Bacon Pie

by Candace Robinson

  “I said slam it.” I pretend like I’m batting and swinging for a home run.

  Her stare moves down to her nails and then back up to me like I’m crazy. “Yeah, you have fun with that.”

  Kiev covers half his face and starts laughing. We turn around and begin walking. “Slam it? Good one.”

  “I know I should have just told her damn it again. I knew the last day was going to be the shittiest, especially since we have the butter station.”

  “Why? You just have to watch people play around with butter.”

  That’s not the point. “You weren’t there. The past still taunts me today.” I cringe.

  He rolls his eyes and runs a finger across his perfectly formed bottom lip. I bet he’s a great kisser. I’m going to ignore my senseless thoughts, especially after seeing him all close with Monica on Monday. That right there confirms there’s some kind of relationship going on.

  To take up time, we stop by the gift shop. There’s everything bacon you can think of, including bacon-flavored breath mints and toothpicks. I walk to the backside of the store and look around. There are more of the bacon mints, which must be a popular commodity. I grab the small metal tin and examine it. Who would even want that if you were trying to freshen your breath? I set it back down.

  Kiev walks up in front of me with an open can of mints, holding it in my face. I guess he’s one of those people. I take a whiff—it’s overpowering and smells nothing like bacon. He places one in his mouth. “Want one?”

  “Did you just buy that?” I turn to look at the older guy at the register.

  “Yeah.” He rattles the mints at me.

  I shake my head but grab a mint and stick it in my mouth. It has a funky taste, and, yep, it tastes nothing like bacon—possibly old Spam. “These are terrible.” So, they don’t smell or taste like bacon, so what’s the point?

  Kiev pops his wet mint between his teeth to show me, waggles his brows and sucks it back in his mouth. “No way. It tastes amazing.”

  “I shouldn’t judge your taste after Barnabas’s pie.” I can’t believe he really thought that salt pie was good.

  “Oh, come on, that pie wasn’t that bad.” He smiles.

  “You’re crazy.” I turn around, and we leave the store and find the butter station. It’s one of those rectangular fold-out tables with metal chairs surrounding it.

  A woman wearing a plastic food cap and gloves is setting out blocks of butter on paper plates. “Are you two the volunteers?” she asks.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kiev answers.

  “Okay, here are the instructions to teach the class.” She lays down a piece of paper with step-by-step instructions on how to make a butter pig.

  She can’t be serious. “I thought this was like a contest where we pick whoever does the best and give them a prize,” I say. “I don’t even know how to carve butter.” I only know how to stab at it, and I’m good at that.

  She points her plastic-gloved hand at the table and then taps the instruction page repeatedly. “The directions are all right here.”

  “Don’t worry, we can handle it.” Kiev throws his hand at the air like it’s no big deal. I guess I’ll just have to wing it—show this butter who’s boss.

  The lady puts a pale pink sign up that reads: Open. She tells us to start the class in about fifteen minutes. Six people show up to the station—two elderly women, a forty-something-year-old woman, a teenage girl, and a pair of siblings, who look to be maybe around seven.

  “Are you all ready?” Kiev asks the class.

  “Yes,” the group answers. Well, most of the group, the two younger kids are just kind of staring around.

  I pull my paper plate with the huge block of yellow butter on it in front of me, and then put on my plastic gloves.

  Kiev holds up his plastic knife. “First cut the block into three equal pieces to form squares.”

  Easy enough. I cut them with the piece-of-crap plastic knife. I mean, can’t we get some real knives here? I finish chopping the block into parts, and I feel like I’m the master at this.

  “Now, we’re going to start rounding two of them.” Kiev holds up the number two with his fingers at the smaller kids.

  Kiev delicately fillets his butter, curving it out precisely into a rounded structure. Mine still appears to be a square no matter how much I saw it down. Somehow I end up with a pile of thin pieces and no ball. Screw this.

  “Now we’re going to make the nose, tail, feet, and ears with the other block,” he says.

