And so I settled into the slow lane called May in Bienville. Because I had gotten kicked out of Stanton Hall so late in my junior year, Grandmother determined there was no need to enroll me in any one of Bienville’s fine educational establishments, public or private. The result was daily lessons throughout the month of May at home with Mr. Charles Dumas, tutor to Bienville’s upper crust. Mr. Dumas was tolerable, even if he was periodically besieged by sinus flare-ups that made him snort like a horse. God bless him, he had a tendency to drone on about the Hundred Years’ War, even when discussing Algebra II. How he was able to find a connection between the Fibonacci sequence and the Battle of Calais is beyond me. At least the medieval tapestries of Joan of Arc were pretty.
In general, I had nothing much to do, and no one much to do it with. I finished Mr. Dumas’s assignments like a good little girl. I fired up my Netflix queue with constant requests for Veronica Mars and Alias. And I ran. Oh, how I ran. I know, it’s an odd thing for a smoker. Maybe it’s because I feel like I need to make up for the fact that I am destroying my little pink lungs with every puff. Also, I have a truckload of nervous energy. I’m not one of those people who is constantly on the move, but every once in a while a wave of anxiety crashes over me and I feel like I have to move or I will die. And since we wouldn’t want that, I run.
Grandmother’s house was in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Bienville, Magnolia Oaks, and as such, it was a stone’s throw from downtown. Every day after the mid-afternoon rain shower, I stepped out the front door, turned right, and took off at a slow jog through the residential streets canopied with oaks and lined with grand old homes on giant plots of land. That time of day, the humidity is insane, so I often felt like I was breathing water vapor. But I kind of liked that I would get so sweaty so fast. At Commerce Street, I picked up speed, racing cars heading into the business district. At Government Boulevard, I turned right, ran past town hall, the city courthouse, and the chamber of commerce (where I sometimes waved at Mr. Walter). I’d hit the port and run along the docks, dodging forklifts and weaving my way through shipping containers. Then I’d loop back home, throw myself in the shower, and call it a day.
But I never, ever, ever turned left. Coming out of Grandmother’s, I most consciously avoided turning left. In fact, since returning to Bienville, I had studiously avoided even glancing left out of the very far corner of my eye at the house that was two doors and three oak trees down from me.
At 511 Magnolia Street.
Home of the Churchvilles.
Last known residence of one Luke Churchville, my childhood best friend.
It’s not my fault things ended the way they did. It’s not his fault, either. All that blame, in my humble opinion, resides with Cosmo. Luke and I didn’t do anything wrong. It was a huge misunderstanding, really. But when you’ve been so close for so long, and then suddenly it all explodes, there are a lot of loose ends and unknowns.
So I felt nervous. So nervous that I wasn’t sure what I wanted. To see Luke or not to see Luke, that was the question. Hmmm. Better to keep that boy tightly sealed in his little box, all bricked up in the wall of tragic fame. If I didn’t see him, I didn’t have to deal, right? So I never turned left.
But, of course, the day came when curiosity got the best of me. Maybe it was my new Magnolia Maid status (not!) that gave me the gumption to mosey in the direction of 511 Magnolia. Or maybe it was the extra-strength espresso I had just gulped down.
Whatever it was, a few days after the pageant I decided to turn left. I chanted Bienville’s motto (“Fill our city with sweet perfume, plant a magnolia and watch it bloom!”) and inched my way over to the spacious home I had practically lived in during that terrible time after my mother’s death. I wondered if the tire swing was still hanging from the giant oak in the backyard. If Mrs. Churchville still maintained a greenhouse for her orchids. Was it still strictly off-limits to kids, something that Luke and I learned the hard way? What about the clubhouse we built together? Was that still there? We must have been about eight the year we pooled our allowance money together to buy plywood out at Lowe’s and slap up a structure that came out as decrepit and treacherous as an ancient fishing shack. We didn’t care, though. It was our second home until the Churchville family dog, Daisy, claimed it and infested the place with fleas so bad that Mrs. Churchville swore she’d make Luke and me take a flea bath if we ever crawled in there again.
“You looking for Mr. Luke, Miss Jane?” I jumped at the sound of Henry’s voice. He had come outside to trim the azaleas back.
“Oh, hi, Henry.” I acted as nonchalant as I could. “Yeah, I haven’t seen the Churchvilles at all since I got back.”
“That’s ’cause they built themselves a big house out by the new golf club. Moved a coupla years ago.”
Aha. Luke wasn’t there. He wasn’t residing in the house two doors and three oak trees away from me. I didn’t have to worry about running into him at any old moment. Hearing that, every single cell in my body breathed a sigh of relief. Honestly, until that moment, I didn’t realize just how tense I had been.
“Oh, that’s nice. Who lives there now?”
“Dr. Paxton and his wife. They got three girls. Little things.” As if to punctuate his statement, the front door of the house formerly known as Luke’s swung open, and three feisty little sisters bounded out to a family-sized SUV shrieking over who got to put in the DVD.
“Good to know,” I said, and took off running. Yes, it was very good to know that Luke Churchville wasn’t living in the middle of my street anymore. I didn’t have to run into him. And as long as I stayed away from the new golf club, the Churchville family church and, oh, just about every social event in this fishbowl of a town, I could keep it that way.