A hop and a skip later and we’re skating light along the end of the darkening path, laughing our skulls off about massive dragonfly sex happening all over kingdom come, when we crashpad into two of her flapple-Jacks in the parking lot. Pretty Penny One and Two. This town is just too dang small.
“Clash,” Eve whispers and they wave and beep beep the remote lock on their massive swank whip.
“Word, EB!” They’re both superfreeze flip in shades so massive, their frames swallow their mugs and in their lenses, Eve is tiny, wavering and warped.
“Word, Jacks,” Eve says, sporting a fashion of smile she’s never worn with me.
“Geezuschrist! Evelyn Brooks! Where the flip’ve you been all our life?” they say. Their shags are immaculately combed and they sport slinky sarongs with long strands of bathing suit ties looped and bowed at every corner of their bony, tanned bodies.
“Dunno, sweet-Jacks,” Eve says. “I’ve been gigging at the restaurant a ton.”
“You should dial us or something. We dialed your speak like a gajillion times,” they say. “We have to get into it before we all jetset for colley.” They both tote massive billowing purses with snaps and buckles and bulges and fringes, strapped with thick bands that drape over their gaunt shoulders.
“Word,” Eve says, faking a frown. “I wasn’t hit to your dials. My speak’s, like, crank, or something. It’s been acting massive flip.” Just then Eve’s speak rings and she yanks it from her pocket, hits ignore. Their eyebrows arch. I laugh. I cough. I shuffle my feet. I’m a parody of a flap-Jack in a massive crickets jam. I back away toward my banger.
“Um,” they say. “So clash.”
We all stand in silence. Eve’s speak rings again and she giggles, like popcorn popping. She presses buttons but it keeps ringing.
“Flip,” she laughs. “Ponies ’n’ pigtails!”
“She’s All Thumbs, flap-Jacks,” I say, cracking up and Eve snorts, rubbing her watering eyes.
The Pennies drop their pointy chins and scrunch up their noses. “Are you … fried?” they say, lifting their lenses to look into Eve’s red-rimmed eyes. She just shrugs and my sides are aching. “Whatever,” they hiss and spin and heel it to their whip, their colorful sarongs wafting like garish enemy flags.
“Rinse and re—” I start to say, but Eve grabs my peace sign fingers and drags me to my car.
We get in and sit and I’m still massive giggling. Eve says stop, so I do. She says, “You don’t understand. They’re just acting like clash cogs. They’re not that flip.”
I nod.
“There’s just some rules, is all.” She flips down her mirror. “And I’m breaking like six thousand and fifty-seven of them—so they’re jammed. And they should be.”
I nod again.
I watch her mug in the mirror and our eyes meet. She slides on sparkly lip gloss and pulls a fingertip under her eyes. “I haven’t dialed, I haven’t been into it with them in, like, weeks. I’m not acting like an apple-Jack.”
I nod again.
She sighs and flips the mirror back up. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t mean, ‘acting’—like pretending. I’m a superbeat apple-Jack. I mean, usually, just not lately.”
I nod again.
“Listen,” she says. “You may think they’re clash cogs, but they’ve been my best Jacks for years. We’ve had massive good times. And do not nod your flip skull again, Bug-Jack!”
I don’t nod. I shrug.
“You’re driving me Ophelia,” she mumbles as she grabs the keys from my hand and turns them in the ignition of my car. I pull out of the lot and we cut a wheel and drive in silence.
“And y’know what?” Eve says after many quiet moments. “I don’t think I like that word.”
“Eh?”
“Lesbian,” she says. The L-Bomb.
“That’s random.”
She sighs, looks out her window.
“I mean, that’s what they’re gonna call us, you know? If they find out.”
I shrug, keeping cool. “Who cares. If people wanna jive, let ’em jive.”
“Come on, Bug. You can’t scheme you haven’t thought about this.”
We stop at a red light and I pick at an old sticker of a kitten in a party hat peeling off my dash. “You know I have, Thumbs. But what I’m saying is I don’t give a rat’s tail about what other clash-Jacks want to call or not call me. Who cares?”
“So, I suppose you’ve already told Zoë and Maya all about us swapping spit, getting cozy.”
I shrug. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Well, forget other Jacks, then. Just for you. Don’t you care what this means? Don’t you wanna be ready to deal with it when everyone finds out?”
“All I know is I like you. Well, not so much right now—” I check, but she’s not smiling. “B’sides, even if Jacks did talk about us, don’t you think they’d just find it massive fascinating? I would.”
She groans. “You don’t know my Jacks. And besides, maybe I don’t wanna be massive fascinating.”
“Word, Thumbs. Because I hear boring’s the new black.” She’s still not smiling.
“I think you should be more serious about this.”
“I’m serious as a broken phalange, beaver fever, Alektorophobia. Just ’cause you disagree with me ’bout this doesn’t mean I’m not serious.”
“Well, I s’pose that just makes you a better person than me.”
“Perhaps. But that’s besides the point. I’m just saying, can’t we just enjoy ourselves for half a nanosecond without worrying if the flipping world’s gonna come to an end? This is fun, right? You and me? Bug ’n’ Thumbs?”
She shakes her head. “A girl’s gotta think about her future every once in a while, Jack.”
“But that’s all you do! And, y’know what? Flip it! Flip it all. My Oma’s laid up in her bed right now, dying. And here we are. Alive. And maybe I’ve just had more time wanting this than you, but I’m not ready to let some flip-flap Barbie-Jacks tell me what I can and can’t do.”
She sighs, sits back in her seat. I got nothing more. I make like a tree. I’m stumped.
“Eve, what else do you want me to say?”
“That I’m not a lesbian.”
“I can’t say that. Only you can.”
“Word,” she says. “I know.” And we go quiet again. “What’s alektorophobia?”
“Fear of chickens.”
She finally smiles.