After school Freddie is waiting for me at the bike rack. I hand him my phone with my text message exchange with Charlie open for him to read.
“Enjoy your weekend?” It takes him a moment. “Enjoy your weekend! YES!”
He jumps up and down and yanks me off my feet as he spins me around in a circle. “I swear to Christ, Ramona, you’re my best friend.” When he sets me back down, he pulls my fist into the air as he hums “We Are the Champions.”
I know he’s probably exaggerating, but the idea that I’m someone’s best friend fills my rib cage with summer.
TWELVE
If you head straight west, Baton Rouge is technically a two-hour drive from Eulogy, but we’re making a little bit of a detour.
See, I told Freddie I could go with him out of town before I gave him my one and only condition: that we take Grace with us.
Freddie agreed without much hesitation—maybe because he was too high on the idea of seeing Viv or maybe it was he didn’t think Grace would actually say yes.
But she did.
That night when I got home and checked my phone, there was a partially clothed picture of Grace waiting for me, with a follow-up text asking me to delete the message after I opened it.
Now, listen, everyone who pretends they don’t send nudes or partial nudes are either celibate, still use flip phones, or lying. But it was the first time Grace had ever sent me anything like this. After all, we were together all summer, so there was really no need then.
I took a minute to devour the picture. She stood in front of her mirror with one arm covering her chest and the other holding her cell phone. Tiny gray shorts were slung low on her hips. Her black bob has grown out since I last saw her, and mostly conceals her face. To anyone else, she might be unrecognizable. It was sort of innocent, but just the sight of her made me think I could walk to her house all the way up in Picayune if I had to.
I’m not this sex-crazed maniac or anything, but I’m a human being. I think about sex. Girls think about sex. Sometimes a lot. I hate this idea that boys are thinking about sex nonstop and girls are thinking about—what? Stationery and garden gnomes? No.
The second I’d memorized every detail of the picture, I called Grace. I heard her pick up the phone, and before she even said hello, I said, “Are you trying to kill me?”
She laughed. “I told you I miss you.”
“What if I said you could see me sooner than you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to be driving through Picayune on my way to Baton Rouge. Maybe you could join me? Like, a weekend getaway?”
“I don’t know,” she said, too quickly. “My parents probably wouldn’t be okay with that, and I have things going on.... I have stuff I probably shouldn’t miss.”
“Can’t we at least try asking your parents?” I hated that I sounded desperate.
She was quiet for so long I almost checked to see if we’dlost the connection. “Can’t hurt, I guess,” she finally said.
It took some convincing, and me talking to Grace’s parents on the phone, and then my dad talking to Grace’s parents on the phone, but she said yes.
And that is why I am sitting in the front seat of Agnes’s Cadillac, begging Freddie to drive faster.
Freddie is in charge of the music, and his preferences are rap and folksy white guys with acoustic guitars. Two polarizing options, if you ask me. The stereo is so loud; I have to keep my window down to drown it out a little bit.
The road winds through swampy forest that crawls right up to the edge of the pavement on either side. It’s a scene I’m so accustomed to, but I wonder what it must be like to see something like mountains or giant redwoods every day. At what point does another’s person’s extraordinary become your ordinary?
Grace’s house isn’t as grand as I’d decided it would be. It’s nice, though. The grass is cut so evenly it looks like someone trimmed it with scissors. She lives on one of those cookie-cutter streets where there are only two or three types of homes, but they all stand apart in a slight way with different colors of paint and bricks.
Freddie stands a few feet behind me as I ring the bell.
Grace’s mom answers almost immediately. She rubs her soapy hands down the front of her apron. “Oh, sweet Ramona! Your hair is almost brighter than I remember. We just finished up dinner. I wanted to wait for y’all, but Grace said you wouldn’t have time.”
I smile. “Good to see you, Mrs. Scott. This is my friendFreddie.” I motion him forward. “We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
“Oh, how nice!” she says.
