We’re sitting on a rock. Eve Brooks and me.
I was standing, scatting a group of flap-Jacks, when suddenly she was behind me, grabbing my shoulders and hugging my neck, squeezing my esophagus, saying, “What’s eggs, Beatstreet Bug? How’s your happyface?”
I coughed, said, “Vise Grip Jones, watch the plumbing!” as I rubbed my throat and she laughed, sauce thick on her breath.
We’re sitting on a rock. Eve is sighing and talking about what a clash mop heart-Jack Nate Gray is. I’m dragging a tar.
I feel her watching me. “That’s one toxic hobby you got there,” she says. “I thought you were quits.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Be easy, Bug. Nate’s hit,” she says. “He just has a lot going on.”
I drag. “I hear you passed out.”
“Oh.” She takes a breath. “I’ve been eating only grapefruits for a week,” and I turn, give her goggle eyes. “I’m on a diet,” she says and then schemes a drag from my tar.
“Hypocrite,” I say as she hands it back. She smiles, and then chokes. She coughs and smoke billows from her mouth and she’s gagging and sticking out her tongue. “I’ll catch your lung if you hack it up,” I say, leaning into her and cupping my mitts under her chin.
She touched the roughed-up red of my throat and laughed, saying, “If I’m Vise Grip Jones, you are the Magician. You make me laugh when I’m sad. You perform marvelous, death-defying acts of cunning and charm.” She didn’t really say that, but I would like to think she would have if she hadn’t said, “Oh crank, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
We ran to the woods and she wasn’t sick. Not even a little. She burped a belch that woke the dead natives sleeping below our feet and we hooted and held our shaking brew-filled bellies with glee.
We’re sitting on a rock. Eve and I split a piece of gum and she blows tiny snapping bubbles as I pull my hood up over my head and explain my Theory of the Universe. That is: We’re all walking talking Popsicle sticks with our heads melting, our brains juice at our feet.
We’re sitting on a rock. Eve’s superfreeze ace in this speckled white-and-blue angora sweater and I’m studying it, petting it softly like a pup.
“My apple-Jacks are driving me bananas,” she says. “It’s like school never ended and the drama just goes on.” I nod, glad she’s confiding in me. “Hey, Beatbug,” she sighs. “I wish we could’ve stayed hit these past years. I really coulda used you by my side. Even if you are a toxic hobbyist, I’m glad we’re ponies ’n’ pigtails again.”
I smile. “You’ve massive missed out.”
Eve laughs. “And so have you.”
And she points a finger at my nose and I bat at it like a cat, and she mimes like it hurts.
“True words,” I say.
We sit on this rock and I tell her about my Oma. Eve picks up a water-smoothed stone and places it, warm from her hand, into mine.
We’re stumbling up the path to my banger. It’s massive dark. “I know these trails,” she says. “I grew up in these woods.” I picture her here, a miniature version of her now, white-blond curls, red dress, and Mary Janes, dog off its leash, mother and father heeling it arm in arm. They sing a song about a frog and some logs and laugh in fits at the riot parts.
“Your life’s like a Disney flick,” I say.
“You don’t know flip about my life.”
“Truth,” I say and shut my crank mouth, feel a-flap-Jack.
“Or dare?” she finally says.
“Huh?”
“Truth or dare, Lu Butler?”
I laugh. “Dare.”
“Um,” she thinks. “Crush all the tars in your pack.” I roll my eyes at the night sky and twist and turn the crumpled box, paper and tobacco in my mitt. “Beatstreet.” She smiles.
We keep walking, I push a branch from my face. “Truth or dare, Eve Brooks?”
“Truth.”
I’m silent. Then I laugh. “Would you or have you ever kissed another betty?”
My question hangs between us like a hammock as we forge ahead. “Nope. Never have. But … word. I think I would. Not just any ace-Jack, though. She’d have to be something special.” She smiles at me over her shoulder.
I try not to trip.
“Truth or dare, Lu Butler?” she says into the woods.
“Dare.”
Eve whips around in the path. “No fair! All you want is dare. No truth.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
“Well, word, then. Truth. Probe away, Miss Inquisition. Ask anything.” She looks at me for a minute and then shakes her head.
“No.” She smiles. “I don’t need to ask. I know you and all your pesky Bug secrets.”
I laugh. “I’m sure you do,” I say, but I’m not so sure she does.
We’re sitting in my banger. My heap banger. We. Us. Me and Evelyn Brooks. I’m sliding fast into sober as I start the engine and feel her arm brush light against mine.
She’s shivering and chit-chattering and I’m blasting on the heat and wiping the fog off the windshield with my sleeve. I slide out of my hoodie and fork it over to her. She’s got freckles on the backs of her hands. She’s sleepy and slow and I’m geared up, fully charged. The pulse of my blood under my skin, in my groin, under my temples is overwhelming, deafening. Eve fumbles with her seat belt and says, smiling, with a big yawn, “I’m all thumbs, Bug.”
I laugh. “Listen, Thumbs. You could just crashpad at my house tonight,” I suggest, the coolest cucumber on the block.
“No, Bug,” she says. “I gotta jetset home. I’m early-bird shift at the restaurant tomorrow morning. Plus, you don’t understand. I have to brush my teeth.”
“Word,” I laugh and we wheel in silence, tunes slipping softly through our ears, moving so hush through our sleeping town to her front door. She’s no longer Ms. Ancient-History-His-Betty-Vise-Grip-Jones. I am no Magician.
And we are Lu and Eve. Bug ’n’ Thumbs.