Page 31 of Shelter
Ava shrugged. “He keeps saying she’s like a fairy. Why would a guy say that if he didn’t like a girl?”
I felt my lip curl. “Why would he be such a jerk if he likes her?”
She laughed. “Sometimes, if a guy likes a girl, he’s mean to her to get her attention.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Sometimes it works,” Ava said with a shrug.
I realized then that while most people might be smarter than me at school stuff, that didn’t mean I lacked sense. I wouldneverfall for somebody who’deverbeen mean to me. And if a boy was doing that to get my attention, I’d give him my attention — in the form of a baseball bat.
“If Jane Eyre falls for Mr. Rochester, I’m gonna be so mad,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Please keep reading.”
Ava kept reading.
And two days later, I had to eat my words about Mr. Rochester. When Jane cried in the orchard when Mr. Rochester told her he’d soon marry, and she thought he would send her away, I nearly cried with her. And then he’d proposed.
“I ask you to pass through life at my side — to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
I wanted to clap when Jane said she would marry him. I even squealed.
Ava set down the book, a frown creasing her brow.
“What is it?” I asked, suddenly worried. “What does it say?”
“Well, they just got engaged, and the weather’s changing,” she said, still frowning.
“So?”
She held up the book, showing me its top, marking our place with her thumb. “A storm just came up right after she accepted him, which can’t be a good sign, and we’re only just past halfway,” Ava said darkly. “Something bad’s going to happen.”
“Ugh!” I groaned, hating the knowledge in my gut that she was right. “I hate this book.”
But that was now a lie. I loved it. I wanted Ava to keep reading. She usually only read for about two hours a day, complaining that her voice started to hurt if she went on longer. And Ava had grown a little hoarse over the last two days, so she stopped then.
On the Thursday after Easter, I went into the kitchen at noon, ready to meet Ava for lunch before we went out to the pool. I had my bikini on under a cover-up because while Ava was allowed to sit at the kitchen table in her bathing suit, Mama would have strangled me for that. She complained enough because my cover-up was a sheer aqua-blue material, and it still showed off my orange bikini underneath.
But my argument was that if Mrs. Abigail didn’t mind Ava sitting at the kitchen table in a bikini — the woman almost never set foot into the kitchen in order to see it, anyway — then she wouldn’t object to my cover-up.
Mama would grumble a little at my back-talk, but I knew she wasn’t going to push me too far. After all, I was doing schoolwork over spring break, and when had that ever happened before? I felt all kinds of smug about that, and I was ready to pull out the big guns and threaten to drop the whole project if she wouldn’t get off my case. But I didn’t have to. And I was glad I didn’t have to. Because I would have been bluffing.
IlovedreadingJane Eyre.
So, in my bikini, cover-up, and flip-flops, I waited at the kitchen table, eating the egg-salad sandwich Mama had fixed for my lunch. Of course, it wasn’t just any old sorry excuse for an egg-salad sandwich. Mama cooked for a living, and that meant that anything she made — for the Whitehursts, for me, or for herself — tasted divine.
This particular sandwich came on toasted sourdough bread. The egg salad was seasoned with a pinch of celery salt and a hint of curry powder. And during the spring and summer months, Mama would make her own mayonnaise. I didn’t know what her secret ingredient was, but nothing that came from the grocery store could ever measure up. Winter and fall months seemed long and sad affairs without her homemade spread.
On my plate next to this superior sandwich, Mama had placed a bunch of green grapes and a handful of kettle chips she’d made with a mandolin slicer and a deep fryer. She only made them on special occasions, and these were left over from Easter. Just as I hoped there’d be some leftover peach ice cream.
I munched on a chip and heard a door open and close upstairs.Finally,I thought, taking a hearty bite of my sandwich. I opened my paperback to the page where we’d left off yesterday and set the book face down, knowing Ava would read while Mama fixed her plate.
But the footsteps I heard on the stairs sounded heavier than Ava’s. Mid-chew, I frowned at the kitchen entrance and nearly choked on egg salad when Cole Whitehurst’s shape filled it.
Our eyes locked for an instant, and I noted his surprise at seeing me in his kitchen before I pulledJane Eyreto me like a life vest in open water and put my eyes on the pages.
“Welcome home, Cole,” Mama greeted him cheerfully. “You got back from Destin last night?”
I didn’t look up, pretending to fall straight back into my novel and blindly plucking a grape off my plate. Ever since the night two years ago when Cole had refused to help me with my schoolwork, pawning that job off on his sister, I’d mastered the art of ignoring him.
