Everything (4 page)

“That ther’ was high fashion in my day, chile,” said Opal as she pursed her lips as if I didn’t appreciate fashion, which clearly, I didn’t.

By the time I got to school, I had missed thirty minutes of my first class and the professor gave me the “Really, you’re late for the first day of class?” look, which I tried to ignore as I slid into an empty seat in the back. I considered myself a “professional student,” since I hadn’t yet stuck with one major. Currently, it was journalism, since I like to write, so the class I was in now was creative writing. Last semester, I thought I wanted to be a nurse until I saw all the math I would have to do—forget that! I’m horrible with numbers, and doing math made me feel like Forrest Gump. Truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was only twenty-two and I had time, right?
 

I sat through the class and listened to the professor give the syllabus for what was to come during the semester and what was expected of us. Great, we have to write a five-thousand-word creative writing paper at the end of the course on how we changed. Really? Just then my phone buzzed with a text. Thank god I remembered to put it on vibrate before class.

Sissy!

What A?

I <3 my Class!

Can U B any louder by text?

Omg YES!!!!!

I’m in class. Point?

Mom wants 2 do lunch

OK I’m free @ 130

Me 2, well 135

OK meet by oak tree

Kk, MUMU girl lol

WTF! How do u know that?!

Lol I just do. Bye

I swear, news got around in this town like the town slut. I’m sure someone had told my mom and then my mom told Aria, or someone had told Aria and Aria told my mom. Either way, bigmouth townspeople. Not that it was a secret, but it was embarrassing, to say the least. I texted Tina.

So I’m MUMU girl now?

As opposed to ho?

Not funny. MUMU really?

Relax only old people know what a MUMU is ne ways

Hello! This town is old people!

Oh Get over it Mu. I mean Day

F U!

U kiss ur mom w/that mouth?

I put my phone away. It would go on if I let it. My class let out, and I went on to the next few classes while running into a few other friends I had made during my first semester and playing catch-up. Each one had given me a knowing look that said they knew the muumuu story. Great, it was all over town. No way to live that down but to own it. So when another one of my high school–turned-college mates approached me with the knowing “muumuu girl” look, I let it all out.

“Okay, yes, I had a big flowery muumuu on this morning in the parking lot of SGAC. Would the whole town just get over it already? It’s not national news!” I huffed.

“Whoa there, sister,” said Riley Williams, hands held up with palms facing me as if he was warding off my attack. “I just came to see how your break was, Dacey. I hadn’t heard anything about a muumuu and SGAC.”

“Oh. Well, now I feel bad, Riley. I’m sorry. It’s just the whole town has been staring at me like it was a crime to wear a muumuu to an animal clinic or something.”

“Nah, I’m kidding. I totally knew about the muumuu, but that’s not why I came over here,” he said with a smile.

“Riley, I could face-punch you, but I won’t,” I laughed. I had known Riley like most kids in this town since birth, but unlike most kids in this town, Riley was a friend, and I didn’t have a lot of those. Not because I didn’t want friends, but people just didn’t know how to take me. Most of the time they didn’t know if I was being funny or bitchy or sarcastic, and in truth, I couldn’t tell you which one I was being. But Riley kind of didn’t care. He made me laugh, as he had a dry sense of humor that most people in town found weird. He fit in with my off-kilter friends. We weren’t close, but he always seemed to be around.
 

“So you know what people are saying?” he asked as he casually fell into step beside me while I was walking toward the oak tree to meet Aria.

“And by people you mean...?”

“Yes, I mean the whole entire town,” Riley finished my sentence.

“Not really, but I know you’re going to tell me, so out with it.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

I shot him a look.

“Okay, okay. But don’t shoot the messenger, okay?” he said, hands held up again as if protecting himself.

“They are saying that you are becoming just like your aunt.”

“
What?
” I screamed, causing several students to look my way.

“Remember what I said about not shooting the messenger,” he said, backing away.

“Oh, cut that out. I’m not going to hit you,” I said edgily.

“Oh, I don’t know, your fists say differently,” he said, looking down at my balled-up fists.
 

