Samuel Landry had done what no one else in Bottom Springs had ever managed: gotten accepted to Duke University, a school so good it called itself the Harvard of the South. Despite how cruelly kids had always teased him for the tics he couldn’t help, calling him stupid and worse, Sam was the best student in the grade below us.
He and I had always been friendly, if not friends, likely on account of our mutual wariness around other people. So when I heard the news that he’d been accepted to Duke and I immediately burst into tears, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It took a full week of misery and several pointed comments from Ever to realize I was heart-sickeningly jealous. Not only did Sam hold my dream of college in his hands, but he’d dared to think bigger than even I’d allowed myself. Bottom Springs had hemmed in my possibilities, but not his.
Of course, I’d felt terribly guilty about my reaction. So when I found out Sam wouldn’t be going to Duke after all because his financial aid left him a few thousand short of tuition—Sam’s momma was a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly and she’d raised him on a single income—I’d decided the only way to repent was to make sure Sam got to go.
Everett kicked a pebble and it skittered away. “When this all goes to hell, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You didn’t even wear your bathing suit like I said. Your jeans are going to get soaked.”
Sam laughed—at the idea of a soaked Everett or Everett in a bathing suit, I didn’t know. It was obvious Sam was still intimidated by Everett, because he kept shooting nervous glances Everett’s way. Sure enough, his laughter cut off abruptly when Ever turned his cool gaze on him.
“Maybe that was the point,” Ever drawled. “Get ’em wet so I don’t have to wash ’em later.”
“Gross.”
Ever raised an eyebrow. “We can’t all be supermodels in our Vacation Bible School T-shirts.”
I looked down at my oversized VBS shirt, with its crucifix wreathed in flowers, and flushed. I’d thought this shirt was the prettiest I owned. “It’s a cover-up for my bathing suit. At least I remembered mine.” I was wearing my old one-piece under my shirt. After the encounter with Fred, I’d hidden my yellow bikini in the farthest reaches of my dresser. “I’m dressed sensibly.”
“Oh!” Ever clutched his heart. “‘Isthisthe face that launched a thousand ships?’ ‘She walks in beauty, like the night.’” He pretended to stagger back. “‘Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; their beauty shakes me, who was once serene.’”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes. “Just what we need. Everett’s feeling goofy. And that’s Marlowe, Byron, and Chaucer, for your information.”
Sam looked at me in amazement. “Is he…reciting poetry?”
“Don’t encourage him,” I warned, opening the empty cashbox. “It’s a game we play when we’re bored. Ever’s never met a poem he didn’t like—or, unfortunately, memorize to use as a weapon of annoyance later. For some reason, he won’t stop repeating the Chaucer even thoughI guess it every time.” The last was directed at Everett.
Sam’s astonishment only seemed to grow.
“‘Brightness.’” Ever found my eyes. A small smile curved his lips, the kind he wore when he was pushing it. “‘Pouring itself out of you, as if you were burning inside.’”
I cleared my throat. “Neruda.” Ever knew I liked Neruda. His eyes didn’t leave my face. Like twin black holes reordering space and time to pull me in.
“I’ve got one,” Sam said. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’”
Ever’s eyes cut away, and I took a deep breath, as if resurfacing. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he whooped. “We have a contender!”
Sam laughed. “Wait, I’ve got another—”
Down the street, the door to the Rosethorn Café swung open and people began filing out. The post–Bible study crowd. “Hey!” I elbowed Sam. “Big smiles, okay?”
Sam sat straighter in his folding chair and smiled obediently.
I turned to Ever and he rolled his eyes but bared his teeth.
“On second thought,” I said. “Maybe just stand a ways behind us.”
As the crowd approached, I mustered my courage and waved. “Hi, Mrs. Anderson! Mr. Blanchard!” I waved harder at Herman Blanchard, who’d been my Vacation Bible School teacher growing up. If I talked quickly enough, maybe I could outpace the heat running up my neck.
“Ruth,” said Mr. Blanchard warily. He was normally known for his easy nature—it was why children loved him. Right now, he looked like he wanted to turn and flee.
With tight smiles, the group stopped in front of our table. There were different tiers of people in Bottom Springs. You could tell where someone stood by how they were treated in church. The people at the bottom, the Fortenot Fishing wives and their families, and other newer folks who’d moved here for jobs at the Company or Blanchard Hospital sat near the back. They were hardscrabble people who were to be assimilated at Holy Fire, but not treated as bosom friends. The people in the middle,whose families had lived in Bottom Springs for generations, like Old Man Jonas and Mrs. Autin the tailor, were treated with modest respect and affection, sometimes made ushers. While their ties to the town were admirable, their families had never amounted to much. And then there were the people in front of us, who lived in my parents’ neighborhood, with jobs that passed for lucrative and respectable families. They were the kind of people my parents kept close. The top echelon.
Mrs. Anderson read the sign on our table. “Send Sam Landry to college, huh?” I sat up straighter. Mrs. Anderson was a friend of my mother who was so under her sway she’d even taken to wearing her hair the same style, dyed platinum blond and cut bluntly at the shoulders. Looking at her, I felt an echo of the same anxiety that surfaced whenever I was home.
She gave her best approximation of a smile. “You three. What an…interesting group.”
I knew the subtext:A troupe of misfits.
