“Me, too.”
The boppy hooks and thick harmonies of “In the Forest,” a song by the improbably named band The Baby Owls, was so ubiquitous now she’d actually heard their neighbor, the nasty Mrs.Binkley, humming it as she ruthlessly clacked her big Edward Scissorhands trimmers over her hedges. Mrs.Binkley’s yard was flawlessly, almost spitefully, groomed. It was a passive-aggressive response to years of living next door to the Greenleafs, whose yard was untamed at best, and featured a number of pretty things growing in the wrong places, which rather described the Greenleafs themselves.
This is the chorus
Of we’re lost in the forest
You can never bore us
Because we’re lost in the forest
Just try to ignore us
While we’re lost in the forest
Going round and around and around
It was a pretty stupid song, but then the lyrics of a lot of great songs didn’t bear up well under close examination. Glory didn’t hold that against it.
Her mom hummed softly along. Funny, but Glory couldn’t remember hearing her mom ever sing out loud. Not even Christmas carols, and who could resist those?
“Maybe you could learn how to play it, Glory.”
“Already did, Mom.” It was an easy one. She’d even given it her own bluesy spin, just for fun.
“Good for you, honey.” But Charlotte said it absentmindedly. Her thoughts were back on their previous track. “You know... youmightactually meet a movie star. Like Britt Langley did.”
A cable TV series set during the Gold Rush—called, appropriately,The Rush—had begun filming on location in Hellcat Canyon, taking advantage of rugged vistas and picturesque rivers and rocks and so forth. It starred John Tennessee McCord, who had improbably swept Britt Langley off her feet. Understandably, it had been the talk of the town. And even YouTube.
“Heard she just quit waitressing down at the Misty Cat to go to Los Angeles with John Tennessee McCord,” her mom supplied. “Sort of a last-minute thing.”
Her mom somehow got all the gossip. It circulated through Hellcat Canyon the way Whiskey and Coyote Creeks did. Charlotte Greenleaf was a social creature, and people liked to talk to her anyway.
Glory humored her. “Gosh. Maybe I will.”
Britt was very pretty and well-spoken, and she’d always been quite nice to Glory, which patently wasn’t true of a lot of women in town. She couldn’t begrudge Britt either happiness or a movie star.
But Glory was pretty sure Britt Langley had never bitten a guy.
Or cursed his genitals.
And no movie star with a brain in his head would go out to the Plugged Nickel.
Damn. She needed to quit that job.
Her mom got up to refill her coffee. “You have any plans this weekend, sweet pea? You should be having some fun. Going on dates.”
Glory almost snorted. “Don’t worry, Mama. Pretty much every guy in Hellcat Canyon wants to go out with me. I’ll pick one when I’m ready.”
That statement was 100percent correct, if one understood that “go out with her” meant “do her.” And Glory knew the difference, by God, and no one was more particular while looking more like a vixen.
Her mama liked bravado. “That’s my girl,” her mama encouraged absently, gazing out the window. Possible new husbands for herself probably scrolling like a stock market ticker through her brain.
The sun was up a little higher now and shining through the sheer, faded yellow curtains. Like the radio, those curtains had been in the kitchen for as long as Glory could remember. The Greenleafs were like the Simpsons, she thought.Theirkitchen curtains never changed, either. They were covered in little corncobs.
She’d begun to feel like she was sentenced to play a game of computer solitaire long after no moves were left. Or maybe she was lost in the forest, going around and around and around and around.
Maybe that song wasn’t so stupid after all.