  Seriously, whose idea was it to come up with butter carving? Someone that has no life, that’s who. Is there something wrong with just molding clay?

  Everyone’s pigs around the table are looking pretty good. Especially the young teenage girl’s—she was probably a blue-ribbon, rodeo-art winner before. Even the two young kids are doing a decent job—their mom did help a little, though.

  They all then attach the pieces to their butter pig. After they leave, it ends up being just me and Kiev with a little bit of time left before it reaches six o’clock.

  “Why’d you quit working on yours?” Kiev asks, looking down at my thin slivery pile.

  “We can’t all be butter artists.” He really is good at art, just like with the toothpick craft.

  “Let me show you. Just grab your knife.” He moves his metal seat closer to mine and maneuvers himself beside me, then tries to extend his arm around my shoulder. “This isn’t going to work,” he says. “Can you sit in front of me for a moment?”

  He scoots his chair back and spreads his legs apart, leaving me a small space to sit between. I shoot him an eyebrow. “I don’t think I need to learn to sculpt that bad.” And put on a show for all the people passing by.

  “I’m not going to do anything weird,” he says. As long as he doesn’t pat his leg and ask me to sit in his lap, I’ll be fine.

  “Okay.” My palms start to sweat with the plastic knife gripped in my hand. I stand from my seat and sit on the chair between his legs. If I inch toward the edge, I’ll fall right off. So, I stay where I am.

  Leaning forward, Kiev drags my plate in front of us, and his chest presses against my back. Picking up one of the blocks that’s still a cube, he wraps his gloved hand around mine, and guides me to it.

  He shows me how to shape it, and we begin to mold it together. My stomach fills with nausea and a pleasant feeling that bounces around in there—it must be a butter ball. The scene from the movie Ghost passes through my head, and I try to shut that image down. We’re not making pottery—we’re carving freaking butter. I chuckle to myself.

  “What?” Kiev whispers, his soft breath against my neck. I have to control myself from shivering with how good it feels.

  “Nothing, just thinking that I’m finally not hating this anymore.” I keep my eyes focused on our hands because his face is right next to mine, his lips so incredibly close.

  “That’s a good thing, since carving butter is an everyday occurrence,” he jokes.

  Our project has taken on an oval shape, not quite a sphere, but much better than what I had done earlier.

  “Thanks, Kiev.” I sit there for a moment, not wanting to seem weird and hop off my chair too quickly, but I don’t want to stay and seem like a hoverer either.

  So, I finally rise from my chair, trying to hide how affected I feel. I glance back at Kiev, who looks to be counting.

  “Are you, all right?” I grin.

  “Of course.” He isn’t looking me quite in the eye.

  “Good,” I say.

  “I guess we need to clean the area.” He stands and starts putting away all the stuff in a box below the table.

  Pulling out my phone, I take a picture of Kiev’s spectacular dairy pig before he throws it away, and send it to Barnabas.

  Me: Look what I made.

  Barnabas: It’s not stabbed into pieces, so it’s not yours.

  Me: Always ruining my fun. It’s actually Kiev’s.

  Barnabas: Butter Love

&nb
sp; I smile and put away my phone. Freaking Barnabas.

  “What are you doing now?” Kiev asks.

  I look around the festival. “Well, I’m at the festival with you at this station, Captain Obvious.”

  “Smart ass. I mean after this.”

  I don’t really have anything going on besides some homework I have to finish for tomorrow, and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him longer. “I don’t have anything planned.”

  “You want to be a stand in and practice lines with me? Auditions won’t be for a while, since Hamlet is happening right now. If not, I can always ask Cole.” The last sentence rushes out of his mouth.

  “No, I don’t have anything going on right now.”

  “Cool. You want to go to the train graveyard since it’s nearby?”

  “Okay.” The train graveyard should be a lot calmer, since there isn’t a party going on this time.

  After cleaning the station we walk past the games, and one kid is going crazy on the Whack-a-pig game. I’m surprised that thing isn’t broken already. The smell of bacon blasts its way through the air as we pass a food stand labeled: Hammy’s. It looks to be bacon wrapped inside of ham.

