Chasing Jupiter (3 page)

“Okay, but don’t linger.” Mama shot us a glance before hurrying ahead with Dad and Juli. “I don’t know what they’ll say when they see that girl’s hair,” she muttered.

I slowed my steps until I fell into step with Cliff. “Hello!”

He glared at me and looked at the ground, counting his steps. “Uno, dos, tres …”

“Oh, so you’re going to be difficult today? Okay, then. I’ll talk to myself.” My eyes wandered around aimlessly as we walked. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning? A little warm, perhaps. Yes, a little warm, but it’s a
dry
heat. At least it’s not raining. But if it was raining, wouldn’t that mean it was cooler out? Perhaps, but—” I stopped mid-sentence, my eyes locking with the eyes of another.

Frank Leggett, the son of the peach farmer. His light brown hair fell across his forehead, almost shiny in the morning sun. He carried a ragged notebook tucked under one elbow. And he was staring at me like I’d grown two heads.

I jolted to a stop in the middle of the street, unsure what to do.
Should I say something? Did he notice me talking to myself? Of course he noticed, or else he wouldn’t be staring
. “Um, good morning,” I said weakly.

Frank’s brows rose. His eyes trailed over me toward Cliff, who was grumpily walking in circles and then back to me. “Why are you talking to yourself?”

Funny story …
My mind raced, but I couldn’t think of a logical reason. I sighed.
Let him think I’m crazy
. “I’m more pleasant company than any other person I can think of. No one else is as eager to listen to me as I am.”

He stared at me blankly for a moment. Then a smile broke on his face, slowly at first but then blossoming into a full-out grin. He had a wonderfully handsome face when he smiled, like the difference between a small flame and a blazing fire. His eyes were a gold-green, crinkling up at the corners. For three and a half glorious seconds, I was at a loss for words.

Then, as quickly as the smile came, it left and he was Frank Leggett again. Frank Leggett, the socially inept. Frank Leggett, the good-looking boy who was too moody for any of the girls to want to go steady with. Frank Leggett, the son of the peach farmer.

He nodded and turned, heading toward the church. I followed
behind, dragging along Cliff and wanting to kick myself.
Stupid, stupid
.

Pastor Greene’s voice boomed through the church walls. “Good morning! And isn’t it a wonderful morning to be in the Lord’s house?”

My eyes squeezed shut.
Oh
,
great
. Frank pushed open the church door, and I braced myself. Sure enough, everyone turned around to watch the three of us slip in the back. Frank seemed unfazed and headed toward his family’s pew.

Mama frowned at me. Beside her, Juli was holding back a smile, her hair even more hideously blue in the morning light. She looked frightful. Gorgeous, but frightful all the same. Our family would surely be the talk of Georgia that afternoon.

I lowered my eyes and led Cliff to where our family sat. I settled in my seat directly behind Dotty Greene, the pastor’s wife. Her blonde hair was piled up in a beehive and obstructed my view.

“Please stand to sing,” Pastor Greene said, pulling out a hymnal.

I flipped through pages in the hymnal until we came to the right hymn.
How Great Thou Art
. I wrinkled my nose.
Why do they all have ‘thee’s and ‘thy’s? Why not ‘y’all’?

I didn’t really care that much about church or about the music or the sermon. I never gave much thought to God or heaven. I mean, the way I saw it, I was only sixteen. I had a long time before I really had to worry about getting “right with the good Lord,” and all that. But what I did find intriguing was the pastor’s wife’s singing voice.

The music swelled to the chorus, and Dotty Greene’s voice began to raise and waver. “Then sings my soul!” she belted out in a high, screechy voice. And then suddenly it dropped, breaking over a low note.

My eyebrow shot up. Because no matter how bad it sounded, it sure was interesting.
At least she sings with enthusiasm
. I tucked away a grin from the side of my mouth.
A whole lotta enthusiasm
.

T
he last few days of school passed by in a blur. It had been a hot spring and an early summer. By mid-June, the peach trees were loaded with fruit and Georgia smelled sweet and sticky again. We were free to roam from dawn ‘til dusk.

