Best Not to Make Best Friends
School ended on a Wednesday. We packed all our worldly belongings into Nan’s old hatchback on Thursday and were on the road first thing Friday morning. After four hours of driving, sandwiched by yellowed cow pastures on each side, we were almost there.
“In six miles, exit left,” Nan’s GPS interrupted during her rotation of Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton songs. She may not rely on modern technology to find our new towns, but she sure did to drive there.
The little dot labeled Hope Springs crept closer and closer. I smoothed my twice-ironed skirt. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to smooth out my nerves or squish down my high expectations.
As we drove past an acre of flattened land and the makings of a huge building, my breath caught. It was all I could do to gasp and point. A billboard plastered with Arletta Paisley’s face smiled down like a Texan angel sent from above just for me. Under her face were the words SMARTMART SUPERSTORE OPENING SOON. Already, I had a good feeling about Hope Springs, and that billboard was like Arletta Paisley herself saying, “Jubilee, darlin’, I’m so glad you came.”
Nan laughed. “Looks like you’ve got your own personal meet-and-greet committee.”
Arletta Paisley had recently become the national spokesperson for SmartMart, and with both of them greeting me at the city limits, I felt double welcomed. SmartMart was the same in every town. I always knew where to find exactly what I wanted, and what I wanted was normally in the back of the store, where Arletta Paisley’s housewares lined the shelves. Overstuffed pillows, fluffy bath mats, floral-print shower curtains, pastel comforter sets, four-hundred-thread-count cotton sheets, and dishes, all in the calm shades of baby nurseries. Walking the aisles, I almost felt embraced.
Nan and I always did a drive-through in a new town, but our Hope Springs exploration didn’t last long because there wasn’t much to drive through. There was only one middle school, one high school, one biggish grocery store, and one run-down city pool, but about one million beauty parlors and churches. The library was the smallest one I’d ever seen, and the community center wasn’t much bigger. Another surprise was that Hope Springs, on first inspection, didn’t have any sign, statue, or other significant marker dedicated to Arletta Paisley. I didn’t even see anyone carrying one of her signature handbags or wearing a Queen of Neat T-shirt like the one I had folded up tight and tidy in my suitcase.
“Well, let’s see what we’ve got,” Nan said as we parked in front of City Hall. Our first day of a new move always started at City Hall. Nan said it was the fastest way to get settled into a new town. She never worried about getting a job. As a certified nursing assistant, or a CNA for short, she figured there’d never be a shortage of sick folks needing assistance.
Downtown consisted of two intersecting streets, Main Street and High Street, separated by a single flashing stoplight and no traffic. Not a single moving car.
Hope Springs’s City Hall was a two-story brick building with tall white columns and pairs of paint-peeled shutters on every window. In front, there was a stone well with a commemorative plaque. Finally, I thought and walked up to it, wondering what the heck a well had to do with Arletta Paisley.
The plaque read:
Nan came and stood behind me, reading over my shoulder. “I’ll be,” she mumbled. “Guess that means there’s no spring in Hope Springs.” She chuckled all the way to the foot of the steps. “You coming?”
I didn’t think too much of fate or fortunes, but a dried-up spring sure didn’t seem like a great start. I closed my eyes and took deep gulps of air, trying to breathe in the place. No tingling, no goose bumps, not even a hint of perfection whatsoever. The only thing I felt was a strong urge to sweep the steps.
With my eyes still closed, I tried to picture that billboard again. I tried to reclaim that hopeful feeling I’d had just minutes before. I tried to ignore the fact that so far Hope Springs was falling a little short of what I’d hoped for.
“Nan, you mind if I wait here?” I sighed and plopped down on the first step, worried we’d made our way into another dead-end, boring, waste of time, dusty mudhole of a town, with another move not too far off.
“Sure, hon. But don’t wander.” She took the steps two at a time, her wooden wedges making a dull clomp to match my mood.
Nan turned and gave me a silly two-thumbs-up before going in. I prayed she found somewhere decent for us to live. She tended to trust her gut when it came to our rentals, and history had proven her gut wasn’t to be trusted.
As I sat staring down the empty Main Street, the heat pressed on me until sweat trickled down my back. The stoplight creaked and swung in the slight breeze. I stood, stomped back over to the well, and dug around in my bag for a penny. Surely, that billboard meant something. I held my coin out, ready to wish that this place would be it, would be the perfect place we’d been searching for. With that penny balanced on my nail, waiting for a flip, I thought too long on all the things I might wish for and froze.
Nan was my father’s mother. He’d died in a motorcycle accident when I was four. I only had two clear memories of him. One was of a Big Bird birthday cake and my dad singing loud, Nan and Momma laughing and covering their ears. The other was of his short black hair and how it felt rough and soft at the same time, like crushed velvet. All I knew of him was from Nan’s stories. Sometimes, I thought losing him was harder for her because she remembered so much more, and because the motorcycle had been a hand-me-down present from her.
