Uncertain, TX: Chapter Eight

Previously… (Chapter 7 - Read) or (Chapter 7 - Audio) OR start from the beginning. Audio file to follow (so you get that East Texas twang).

Addy called midway through September, breathless with excitement over her new school, her study schedule, and the ski trip her parents promised her over the coming Thanksgiving, but before she could ask Dana about her freshman year at Karnack High, she was being called from the phone.

“I’ll call you right back,” Addy promised.

She didn’t.

“Cherry! The phone!”

“You think I can’t hear it?” Cherry snapped.

“Aren’t you usually jumping like a kangaroo to grab the damn thing?”

Cherry answered in her company voice, “Happy Holidays, Folsoms’,” then dropped back to her normal tone, chatting with whoever was on the other line about upcoming Christmas plans. Dana turned back to her book, ignoring the conversation in the other room.

She hadn’t talked to Addy since that one call in September.

Spring Break stretched before Dana, an entire week away from her mom who had gotten a temporary job as a hostess at a café in Mooringsport, across the state line. Fishing was at its best early in the morning, then Dana could spend the rest of the day tooling about the lake, looking for new haunts, and cleaning up trash. After finding a softshell turtle trapped in plastic soda rings, she made a point to do a little cleaning every day.

By the fifth day, she’d checked pretty much every cove and slough on the Texas side of the massive lake in the old canoe but couldn’t bring herself to cross the state line. That side was full of party barges and families waterskiing, anyway. Ronnie had given her the johnboat to use.

“You need a break, Girlie. Gonna get arms bulging like Popeye.”

She laughed as he made the tattoo of a pin up on his forearm dance.

He sent her off with kiss to the top of her head, an ice-cold soda from the machine on the deck of the marina and a sack of salted sunflower seeds. She slowly circled the bayou, zigzagging the river current to avoid it pushing her away from the one cove she’d refused to visit for months. She cut the motor and drifted towards the lone tree, the waterline almost to the base of the door. Inside, all the blankets and rubbish accumulated the previous summer hung off the interior ladder inside a water-proof bag Ronnie had given her the year before, protected from the elements. It seemed like too much effort to re-nest the top deck of the tree for just an afternoon, so instead she took one of the seat cushions from the boat and carried that up top to keep her butt from going numb and fished a paperback from her jeans’ pocket.

She made it for a couple of hours before loneliness crept in; dread for a long, solitary summer stretched before her and drove her back down to the boat. The noise of the two-stroke engine effectively drowned out her thoughts for the rest of the afternoon.

Fourth of July fell on a weekend, so the lake was packed, full of loud families, drunken college students, and wannabe fishermen. Dana skulked about the town, the lake, even the Shady Glade gift shop with the pitiful hope that Addy and her family had come back this summer or at least for the holiday and Dana would see her again. She’d even paddled east to the Louisiana side, the part known as Big Lake, where she knew several large houses sprawled in a fairly new gated community along the water’s edge. Portions of the lake bottom had been cleared of cypress to allow for oil derricks and ski boats. It was the moneyed side.

Here and there, brightly painted party barges floated past her as she drifted in Ronnie’s busted, rusted canoe, boisterous families spending the holiday together drinking and having fun. Many waved at her, but others, particularly those on the nicer boats, looked down at her in her cut offs and ragged, sleeveless shirt, a bright orange bucket-hat on her head to keep her face out of the sun, and looked quickly away. In the distance was that large paddleboat she’d seen the previous summer. It was too large to navigate the shallower bayou waters but fit perfectly here where the dam up north-northeast kept the waters high.

So at least part of the Winn family had come back to the lake.

Music carried over the water, classic rock, as well as the sounds of groups of people having a great time.

Dana wondered if Addy had brought a friend from school to spend the summer at the Winns’, someone more refined, less likely to be an embarrassment, someone with nice clothes and better manners. She jammed the oar into the water, and with a few vicious strokes, turned back West and headed home.

She didn’t bother traveling that far from home again that holiday weekend.

The lake emptied out by Monday. Her dad had given her a new fishing pole for Christmas much to Cherry’s horror.

“I told him to give you money for some bras! You’re getting too big to go jiggling and flopping around like that.”

Dana took Ronnie’s beat-up canoe to Whatley’s Island where she’d had luck the last week with yellow bass, probably because most folks didn’t bother with them since they were smaller than their white and large-mouthed cousins. She’d brought a netted sack to collect all the trash the vacationers left behind. The Styrofoam beer cooler lids and paper plates made floating islands that ruined her fishing spots. She paddled around scooping up trash until she had a good-sized catch, sometimes parking on the shore to grab discarded beer and soda bottles for the recycling deposit. As she was pushing off the sand to paddle back home with a nice cache of intact glass bottles that would fetch her a few bucks, she heard someone call out.

