyfriend now?”
“No,” I said.
“Don’t be stupid, Canaan,” Andy said, peering over the back of his seat. “Nasty Nola couldn’t get a boyfriend — not even Teddy Ryan.”
It felt like my face was on fire. I looked at Canaan, expecting him to say something. To tell Andy to shut up. No matter how bad things were between us, he’d still pick me over them — right? He wouldn’t let them get away with calling me that.
But Canaan didn’t say a word.
“Nasty Nola,” Peter snorted. “Oh yeah. But it’s more like Fat Nola now. Or wait — what’s her real name again?”
“Fionnula,” Canaan answered.
It was like he’d just slapped me.
“What kind of name is that?” Peter asked.
“Fat Fionnula,” Andy said. “And she’s just going to get fatter with those French fries and that shake.”
I glared at Canaan. “You’re just gonna let them talk to me like that? Let them call me those names?” I whispered.
“Get your new best friend, Teddy Ryan, to stand up for you,” Canaan said. “Since he’s so much nicer than me and all.”
Andy and Peter had started making up a song, repeating “Fat Fionnula” over and over, throwing in a few of those four-letter words in between. I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t let myself. I wouldn’t let them see me in tears. That’s what they wanted. That’d just make it more fun for them.
“Shut up!” I yelled. At least, I tried to yell. My voice cracked right in the middle, so I didn’t sound as tough as I wanted.
“What are you gonna do about it?” Peter asked.
“Careful,” Andy said. “She might sit on us. She’s so fat, she’d squish us.”
“I mean it,” I said. “Quit it, or I’ll … I’ll …” But I didn’t know what I’d do. I’d never had to stand up for myself before. Canaan had always been there to do it for me. But this time, he was one of the people I had to stand up to.
“You’ll what?” Canaan asked. “Tell on us? You’ve always been a tattletale.”
“All right, y’all get out of here,” Edna said, coming out from behind the counter. “I ain’t gonna put up with that kind of behavior. Y’all are being rude and ugly, and I want you out.”
“We ain’t even ordered!” Peter whined.
“Eat somewhere else,” she snapped. “Out!”
With a bunch of growling and grumbling, Peter and Andy hauled themselves out of the booth and stomped through the door. Edna turned to Canaan then.
“And you,” she said. “I am disappointed in you, Canaan Swift. I want you out, too.”
“Fine.” He stood up and started for the door. At the last minute, though, he turned to face me. “And just so you know,” he said, “I never wanted to go to your stupid circus. That crap is for babies. You need to grow up.”
“Out!” Edna yelled.
And he left.
Edna didn’t ask me if I was okay after that. I think she could tell I wasn’t. Instead she just put a hand on my shoulder and asked, “Do you still want that free dessert?”
I shook my head. “No … thank you.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think I just … I think I want to go home.” I threw out my half-eaten French fries, but Edna wouldn’t let me get rid of the shake.
“Take it home,” she said. “If you don’t want it now, put it in your freezer for later. No point letting it go to waste.”
When I got back to the subdivision, I called Mrs. Hooper to check in. She asked if I wanted to come over and hang out with Felicia — “We’re grilling hot dogs,” she said.
“No thanks. I’m not real hungry.”
“All right. But if you change your mind …”
I sat in the house for a while, watching TV, drawing in my sketchbook, reading. I couldn’t focus on anything. I just kept thinking of Canaan. Of the things he’d said. Teddy was right — he was just like them.
I decided to go for a walk. Mama said walks were good to clear your head, and I figured I’d give it a try. Honestly, it wasn’t working real well — everything I saw on my walk down the street reminded me of Canaan or the other Swift boys. And that just made all my thoughts stew more and more. They didn’t clear at all.
“Nola,” Mr. Briggs called out from his porch. “How are you doing today?”
“Not so good,” I admitted. I walked up his driveway and sat down on the front steps beside him. He was whittling on a block of wood, but it looked like he’d just gotten started, so I couldn’t tell what it was going to be just yet.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Does this have something to do with Canaan or his brothers?”
“How’d you know?”
“Oh, it’s an easy guess,” he said. “You two kids used to be attached at the hip. But I haven’t seen y’all together once since the summer started.”
“Well, yeah. It’s Canaan. He’s just …” I chewed on my bottom lip. “He’s different. He’s mean now. He’s not my best friend anymore.”
Mr. Briggs sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that, Nola. I really am. Unfortunately, he’s lost somebody very important to him, and sometimes when that happens — when people lose someone — they change.”