I hadn’t even realized I had balled them into fists. But I had. I was so mad. “The townspeople think I caught the crazy train like my aunt? That’s crazy!” I said incredulously.

“Well...” He drew out the word.

“Shut up, Riley! I know what that sounds like, okay, but you know how ridiculous that sounds, right?”

“I know, but you know small-town craziness is small-town craziness, no matter how it sounds.”

“Yeah, I know. Ugh, thanks for the heads-up,” I said as I spotted Aria sitting under the tree.
 

She looked up from her phone and smiled when she saw Riley. “Hey, Ri-Ri.”

“Yeah, that isn’t cute, but hey, what’s up, Aria? How’s your first day so far?” He smiled at my little sister. Everyone liked her, even my friends who were four years older than her.

“Great! All my classes are
so
cool. Did Dac tell you what my major was? You’ll never guess. Guess! Guess!” she said excitedly.

“Okay, calm down, and next time have decaf coffee,” he said calmly as he placed both hands on her shoulders to get her to stop jumping up and down.

“Silly, I don’t drink coffee,” she said, but she did stop jumping up and down.

“Really?” asked Riley skeptically. “Then you should bottle your hyperness and sell it, ’cause
man
!”

“I should! Dac says that. I think she tried when we were little. That’s how I got this scar on the back of my neck.” She lifted up her hair to show off the perfectly round scar that came from a handlebar accident when she was eight and I was twelve. It totally
looks
like someone tried to stick a tube in her neck. Had Riley been anyone else who hadn’t grown up in this town, he might have believed her too.

“If I wasn’t there, I might have believed that, but your sister thought she killed you that day, kiddo,” Riley said.

It was true. Aria had screamed murder from the accident, and I thought I had broken her. It was the scariest day of my life. But she just fractured her neck and had to wear a neck brace for six weeks and got me to wait on her hand and foot because of it. I complained, but secretly I didn’t mind because it was my fault and I would do anything for my sister.

“I’m still waiting for you to guess, Ri-Ri,” said Aria.

“And I’m still waiting for you to say my name correctly, but in the interest of saving time, I’ll guess theater. Am I right?”

“Boo. You told him,” she accused me.

“No, I actually didn’t. He’s just very perceptive,” I defended myself.

“I am perceptive, but it could have something to do with the Intro to Arts and Theatre syllabus peeking out of your folder that I
perceptively
saw,” said Riley, pointing to her folder on the ground by the tree that she had left there when she jumped up to meet us.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Aw, man. I really wanted you to guess too,” she pouted.

“It’s okay, kiddo. I would have never guessed theater, so we are square,” he said, like that made total sense. “I’m gonna take off. I have another class across campus in five and if I walk briskly, I’ll just still be late. So see ya.”

Laughing, I waved him off. “See ya, Riley.”

“That crazy boy,” said A, shaking her head.

“Yea, that crazy boy. Where is Mom? I thought you said she was meeting us?”

“She is running late. She’ll be here. Relax, muumuu girl.”

“Ugh, shut the hell up. That’s an Opal story. I’ll tell you about it later,” I said, not wanting to relive it so soon, especially the chocolate vomit part.

“Looks like it’s going to rain. I hope Mom gets here soon,” she said, looking up at the sky.

That’s the thing about Florida weather. One minute it could be sunny and hot; the next it would be cloudy and overcast getting ready for the heavens to open up. I hadn’t even noticed the birds were circling in the sky like they do when there’s a storm coming.

Now Aria was standing up looking at the birds, saying, “It’s coming. See the birds? Heeere birdies, heeere birdies.” And people thought
I
was the one turning out like Aunt Opal?

“I don’t think that works on birds, and even if it did, would you really want fifty birds zooming straight at you? It’s like you haven’t seen
The Birds
with me and Mom ever.”

“Oh my god, you’re so right! See, this is probably why you’re smarter than me,” she said.

“Hey, have you heard that people are saying that I’m turning into Aunt Opal?” I asked her seriously.

“Oh, that. Yeah, I heard some rumors, but no one has said anything directly to me, so I didn’t think anything of it,” she said with a shrug.