“Hey! Bird Girl!”

She slipped, almost face-planted into the boat. Sighing, she tugged the canoe back onto the shore. Dana dragged the hem of her sleeveless t-shirt over her face to mop off the sweat and turned around, heart hammering like mad.

Adelaide Winn was still the prettiest, most put-together girl Dana had ever seen in her life.

Her blonde hair was longer, styled perfectly so it framed her face and bounced on her shoulders. She looked leaner, like she’d spent the winter and spring playing sports or doing Jazzercise. Dana knew all about Jazzercize—Cherry had a VHS tape with routines to keep her waist trim. Where Addy’s ironed, pale-yellow Polo was tucked into her white shorts, her waist looked trim, too. Her legs were start-of-summer-tan, well-shaped and long. She looked like a teen model. Dana, well, Dana’s long, muscled limbs were covered in duckweed and swamp water, she had on stained clothes, the tip of her nose was still peeling from where she’d gotten too much sun and she was barefoot. Somehow that was the most embarrassing thing, that and the bag of literal trash she was hauling around.

Dana poked at an empty beer bottle through the netting. On one hand, Addy finally materializing was what Dana had wanted since last August. But on the other, where the hell had she been all this time? And why did she always have to materialize just when Dana was at her most swamp-rattiest?

It couldn’t be helped. Besides, she was hurt. Mad, even. “I wondered if I’d see you at all this year.”

Addy shifted her weight from foot to foot, her cool demeanor broken for now. “This was the soonest I could get away. I’m sorry, Dana. How… how are you?”

“Fine.”

“Don’t be mad, okay? You have no idea how hard it’s been to get away to see you.”

Dana tucked the bag of trash in the bow of the canoe where her busted up sneakers rested. “I guess I wouldn’t, because I never heard back from you. I didn’t have your number in Shreveport to call because you always called me.”

Addy worried her hands. “I know, Dana, I know. My mom… she is such a—” Addy stomped her foot. “Look. I’m sorry. Dana, I really mean it. I missed you so much.”

Dana stared at the sun’s reflection on the green water, at the stained waterline a foot above its surface on the copse of trees ringing the wee bay, at anything but the naked expression on Addy’s face.

“Dana, please.”

“I guess I missed you, too,” Dana sighed.

“And I don’t care what my mom says. I’ll give you my new number in Shreveport. I got my own line for Christmas.”

Dana’s heart clenched at the thought of Addy’s mother deciding she wasn’t worthy of a phone call. “Christmas, huh?”

Addy blushed. “School was really intense this year. My parents had to get me a tutor. My dad opened up a new… something, I don’t really pay attention, but my mom and I had to travel with him because he was gone for so long overseas and—”

“You went overseas?”

Addy nodded.

“Watch out,” Dana said as she dragged the boat high enough so it wouldn’t drift off and dropped the oar inside. While Dana chewed on the inside of her cheek, stuck on whether a handshake or just a smile would be enough, Addy flung herself at Dana, wrapping her up in a hug.

Dana hugged her back, tentatively at first then, when Addy made a small hurt noise, tightened her grip. They stood there for a long moment, rocking gently and holding each other. Finally, Addy pulled away, her grin as wide and beautiful as Dana remembered.

Addy knuckled away tears on her face. “I really did miss you.”

Dana caught an errant tear rolling down Addy’s cheek. “Always crying.”

Laughing, Addy grabbed Dana’s hand and kissed the back of it. “That’s me, a big ol’ cry baby. So what about you? What’s been going on?”

Dana shrugged. “Well, I didn’t go overseas. Over to Marshall to stay with my dad at New Year’s. His wife Linda let me have a sip of her sparkling wine when the ball dropped.”

“Was it good?”

Dana shrugged. “Tasted like ginger ale.”

“So that’s it? You had some champagne on New Year’s? Nothing else?”

Dana leaned against a pine tree, arms crossed for lack of anything to do with her hands. “I mean…what else is there to do? I read books? Went to school?”

Addy pulled a leaf caught in Dana’s hair. “You cut your hair short.”

“It was always in the way.”

“I like it,” she said, running her fingertips through the shorter sides, then combing the feathered top smooth, destroying any measure of calm Dana was trying to hold onto. “It’s like Princess Di’s, but shorter. It suits your face.”

Dana would have to get used to Addy’s casual touches all over again.

“What were you doing? Mussel hunting?”

Dana grinned. “You remembered not to call it fishing.”

“I did have a tutor at school this year,” Addy said. She gently kicked out at Dana’s ankle.

