Candy Colored Sky, стр. 26
“You all are useless. I’m running an underground casino in the garage and you all just . . . let it happen.” Mom slices through the air with her hand before standing to take her empty plate to the sink.
“Eleanor, you are welcome here anytime. Thank you for breakfast, and if he doesn’t let you sit in on that boys club he has in our garage . . .” My mom pauses to emphasize her next words by pointing at my grandpa. “You let me know. I have ways of making him understand.”
“Ha ha!” Grandpa tilts back in his seat to laugh. My mom pauses behind him on her way out the door and leans down to kiss the top of his head before calling him an old fool.
When Jake turned eighteen, his teammates kidnapped him at midnight and took him to a strip club. Me, I lost a pancake showdown and displayed my weird-ass family dynamic in front of the girl who, until lately, I haven’t been able to utter a full sentence to. I honestly think I come out ahead.
“I love your family,” Eleanor says, leaning toward me and taking my fork off my plate, stealing a taste of my breakfast for herself. I push it closer to her without saying a word, and she finishes every last bite.
Eight
Grandpa takes over cleaning up after we all finish eating and mom’s off to her weekend job. He says he’s doing me a favor for my birthday, but I know better—he’s sending me off to spend time with Eleanor on my own. True to form, he adds a waggle of his thick eyebrows when she leaves the kitchen, just to make me sweat.
I sent her up to my room without me to get her away from Grandpa, but now that I’m standing in the hallway watching through the cracked opening of my door while she inspects every element of my room, I regret giving her free rein.
I doubt she’ll notice it, but I have a picture of her amid the collage of random things I think are cool that I taped to my wall right next to my night stand. Even more pathetic? It’s a picture from last year’s yearbook that I photocopied at my mom’s office. It’s blurry and pixelated, but it’s the only photo of her I have. There is no way I will come across as anything other than a sad obsessed puppy dog if she sees that.
My nerves grow as she gets closer to that area of my room. I decide to head off trouble and burst into my room with enough fanfare to bring her attention to me completely.
“Sorry, I was talking to my grandpa for a few minutes,” I give as my excuse.
“I was just scoping out your library.” She points over her shoulder at the makeshift bookcase I built with cinderblocks and two-by-six boards. Just one more impressive display of how I spend my Friday and Saturday nights.
“Notice the dearth of cooking books on the shelf.” My joke earns a quick laugh.
“I was looking at the Bradbury. You have a lot of his,” she says, moving closer to the books and running her fingertips across the spines. “I thought Green Town was a real place for the longest time.”
She’s referencing Something Wicked This Way Comes. This little slice of a shared experience sinks into my chest. I smile because of it, mouth stretched wide enough that I can feel the heat on my cheeks, a blush put there because I’m excited.
“I tried to find it once. Seriously, I totally wanted to go to that carnival and investigate.” My words come out like those of an excited child, and my mood shifts to being embarrassed. I look down at my feet as I stuff my hands in my pockets and kick at the thick pile of my carpet. I end up in my desk chair, partly to draw her attention this direction, away from her picture, and also to give my nervous body some shelter. It does very little to slow the drumming in my chest, though, especially when Eleanor sits on the end of my bed, folding her legs up to make herself comfortable.
“I would have gone with you. I mean, it would be easier with the Bronco, but we so could have walked there.” Her eyes animate as she leans forward and rests her chin in her palms, elbows propped on her legs. I’m puzzled by how one person could be that flexible, but even more, how she can make an expression so dreamy that I’m practically able to see her imagination at work.
I cross my leg and lean back, threading my fingers behind my neck as I spin slowly in the chair.
“Where do you think Green Town would be?” I muse. I try to appear as relaxed as her. The difference between us is I’m completely faking it.
“Definitely south of the city. Way south. Somewhere with lots of woods, and really old homes and narrow streets.” I can tell by the wondering way she describes her version of a Ray Bradbury setting that she’s a legitimate fan and I grin at the ceiling, nerding out.
“You know, he based Green Town on his hometown, which is north and closer to Chicago,” I say, showing off my trivia knowledge. I drop my chin and meet her waiting steely eyes that pin me and cause me to shift and look at her sideways with caution.
“Yeah, well he was wrong. That’s not how it looks in my head. It looks like woods, and big trees and lots of fog. A suburb, ya know?”
She isn’t wrong. That’s exactly how I imagine it, too.
“Yeah,” I muse, leaning back again, and dropping both feet to the floor as I stretch my body in the chair. “You’re right.”
“Can I have your phone? Just for a sec.” She holds both palms out toward me