That was Aria, blissfully in the dark about most things, but then again, most little sisters were. I would ask Mom later. I hated small-town gossip, but I hated people thinking bad about me or my family more. It was probably one of the reasons I always stuck by Wally. Sure, he was a craptastic father, but I wouldn’t have anyone else thinking that about him.

I decided to text Mom to see where she was. She replied that she was parking.

“Mom is parking. Let’s go meet her,” I told Aria. I started walking over to the student parking lot. I saw Mom’s silver Lexus sedan sitting in the parking lot, and she was on the phone talking. I was so hungry, but I resisted the urge to bang on her window to hurry up and just stood patiently next to her car while Aria plopped on the trunk and kicked her legs back and forth like the kid at heart that she was.
 

When Mom opened the door, she didn’t bring her purse with her and she had that “I’m sorry” look on her face.

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re canceling?” I guessed.

“I have to. Your dad needs help at the shop, and we are going to grab lunch, but come by for dinner and we can talk about what happened with the muumuu and Opal today,” she said.

“Geez, everyone does know about that, I guess,” I said, throwing my hands in the air.
 

“I’m afraid it was watercooler news today at school, honey,” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

“Oh, great. I made the elementary school watercooler news circuit,” I mumbled calmly. “Now, future kids will think I’m beginning to be like Aunt Opal too. The town has
one
crazy person,
one
. And Aunt Opal is it. Guess who’s in line to take her place? You’re looking at her.”
 

“Yeah, I heard something like that too, and I set those old hags at the school straight about you too,” she said.

I hated that she was left trying to defend me against a bunch of old hags and gossip hounds who had nothing better to do. Shouldn’t they have been off trying to educate the future kids of the world or something other than worrying about why I was in a muumuu in the parking lot of SGAC?

“Mom, you know I was tied up with Opal this morning, again. She gave Rufus a gallon of chocolate milk, and when I went over there to help and take him to Trevor, he threw up on me.”

“Gross!” interjected Aria as she had hopped down from the trunk and was now avidly listening to the story.

“I know! So I asked Aunt Opal for something to put on just to get to Trevor, and she came back with a muumuu, and before I had time to protest, she had the dang thing on me and she was hysterical thinking Rufus was going to die, so I just let her, and long story short, boom—clinic parking lot, crazy Aunt, me in a muumuu,” I rushed out.

“Breathe, Dacey. It’s okay. You don’t have to plead your case to me. I know the Aunt Opal stories,” Mom said evenly.

“No, Mom. Don’t calm her down. Maybe her head will do that spinny thing, and she will spit green stuff from her mouth,” said Aria.

“Wow, really? I’m a little disturbed by how excited you got by that prospect, you freak,” I said, even though it made me smile because it did calm me down. She always knew how to do it.

“I see it worked,” she murmured proudly.

“Whatever,” I murmured back.

Mom carried on like she had not heard a thing, which, knowing Mom, she probably did, but she had long since given up on trying to decipher our sister talk. “Don’t worry about it, dear. It will blow over. You know these rumors—they spread like butter and are gone with the rising sun. Tomorrow it will be about how old man Simmons and Coramae are special friends,” Mom said.

“Mom,” I said straightforwardly, “everyone already knows about old man Simmons and Ms. Coramae being special friends.”
 

“Yeah, they do,” said Aria, laughing heartily.

“And here they were thinking no one knew,” Mom said to herself. “Oh, well,” she shrugged her shoulders. “Still, what I’m trying to say is it will all be water under the bridge soon enough.”

“Where is this proverbial bridge? I’d like to throw whoever started this malicious rumor off it,” I muttered angrily.

“You know I’d help you, or watch you struggle with the body,” said Aria eerily.

“Girls!” cried Mom, flabbergasted. “Stop talking like that, joking or not. I hate when you guys talk like that. It creeps me out.”

“Sorry, Mom,” we both said at the same time.

“Don’t do that either—that creeps me out more when you talk at the same time!” she said. “I’m leaving. I’ve kept your father waiting long enough. I’m surprised he hasn’t called me back by now. I love you, girls. Here, have lunch on me,” she said, handing each of us some money.