That was the summer of 1969, and I was sixteen years old. Thanks to Mama’s prodding, I’d finally let my hair grow out, and it was the first summer I could run around with my loose waves whipping around me in the wind. It made me feel free and a little bit wild.

On our first official day off of school, we didn’t have anything better to do than lie around, watch the clouds, and talk about nothing.

Cliff loved running his fingers though my ponytail. We’d sprawl out by the fence in the backyard and stay like that for hours, his hand tangled in my long auburn hair. That’s what we were doing on a Monday. Just lying there and breathing in and out in silence.

Cliff took a deep breath and let it out, his chin tilted up at the sky. “Say, Scarlett?”

“Yeah?” My eyes were closed, and the sun felt so warm and soothing on my face.

“When are we going to build a rocket to Jupiter?”

A frown pinched my forehead.
Oh
,
I forgot I promised him that
. Obviously Cliff wouldn’t have forgotten. I’d never known him to forget anything.

I closed my eyes. “Sometime, I guess.”

Cliff sat up abruptly, frowning at me. “No! Every time you say that it means you’re never going to do it! Scarlett never keeps her promises to Cliff!”

My eyes flew open.
Whoa, referring to himself in third person—not good
. I pried his fingers out of my hair. He was making it even more of a snarled mess. “Well, I promised you I would, didn’t I? And I
always
keep my promises.”

He settled back down, pacified by my response. I did always keep my promises, unlike most people. A promise spoken by Scarlett Blaine was a promise kept.

I rested my head on my forearms and stared up at the sky. Little wisps of clouds floated by like ships drifting across the deep blue sea. The grass was warm and soft under my skin. “So is that what we’re going to do this summer? Build a rocket?” I asked.

“To Jupiter.”

“Right.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His chin was tilted back up toward the sky. I wondered if his thoughts were always up in the clouds, hovering above those of the rest of us. “What are we going to build it out of? Wood?”

“I don’t think we’d ever make it to space in a wooden rocket ship. It would burn up from the sun!” He frowned. “No, we’d have to cover it in some kind of metal. Metal sheets, maybe, like the kind they used to cover the warehouse last fall.”

Metal sheets
. I ran up the calculations in my head. “Cliff, that’ll cost a lot of money. How are we going to get it? I don’t have a job.”

He bit his lip, thinking hard. “We could do a tap show act.”

“Neither of us knows how to tap dance.”

“Oh.” Cliff fell silent for a moment. “Well, you’re pretty good at baking pies. You’ll sell pies, and we’ll use the money to buy wood.”

“Sell pies?” I tried to imagine myself standing at a pie stand, selling pies on the street. “No one would come.”

“Yes, they would.” Cliff nodded firmly. “You bake good pies.”

A smile tugged at my lips. He was so sure, completely confident we would make enough money to build a rocket to travel to Jupiter, and sure that rocket would work. My shoulders slumped, defeated. “Okay. Tonight I’ll ask Dad if he can bring home some peaches.”

Cliff jumped up. “Why wait? Let’s go find him and ask if we can help bring them home!”

I relished a few more seconds of lying on the grass, the last I might get all summer, then shrugged. “Fine with me.”

I followed behind Cliff as he ran into the house yelling, “Mama! Mama! Ma
-ma
!”

“What?” Her voice was slightly muffled, which meant she must have been in the kitchen.

I ran in to find her pulling her hair back into a loose bun; her work clothes were spread over the ironing board. I halted to a stop. “Are you going to the plantation?”

“In a few hours or so. They’re ramping up the bed and breakfast for the tourists again. Their first big customer came yesterday, and I wasn’t there. So guess what I got?” She made a face. “A talking to, that’s what. I swear, they treat me like a child. Or a slave. A slave in their plantation house.” She rolled her eyes and picked up a lotion bottle off the counter, pausing to pump lotion onto her smooth white hands. She rubbed her palms together and sighed while reaching for a rag to hold the iron.

Once, when I was hardly five years old, I’d asked Mama why she always put lotion on her hands. She told me that soft, supple hands were a woman’s crowning glory.

