You Smell Like Strawberry Shortcake
Justin
Mr. Hart answered the door and didn’t even say hello. “I blame Tiffany mostly, but Justin, you’re a good boy. I expected better of you.”
After all of the events of the day I had completely forgotten about getting busted for being in her bedroom. “Sorry, Mr. Hart.”
Mrs. Hart came from behind, drying a big bowl with a towel. “Uh-oh, what happened?”
“I didn’t tell you but when we came home last night, I caught Justin in Tiffany’s room.” My face got warm. “Alone in the house. In her bedroom.” The way he stretched out these phrases gave me a good idea of where Tiffany got her dramatics from. “Kissing.”
What? I clenched my teeth and my face turned hot. Very hot.
“Nasty,” Tiffany said as she walked past both of her parents. “That is so not what happened.” She threw up the hood on her sweatshirt and thrust her hands into her front pockets.
Mrs. Hart squealed and pushed her way in front of Mr. Hart. “I think it’s sweet. Like when you were little and told everybody that you were getting married. You kissed then.”
Tiffany’s head had developed a slow and steady back and forth shake. “We were two years old.”
That was probably when my red string became too tight to remove. Truthfully I didn’t remember any of it but I had heard the stories.
“But you shouldn’t be in her bedroom, Justin,” Mrs. Hart said, waving both a towel and a finger in my direction.
“I . . . I’m sorry . . .”
I stuttered but Tiffany answered. “Not kissing. We were sooooo not kissing.”
We all stood there, faced off at the doorstep, the parents inside the cozy house with the orange glow and Tiffy and I standing with our hands in our pockets in the cold grey night. Crickets chirped in the shrubs that dotted the border of her house.
“So, umm, we’re going to the park,” Tiffany said, gesturing with her shoulder down the street.
“Alright, but no kissing,” her dad said.
“Fine by me.” Tiffy grabbed my arm and dragged my stuttering, dumbstruck-self off the porch.
“A little kissing wouldn’t be bad,” Mrs. Hart shouted after us as we walked away. Pure heat radiated off of my cheeks, ears, and neck. Like a burning fever that subsided with the crisp fall air.
Tiffany let go of my arm. “Worst conversation of my whole life. You’re lucky your parents are dead.”
My feet slowed down as I tried to understand what she had just said.
“I’m sorry. So sorry. That was stupid of me. I’m just stressed. I’m not used to seeing…” Her voice trailed off. “And I’m trying to get elected, and …” She glanced over her shoulder. “You really don’t see them?” She pointed behind us and I turned around, but the road was empty. “They’re right there.”
I shook my head. I tried to clarify once we got to the park.
“I do see ghosts but not your ghosts. I ignore most of them.” We both sat on the swings. “Do you see other ghosts?”
The swing next to Tiffany started swinging even though nobody was in it. She looked at it for a second then shuffled her swing closer to mine and grabbed hold of my chain. When we were little we used to link our arms around each other’s chains to swing in perfect sync, so out of habit I wrapped my elbow around her chain and she did the same.
“At school there’s this guy.” She started pumping her legs knocking my swing around. “He’s grayish and hangs out at the backstop of girl’s baseball field. Just sitting in the grass, running his hand along the chain link. Have you seen him before?”
I shook my head. I pass the girl’s baseball field every day to get to the portable classrooms and I’ve never seen anyone out there. How many more ghosts were out there that I wasn’t seeing? I opened the bag and pulled out two dried sage bundles, roughly the length and width of hotdog buns.
“What are those?” She took one from my hand.
I traced my finger around the string that held the dried leaves together. “They’re called smudge sticks and they drive away spirits. I use them to sleep. You just have to seal up your room nice and tight, light one end on fire—” I pulled out the lighter from the bag, “snuff it out, and then you walk the smoke around the room.”
She smelled it and then wretched it from her face. “Dude, I am not putting that stinky thing in my room. My room smells like strawberry shortcake, and I’d like to keep it that way. Actually . . .” She took another whiff. “These smell like you. It’s not your detergent after all.” She threw the bundle back at me and I barely caught it.
“But Tuesday is a new moon and I don’t know about you but—” I knew the words I was thinking but they got stuck in my head. What if nothing happened to her on the new moon? I had been wrong about this stuff before. Maybe I was the only one with new moon problems. Slowly I came up with something else to say. “Sometimes . . . things happen to . . . people . . . on new moon nights . . .”
She lifted one eyebrow and pulled a face. “Umm, cryptic. Yeah, I still don’t want to smell like you.”
She was right. I smelled like sage. I showered everyday but it was hard to get the smoke out of my clothes. My sixth grade teacher even talked to Hannah because she thought I was doing drugs.
“Come on. You’ve gotta have something less stinky.”
I racked my brain. “Man of Words.” Once I said it, I wanted to take it back. Rewind time and say something different.
“The poem from fifth grade?”
I nodded and kicked the sand under us. Without having the ability to control time and erase what I said, I just kept going. “Anything with meter would probably work. A rhyme. A song. It just gives you some place else to focus.” I pulled the sage back out of the bag. “But this is really the best.”
She jumped off the swing and put her hands in her pockets. “I’d better get back for dinner.”
Right. Well, there was no hiding it. My peculiarity had exploded in all its bright colors. And I, silly me, thought it couldn’t have gotten worse than fourth grade. Not only was I a weirdo who saw ghosts, but I couldn’t even see all ghosts. I smelled like burning herbs and recited poetry when I got scared.
Awesome.