  We hop in Kiev’s Jetta, and he drives the five minutes it takes to get to the train graveyard. I slide off the pig ears and slap on my hat.

  He pulls into the graveled lot, and we step out of the car. My shoes crunch against the tiny rocks, and I walk toward the overgrown grass. I look up at the sky. It’ll be getting dark in probably about an hour.

  Kiev hands me a book when we get to the train and stop in front of a train car. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “So you really love doing this?”

  “Oh hell yeah. It’s my life.” He looks up at the sky. “Sometimes, you just want to be someone different. With theater I can be. Whether it’s a second, a minute, an hour, I can escape and not have to be me.”

  “What’s wrong with being you?” I ask, my face folding into a quizzical expression.

  “Nothing. But after my mom left, after my sister changed, after my dad became this person that isn’t wholly him anymore—it’s just nice to be someone else sometimes.” He shrugs.

  I kind of want to wrap him in a hug. “Wow. I wish I could examine and decipher things the way you do. I throw my life into video games or old movies. Not that that is doing anything special.”

  “It’s what makes you, you.” He taps the bill of my hat.

  “Aww, before this gets too sentimental, let’s do these lines you want to practice.” I point at A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Kiev opens it to show me which lines to read. “Okay, Puck, show me what you’ve got,” I say.

  He starts spouting his lines, and they make no sense to me. That’s Shakespeare in general, though, but Kiev’s really good. He can form emotion into a tight spring that seems to blast around me. I’m impressed. My lines come out robotic, but they’re good enough for him to practice his. His arms are flying as he speaks, expression fierce, voice deep and lovely. Okay, after the butter scene, I can’t start to feel this strange thing or look at him and think he’s all hot and stuff with whatever the hell he has going on with Monica.

  “I’ve gotta get out of here,” I interrupt him.

  “Already?” His arms drift down to his sides. I don’t really want to leave, but just the other week I punched this guy. And now I’m crushing on him? I’m not even sure when the last time I liked anyone was. Then there’s Monica.

  “I mean, I don’t have to leave but I don’t want to stay.”

  “Something wrong?” His brows furrow into confusion like maybe he’s done something wrong.

  “I don’t know.” I do know, but I don’t want to explain it all to him and look like a fool.

  “You don’t know?” He looks around, as if searching for an answer.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend to practice lines with?” I blurt.

  “No?” He does some weird head twitch with an eyebrow raised.

  “Is that a question?”

  “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Well, whatever relationship you have with Monica, I don’t want to get in the middle of it. She already started scowling at me in class the other day after I passed you guys and Cole last week in the hall.”

  He takes a step toward me. “So, you saw her kiss me on Monday, then? Is that why you think she’s my girlfriend?”

  “And I saw her all over you at the party,” I point out. I don’t know if I want to know what went on between them after I left the party.

  Crossing his arms across his chest, Kiev says, “There’s nothing there. Never has been. Never will be. I let her know that on Monday, too.”

  “But there was a kiss.” My eyes stupidly sweep down to his lips.

  “And I basically told her to knock it off.”

  “All right. Well, what’s going on here?” I’m not sure why I even asked that, but I’m glad I did.

  “What do you mean?” He looks confused again.

  “Never mind.”

  He cocks his head to the side. “Just tell me.”

  “Um, do you like me?”

  “Yeah, I like you,” he answers, nonchalantly.

  “Not like a friend, but like-like.” I have to point that out because sometimes I don’t think guys understand the meaning of that question.

  Walking toward me, Kiev places a hand against my cheek and presses his mouth against mine. I do nothing except stand there, frozen—awkward.

  His hand falls from my cheek, his face all red. “Oh, were you just asking that because you thought that I liked you, but you don’t feel the same way? Because we can just rewind that moment.” He spins his index finger in a circle like he’s turning back time.

  I laugh. “No, I like you.”

  He doesn’t look like he believes it. “Then why didn’t you kiss me back?”