Nan hadn’t been on a motorcycle since Daddy died, but she sure hadn’t settled down any either. Other grandmothers with their sensible shoes, poufs of white hair, and flowery smells were nothing like Nan. She kept her hair cropped short and dyed jet black and smelled sharp and clean like cut grass. Though Nan’s biker days were behind her, the look stuck. She had a flair for fashion and makeup that was best left untapped.
I looked up to see a boy in a Texas Rangers hat watching me from across the street. He gave me a little wave, turned, and took off down Main Street before I had a chance to wave back. With the coin still waiting on my finger, I looked down into that empty well and thought about that kid I’d just seen, and how many new kids I’d met and then left behind. I wanted Nan and me to find a home, but really, the one thing I truly wanted was to wish that motorcycle out of existence. But the idea of my wish getting mixed up with hundreds and hundreds of strangers’ hopes made me drop the penny back into my purse.
“Hey, don’t fall in. There’s no water down there.” A girl my age came bouncing down the steps. Her knees were speckled with scabs, and her hair was a jumble of short dark curls thick enough to hide Easter eggs. “I’m Abby,” she said. “Abby Standridge. My mom’s the mayor. I’m not bragging. Just telling you before you hear it from someone else. Small town—everybody talks.”
Abby’s shorts were spattered with paint stains, and the pocket of her T-shirt was half torn off. She didn’t look a bit like the perfectly pressed, ready-for-Sunday-school politicians’ kids I’d seen on TV.
“I’m Jubilee. Nan and I just moved here.” I flicked a tattered leaf off my skirt.
“I know. I met your grandma inside at Housing and Development. Which is what my mom calls Mrs. Fisher, the receptionist. They were talking about Mrs. Burgess’s old house. It’s nice. There’s a pond nearby that’s full of catfish.” She looked at me like she expected an invitation. Fishing was not my idea of a good time, or even a halfway decent time. Besides that, it sounded like a best friends’ activity.
All last year, I’d held strongly to Relocation Rule Number 6: It’s best not to make best friends. I’d made that mistake once before, and I wasn’t about to do it again.
“I don’t think we brought my fishing pole.” I’d never in my life laid eyes on a real fishing pole, but I’d learned from Nan that, when it came to strangers, less truth meant less trouble.
“I live right down the road from the old Burgess place. You can’t miss my house; it’s big, old, and bright yellow. If you want, you could ride your bike over. Maybe I can even find an extra rod,” she offered. Before I could answer, she waved and ran back up the steps.
“I don’t think we brought my bike either!” I yelled after her.
While Abby seemed nice enough, it turned out we had different taste in extracurricular activities, and houses too. The Burgess place was anything but nice. The building sat at the end of a dirt driveway that erupted in plumes of dust at the sight of a car tire. One set of shutters was missing and the other hung lopsided, like the whole house had been smacked catawampus.
Out in a field, I could see the glassy top of a large pond of murky green water. The banks rose up thick with weeds, and the water seemed to suck in the sun rather than reflect it. If it was full of anything, it’d be snakes and maybe a swamp monster or two.
Nan killed the engine. We sat while the dust settled and stared for a minute.
“Well, it’s a step up from the apartment complex,” she said. “I thought a house would be nice for a change. It’s furnished too. Had to give a deposit, plus first and last months’ rent for the year. But we’ll make do.” That was code for she’d spent all or most of our money. “Why not start off with the best?”
I studied the house. If this was the best, I needed to adjust my expectations. The perfect place didn’t necessarily mean the place we lived in. So, I opened my car door and tried to be open-minded.
Nan must have sensed my skepticism. “We’ll make it work. ‘Creativity takes courage.’ Henri Matisse.” She walked over to my side of the car, grabbed my hand, and pulled me forward.
The walk to the porch coated my new white canvas slip-ons in a thin layer of orange dirt. While Nan fiddled with the keys, the wind kicked up and, just as she unlocked the door, a sand-filled gust blew right in our faces. We stepped inside. Nan gasped and dropped the bags in the middle of the living room.
“Holy horseradish,” she whispered. She turned in a slow circle, her mouth hanging open as she took it all in. Every single piece of furniture was covered in pink fabric—the kitchen cabinets were painted pink, the wood floors were covered in pink patterned rugs, and the couch was worn pink velvet. “Jubilee, am I dreaming?” It took every inch of my self-control to keep from laughing, but then Nan looked at me all wide-eyed, and we busted into a fit of giggles.
I grabbed her hand. One thing I’d learned from Arletta was that a true crafter didn’t just see what was in front of them; they saw possibilities. I wasn’t ready to give up on Hope Springs, and I wouldn’t let Nan do it either. “Don’t worry. Like you said, with a bit of courage, creativity and fifteen”—I eyed the pink and mauve striped drapes in the living room—“thirty-five yards of upholstery fabric, anything is possible.” A couch cover wasn’t an easy thing to whip up, but sometimes the glamorganizing way of life wasn’t for the faint of heart.