Then I noticed. Jasper was wearing a nightgown.
No matter how I tried, I couldn’t not stare at her. She was so out of place, with her big hair, long bare legs, and the nightgown—a billowing pink T-shirt that read Zzzzzzzzzzz . . . There was a sleepy-eyed teddy bear on it. The teddy bear was purple.
It had to be the ugliest nightgown in the history of nightgowns.
Jasper caught me staring and glanced down. “I’m . . . uh . . .”
It was like she was a different person from our first meeting. All of her calm was gone. Her brown eyes were huge in her face. They looked almost frightened.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Why are you . . . well, what are you doing?” I think we both knew I really meant Why on earth are you up at Red’s Farm at the crack of dawn in your nightie?
But then, in that moment, a funny thing happened. It was like I watched Jasper decide how to feel. Like I could actually see it happen, the transformation. One minute she was freaked out and embarrassed and unsure. And then, in a split second, she wasn’t anymore. Her mouth closed, her eyes softened, and her shoulders shifted back. She flashed me the same big smile that she had a week before and answered me with a shrug.
Then I noticed the big pile of crumpled laundry on the rock behind her. She saw me notice it too. And the small bottle of dish soap beside it. It took me a minute to put the pieces together. “Wait. Are you washing your clothes?” I asked. “In the creek?”
“Well, if I had anything else clean to wear, do you think I’d be wearing this in public?” Jasper said with a grimace, holding out the hem of her shirt and doing a little curtsy. “There’s something wrong with the water at our house, and the people from the city haven’t come to fix it. But all my stuff is dirty, and Mom is at work, so she wasn’t able to take me to the laundromat. I couldn’t stand wearing my gross dirty jeans anymore, but I remembered this place and came back. It was this or taking the bus to the laundromat in this nightshirt, my bare legs touching the seats.”
And I guessed that made sense, even if it was a little bizarre. It explained the nightgown, anyway.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.” Then I glanced from the pile of clothes back to Jasper. “You know, if you want to, you can just come use the washer and dryer at my house. If you don’t mind walking a few more blocks in your pj’s.”
Something flashed over her face, and then she smiled. “Really?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“But what will your parents say when I walk in like this?”
“They’re leaving for work soon. And even if they’re still there, they won’t notice. They don’t notice much.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, maybe my mom would notice, but she’d be all nervous and extra friendly and tell you she liked your shirt. Even if she didn’t.”
Jasper looked down at the shirt and back up at me, “Be real,” she said. “Nobody could like this thing.”
I couldn’t help laughing at that. “Yeah, it’s pretty awful.”
“Hey . . . if you really mean it,” said Jasper, “I’d be super grateful.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling a rush, a thrill. I guess I hadn’t actually expected her to say yes. This was the most interesting thing that had happened all summer. All year. Maybe even longer than that. “Do you want me to help carry anything?”
“Oh, no, I can get it,” she said. She turned around and started scooping up her wet things, shoving all the clothes—wet and dry both—into a big red sweatshirt. Then she scooped the big laundry ball up in both arms. “But thanks!”
As I led the way home, down the creek bed, and held the kudzu back for Jasper and her armload of clothes, I had a thought. “Hey, Jasper—why didn’t you bring a laundry basket?”
She laughed into the pile of clothes. “Because I’m an idiot sometimes, that’s why!”
I laughed too. “Well, sure. Everyone is.”
Extra Real
It usually takes me a little while to talk when I meet someone new, but for some reason, the whole way home, I talked and talked and talked. I thought maybe I was being annoying, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from giving Jasper a guided tour of the neighborhood. It was like I needed her to love it, and so I found myself pointing out things I hadn’t thought about in a long time. All the things I’d been walking past without noticing them. And once I started talking, the words just didn’t stop.
As we walked along, I pointed out the protected overhang beside the creek where homeless guys sit when it rains. “They sing sometimes,” I said. “You can hear them up at the farm.”
