“LET’S CALL IT Poopy,” I say, sniffing. We’ve been driving south for about an hour. It’s one in the morning.
“It doesn’t smell,” says Jesse. “It’s just little baby duck poo.”
“That’s a good name!” I cry. “Poo. Short for Little Baby Duck Poo. Alternately called LBDP. “
“Vicks!”
“Then we can shorten it to LB or DP, and then later just Pee, and then later P-Baby. It can have ever-morphing little duck names. It’ll be like the rap mogul of duckland.”
“No.”
“Or else we could call it Turd.”
“What part of no do you not understand?” Jesse asks me.
I persist. “Turdball? That’s better.”
“You’re a sick person, you know that?” Jesse laughs.
“You’re not going to keep it, are you?” Mel wants to know.
“Of course I am!” Jesse answers. “And Mama loves animals. There’s no way she’ll turn it out.”
“Hey,” I ask her, “does that guy next door to you still have that hutch outside with the guinea pigs?”
“Uh-huh,” Jesse says. “Otis and Lola.” When Mel looks confused, Jesse adds, “There aren’t any yards where our trailer is, so you can see everyone’s business.”
“You think you can keep the duck in a hutch?” Mel asks, wrinkling her nose.
“Like made out of chicken wire but with a cozy place to sleep,” Jesse says. “Out the back of the trailer. With hay or wood chips or something. At least until she’s bigger.”
“Turdball will love it,” I tell her. “She’ll love the hutch. I’ll get Penn to help you build it, if you want.”
I say this because I know Jesse thinks Penn is cute, though she fools herself that it’s a secret. Besides the free Coke she always gives him, she stands in front of him too long when she brings his food, and one day I caught her in the Waffle bathroom combing her hair when he came in for breakfast and she was working the counter. She actually left her station and went in the back to fix her hair, which is not something Jesse would ever do unless she felt like her hair was really, really important just then.
Jesse pulls a strand of that very hair over her lips, and I think, Uh-huh. Do I know my Jesse or what?
Then she nods, which throws me.
“Are you nodding because you want me to call him?” I say.
“Um. Why don’t you give me his number, and I’ll call him?” she says.
“You’re going to call him?”
She blushes, but she doesn’t back down. “Well, yeah. Maybe.”
“Okay, cool,” I say. “Don’t let me forget.” I turn to the duck. “Turdball, don’t let me forget to give Jesse Penn’s number.”
“Her name is not Turdball,” Jesse says.
“Lucky?” suggests Mel. “Lucky Ducky?”
“Or Hope?” says Jesse.
“Hope the Duck? Please.” I am indignant. “We can do better than that. Ooh, how about á l’Orange?”
Jesse squeals in horror. “You guys!”
Mel follows my lead. “What about Roast?”
“Or Peking?”
“Or Curried? Or Smoked?”
“Roast is good,” I tell her. “That’s funny. Hi, Roast. Hi, little Roastie.”
Jesse makes a growly noise while she changes lanes. I can tell we’ve pushed it far enough.
“All right, what about Waffle?” I offer. “Because we all work at the Waffle.”
“I like it,” says Mel decisively. “That has my vote.”
“It’s kind of ducky, too, isn’t it?” I add. “’Cause it sounds like waddle. Which is how it walks.”
“Hi there, Waffle,” Jesse says experimentally. “Do you like that name?”
The duckling is silent.
“If you’re not answering me,” says Jesse in mock irritation, “then how am I supposed to know what you think?”
We’re back on the highway, headed south toward Coral Castle. I am lying down in the backseat. Mel moved up front to let me stretch out, since I didn’t sleep as well as they did in the hotel. My mind was too wound up to go rapid-eye-movement or anything.
Well. We are alive, we are here.
We are badass.
We have a duckling.
We have left our families and their diseases and their worry and their expectations. We left our school friends and our work friends and our jobs and lives. We shook them all off to be here, speeding down the interstate, singing “Suddenly I See” in the dark.
Here, there’s no senior year of high school, no money worries, no everyday life. Just the three of us and a small aquatic bird.
And my brain, which is still wound up. And the ball of ice that’s still in my chest.
I reread Fantastical Florida with a flashlight Mel bought at a gas station. I figure with this short delay for a near-death experience we’ll get to Homestead by about five A.M. Then we can hit a Waffle House and suck down coffee and eat some bacon hot off the grease until Coral Castle opens.
The name of the girl Ed Leedskalnin loved—Ed being the Latvian guy who built the castle—her name was Agnes Scuffs. Such a stupid name for someone so beloved.
If I were named Agnes Scuffs, I don’t think anyone would ever love me.
Hell, no one loves me now and my name is Victoria Simonoff. Which is a very sexy name, actually.
Agnes Scuffs didn’t love Ed back, so he moved 1,100 tons of coral by himself, using only his weird supernatural powers that he never even had until she dumped him. No one ever saw him build anything. Never saw him touch the coral. And no one ever helped him either. The guy was only five feet tall. When Agnes Scuffs broke his heart, he became magic.
I’m heartbroken.
I am.
I know I’m the one who broke it off with Brady, but I feel like he broke it off with me.
I used to think there was no way I’d ever build a coral castle for him, if he didn’t want me anymore. I thought I’d know how to get him back. Know how to make him want me again.
And if I couldn’t, I was sure I wouldn’t mope around. I’d just move on.
Now, I’m wishing that my heartbreak did make me magic. So I could make something beautiful, or do something heroic, and Brady would see it and that’s what would make him come back.
I would build a coral castle, if I could.