“Like my grandma Lucy?” I asked. “I hear she used to be a real happy person. It’s hard to imagine, though. I’ve always known her as cranky and loud. Mama says she changed after Grandpa died.” My stomach churned as I remembered that broken drill I still hadn’t told anyone about.
He nodded. “It’s a hard
thing, losing someone like that.”
“I wonder if Mama changed after my daddy died,” I said. I never really thought about it before. Mama had always just been Mama to me.
“She might have, in some ways,” Mr. Briggs said. “But she’s a strong, strong woman, your mother. And she had you to take care of, to get her through.”
“Did you ever lose anybody, Mr. Briggs?”
He nodded slowly. “A long, long time ago. I was in love with a woman. But when I returned from the war, she’d married someone else. It broke my heart.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “That was a long time ago. And everything happens for a reason. She spent the rest of her life married to Clay Hooper, and she was very happy.”
“Wait, Hooper?” I asked. “You were in love with Felicia’s grandmother?”
“Her great-grandmother,” he said. “And yes, I was. Like I said — everything happens for a reason. If she hadn’t married Clay, Felicia wouldn’t be here. But losing her was hard. And it did change me — in good ways and bad.”
“Do … do you think losing Canaan will change me?” I asked. Saying it out loud, that I was losing him, made everything hurt worse. It made it real and opened up a hole in my heart. “Do you think I’ll get mean like he and Grandma Lucy did? Or quiet, like Kevin?”
“I think,” Mr. Briggs said, pausing between each of his words, “that you are very much like your mama. I think you’re stronger than most people your age…. And I’m not so sure you’ve lost Canaan.”
“I am,” I murmured. “I didn’t want to believe it, but after today … I don’t think we’ll ever be the same kinda friends again.”
“I hate to hear that,” he said. “But, you know, sometimes growing up also means growing apart.”
“Maybe I don’t want to grow up,” I said.
Mr. Briggs kept chipping away at the wooden block, a soft smile settling on his wrinkled face. “None of us do.”
When we were five, me and Canaan decided to run away. We were two weeks away from starting kindergarten, and neither of us wanted to, so we packed duffel bags with toys, a couple of apples, and my favorite blanket before making our escape.
“We’re running away,” I announced to Mama as Canaan and I made our way out the front door.
She didn’t even glance up from the book she was reading. “All right,” she said. “Just don’t cross the street by yourselves.”
We marched out the front door and headed down the sidewalk together. “Where should we run away to?” I asked Canaan.
“That way,” he said, pointing off to the right. “That looks like a good way to run away to.”
We’d taken a few steps when Felicia hollered at us from her front yard across the street. “Canaan! Nola! Where y’all going?” She was standing in her driveway, clutching a Barbie doll.
“We’re running away,” Canaan told her. “So we don’t gotta go to kindergarten.”
“Can I come?”
“We ain’t supposed to cross the street,” I told her. “Maybe you can come next time we run away.”
“Oh, okay.” She looked disappointed, but she went back to playing with her doll, and me and Canaan kept walking, heading down the street with our duffel bag hanging between us.
We walked past a few more houses before we reached Mr. Briggs’s front porch. He was sitting on the step, whittling the way he always was. “Morning, Mr. Briggs,” Canaan said, waving.
Mr. Briggs looked up from the piece of wood in his hand. “Good morning. Where y’all off to?”
“We’re running away,” I said.
“So we don’t have to go to kindergarten,” Canaan explained.
“I see. Where are you running away to?”
“End of the street,” Canaan said.
Mr. Briggs nodded. “Well, that’s an awful long way to run. Y’all have time to take a rest? I’ve got lemonade and cookies inside.”
“We always got time for cookies,” Canaan said. “Right, Nola?”
I nodded.
We followed Mr. Briggs inside and sat down at his kitchen table while he poured us some lemonade. He set a plate of cookies between us and told us to help ourselves.
“So what’s this about not wanting to start school?” he asked, easing himself into a wooden chair.
“We ain’t going,” I said. “Kindergarten sounds hard.”
“And boring,” Canaan said.
“And scary,” I added.
“Don’t know about all that,” Mr. Briggs said. “You never know. It might be fun. You might like it.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“And even if it ain’t fun,” he continued, “y’all got each other, right? Y’all can take care of each other, even if it is hard and scary. Way I see it, if you two can run away together, you can face anything together.”
“You think so?” Canaan asked.
“I sure do.” Mr. Briggs leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I think school will just be another adventure for the two of you. And I know y’all like adventures.”
