“Not yet, but a couple have been flirting. I can’t wait until next year, when...” Audrey stopped midsentence.
“In my day the boys asked the girls,” Grace said, remembering how Justin took her to both her junior and senior proms. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to visualize the dresses that she had worn to each.
“Y’all are all old.” Audrey kept dancing. “I’m happy because I don’t have to sell the shop when I inherit it. Talk at school is that we’ll be moving to Europe in the summer because you are finally letting someone buy the place and are dating a very rich man. Next year, I can either shop in Paris for my junior prom dress or maybe I’ll have a designer make it for me. We won’t have to buy off the rack. Crystal and Kelsey have already been asked by two of the most popular boys in school, and their mamas are taking them to a designer in San Antonio to have their dresses made.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, darlin’,” Grace said. “We are not selling anything, and I’m not dating a rich man. He asked me to dinner, but I said no.”
Audrey stopped in the middle of a spin, threw herself onto the sofa, and laid her hand across her forehead in a dramatic gesture that would have made Scarlett O’Hara proud. Raelene came into the house, saw her lying there, and rushed across the room.
“Are you all right? Do you need a cold cloth?” she asked.
“My world has fallen apart,” Audrey groaned. “Why do things like this happen to me? I’ve had nothing but bad luck for weeks now. Crystal and Kelsey said they can only be my friends at school.”
Raelene took a couple of steps back, dropped her backpack, and slumped into a chair. “I guess the rumors aren’t true?”
“What rumors?” Macy covered a yawn with her hand as she entered the room.
Grace shrugged. “Rumors have made a mountain out of a molehill. Do you girls remember that old game of Telephone, where someone would whisper something to the person sitting next to them, and thenthat person whispers it to the next and so on, all the way around the room? The last person says what he heard?”
“No,” Audrey whispered, as dramatically as if it might be her last word.
“Me neither,” Raelene said.
Macy sat down in a rocking chair near the cold fireplace. “The game starts out by someone writing down a sentence on a piece of paper; then he or she starts it like Grace said, and the final person either writes down what they heard or else just says it out loud, and then the first one reads what was really said at the beginning of the game. That’s kind of like what happened today, and the rumor that reached the end is a far cry from the first sentence that was said.”
“Yep,” Sarah agreed with a nod.
“What was the original sentence?” Raelene asked.
“That I’m going to have lunch in Travis’s office and give him pointers on a factory that will turn out doughnuts,” Grace answered. “What is the final one?”
“That you and Travis Butler have been secretly dating for months,” Raelene answered, “and you’re getting married this summer, and Audrey is going to have her prom dress made by a French designer next year.”
“Oh. My. Goodness!” Macy giggled. “And you believed all that, Audrey?”
“Don’t be giving me grief,” Audrey smarted off. “You believed Neal.”
“That’s coming close to sassing, and there is a penalty for that—like maybe you get to work in the shop on Saturday,” Grace said in a low voice.
Macy’s face turned beet red, and it was not a blush. “And, girl, we are trying to protect you from people just like Neal. Your new friends are worse than he ever was.”
“Sorry!” Audrey grumbled. “And they are not.”
“Yes, they are,” Raelene said.
Audrey popped up to a sitting position, tucked her blonde hair behind her ears, and glared at Raelene. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”
Raelene raised a shoulder in half a shrug. “Crystal and your other best friend, Kelsey, were whispering about punking you while I was having lunch in the library. Their mamas told them about Travis Butler when they came to the school to bring their lunches. That gave them the idea, and they just ran with it. Crystal said they could tell you anything and you’d believe it, and Kelsey mentioned that you’d covered for them with the cigarettes and liquor, so you thought they were really your friends.”
Audrey’s lower lip quivered. “That’s not true. Theyaremy friends, and they wouldn’tdothat to me.”
Grace moved over to the sofa and draped an arm around Audrey’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, darlin’.”
“But, Mama”—tears began to flow down Audrey’s cheeks—“it can’t be true. I gave up all my other friends that I’ve had since kindergarten because Crystal and Kelsey want us to beexclusive.”
Grace pulled a tissue from a box on the end table and wiped her daughter’s tears away. “It’s a tough lesson, but one that I hope you only have to learn just this one time.”
Audrey buried her face in Grace’s shoulder. “I just can’t believe they would do that to me when I’ve been so good to them.”