“Not hunting. Nothing that fun. Just cleaning up trash. Fourth of July folks usually chuck anything not nailed down into the water. I hate it.”

“Rude.”

“Mm.” Dana glanced at her boat then at Addy. Addy had on white denim shorts, short enough that most of her legs were exposed. The canoe Ronnie’d loaned her was covered in dust.

“You want help?” Addy asked, moving as if to climb aboard.

“You’ll get filthy!”

Addy rolled her eyes and stepped into the murky water, probably ruining her sneakers. “I can wash this.”

Dana was reminded anew just how much she cared for Addy, always surprising Dana with a lack of care for her fine clothes in favor of them spending time together. “Well, okay.”

It wasn’t as easy to pick up where they’d left off. Dana’s lonely winter stretched between them, pockmarking their conversation with fits and starts and awkward stretches of not knowing what to say or how to get back to where they’d been.

Dana ran the boat aground by Pelican Lodge’s catfish stand and waited for Addy to disembark before collecting the bag of trash she’d picked up.

“Oh, pee-yew,” Addy groaned, waving her hand in front of her nose as they neared the restaurant’s dumpster.

Dana shook out the mess from her bag into it, the plastic and broken glass clanging and crashing and smashing into its empty interior with such a clatter that a flock of birds were frightened off the roofline.

She dusted her hands onto the seat of her cut offs. “Guess you’re just not used to trash anymore.”

Dana tried to brush past her and get back in the boat, but Addy caught the back of her t-shirt and tugged. “Come on. Let’s go wash our hands a get a soda.”

“I don’t have any money on me.”

Addy looped their arms together, almost dragging Dana up the porch to the cafe. “You know I do.”

Dana didn’t know why she felt so mulish about this. She refused to meet Addy’s eyes in the mirror as they washed their hands in the shared stream of water, or across the table when Shirl took their order.

“I’ll just have water.”

Dana picked at the chip in the tabletop when Addy corrected her and told Shirl to bring two large Dr. Peppers.

“Maybe I didn’t want a soda, did you think of that?”

Addy chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Yes, you do want one, you’ve probably been out in the sun for hours. And you’re just being stubborn. I know it’s your birthday today. Let me at least buy you a coke.”

Dana rolled her eyes and kicked back in the vinyl booth, arms akimbo on the back of the seat, eyes darting everywhere and seeing nothing, particularly not the unhappy expression on Addy’s face.

“Look. You’re still mad at me. I would be, too. But please. Dana.” Addy’s voice cracked. Barely above a whisper she said, “You’re all I thought about when… Dana, you’re the only good thing I have to look forward to. Please don’t be mad anymore.”

Dana looked at her, really looked at her. Yes, her thick blonde hair was pretty, perfectly styled, her make-up tasteful and just enough to enhance her features, her clothes expensive looking. But there was a brittleness to her, too, a wariness in her gaze, her shoulders curled in just enough to remind Dana of a spooked animal.

Slowly, slowly she stretched a hand across the table and wrapped her fingers around Addy’s hands where she’d been working and wringing them together, waiting for Dana to get off her high horse. Addy burst out in a part sob, part laugh, twisting her hand so they could twine their fingers together properly.

“I guess having money doesn’t just make everything perfect, huh?”

A few tears clung to Addy’s lashes as she shook her head, no. “Missed you, Bird Girl.”

“Missed you, too. But.” Dana cleared her throat, letting go of Addy’s hands when Shirl came back with their sodas and a basket of hush puppies and bottle of ketchup. “Addy, you can’t just drop me and do that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ crap.”

“Dana, I—”

“Hey. You did. You know you did. And you can tell me why one day when you’re ready, but that hurt. You made me…” Dana sighed. “It made me feel bad, like I didn’t matter at all.”

Addy nodded. Addy’s hand spasmed on the tabletop. She curled it into a fist. “You’re not trash, Dana.”

Dana stabbed at the ice in the red, plastic cup with her straw. “Don’t I have enough people in my life making me feel that way? I gotta take it from you, too?”

“You’re not out of mind, not ever. I just had…complications.”

“Complications.” Dana dragged a hush puppy through a puddle of ketchup. “Too many activities? Trips? Friends?”

“No. Dana. I—I’ll tell you one day. But not today. Today I just want to be happy and be with you after missing you so much. You’re pretty much the only good person in my life.” Addy drew in a deep, shaky breath. “You have my word I won’t let my folks keep us apart again. I’ll make sure of it.”

The chasm Dana envisioned between them vanished with that admission.

“Happy birthday, Dana.”

“Well…” Dana drawled. “I guess it is now.”

_{Next chapter on Tuesday, August 18th at 8am CT, with audio book at 8:30am.}

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