Yesterday, I was boiling hot mad in church when Melissa and Lottie were passing notes back and forth and Lottie wouldn’t even tell me what they were talking about. When church was over, I grabbed Momma off that platform and said, “Come on, let’s go.” I barely even looked at Lottie when we left.
But later, after Momma and I had gotten a good ways down the road, the Townsends’ truck roared by. Mr. Townsend honked the horn and the girls leaned out and shouted, “Violet! Violet!” Lottie hung out the window and waved. “See you in a few!”
Well, my heart swelled up and I waved back and watched their truck tear down their driveway, spinning out a cloud of dust.
“Going to the fish fry?” Momma asked.
“Yep.” ’Course I was. I couldn’t be mad anymore, not after the whole Townsend family practically fell out of the truck to make sure I was coming.
“I think I may take a nap, then,” Momma said, as if this wasn’t the same conversation we had every Sunday.
After she lay down, I got myself ready and ran over to Lottie’s.
“Where’s Melissa?” I asked Lottie soon as I walked through her back door. Figured I better prepare myself.
Lottie raised her eyebrows and handed me a paring knife for the lemons. “I think Melissa’s done with fish fries.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. I didn’t mean it, of course, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I made a clean slice through a lemon and it squirted me on the cheek.
“Yep,” Lottie said. “Just you and me.”
I couldn’t help but smile even though I’d just stuck a lemon in my mouth.
So things are right back to normal today. Lottie and I are in her kitchen making crusts for apple pies. I’m pressing out a perfect pastry circle. This is a chore I like, pushing the rolling pin like a steamroller across the dough. I stretch the dough till it’s almost breaking. Then I poke two holes in the top half for eyes and a bunch of holes, snowman-style, for a smile.
“Look,” I say.
Lottie stops rolling for a second, looks up, and laughs. Setting aside her rolling pin, she pokes some holes in her dough. “Look at mine!”
Her face is even better—she made Xs for the eyes and a line for the lips, so her dough face is either asleep or drunk. We giggle and ball up our dough to roll it out again.
When I look up, I notice Lottie’s got her bathing suit on under her shirt. Yesterday, too. Well, it is hot in here. They don’t have air-conditioning either, and the fans are just blowing the hot air around.
“We going swimming later?”
Lottie tilts her head. “What?”
“We going swimming?” I point to her neck where her bikini top is tied. “You got your suit on.”
Lottie licks her lips. “Oh, that. Um . . .” She looks down, rolls a little dough, looks back up. “I don’t know if there’ll be time.”
“What do you mean? I’ll just run and get my suit after we get these pies in.” No big deal.
“Well, I mean, like—” She sets her rolling pin down and looks at me straight on. “Okay, don’t be mad, but Melissa invited me over to watch Paris Heights with her.”
My eyes narrow into slits so thin I can barely see out of them. My cheeks turn into stone.
Her shoulders droop. “Violet!”
“What?” I say and purse my lips.
“She’s nice. I don’t know why you don’t like her.”
“I never said that!”
Lottie leans her head. “It kind of shows.”
I look away from her so she can’t see that I know what she’s talking about. “She tries to be so glamorous all the time.”
“She thinks you have pretty eyes.”
Okay, I do like hearing that. But still, I’m not giving up my best friend for “pretty eyes.” I shrug so’s Lottie can see I don’t care about that.
She heaves a big sigh. “I’m allowed to have other friends, you know. You do.”
I lay my perfect pie circle in a pan. I grit my teeth as I roll out the next ball. “No, I don’t.”
“What do you call Eddie?” She settles a crust and rolls out another ball too. “Half the time you’re out doing something with him.”
I roll faster, harder. “Eddie doesn’t count. He’s a boy. Besides, you don’t like doing some of the stuff we do.”
We got the crusts in the pans and the tops rolled out. The windows darken as we work.
“Maybe there’s stuff I like to do that you don’t like to do.” She pinches around the crust so the top and bottom’ll stay together. “I’m just saying that you have other friends and I don’t get mad about it.”
It’s true. She don’t ever get mad when I’m out with Eddie. But like I said, Eddie’s a boy. Melissa’s trying to get my spot. I try to get the madness out of my face. It’s still in my heart, but I don’t want Lottie to know that. I just want everything to be like it always is. I grab the apples and a knife and start cutting. “I don’t see what’s so interesting about Paris Heights.”
Lottie laughs and grabs an apple. “You’ve never even seen it.”
I am beginning to simmer. She knows Momma don’t allow me to watch programs like that. I use my knife like an ax. Chop. Chop. Chop. I’m done cutting apples. As we mix the apples with sugar and spices, a long train of thunder rumbles by.
“I wonder if we’ll have time to bake these pies,” Lottie says.
“Plenty of time,” I say. I dump the filling into both pans and we lay the tops on. “That thunder is far away.”
Then it booms again.
“I don’t know,” Lottie says, a worried look on her face. “Sounds like it’s getting louder to me.”
Thunder drums in the clouds again. Irritation crosses over me. I know what she’s getting at. “You just want to hurry up and go to Melissa’s.”
“No, I don’t. I just don’t know if there’s time for these pies to bake before the storm starts.”
“You can’t tell when a storm’s going to hit? Well, I can tell you.” I grab the pies, open the oven, and slide them in. “It ain’t hitting now, so these pies are going in.” I slam the oven shut. Paris Heights will have to wait.
I spin around and look at her. “What do you want to do now?” I ask. “We can’t go swimming.”
Lottie fingers the ties at her neck. “Let me clean up this mess first.” She goes to the sink, looking out the dark window as she runs the water.
A soft light flashes inside the clouds. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—crack!
Lottie turns around. “I think we should turn everything off.”
I stand up and cross my arms. “No! That storm is three miles away.”
A bright strike flashes through the back windows and I forget to count.
Lottie frowns at me and stomps over to the box fan. “That’s it. I’m turning everything off.” She twists the knob, crosses her arms, and looks at me.
Static rushes across my scalp and down my arms. All my hairs stand up. I look at Lottie in slow motion and my mouth starts to form her name. Then light races down the kitchen wall and flares out the oven and at the same time—BOOM!—a bomb explodes. My ears are deafened. My heart hammers against my chest.
I start crying.
A fire is burning inside the oven. The smoke detectors shriek and Lottie’s screaming and I’m screaming too ’cause I don’t know what to do— Lord, help me—and then I’m getting up, I’m grabbing Lottie, and we stumble out of there and cross the yard, slipping and falling through the rain till we climb my steps and fall into my house. We hug each other and cry.
Then I remember learning 9-1-1 in school. I let go of her and run to the phone.
“What’s your emergency?” the lady asks.
I sob into the phone.
The lady says, “Take a breath and speak clearly. What’s your emergency?”
I take one big breath. “My best friend’s house just got struck by lightning.”