Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson Page A

“I don’t think so. Poopie’s into everything. New Age. Meditation. Saints.”
    “Well, which saint is that?” Murphy asked.
    Leeda squinted at it. “Actually, that’s Saint Jude,” she said, obviously proud she knew the answer. Murphy had heard of Saint Jude. Her mom had dated a deacon once. The meaning of Saint Jude was just on the tip of her tongue.
    “What’s it the saint of?” she finally asked, caving.
    They looked at each other, then Leeda bent to brush at her leg. Murphy’s eyes followed her hand to the crawling black blotches all over her legs. She gasped at the same time Leeda let out her first piercing scream.
    “Oh, damn.” Murphy watched Leeda jump up and down on the lawn, slapping at her legs, flabbergasted, then chased after her, trying to slap at the fire ants too.
    The lights in the house flared up.
    “Yip! Yip yip!”
    The door flew open, and the first one out to see what was wrong was Honey Babe, followed shortly by Majestic. And then there was Poopie Pedraza hurrying across the grass in a pink nightdress.
    Murphy considered running. She scanned the porch as she looked for the best route. The house lights flicked on and created a wide circle around the statue of Saint Jude, and suddenly Murphy found her answer.
    Saint Jude was the patron saint of lost causes.
    When Cynthia Darlington was renovating the Darlington house in 1989, she accidentally plastered her birth control compact behind a wall. It was five and a half weeks before Cynthia squeezed out the time to visit the gynecologist, and then it was only to find out that her prescription wouldn’t do her much good for the next eight months.

Chapter Eight
    B irdie hoisted her suitcase down the stairs, and the papillons followed her to Camp A, where all three moved onto the couch in the common room.
    Birdie had a little thrill running through her as she unpacked her stuff into the bureau that held the TV, though she hadn’t felt this when Walter first announced that he wanted her to stay down at the dorm so that she, Majestic, and Honey Babe could keep an eye on Leeda and Murphy McGowen.
    The other night, when she’d come downstairs to see what all the noise was about and found Poopie irritably rubbing Leeda’s legs with alcohol, the first thing she’d felt was hurt. Birdie had ducked out of sight, feeling embarrassed and left out. It was embarrassing that Leeda—her cousin, whom she’d known her entire life—had snuck out with Murphy, while she, Birdie, had gone to bed at ten o’clock after watching a rerun of Dawson’s Creek. It made her feel like a freak of nature, an eighty-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s body.
    And then Walter had made it worse by sentencing her to the dorms, tearing her out of her comfort space. And here she was.Only between then and now Birdie had realized that sleeping in the dorms also meant sleeping approximately fifty feet away from Enrico, and that was what made her a little breathless. She looked out the window toward the men’s dorm, wondering which was Enrico’s window and if he kept his blinds open.
    She was leaning onto the windowsill, still looking, when Murphy came in from the field, covered in white dirt, with dry leaves in her hair as if she’d been taking a nap in the grass. Murphy came to a dead stop in front of the couch.
    “Hey,” Birdie said quietly, forgetting Enrico and blushing slightly.
    “What’re you doing here?” Murphy asked, her full lips parted as she waited for Birdie to stammer out an answer.
    “Um—uh, my dad wants me to stay down here to, um, stay for a while.”
    Murphy sank onto one hip. “To spy on us, right?”
    Birdie swallowed, avoiding Murphy’s eyes. Her gut sank. “Um, not spy on you, just to…” Birdie searched her head for a euphemism for spying. She looked at Honey Babe, then Majestic, as if they could supply one. Her excitement of a moment before had completely vanished. “I’m going to help….”
    Murphy held up her hand in a stop