WHILE VICKS IS away, me and Mel fix up a little house for Waffle. We rip the top off the Dunkin’ Donuts box and Mel hands me her super soft white T-shirt to put inside, the one she wore the day we left. When I feel it, I’m brought back to that night at the museum, how Vicks heaved Mel up and I held her steady so she could reach through the open window and unlock the door.
That was the night we met Old Joe. And Marco. And, piecing it together, I reckon it was the night Vicks broke up with Brady. Was that really only two days ago?
“Are you sure about this?” I say to Mel, fingering the shirt. “It’s kinda fancy for a duck.”
“It’s soft,” Mel says. “Waffle will like it.”
“But it’s the shirt you wore when…you know.”
She looks perplexed.
“When you met a certain special someone?” I prompt. “Brown eyes, nasty habit of sneaking up on folks, name rhymes with Sparko?”
Mel giggles. “‘Sparko,’” she repeats. It’s adorable how happy she gets just saying his not-even-real name.
“We can use Vicks’s salsa T-shirt,” I say. “She won’t mind, and your shirt’ll stay pure.”
“Pure?” Mel says. “It’s a shirt, Jesse. A soft cotton shirt that’ll keep our Waffle snug and cozy, so that you can stop worrying and get some sleep. And if you go to sleep, then maybe I can finally go to sleep.”
“But—”
Mel holds up her finger and shakes her head. “What is ‘pure,’ anyway?” She continues to hold up her finger, but no words spill forth.
“I’m waiting.”
“Um, I have nothing more on that, actually,” she says, dropping her hand to her lap. She giggles. “Except, come on. What’s a little duck poop between friends?”
So I accept the shirt. I fluff it just so in the bottom of the box, place Waffle inside, and set the makeshift bed on the floor. I stretch out on the seats above and try to go to sleep. But below me, Waffle quacks and patters about, nipping at her soft white blankie like it’s nice, but it sure isn’t her mama’s warm body.
Mel groans when I sit back up. From the rear seat, she says, “Jesse? I want you to put your hands above your head and leave the duck alone.”
“Oh, hush,” I say, scooping Waffle up and cradling her against my chest. “You sound like that itty-bitty policeman.”
But Mel doesn’t hush, and neither do I. Maybe ’cause we’re in an unfamiliar parking lot in the middle of an unfamiliar city? Maybe ’cause we’re anxious for Vicks, who by now is either sealing the love deal or saying her final good-byes. Or maybe we’ve gone around the bend from bone-deep exhaustion to gritty-eyed wakefulness, the sort where you can’t even relax your eyelids.
Whatever the reason, sleep won’t come.
So I ask Mel if she believes in heaven. I don’t know how anyone couldn’t believe in heaven, but then again, look at Vicks.
Mel hesitates. Then she says, “Are you thinking about your mum?”
I stroke Waffle’s soft feathers. She’s quiet now, and peaceful. “Yeah.”
“Jesse,” Mel says softly, “she’s not going to die.”
“How do you know?”
“Because…well, I don’t. I guess I just said it.”
“Bad things do happen, just like Vicks said.”
“I know. But good things happen too.”
“Huh,” I say. I stare at the Opel’s cracked ceiling. “Is that a Jewish thing? Focusing on the positive?”
“Maybe,” Mel says, laughing a little.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know. I just am. But, Jesse…”
“What?”
“It’s great that you believe so strongly in God, but I feel like sometimes you worry about the wrong things, like what’s pure and who’s a virgin and what the rules are for being Christian or Jewish or whatever.” The seat squeaks as she shifts. “Isn’t it possible that God’s bigger than all that?”
No, I think. God is God is God.
But then something in my brain shifts, opening the tiniest crack of…something. I don’t mean for it to. It just does. And I’m not saying yes, but I am just possibly saying maybe. Maybe to the idea of one big God, expanding in all directions, reaching people however He can. Like the sun, which is officially over the horizon now.
“I think you should have a talk show,” I tell her. “Mel in the Morning. What do you think?”
“Hah.” I hear her bumping around back there. “I think you need to call your mum.”
“Duh,” I say. I know I need to call Mama. Why does everyone have to keep telling me to call Mama? “But it’s five A.M. No way I’m calling Mama at five A.M. She’d tan my hide!”
“You need to call your mum,” she says again, sounding sad.
She’s silent for a long moment, so long I figure she’s drifted off. Waffle breathes beside me, safe in the crook of my elbow. Her bitsy head is tucked beneath her bitsy wing, and her bitsy yellow body puffs out with each teaspoon breath.
“Jesse?” Mel says.
“Yeah?”
“You pray, right? To God?”
“’Course.”
“And you, like, ask Him for help?”