We turned onto Berne Street, and I pointed out the yard with all the bottle trees in it, blue glass bottles stuck on every bare branch. A few houses past that, we came to the cracked stretch of sidewalk with the hollow tree growing up through it. Some mysterious neighbor had made the tree into a geocache years ago, and occasionally they still hid a tin box of hard candies there too. But when we looked inside, the box was empty.
“Oh well,” said Jasper. “Next time.”
Then, before I knew it, we were standing in front of Tess’s house. I hadn’t meant to stop walking, but somehow, that’s what happened. I felt my thighs graze the hedge of gardenias that separated the familiar green house from the sidewalk, and glanced down at the sweet white blossoms. I reached out a hand to touch one. So soft. How many times had I picked them, to wear in my hair or make a bouquet for Mom?
“Who lives here?” asked Jasper as though she could tell it wasn’t just any house.
“Oh, this is . . . Tess’s house,” I said. “But she’s not home.”
“Who’s Tess? A friend?”
I nodded. Because it was true of course, even now. But there was so much I wasn’t sure how to say. I didn’t say that Tess’s mother had given me my first tampon, when I got my period while making hand-cranked peach ice cream in their yard. I didn’t say that her mom was my mom’s best friend from high school. Or that I hadn’t set foot in her house for months now, and there was no way I could really explain that fact.
I only looked from the green house to Jasper and nodded. “Yeah, she’s a friend. But I think she’s on vacation right now.” My voice sounded funny coming out when I said that, sort of hoarse and quiet, so I cleared my throat. Then I turned to the house next door, and pointed. “But now, that house is pretty funny. The guys who live there—Ed and Johnny—they have a yard sale every Saturday, full of things like half-burned candles and old remote controls. There’s a bowl of batteries, but no way to know whether they’re dead or not. So much junk.”
If Jasper could tell that I was changing the subject, she didn’t say anything about it. She just said, “Every single week?”
“Yep!” I said. “I don’t even know where it all comes from? Maybe the house is just getting emptier and emptier, week by week. One day there won’t be anything left inside it, and then they’ll move away.”
“Weird,” said Jasper.
We started walking again, and I pointed out the dead-end alley where the basketball hoop was. But as we passed a big new house going up, its raw wood gleaming yellow in the sunlight, it was Jasper’s turn to point. “Whoa! Now, that’s a mansion, huh? Who has that much money? Can you even imagine living in a house like that?”
“It is pretty huge,” I said. “Hey, what if you were at one end of the house, and you had to pee, and the bathroom was at the other end? You might not make it, the place is so big.”
Jasper laughed. “It probably doesn’t matter. It probably has, like, seventeen bathrooms.”
“Good point,” I said. “Still, I bet it echoes.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, there’s a bunch of those being built now around here. My parents used to talk about it all the time, when rich people started moving into the neighborhood. It’s funny. They have these big lawns that none of them mow themselves.”
By that point, we were nearing my street, so I pointed out the fig tree in the middle of the
roundabout. “We helped plant it,” I said. “When I was little.”
“Oh, figs,” said Jasper. “Are they ripe?”
I shook my head. “Not until July. I don’t think. Can’t remember for sure. One year we picked them and tried to make jam, but it was actually pretty gross. That’s the kind of thing my mom used to pretend to do—stuff like making jam or quilting. She’s awful at it all, and she doesn’t usually finish. Just buys whatever equipment she needs, and then it ends up in the garage. Does your mom do stuff like that? Crafty stuff?” I looked back at Jasper, but she had a vacant look on her face—like she was staring through me.
“No,” she said. “Not at all.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, then what’s she like?”
“Who?” asked Jasper.
“Your mom.”
Jasper shook her head. “Not crafty,” she said. She turned away, to reach up and touch a green fig. “This sure is a fruity neighborhood. There’s all kinds of stuff growing at the farm too. Strawberries and whatnot.”
