Freddie reaches for his wallet, and Stella automatically shakes him off. “On the house.”
My mouth drops open.Sorcery.
With the box tucked under his arm, we both turn to leave. My shoulders slope downward as I try to imagine how I can fix this without Hattie crucifying me.
“Oh, Miss Stella?” asks Freddie as he doubles back. “No chance you could do that cake for tomorrow? A one-time favor?”
I hold my breath.
Her bushy brows furrow into a caterpillar. “Just this once,” she says. “And don’t y’all tell nobody I went back on my policy. Can’t have rumors going around.”
Freddie gives an all-knowing grin.
She shakes her finger right at his chest. “That charm might last ya,” she says. “But your good looks won’t be around forever.” She turns to me. “Now what can I get y’all?”
I nod my head as fast as it will go. “Double chocolate, please.”
“And I wasn’t kidding ’bout my paper,” she adds. “No point in paying for it if I can’t read the damn thing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As soon as we’re in the car, I turn to Freddie. “What wasthat?”
“Or thank you would be good, too.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, okay, thanks.”
“Where to now?”
I open my mouth to speak, but pause. I’m not ashamed of our little trailer. There’s not much hiding down here, but I never brought Grace home. I didn’t know how to, I guess. Grace knew I was poor and that I lived in a trailer, but there was always some kind of disconnect. Whenever I said the wordspoororbroke, she would give me a limp smile and tell me about one of the handful of times she went without in some way. So Grace never saw me in the yellow lights of my kitchen or on the brown carpet of my bedroom. But Freddie—he’s the same Freddie who cried a little too often when we were kids and was always there when Hattie wanted to run off with her friends. Now he’s a taller, more grown-up Freddie who doesn’t always smell like egg sandwiches.
We tear apart a few croissants—they smell too good!—as I point him right and left until we’re at the gates of my trailer park. “I’m good here,” I tell him, unbuckling my seat belt.
“No way. It’s still raining.”
I lean back against the seat, resigned. “Watch out for the potholes.”
And he does, but the uneven pavement still jolts us to my front door.
“This is me,” I say. “And thanks again for your help with the cake.”
He nods. “See you at school next week?”
“Yeah.” I almost forgot that we’re in the same grade.Freddie and I are late summer babies, but a year apart, making him eighteen and me seventeen. Different school districts have different rules, I guess.
Next week feels so far away. And this random bit of hope I hadn’t even realized I was housing in my chest begins to wilt. Freddie will go to school and he’ll make friends. Of course he will. They’ll tell him that I’m the white trash lesbian from the trailer park and that I’m so far down the social food chain that even the bottom-feeders are above me, which is why, unlike Ruth and Saul, no one really made a fuss when I came out. No one’s really concerned with the sexual identity of a girl from a local trailer park.
He pops the trunk and I run around to get my bike.
My still-damp clothes are soaked again in an instant, but instead of racing inside, I knock on the driver’s-side window. “Come to Hattie’s party,” I shout, talking as fast as I can so the interior of Agnes’s car won’t get too wet. “Well, it’s her boyfriend’s party, but she’s planning it. Tomorrow night. Boucher’s after hours.” Maybe it’s a desperate attempt to hold on to him and show him who I’ve become before anyone else at school can do that for me.
Freddie smiles. “Okay. Yeah.” Rain splats harder against the leather interior, so he starts to roll the window up. “Should I bring anything?” he shouts through the cracked window.
“Just that panty-dropping charm,” I call.
Even through his fogging window, I can see him blushing.
FIVE