  “Because I don’t know how—I’ve never kissed someone.” It’s lame that I’m seventeen and have zero experience.

  “Liar.” He smiles.

  “I’m not lying.” I kind of wish I were.

  “Not true. What about Jason Warren?” Kiev asks.

  “Seriously? That was fifth grade, and we didn’t even hold hands.” I don’t even think we acknowledged the end of that relationship, because we didn’t even talk.

  Kiev gives me a smile with the edge of his lips tilting to the side, and then motions me over with a finger. “Come here.”

  My body feels on fire, and I want to get an ice cube, but I also want to move closer to Kiev. Why am I so damn nervous? If I knew kissing could give a person this much anxiety, I would never have started this. Okay, that’s false, I totally would have.

  I take a step toward Kiev, and he places the tips of his fingers against the bottom of my chin. “Do you want me to show you how?”

  “Um. Okay.” I really want to say, heck yeah!

  “Promise not to be a statue.” He grins.

  “I’ll try.” I grin back.

  Leaning forward, he presses his lips softly against mine. I give him a peck and pull back. “That was nice,” I say.

  Laughing, he shakes his head. “We can do better than nice. Just follow my lead and open your mouth against mine.”

  “Sure.”

  He laughs again. “The next time it can be more romantic.”

  What? Screw that. It can be romantic this time. I practically head butt him by crashing my mouth against his, pushing him against the outside of the train car. I move my mouth against his, not sure if I’m doing it right, and honestly don’t give a damn. But then his mouth opens to mine, and his hands drop to my lower back to pull me closer. I throw in some tongue for good measure, hoping it doesn’t feel slug-like in any way. He lets out a groan, so I know I must be all right at it.

  Pulling back, he locks his gray eyes with mine. “Do you still want to leave?”

  “In a minute.” I run my hand through his light-brown hair and drag his face back to mine, kissing him slowly. His fingers run along the bottom o
f my shirt, brushing the skin of my lower back.

  I move back this time. “Now I’m thinking about all the time that was wasted with me loathing you for no reason, when we could have been doing this.”

  “I know. It’s really all your fault. If you would have just said, ‘Kiev, thank you for giving me that answer,’ I could have said, ‘Lia, let’s go make out.’”

  I shake my head. “God, you’re such a nerd.”

  Kiev grabs my hand. “Come on, let me take you home.”

  We’re quiet on the car ride back to my apartment, but I keep looking at him out of the corner of my eye and catching him smile, which makes me smile.

  He turns into the apartment parking lot and looks at me. “So, do you want to hang out tomorrow after school? Since we don’t have the volunteering stuff anymore.”

  “Sure. You want to come over?” I ask.

  “I have to stop by the house first to do a couple of things and then I can come over.” He grins.

  That makes me think of his pet. “You want to bring Pepe over as well to show my dads?”

  “That works. He’ll be excited to get out of the house.” He reaches out his hand toward me.

  “Yes?”

  “Phone?”

  “What?” I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about.

  “Hand me your phone.” He wiggles his fingers in the air with his palm still facing up.

  I hand him my phone, and he enters his number.

  “You know, if you want, you can go ahead and send me a text so I can have yours.” He arches an eyebrow at me.

  Biting my lip, I shoot him a text and open the car door. “Okay, well, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow, Lia.”

  I wave goodbye, walk inside the house, and find Mom watching some reality show. “Hey, Mom.”

  She angles her head away from the TV to face me. “Hey, baby. How did the volunteering go?”

  “It was our last day, so it was okay.” Better than okay, really.

  “You’re not grounded anymore now. And you better have learned something from this.” She gives me the eye. Was I still grounded? I had no idea. However, I did learn that Piggy Palooza isn’t so bad.

  “Thanks, Mom. I did learn a valuable lesson.”

  She waves me over for a tight hug, and I head to the bathroom for a quick shower. Afterward, I walk to my room and pull out my math homework from my backpack to begin working on it when my phone beeps.