The band comes by and shakes our hands. I search my pockets for a few bucks to drop in the trombone case. (It is my personal philosophy that dresses without pockets are useless.) They transition into “O Holy Night,” and a whole new crowd has already gathered.
The sun has dipped far below the horizon of buildings, and all that’s left is a faint early-twilight glow.
Freddie takes my hand. “Let’s walk.”
And we do. We walk all over in our matching T-shirts. We wander into stores full of beautiful things we can’t afford. We take pictures in souvenir shops, wearing feather boas and ridiculous hats. We slide into a photo booth and Freddie says to make serious faces and then tickles my armpits, making me laugh so hard I can’t breathe until the last frame, when he kisses me and I kiss him back.
I pull him into a store on Decatur Street called Hex. The windows glow with candles, and in a small corner of the store a woman sits behind a partially closed curtain, telling fortunes. I can see that the store makes Freddie a little nervous—or maybe it’s the girl behind the counter with the shaved head. He hovers close behind me as I look very carefully at all the spell kits. You can buy a kit for love, money, happiness, justice. Anything you can think of.
Freddie drifts from me as I study the bowls of crystals and stones. It’s incredible to me to think that all these objects can hold so much meaning, but at the end of the day they’re objects and only we can give them meaning.
Freddie kisses my temple. “I’ll be outside.”
The curtain at the back of the shop opens, and a man comes out with a worried expression. Behind him, the fortune-teller gently touches his shoulder and he nods a thank-you. She’s not the person I expected to see behind the curtain, that’s for sure. She wears mom jeans with afloral oxford tucked in. Her bangs are teased, and she looks like she should be chasing kids around an outlet mall.
Her eyes are warm when she says, “Aren’t you the tall one?”
It’s something I hear all the time from strangers, but it still takes me by surprise. Sometimes—and especially on days like today—it’s easy to forget yourself.
“Blue hair, too.” She squeezes past me to the office behind the register. “Blue is for stability, if I recall, but sometimes it’s good to shake things up. Isn’t that right, Sam?” she asks the girl at the register.
“Yep,” she says, her voice dripping with indifference. “Shake things up.”
I twirl a loose tendril around my finger and nod. After looking around for a minute or two longer, I buy a few prosperity crystals for the chocolate box under my bed and meet Freddie outside.
The woman’s words stick with me, though. On most days, I would shrug it off, but today is different. Today is not an average day in the life and times of Ramona.
He looks down at his phone. “Quarter to midnight,” he says.
“Oh, wow.” I yawn. “I guess we should start heading back.”
We walk hand in hand back toward the car and stop at the Café du Monde to-go window for two café au laits and a bag of beignets for the ride home.
The drive is quiet as we sip our coffee and try not to getpowdered sugar all over Bart’s truck. After a while, I feel myself slipping in and out of sleep for the next hour and a half.
Freddie wakes me up, and I expect to be home, but instead we’re at the base of a dark, empty bridge.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
I stretch my arms out, forcing myself to be alert. “Nothing good ever follows that question.”
He checks the rearview mirror and turns his headlights off. There are no streetlights. All that’s left is the hazy glow of the moon above. In complete darkness, he begins to drive over the bridge.
“Roll your window down.”
I do as he says.
It’s a little bit terrifying and it’s a little bit peaceful.
“We’re floating,” he says.
And I see it. I feel it. We’re in a truck coasting through the stars, hovering high above Eulogy. I am Peter Pan and he is Wendy, and this moment will last forever. We are flying.
TWENTY-SIX
I sit with my legs stretched out and propped up on a chair on the patio of Boucher’s with Ruth as she finishes her lunch. Beside her is a small stack of letters with letterheads from her top-choice universities. Three acceptances and one wait list.
“I can’t believe I got wait-listed at University of Texas,” she says.
