Where did you get the name Trip?”
We had been in every class together that morning, and now we were walking toward the cafeteria for lunch. I didn’t catch Trip’s real name during roll call, but it had sounded like Something-Something Hedgeclipper the Fourteenth. I always thought nicknames were interesting. Like, GiGi obviously stands for the Gs in Galileo Galilei. And I knew this boy back home whose real name was Buford Ballsy, only everyone called him The Butt on account of how he loved nothing better than to moon you from the school bus window. Though if you ask me, it’s a pretty sad situation if your real name is worse than being called The Butt.
“Did you used to trip a lot as a kid or something?”
“No, it’s short for”—he made a face—“Triple. Because I’m the third. Bradford Breckinridge Davis the Third. Lame, right?”
“Oh no, I really like it. You’re just like Thurston Howell the Third.”
“Is he new here?”
“No, he was the rich guy from that old TV show about the boat that broke down on a desert island—you know the one?”
“No.”
“Well, it was about a whole bunch of people that get shipwrecked, and there’s a professor who’s, like, the smartest man in the universe and a movie star and some farm girl who was always in short-shorts. Anyway, Thurston Howell the Third was the millionaire.”
“What happens?”
“I never actually watched it, but my sister, DiDi, used to tell me about it, because it was our mama’s favorite show growing up.” I smiled. “DiDi says Mama was a real feminist. Like, completely ahead of her time. When she was little, she thought it wasn’t fair that Thurston Howell got to be a Third but she didn’t know any girls who were. So she decided right there and then to start a tradition that every firstborn girl in the family should be named Delta Dawn, like her, till there was a Third. So my big sister is Delta Dawn the Second.”
Trip looked at me. “Delta Dawn?”
“It was this really famous country song the year Mama was born,” I said. It’s funny how names work out. Here DiDi and Mama were named after an old country song, and they were both hairdressers. And I was named after one of the most famous scientists of all time, and, well, I doubted I would ever end up cutting hair. Not that I would mind. It seems like a really cool job to me, and I’d get to hang out with DiDi more.
“And your real name’s Galileo.…”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess my family likes to do things pretty different. Kind of weird, huh?”
“No, I… I like different.” He looked down, then back up at me again. “Does that mean your mom will ask your sister to name her first kid Delta Dawn, too?”
I was quiet for a second. Trip just made me feel so comfortable, I forgot he didn’t know about my whole life. “Well, she—Mama, I mean—died when I was a baby, so she can’t really ask.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Aw, that’s okay.”
“So you live with your dad?”
“Well.” I looked up the hall. The cafeteria was just ahead. I wondered if we would sit together. “He was never in the picture, if you know what I mean. When Mama died, we moved away from Verity to live with our friend Lori a couple of towns over. DiDi got this job sweeping hair at a salon, but now she’s a full-time hairdresser and she’s really, really good. Everyone says. She never even went to beauty school, because we never had the money for it back—What?”
Trip was studying me again. “Nothing. You’re just… you’re really… open.”
I stopped walking for a second and stood there in the hallway. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I was Saying It Like It Is, but maybe this was the kind of town where you keep your mouth shut.
But then he smiled.
And I knew.
It didn’t matter what kind of pie I was, Wish or pecan. He just liked me.
I guess it was the perfect moment for another Recipe for Success zinger, but instead, I told him the truth. “Thanks. You—well, you make it really easy. To be open, I mean.”
There might have been a second when we both realized that we’d only met that morning and maybe it was kind of weird to get so personal so soon, but then Trip made it easy again and nudged me with an elbow. “So, if that professor was so smart, why didn’t he just fix the boat?”
“You know, I asked DiDi the exact same thing.”
“What’d she say?”
I remembered how serious she had looked at the time. “She said the real question was why didn’t he just build a new one.”
“Right… with supplies from the desert island store…” Trip said.
“Or maybe he could have ordered one from the desert island catalog?” I added.
As we walked into that noisy cafeteria together, I made a note to myself that if I was ever stuck on a desert island, I should probably bring someone with survival skills that were a little more practical than DiDi’s.