My heart fluttered with happiness and I put my hands in the air and twirled in a circle, even though Kya and James were dragging their feet a couple of steps behind me. The soothing scent of fresh lavender filled Main Street even more than usual. The smell lightened my mood and contributed to my dancing despite the growliness of my two best friends.
They couldn’t ruin this for me today. My date with Levi had been wonderful, with lots of kisses to make up for lost time. I’d stayed up late dreaming of more.
The Lavender Festival was one of my absolute favorite things about summer in Tadita. Yes, it was hokey and old-fashioned. There were no fancy electronics or rides or games or flashy displays. But there was food and flowers and I loved every inch of it. Even the weather was cooperating with sunshine and no rain or dark clouds in sight.
As part of the festivities, almost everyone wore purple somewhere on their body. Even James wore a purple T-shirt. Kya had a purple boa wrapped around her neck and both of us wore awful purple feather earrings I bought us a few years ago. I rocked a pair of purple shorts that did absolutely nothing for my skin tone, but I didn’t care.
Vendors were set up all over streets closed off to traffic. Jewelry. Crafts. And of course there were flowers. Flower displays everywhere. We passed a cotton candy vendor with no lineup and I stopped and bought the biggest bag of purple cotton candy they had. I ripped off a hunk and shoved it in Kya’s mouth until she laughed, getting it all over her face and hands. James dug his hand in the bag and came out with half the spun sugar, smiling like a little boy.
“My kryptonite,” he said happily.
The sugar rushed to our brains and my grumpy friends loosened up a little.
“Look!” I yelled.
At the end of the street, there was a contest going on and a parade of dogs on leashes were wearing costumes and trotting in a circle with their owners. Some of the owners wore matching outfits. I spotted a Chihuahua dressed as Yoda. And a wiener dog bride.
“Ahhhh.” Even Kya laughed and pointed out her favorites. We howled when a huge sheep dog dressed as Princess Leia rounded up her back to take a gigantic poop in front of the judges. And then a dog dressed as Shrek mounted Yoda, and the little boy holding the leash yelled at the top of his lungs. The three of us cracked up again.
“So,” I said to Kya. “We’re going to set James up with Chantelle. They will totally love each other. And get married and have babies.”
Kya glanced at James. “Hmm. Maybe.”
I giggled. “Look how red you are, James. Chantelle can’t wait to meet you. I am so stoked.”
“Come on. Let’s go to the barns to see the horses,” Kya said with a skip in her step. Her favorite part of the fair was horses wearing beautiful floral bouquets. Most of the horse owners offered free rides down Main Street.
The barns were past the Recreation Center where one of the ice skating areas was cleared to the concrete floor and used to display fair entries. We hadn’t gone inside, but I knew from memory that rows and rows of tables would be set out, lined with entries for contests like best pie or best LEGO creation. Some would have ribbons on them. In eighth grade, I’d won the prize for my homemade flower planter and still had the cherry red ribbon pinned to the bulletin board in my room.
We waltzed past the Recreation Center and then James stopped at another vendor to buy a bag of fresh kettle corn. He walked backward in front of me to offer me a handful and turned quickly and I opened my mouth to warn him but there was a big thunk. I stopped and winced on his behalf. He’d walked straight into a pole. With his nose.
“Ouch.” He rubbed his nose and blood covered his hand.
Kya laughed. “Dude,” she said. “I think you dented that pole.”
“He’s hurt.” I bumped her with my hip. “You okay?” I asked. We stopped walking and people veered around us. I took his arm and pulled him off to the side of the road. Kya followed behind us.
“I’m fine,” he said in a nasal voice, holding his nose.
“You’re not fine.”
I took the popcorn bag from his other hand and saw that blood had dripped over the top. I wrinkled my nose up and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. Then I pushed James down so he was sitting on the curb. “You okay?” I sat down beside him and pulled off the hoodie I’d wrapped around my waist for later, when the sun went down. I handed it to James. “Press this to your nose.” He said no but his nose was bleeding and spilling over his hands.
“Go ahead, James, it’s black. And old.” Not exactly true. I’d bought it at the beginning of the summer, but we didn’t have anything else to sop up his blood with. I put it gently to his nose and he took it and held it there.
“Whoa,” Kya said, and plopped her butt on the other side of me. “You have a lot of blood for such a skinny guy,” she said to him.
“I can spare it,” he said without glancing at her.
“It’s not like sperm, James. It doesn’t grow back.”
“Sperm doesn’t grow back. It takes two and a half months to mature in the body.”
“Now you’re an expert on sperm too? Funny, ’cause it’s not like you’re exactly going around filling the women of the world with yours.”
He glared at her, the hoodie still pressed up against his nose. “Yet there you are, the original donor recipient.”
“Would you two shut up,” I said sharply. A woman holding young kids by their hands gave me a dirty look as she walked by.
Kya and James glanced at me, seemingly taken aback. Definitely not my Lavender Festival voice. “So not appropriate,” I said to them both. “And please don’t talk about your sperm. That’s gross,” I said to James.
“You have no idea how gross,” Kya said.
Pain radiated in my stomach. The two of them snarled at each other with something more than anger. It bordered on hate. I wiped away a bead of sweat, looking back and forth between them. “Guys. Come on. We’re here to have fun.”
That mood was gone.
“He thinks he knows everything about everything,” Kya said to me. “He has a pole up his skinny butt. A ‘deeply intellectual’ pole he is so overly fond of fornicating with. I’m sure he and Chantelle will hit it off perfectly. She’s a pain in the ass too.”
“Big words, Kya. You get them off a gossip website?”
A woman holding a large glass vase filled with flowers walked by and gave them a dirty look. We were collecting way too many of those.
“How about condescending? You like that word, right, James?”
“Condescending? Do you even know what that means?” he said with a smirk.
“Funny.” Kya got to her feet. “You know what, James? I happen to like pop culture and I don’t give a crap about politics. Does that make me a bad person? Should I feel like I’m not as good as you are because your overgrown brain is full of shit that bores the crap out of people?”
“Whoa!” I stood up and put my hand on Kya’s arm, but she ignored it. She ignored me and the curious glances from people around us.
“I do feel like I’m not as good as you, okay, James. Does that make you feel better? You wear your geekiness so proudly and think it makes you so special. Well guess what? It’s as much a cliché as cheerleaders or football players. I’m sick of it. And of you.”
She swiveled on her stylish sandals, swooshing the boa that had come loose around her neck. She marched off in the opposite direction of the barns.
“Kya!” I yelled. I glanced at James, but his head was down and he stared at the sidewalk.
“Go ahead,” he said without looking up. “Go after her. Take her side, you always do.”
“What the hell is going on with you two?” I snapped, keeping my eye on Kya as she set off through the crowd. I wanted to stamp my feet and yell at both of them to stop it. Stop ruining things.
“Why don’t you ask her?” he said, still staring at the ground.
And then he got up, still holding my hoodie to his nose, and walked the other way. “I’ll clean your hoodie and get it back to you.”
I stood in the middle, unable to choose which one to go after, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And what to do about it.
I had no idea.