I looked down at my grass-stained knuckles and hid them behind
my back. “Can we go to the peach farm and see Dad? We want to ask for some peaches.”

She frowned, a tiny crease appearing on her forehead. “Will you be back in time to make supper? I won’t have time to get anything started before I leave.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will. I promise.”

Since my promises were as good as gold, she let us go, and we raced all the way to the peach farm.

Our feet pounded on the gravel driveway, and I enjoyed the warm, breezy air kissing my windblown cheeks. The houses of our neighborhood whizzed past. By the time we reached the peach farm, our chests were heaving and we kneeled over, gasping for air.

“I beat you,” Cliff wheezed.

I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

Dad was standing in the middle of the orchard with a pair of pliers in his hands. He looked up, wiping sweat off his forehead, and frowned when he saw us. “What are y’all doing here?”

We ran toward him and swung our legs over the fence, climbing into the orchard. I placed a hand over my brow to shield off the sun. “We wanted to know if we could have some peaches. We’re going to use them to make pies and sell the pies for money to build a rocket.”

“To Jupiter,” Cliff added.

“Yeah.” I gave him my best smile, wrapping my arm around Cliff for added sweetness. I tried to read Dad’s eyes—would he see how much this crazy plan meant to his son? “Please?”

Dad frowned again and turned back to his work. “I can’t give y’all peaches.”

Cliff’s face fell. “Why not?”

“Well, first off, they’re not my peaches. They’re Luke Leggett’s. And second off, you two don’t need to be building rockets and causing trouble. We have enough trouble in the family already,” he muttered.

My chest began to swell with disappointment and anger. “It’s not causing trouble! I’m a good cook! I know people would buy my pies.”

Dad sighed and turned, cupping my cheek. “Scarlett, baby, I know you’re a good cook. I just don’t need the trouble this summer. If you want to buy the peaches yourself or make money some other way, that’s fine. But I can’t be troubling Mr. Leggett about it right now.” He glanced at his watch and set down the pliers. “Now, I’m heading home. You two run along, okay?” He started for his truck.

“Wait!” Cliff followed on his heels. “I wanna ride in the Clunker.”

Dad laughed, and swung into the driver’s seat with a teasing smile. “Y’all ran here, didn’t you? Well, run on back.” His key turned in the ignition and then he was gone, a cloud of dust following behind him.

I watched him go until he was just a speck at the end of the long dirt road that went through our community. “Well, there goes that dream,” I muttered, kicking at the driveway. I walked back to the white picket fence and sat on the ground.
What are we going to do now? I’ll never get enough money to buy that wood unless I take a job working at the plantation like Mama
. Images of myself dressed in mid-nineteenth-century hoop skirts serving apple pie flashed across my mind. I wrinkled my nose.
Yuck
.

I leaned against the fence to watch the sky again. “At least it’s a pretty day. No clouds or anything.” I let myself ease down the fence then pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them. “Don’t you love the sky in June? It’s like cotton candy—smooth and sweet and fluffy. The tinges of pink hidden in the blue …” I sighed.

“What do you think, Cliff?”

Silence. I frowned and looked around. “Cliff?”

“Talking to yourself again?”

My skin leapt. I scurried to my feet and whipped around. Frank Leggett was standing in the middle of the orchard watching me. A grin tugged at his mouth. “You seem to do that a lot.”

My eyes scanned the orchard. No Cliff in sight. I stood and brushed off my jeans. “This is going to sound really stupid, but have you seen my brother?”

Frank nodded his head. “Isn’t he the one stealing peaches?”

“What?”
Blood drained from my face. “Where?”

He pointed toward the south side of the orchard. “I saw him over there.”

I ran in that direction, my heart pounding along with my feet.
Oh no, Cliff. This is beyond stupid
.

I found him standing under a peach tree, jumping to reach the fruit on the lowest branches. A small pile of peaches already lay at his feet. He brightened when he saw me. “Can you reach that one for me?”

My mouth hung open. I looked from the peaches to him and back to the peaches. “Cliff, what are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Dad will never find out.”

“Cliff, you can’t
steal
peaches. God will strike you dead or something.” I glanced at the sky again.