“Yeah, but we aren’t supposed to pick any of that,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Unless Farmer Red’s there and he offers. Like, if he has too many cucumbers or something, sometimes he’ll send me home with a few. But mostly he saves what he grows, I think maybe to sell at farmers markets around town.”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Jasper.
“Yeah.”
By that point we reached my house, so I turned and pointed. “This is me,” I said, starting up the driveway. Our house was brick with white trim and a big low front porch, like most of the houses in the neighborhood. The bushes in front were overgrown, and the grass was high and messy. I hadn’t noticed how bad it was until this very minute.
I opened the gate, and Jasper followed me into the backyard and through the side door into the kitchen.
“Oh! The air-conditioning feels so good in here,” she said when she stepped into the room. “It’s like walking into a refrigerator.”
“Yeah, my dad keeps it really cold,” I said. “He and Mom argue about it. She says it’s better for the environment to turn it off, and he says it’s better for their marriage to keep it going full blast.”
“Well, I feel a little bad for the environment,” said Jasper. “But I’m not complaining. It’s delicious in here.”
“Delicious,” I echoed. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
Somehow, the strangeness of the whole morning hit me then, and I found myself staring at Jasper, at this girl I barely knew. She gripped her dripping bundle, in her pink teddy bear T-shirt and her flip-flops, in the middle of our kitchen, which still smelled like coffee and toast. The ghosts of breakfast.
“Okay, so, laundry,” I said, leading her straight through the kitchen and into the room we called “the office” because there happened to be a desk there. For months, the desk had been stacked with unopened tubes of Hanukkah wrapping paper that Mom had bought on clearance somewhere. But of course it wasn’t Hanukkah, so they just sat there on the desk, covered in shiny blue dreidels, collecting dust. “The washer and dryer are over here, in this closet. And here’s the detergent, and dryer sheets, and a basket. Sorry if it’s all a little messy right now.”
“You think this is messy?” Jasper set down her bundle and glanced around the room. “You should see where I live. This place is amazing.”
“Really?” I looked from the cluttered desk to the overfull bookshelf and tried to see it that way.
I’d always liked our house fine, but it wasn’t the kind of house people usually complimented. Certainly not amazing. It was regular, a house house. It was true that we had a nice big back deck. And there was lots of strange art on the walls that my dad had made, or friends of his, back when he was young and trying to be an artist. I tried to see all of that now the way Jasper was seeing it. But the couch had cat claw marks Mom always covered with a blanket when people came over, and there were crayon scribbles on the wall from a long time ago that couldn’t be cleaned completely.
Back when she used to joke more, Mom would say that she preferred a relaxed lifestyle, that she didn’t ever want to feel like her house was too nice to put her feet up on the coffee table. That was funny to me, because feet or no feet, Mom was never really relaxed. She was always dashing somewhere in a hurry, and she usually had a list of fourteen things in her pocket that she needed to do that day and tell you about the minute you saw her. Mom stressed. But she was also kind of sloppy. I think relaxed just made her feel better about herself than sloppy.
“I think it’s beautiful,” said Jasper as she unpacked the sweatshirt and started tossing everything in the washer. “I like how every room is a different color. And the furniture is so old and wooden. Like in an antique store.” She pointed to a stack of old peach crates Dad had fastened together for shelving. “I love this.”
“Well, thanks, but this is nothing compared to some of my friends’ houses. They have pools, a few of them. There are some really rich kids at my school. You know, living in those mansions we saw.”
“Well, nobody I know has a pool,” said Jasper. She grinned and added, “Feel free to introduce me to your friends!”
“I guess they’re more just kids I know, not really friends,” I said honestly. Over the years, I’d gotten invited to a lot of birthday parties because of Tess. She just kind of knew everybody, and somehow she always sat at the center of the lunch table. I’d felt lucky to be her best friend. Popular by association.