We finished our cookies and left Mr. Briggs asleep in his chair. We decided we were done with running away for the day. And on the first day of school a couple weeks later, we walked into our classroom, hand in hand, ready for a new adventure.
Felicia called me a few days later to ask if I wanted to go to the mall with her that weekend.
“And Teddy Ryan’s coming, too,” she said. I could hear a giggle in her voice, but I didn’t understand why it was there.
“Sounds fun,” I said. “Sure. I’d love to come.”
I hadn’t been to the mall in months. It was in the next county and took thirty minutes to get there. Mama said it wasn’t worth the cost of gas when you could get everything you needed at the Walmart in Bunker, which was closer.
Walmart didn’t have a Claire’s, though. Or a Hot Topic. The mall was obviously better, and I hoped that maybe shopping with Felicia and Teddy would cheer me up a little. Ever since the incident with Canaan at Rocky’s, I hadn’t been feeling real cheerful.
I got up early Saturday and tried to flat-iron my hair — if I was going to the mall, I wanted to look all right. I even wore a purple sundress Mamaw and Papaw had bought for my birthday. After I put on my sandals, I walked into the living room, where Mama and Richard were talking. They stopped the minute I walked through the door. Just got real quiet.
“What?” I asked, feeling a little nervous. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh no, baby,” Mama said. “It’s just … we were talking about moving plans and I know it’s something you don’t like to think about —”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
I could see through the front window, the one that looked out over the duplex’s two driveways. I could see Canaan walking out to the street, where Peter and Andy were waiting for him.
“Actually … I might be happy to move.”
Mama was stunned. “Really?”
I nodded, but I was quick to change the subject. I didn’t want Mama asking questions I was still too hurt to answer. “I better get going. Mrs. Hooper is waiting for us.”
“Where you going?” Richard asked.
“The mall.”
“Oh, well, in that case. Here,” Richard said, pulling out his wallet. “I’ve got you covered.”
“Honey, you don’t have to do that,” Mama told him.
“Yeah, you don’t gotta,” I told him. “I’ve got some extra money from all the jobs I’ve been working.”
“I do have to, actually,” he replied. “I still owe you for some help you gave me on the yard a few weeks ago.” I was about to remind him that he’d paid me for that a while ago, but then he winked at me, and I knew to keep my mouth shut. “I think this is what I owe you,” he said, handing me a twenty-dollar bill.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling up at him.
“No problem,” he said. “Just remember, be —”
“Frugal?” I offered. “Thrifty? Economical?”
“Wow, I never realized so many of your vocab words were synonyms for cheap,” he said. “But yes. You got the point.”
I gave them both a hug before heading out the front door. Canaan and his new friends had already gone by the time I started walking to Felicia’s house. I ran up the driveway and rang the doorbell. Inside, I could hear JW going wild, barking and growling like a dog five times his size.
“Coming!” Felicia hollered. A second later she pulled open the door, saying, “Back! Back, JW! Hey, Nola. Come on in. I think we’re almost ready to go — and Teddy’s already here.”
JW had stopped barking, but now he was jumping all over my bare legs, leaving a couple little red scratches. I didn’t mind, though. I knelt down and scratched behind his floppy puppy ears.
“Hi, Nola,” Teddy Ryan said. He was sitting on the sofa, wearing his usual khaki pants and striped shirt.
“Hey.”
A second later, Mrs. Hooper walked in the room. She looked real nice in a green dress and heels with her black hair pulled back into a neat bun. She snapped her purse shut and slung it over her shoulder. “All right, kids. Let’s head out.”
Turns out, Mrs. Hooper had a job interview that afternoon at a law office just a few blocks from the mall.
“Daddy’s gonna start working from home so that she can go back to work,” Felicia explained to Teddy and me as we made our way through the mall’s main entrance.
“Why would she want to do that?” Teddy asked. “Who wants to work if they don’t gotta?”
Felicia shrugged. “She said something about needing to be around adults more often. I don’t get it, either, but she’s real excited. And I think Daddy’s looking forward to being at home with JW and me.”
We stopped in front of the giant directory and tried to find the little You Are Here arrow on the map. This mall wasn’t huge compared to the ones I’d seen on TV, but since none of us were here too often, all the departments and store names felt a little intimidating.
“Where do we even start?” I asked.
“I want to go to the bookstore,” Felicia said. “Oh, and the candy store. And the pet store — I need to get JW a new food bowl since he chewed his up.”