Frank ran up behind me. “Hey.” He nodded at Cliff.

Cliff pressed his lips together in a tight smile and went back to picking peaches. I stood in dumbfounded silence, watching him.
Is he really going to keep stealing them right in front of me and Frank?

Frank stepped forward and began pulling down fruit from some of the higher branches and dropping it on the ground. “What are all these peaches for?”

My eyes widened. “You can’t just help him steal!”

They ignored me.

“Scarlett’s gonna sell some peach pies and use the money to build a rocket to Jupiter for me. We hope to finish it by the end of the summer.”

Frank nodded, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
And I guess it was sort of normal Cliff-like behavior. But Frank wouldn’t have known that.

After several minutes of silent staring, my senses finally began coming back. “What are you doing here?” I asked Frank.

He dropped the rest of the peaches before sticking his hands in his pockets and looking at me. “I live here. Or at least, just up that hill.” He pointed. “I was actually on my way over there to … um … take care of a few things, when I saw your brother here and I was curious. And then I heard you talking to yourself again and figured something was up.”

I pressed my lips together and asked, “What are
you
planning to do with all these peaches you picked?”

Frank glanced at Cliff. “Well, I thought the kid said you were making peach pies to sell so you can make a rocket.”

“So you’re giving us these peaches?”

He nodded.

I folded my arms, assuming a defensive position. “For how much?”

A smile tugged at Frank’s mouth for the second time that day. “Sometimes people are just nice.”

My eyes narrowed. “It’s more than that. What?”

The smile turned into a full-out grin, illuminating his face. “Okay, okay. At first I was interested in your arrival because I’ve always had a crush on your sister, Juli, and I figured y’all could put in a good word for me.”

“Juli wouldn’t date you in a million years.”

He didn’t flinch at my bluntness. He only nodded. “Yeah, I know. So now I’ve decided to help you both because a rocket to Jupiter sounds really fun.” He glanced at me. “And I happen to love peach pie and was hoping you’d give me a slice for free.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

He continued staring at me with his gold-green eyes. My skin began to heat, a bright red blush creeping over my cheeks. “What?”

He smiled. “You have really messy hair.”

Self-conscious, I reached up. The loose ponytail my hair had been tucked into had come undone long ago, and now chunks were hanging around my shoulders in loose waves. I pulled out the hair tie and tucked what I could behind one ear. “We ran here.”
I was wrong to grow it out. I should have left it short and neat
.

A teasing glint twinkled in Frank’s eye. “You look like a hippie. Like your sister.”

I frowned. “I am not a hippie.”

He shrugged. “Would you rather I say you looked like a fairy child? Or a runaway princess with briars in her hair? Because I could.”

Cliff wrinkled his nose. “I liked hippie better.”

Frank smirked. “Me too. Now come on.” He stood and brushed off his pants. “Let’s take these to the bomb shelter.” He scooped up an armful of peaches and began walking down the hill.

What?
I grabbed some peaches and scurried after him. “Why are we going to a bomb shelter?”

“No one ever uses it except me,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s the perfect place to build a rocket.”

I watched him from the back. He was tall and thin, with strong arms. His light brown hair was growing lighter in the sunshine, turning the color of golden pancakes. Every couple steps, he’d turn to glance at Cliff to make sure he didn’t fall behind.

I wonder if Juli ever had any classes with him. Maybe she could tell me what Frank’s like
.

“Here we are.”

Frank stopped in front of what was indeed an old bomb shelter and dropped the peaches on the ground. “My parents built this in the fifties, but I don’t think they ever used it.” He pressed his lips
together, as if holding back a secret. “Though it hasn’t exactly been vacant all this time. I kind of, uh, used it for my own purposes.” He stepped forward to open the door and stopped mid-swing. His eyes darted toward us. “Promise not to tell anyone what you see inside.”

I smirked. “What are you hiding in there? Nuclear weapons?”

“Ha, ha.”

Cliff studied the door in silence. His eyes drifted over toward Frank and looked him over. “We will keep your secrets,” Cliff finally declared. “You seem like an
amigo
.”