“Anyway, you should see my place. This house is nice for sure.” Jasper slammed the door of the washer and turned it on. Then she spun around to look at me again, and I wasn’t sure what came next. The laundry would be in the washer for forty-two minutes, according to the green blinking digital numbers. And then the dryer. We had an hour or two, at least.
“Hey, while we’re waiting, do you want something to eat?” I asked. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Why not?” said Jasper. “I can always eat.”
And, wow, could she ever. I got out bagels and cereal and fruit and juice and yogurt and granola, thinking that Jasper could pick what she liked. It turned out she liked everything. Lots of everything.
Sitting at the kitchen table, we didn’t talk for a bit. Just chewed and sipped. But then I was licking some cream cheese off my finger when Jasper suddenly stood up, walked over to a cabinet, opened it, and plucked out a coffee mug, as if she’d known right where it was. Just like that. Like magic.
“Wow, how did you know where to find that?” I asked.
Jasper shrugged. “Everyone keeps coffee mugs above the coffee maker, silly,” she said. “Haven’t you ever noticed?”
“I guess not,” I said.
Watching Jasper pour herself a cup of leftover coffee from the pot, I felt a funny happy twinge. It was nice to see someone so at home in my house. Tess had always helped herself to food whenever she was over, but that was different. She’d grown up here.
After Jasper had stirred in plenty of sugar and a dribble of milk, she rejoined me at the table, where she leaned back in her chair with both hands around the mug. She took a sip of coffee and grinned at me happily over the rim. Just like my mother, I thought. Only the exact opposite. Jasper was relaxed for sure.
“Leah?” she said.
“Yes?” I was nervous for some reason. Something in her even stare and her tone.
But then all she said was “Thank you. Very, very, very, very much.”
That caught me by surprise. “Oh! Sure! Anytime. No big deal.”
Jasper shook her head, like I hadn’t understood her. “No,” she said. “It is a big deal, for me. So for real, thank you. This is so much nicer than any morning I’ve had in a while. Just great.”
Just great. There was something funny in her voice when she said that. Something different, almost sad. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
Jasper nodded right away. “Oh, sure. I’m fine. Just . . . I’m new, you know? And I haven’t really met people. I
guess . . . I’ve been keeping to myself. I didn’t even know I was looking for a friend.”
At the word friend, I could feel my cheeks pinking up, hot. “Oh, whatever, no worries,” I said, glancing away. Then I stood, pushed out my chair, and headed for the bathroom. “Back in a sec,” I called over my shoulder as casually as I could.
In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet, stood over the sink, and watched the water drain down. Why did I feel so weird all of a sudden? Something about Jasper made me nervous. Everything just felt so much. Everything felt like . . . it mattered.
The thing is, Jasper was exactly right. It was the nicest morning I could remember in a long time. It was easy. We were friends. We were friends. Just like that. Talking about nothing much over breakfast, or walking home in the sunshine. It had been a long time since anything had felt so good to me.
I could feel it like weather. The way you sometimes know it will rain before you see a single cloud. I could feel the change of it, just like I had felt it at Red’s Farm the moment I saw her. What kind of girl sprawls on a rock in the sun, alone, and doesn’t feel embarrassed when you catch her? What kind of girl does her laundry in the creek? What kind of girl follows a stranger home, and then eats the last bagel, with a smile? She was like something from a book. Like I’d wished her into existence, though of course I knew that wasn’t possible.
I splashed water on my face and took a deep breath. Then I patted my face dry on a stiff towel and flushed the toilet.
When I got back to the table, Jasper was sipping her coffee and leafing through a National Geographic, which we got in the mail each month but nobody ever actually read. They just stacked up by the fireplace in a basket. Jasper pretended I hadn’t just gotten all weird and blushy a few minutes before, and she glanced up at me in a totally normal way as I sat down.
“Hey, so, anyway . . . ,” she said. “Where were you going this morning, when you turned up at the farm?”
“What?” I said. Then I froze. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
My Jasper June Page 3