“I guess. So?”
“So, you can ask us for help too, you know. Your friends. Vicks…and me.”
“I know,” I say defensively. Like, what kind of idiot doesn’t know how to ask for help?
Well. My kind of idiot, obviously.
But then I realize I do know. I didn’t used to, maybe, but now I do.
“You’re not alone,” Mel says sleepily. “Vicks and I, we’re here.”
Next thing I know, it’s morning and it’s bright out and I’ve got a stiff neck and a dented-in gut from the gearshift. And as much as I don’t want to disturb the peace, I can’t stay in this cramped position forever. Waffle stirs when I move, pulling her head from under her wing and shaking her cotton ball of a body. She pecks at a freckle on my forearm, and I make a note to track down a Miami pet store before we drive back to Nice ville. Waffle needs food, and not just potato chip crumbs. I’ll get her a water bowl, too, and a duck toy. Do they sell duck toys at pet stores? What would a duck toy even be?
Mel and Vicks aren’t here—the backseat is empty—and for a couple of seconds I’m confused. Then I remember: Vicks. Brady. The squat brick dorm we’re down the street from.
The fact that Vicks isn’t back yet is good, I think. At least, I hope it’s good. I hope it means they’re snuggled like puppies in his dorm-room bed, and I consider it a sign of the new-and-improved me that although the word sin flares into my mind, I blow it right out and let it evaporate into the air.
God is bigger than that. There is indeed a chance that He is.
I push myself up and squint out the windshield. Mel is standing with her back toward me in the half-filled parking lot, doing Pilates or some other rich-girl version of what the rest of us call stretching. Her skinny fanny pokes to one side, then the other, and I’m filled with love for that goofy girl. I’m so glad to know her—in fact I can’t imagine not knowing her—and I wonder if maybe there’s room for two best friends in my heart.
On the dashboard is Mel’s cell phone, and under the phone is a note scrawled on a napkin. “Call her,” it says, underlined three times and with a squillion exclamation points thrown in for good measure.
I exhale. Just ’cause she’s grown on me doesn’t keep her from being irritating as heck.
I scoop Waffle up and gently place her in her box. I get out of the car, careful to be super-quiet with the door so I don’t attract Mel’s attention. I extend my arms above my head, and it feels good. Oh, my spine. Oh, my knotted neck. Sleeping in the Opel isn’t the same quality experience as sleeping in the Black Pearl, that’s for sure.
I lean through the open window and grab Mel’s phone from the dash. I flip it open. I flip it shut. I walk to the front of the Opel and perch my butt on the bumper. If I call Mama—no, when I call Mama—what am I going to say?
My gut clenches, but I push through it. I will say what I need to say, that’s what.
I’ll say that I love her, and that I’ll go with her to her surgery.
That I’ll be there for her, and she sure better be there for me. Forever.
That entering wet T-shirt contests is trashy, and humiliates me, and could she please not ever do that again?
I’ll tell her I’m sorry I ran away, sorry I stole her car, sorry about so many things. But I’m keeping my duck. Her name is Waffle. And—oh yeah—I almost got eaten by a gator.
I bite my lip, imagining Mama’s reaction to that one.
Maybe I’ll leave that part out…and hope that she doesn’t ask about the huge gashes on the door.
Two figures appear at the far end of the parking lot, and my heart leaps when I see that it’s Vicks and Brady. They’re holding hands! Yay! Mel spots them and breaks out of her Pilates move. She squeals and claps, and Vicks shakes her head as if Mel is an embarrassment to the parking lot and the planet. She’s grinning, though.
Vicks gives Brady a squeeze, then goes over to Mel. The two of them say some stuff I can’t make out, Mel gives Vicks a happy hug, and then they turn toward the Opel. They take in the phone in my hand. Mel’s eyes go wide, and Vicks nods before giving me a big thumbs-up.
I shake my head, ’cause I haven’t actually dialed yet. Guess I need bravery lessons from little Mel. She and Vicks must read something into my gesture that’s more than I intend, ’cause they start toward me, wearing twin expressions of concern.
“What’s going on?” Vicks calls when she’s close enough.
“Oh, no,” Mel says. “Did something bad happen?”
“No, no, nothing bad happened,” I say. I hear my words, and a skittery giggle burbles up, ’cause shoot, more bad things happened in the last two days than I can count.
But we came through them, didn’t we?
And who knows? Maybe Vicks was on to something with her whole Old Joe bad-bottom appreciation ritual at the museum. ’Cause maybe, sometimes, a girl’s gotta be bad in order to figure out how to be good.
I punch in the numbers before I lose my nerve. I raise the phone. I hear the first ring.
Thanks, Old Joe, I silently pray. Long may you rock.