Chapter 15

Robin

“No really, I can’t afford it.”

I hand the pennywhistle back to the guy. A handmade pennywhistle? Awesomeness “instrumentified,” but costing way more than a penny, and I need to keep my money for the Dread Pirate Martin. Maybe at the end of the summer, I’ll have enough left over for a beautiful handmade pennywhistle, which I have already christened Francis Flute. From Midsummer Night’s Dream. Obviously. I look up to see Carter stepping across the aisle to me, hands in the air, parting the crowd like Moses parted the Red Sea. “Deaf applause” he called it on the hill, but something is wrong. He’s got that gun-to-his-back forced smile again.

I smile at him. “Thank you! Thank you!” I sign to my nonexistent audience, and when I look at him again, he’s smiling. Real smiling.

He shows me a picture he bought that was taken from the overlook. I’ve never seen it in winter—the park is closed then. “Beautiful,” I sign.

He nods.

I check my phone. Yup, it’s been an hour. I wipe off my sweaty hand and take his, weaving through the crowd. His hands are strong, but not farmer strong and not football strong. They’re strong in a classical pianist way. Or a surgeon. I pull him into a little booth and take out my waitressing pad.

“What are you doing after high school?” I write.

He pauses. “I don’t know,” he writes, then signs. He points at me. “You?”

Tour to coffee shops and colleges, playing my guitar.

I hesitate. “I don’t know either,” I write, then sign, copying his earlier movements. We leave the booth and I weave us through the crowd so we’re not too late.

He squeezes my hand and I look up at him. “Where… ?” he signs with his left hand, mouthing the word.

“You’ll see,” I say. He nods.

The crowd disperses, and there it is in all its glory: the hospital’s pie booth.

You want a boy to stay at a craft fair? Take him to the pie booth. A lesson learned from too many years of Trent.

I look back at Carter. His eyes are saucerlike, and with good reason. There are fruit pies and meringues and coolers with cream pies to be bought by the slice or the pie.

“A slice of coconut cream?” I write. We were playing favorites over text yesterday and he said that was his favorite.

“Just one?” he signs, eyes gleaming.

I nod, a mock-serious look on my face, and point to a big sign that proclaims, “Buy a slice and help the hospital! Buy too many and the hospital will help you!”

Carter laughs, signing, “Just one,” in agreement.

I turn to the booth. Mrs. Kelso is standing, waiting for me to order.

“Hi, Robin,” she says. Her son graduated last year, and he was in Westwinds, the select choir, with me.

“Hi, Mrs. Kelso,” I say.

“How’re things down at the Grape Country Dairy?” she asks.

“Good, good.”

“You get into some fancy music school yet?”

I shake my head. “Not yet…” I don’t know if school is really for me. I want to give it a year or two.

“Well you will. Who’s this with you?” Her round face smiles up at Carter, and then she raises her eyebrows at me like I have some explaining to do, bringing an Italian model into Westfield.

I look back at Carter. He waves. “This is Carter,” I say and sign. I practiced this particular phrase last night, along with my numbers. “He’s my friend, here for the summer.”

Carter looks at me, shocked. Sure beats “Please,” “Thank you,” “Yes,” and “No.” I shoot him a proud grin, wiggling my eyebrows, and look back to Mrs. Kelso. She looks worried.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry… We don’t have any Braille menus.”

What?

“Um, he doesn’t… he doesn’t need a Braille menu,” I say. My hands don’t move. Thank God Carter can’t hear this conversation. I flash a nervous smile at him and turn back to Mrs. Kelso. “He’s deaf, not blind. He can… he can read. And… well, you don’t have menus anyway. You just have pies. He can see which pie he wants.”

“Oh! Right. That’s silly of me. I’m sorry,” Mrs. Kelso says. She turns to Carter. “HI, DEAR!” she yells. The whole crowd turns to look at us. “WHAT KIND OF PIE DO YOU WANT?”

Carter calmly points to the pie he wants—coconut cream meringue—and steps back to look at me. He points at me and gestures for me to order as he hides a little smile. I’m turning bright red.

“Sorry,” I sign to him. He shrugs, the little smile still teasing me. He’s acting like this is nothing out of the ordinary. And he really can’t lie. I don’t know if I could ever get used to this. It’s… embarrassing. “I’ll… I’ll have cherry,” I say. July is peak cherry season.

“How nice of you to take him out,” Mrs. Kelso says as she gets our pie, like he’s a puppy or a child or something.

“I’m not taking him out,” I say, taking the pie and nodding at Carter who’s pulling a folded piece of paper out of his wallet.

“How much?” it says. He slides it toward her.

“He’s taking me out.”

Mrs. Kelso looks up at him, astonished. “Four dollars,” she says.

Carter opens his Italian leather wallet and slides a five across the counter.

“Keep it,” he signs, and mouths. Mrs. Kelso smiles her thanks and arranges the money in the cash box.

We take our slices to the playground by the church and Jenni materializes out of the crowd, sitting on the grass beside us. She doesn’t have pie, but she did manage to scrounge up a funnel cake somewhere. I’ll have to get one of those before we leave.

“Everybody’s talking about him,” she says.

“I thought you had a yard sale,” I say.

“Fine. Everybody’s talking about him at our yard sale.”

“And speaking of yard sale, how is the macramé selling?”

She sighs. “Fine? I sold three bracelets and five keychains.”

“Nice!”

“Here—give me that,” she says, gesturing to the pad of paper.

I laugh and slide it across the grass to her. She writes, “Everybody’s talking about you,” and shows it to Carter.

He shrugs and smiles easily. “Comes with the territory,” he writes. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not like everybody else.”

“Who?” I write, and circle her “everybody.”

“Kari, Ana, Callie…”

Whoa. That’s, like, upper-echelon people. Yeah, small towns have popular kids, too. There are a lot of factors that go into the deciding of Westfieldian popular kids—looks, music, money, sports, brains—no one thing is more important than the others. And, of course, you have to be friends or frenemies of all the other popular kids.

“Whoa. Popular kids,” I write for Carter’s benefit. A thought strikes me. “Do you have popular kids at your school?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he writes.

“That means yes,” Jenni says, grinning. Carter looks at me and shakes his head, but we all know the truth here. Of course he’s one of the popular kids. It would be impossible to look like that and NOT be a popular kid. Of course, Jenni’s gorgeous and she’s not really a popular kid. But that’s small towns for you: everybody remembers when you ate crayons.

“What are they saying?” I ask.

“Good stuff!” Jenni writes enthusiastically. “He’s so hot, blah-blah-blah… Callie wanted his number.”

Carter gives her a look. “You didn’t give it to her, did you?” he writes.

“Of course not!” The sun is bouncing off of Jenni’s hair, and her teeth are gleaming at him. “I don’t even have your number.”

“Good,” Carter writes. “Next time just tell them I’m off-limits.”

“Why?” Jenni writes. “You got a girlfriend back in New York you’re not telling us about?”

I give her a look.

Carter shakes his head. “NO!” he signs emphatically at me.

“Then why?” Jenni asks.

He takes up the pen and looks at me. “I’m interested in someone else.”