With the semi-success of Operation Service Project, Dad offers me a short reprieve. Janie Lee is invited to a dinner of Cheetos, pizza, and Mom’s very un-southern tea. When Mom and Dad start debating church politics at the table, Janie Lee and I escape to my room.
She takes the desk chair and opens her violin case. I settle on the bed with a box of Legos. For an hour, she plays, I build, and we are happier than two baby goats chewing on the same chunk of grass. We’ve always done silence as a deep conversation. In that span of time, I don’t think of the future, or the past—I let myself breathe present air.
We are here, and I am comfortable.
Then, we are temple to temple watching Saturday Night Live. Neither of us is a fan, so we flip the channel until we find Betty White.
And we are here, and I am comfortable.
At eleven, Mom knocks, and tells us not to stay up too late. “Church tomorrow, girlies,” she reminds us. “Want me to flip the light?”
We do. The alarm clock’s blue glow illuminates Janie Lee’s shadowy image. She’s wearing large-frame glasses, and pajamas I detest with holy passion. I smell honeysuckle—her face cream—that reminds me I am not particularly clean after a day of hard labor. I carry myself off to shower and return to find her still awake.
I grab a blanket I call the Sheep and toss it over her. Skip this step and experience says I’ll wake up stripped of covers and shaking. I bury myself next to her, and she says, “You remember sophomore year?”
Sophomore year refers to one day in particular. My twin bed seems like a king. “Hey,” I say warmly, and then her head, her tears, are on my chest. “No one thinks about that anymore.”
The Tuesday after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, thirty-five Otters Holt students found Marie Miller, Janie Lee’s mom, on a desk in first-period chemistry. Naked. With Mr. Klinger. Also naked. The formaldehyde pig, Tog, was also a casualty. As were two Bunsen burners.
“Why are you even thinking about that?” I ask.
Janie Lee finds words. “Because she’s why I don’t date. Why I’m afraid of asking Woods to the dance. Afraid of everything when it comes to relationships.” She has never said these words before. Nor the ones that come after. “What if I’m like her? What if I miss out on someone like him because I can’t—”
“Janie Lee, you might live in the same house, but you don’t come from the same place.”
“But so many people think of her, of that, when they see me. Eleven months. Eleven months.” She repeats her mantra several more times.
“A) You aren’t in their brains, so who knows? And B) You can leave Otters Holt in eleven months, buddy, but you’ll pack that fear in your suitcase unless you realize you aren’t like her.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Your mom is Corn Dolly material.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make me wrong.”
She’s worried she’ll turn out like her mom; I’m worried I won’t. Somehow my introverted mother has mastered the art of marching to her own drum in a rhythm people appreciate. She’s bohemian in a town that can’t spell the word—an artist, a kind artist—and people respond to her warmly, whereas I am kind, but people don’t respond to me warmly. Except for the Hexagon. Without them, I’d probably be buried in a pile of newsprint and aluminum. Or still up a tree at the elementary school. No one will ever award me a Corn Dolly.
“Plenty of people think plenty of things when they see me, too,” I say. “And then they get on the phone and call my dad and slam him for not parenting me very well. That’s the way the world works, but are they right?”
She can’t or won’t answer the question. “I’m just . . . what if deep down Woods thinks I’m like my mom?”
Back to Woods. Back to dating. Still, I have an answer. “Then I’ll kick his ass. But he doesn’t.”
In our history, Woods has never compared Janie Lee to her mother in the way she fears. Quite the opposite. I tell her this and she throws her leg over mine, snuggling up so close I smell the baking soda from her toothpaste.
“Billie?” Janie Lee’s tone has the deep ring of a serious question. She feels along my arm. “That your elbow?”
“Yep.”
Sliding her hand slowly down, she grips my fingers tight and solid. I wish I could see her eyes. They’re gray, nearly clear, and sometimes they water when she’s not crying. “You know what I told you the night of the fire?”
My heart is an assault rifle.
“How come you haven’t said much about it?”
I taste blood.
