Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson Page B

motion, smiling sardonically. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” She scowled at the dogs, at Birdie, then trudged up the stairs.
    Murphy had just vanished onto the upstairs landing when Leeda walked in and closed the front door behind her, looking puzzled when she saw Birdie and the blanket-strewn couch. Her trepidation was thinly veiled—very thinly.
    “Are you sleeping over?” she asked.
    “Dad wants me to stay down here for the rest of spring break.”
    Leeda’s shoulders actually heaved in disappointment. She looked around the room, apparently trying to think of something to say, and then finally realized she had nothing. Leeda walked up the stairs too. Birdie could see the backs of her legs covered in brutal red bumps.
    Birdie went back to unpacking. Deflated, she shoved her things irritably into the little bit of space left in the bureau and then put her toiletries into the cabinet under the sink.
    Birdie felt humiliated. Did Leeda think “keeping an eye on them” was her idea of a good time? But the most humiliating part was that Birdie had never snuck down to the lake with anyone, and she lived here. Life was chugging along, and Birdie had never even gotten on the track. She was stranded at the station while people like Murphy and Leeda were actually living, moving forward, looking back at her like she was some kind of alien spy.
    The thing was, she didn’t know how to get out of herself. She just didn’t know.
    “I don’t know,” she said to the dogs, who obviously thought she was fabulous either way. It was in their eyes.
    She went into the bathroom and saw they were out of cotton balls. Birdie sighed. She made a mental note to get some for Leeda the next time she and Poopie drove the workers to town.
    Once she ran out of unpacking to do, Birdie cleaned the kitchen. A few minutes later the women started trickling in, fiddling with the radio and clucking over Birdie’s new living arrangements. Birdie sat with her legs together, unnerved by the commotion that she was supposed to live in for the next five days. When Leeda floated down the stairs to grab a snack from thekitchen, they all gave one another meaningful looks until Leeda’d gone back up. Then they started in on Birdie and what a good girl she was, and on how lazy other people could be. Emma raised her eyebrows in the direction of upstairs and squeezed Birdie’s knee affectionately as if they—the women and Birdie—were older and wiser and Murphy and Leeda belonged to some other generation entirely. Someone switched the radio to weatherband, which they were all addicted to, though it was all in English.
    The radio buzzed with static as they chatted and waited for the Southeast forecast. When Florida was mentioned, everyone quieted down.
    Farmers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are gearing up for a late frost, scheduled to descend on the Southeast later this week. Temperatures are expected to drop to twenty-eight degrees, a level that for the season’s early crops could mean…
    Birdie pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her opal necklace between her fingers. When she looked up, the women were all staring at her. She let out a ragged breath, smiled her grimace smile, and walked out onto the screen porch. There she sank onto the decrepit wicker rocker and rocked back and forth, sweating from the heat of the indoors and trying to quell the rising panic in her belly.
    “ Por qué tan triste, Birdie?”
    Birdie looked up. Enrico had his face pressed against the screen so that his nose was flattened back against his face. Birdie could imagine, with his nose smushed up like that, that he wasn’t so cute after all and that she didn’t want him.
    She wiped at the sweat on her upper lip and smiled. “Heugh.”
    Enrico stared at her. Birdie had meant to say “hi” but then atthe last second had decided “hey” was more casual, and it had come out “heugh.” She blushed. “Um. Estoy muy bueno. ”
    “Muy bien,” Enrico corrected.
    “Muy