“Did you hear me?” she asks.
Our faces are three inches apart. If I tip my forehead forward half an inch, I’ll touch her glasses. “Billie? Don’t fall asleep on me.”
“I heard you,” I admit.
“And?”
“I’m not sure how to feel.” Like I wish we were still watching Betty White.
“Oh.” She’s worried.
Woods and Janie Lee make perfect sense in a photograph. But in real life? She’s leaving at a sprint in “eleven months, eleven months,” and he will commute to college and then die the mayor of Otters Holt, having never traveled elsewhere for more than a week. She’s going to ruin the platonic ecosystem we have maintained in the Hexagon for years, for a relationship that will end in “eleven months, eleven months.” Part of me wants to let this thing run its course, leave it uninterrupted. Because it will end. And then Woods will stay and I will return here after college. That’s when we’ll inevitably begin our us, and I’ll call Janie Lee and say, “Woods and I . . . ,” and she’ll say, “I always knew you would.”
None of these logical thoughts change the shouting match happening inside my head. She said she’s in love. Is she? Am I? What does being in love mean? Surely, there is a spectrum of feelings between desire and love and being in love. Why is this not a class in high school?
Her voice interrupts. “I didn’t think you’d be surprised.”
“Did something happen between you two?” I dare to ask.
“We have this chemistry. It’s there when we sing. I’ve tried turning it off, but then the night of the fire I was like, Why? Why would I turn this off? There’s no one else like him. Except maybe you.” Her stomach muscles contract in a giggle. She continues, “And sometimes I think about that silly wedding we did in third or fourth grade. You remember?”
Oh, yes. “I was his best man.”
“What if that was a sign?”
“What if getting divorced the week after the wedding is the sign?” I ask.
She punches at me. The blow lands on my boob instead of my shoulder. “That was over tacos.”
“I’m sure it’s not the only divorce over tacos. Tacos are very important,” I say flatly.
In this chess game, Janie Lee has her hand on my queen. It’s nearly unbearable.
Several ticks of the clock later, she asks, “Should I tell him?”
I felt this question coming. Even though I could easily say no, no is the wrong answer for her to hear and me to give. No is selfish. I try to keep my selfishness on the inside, beating quietly like an organ that no one notices, a gallbladder, an appendix. “Probably,” I say. “Maybe wait until after the Harvest Festival.”
She makes a noise in the back of her throat as if this is unbearable. “So don’t ask him to Sadie Hawkins?”
“I don’t know.”
There’s another sigh. And then only white noise, of laundry tumbling round and round in the dryer, the dishwasher kicking to the next cycle, Dad humming a “How Great Thou Art” in his office. My eyes glaze over, fixing finally on the tiny green light of the fire alarm. It flashes every four seconds. I count ten flashes.
Janie Lee says, “I didn’t want to tell you. It slipped out the night of the fire.”
And I ask, “Why not?”
“I guess, well . . . I didn’t want you to be afraid it would change us. We’ve been what we’ve been for so long I felt like I was cheating on you or something. That probably sounds weird, but you know what I mean? We’re us.” Without letting go of me, Janie Lee sets her glasses on my nightstand and snuggles closer. “We won’t let anything ruin our us-ness, right? Because if it’s him or you, well, no contest, my friend.”
These words drip inside me. They touch my brain, my heart, my soul, my toes. I love her. Not for loving me. For loving us.
“Nothing,” I promise.
Her lips or teeth always squeak when she wears a wide smile—I hear her squeaking. Less than a minute later, she snores as though all the problems in the world are solved.
For the first time since elementary school, I want to climb the great oak tree and never come down. Instead, I trace my thumb over the knuckle of her thumb in time with her breathing, and lie there. How long can I keep my world the way I want it?
When I’m sure I won’t disturb her, I slide from the bed, into my boots, and down the hallway. Four of the five garage lights flicker to life. The one over Guinevere needs to be replaced; she’s living in shadows.
“You and me both,” I tell her, and set to work on the Daily Sit.