The sweet wonderfulness surrounded Delly again. She rolled back onto the bank, smiling.
Clarice lay down beside her. They stayed like that for a long time.
Finally, Delly had what she wanted most. So she said, “Want to go home?”
“You sure?” Clarice asked.
“Sure,” she answered. Because she knew, someday soon, she’d have it again.
Chapter 47
Every week, Brud Kinney and Ferris Boyd’s games got longer and longer, because Brud kept thinking of animals with longer and longer names. Plus he was getting better.
But there was never enough basketball for Brud.
Sunday morning he walked down the drive to the old Hennepin place and held up his pad. T-Y-R-R-A-N-A-S-A-U-R-U-S R-E-X, it read. No Touch.
The boy read it while Brud held his breath. Then he nodded.
The happiness was going to shoot Brud like a rocket into outer space. His feet were already blasting off. So right there, in front of the boy, he hollered, “A-A-A-All right!”
And Ferris Boyd didn’t flinch or make fun. She just waited for him to come back to earth.
Then they played. The game went on and on, like heaven’s supposed to. Ferris Boyd beat him, but not by much.
After, they were worn out. They both went to the stoop. They lay back on it, stinking with sweat.
Even if he didn’t have the stutter, there wasn’t much Brud wanted to say. He didn’t need to chat, “Nice day,” or talk about his new sneakers.
But there was something that mattered more than anything to Brud. He’d never told it to anybody. He wanted his friend to know.
So he wrote it: I want to play like nothing nobody’s ever seen, only better.
The boy read it. He stared at the sky for a while. Then he wrote, You will.
Brud turned to his friend to see if he was making fun, or feeling sorry.
The boy’s eyes were steady and sure. He meant it.
Then Brud didn’t smile, or nod, or write anything. It was all too small for how he felt. He just stared at the sky, thinking, Thanks.
Chapter 48
Finally, it was the date Delly Pattison waited all year for: the last day of school. But Delly wasn’t yelling “Yahoo!”; she was worried. “Summer’s vacation from school. And people, too, if you want,” she murmured.
So she didn’t ask as they walked out the River Road, with RB singing, “No more school, no more schoo-oo-ool.” She didn’t ask during basketball, even though the paper was pinching her. She didn’t get it out till it was two minutes to the whistle.
“Ferris Boyd, I got a question,” she said, and the rasp was rough. “On Monday, there’s no school—”
RB started singing again, “No more schoo-oo—”
“Quit it,” she commanded.
“So we won’t be walking out here together. We got chores in the morning, but we could . . . in the afternoon . . . if you want. . . .” It was too hard; Delly couldn’t finish.
But the paper was pinching her a purple herman. It was going to make her ask. “Bawlgrammit,” she muttered. Then she took a big breath and pushed it out. “You want us to come here and hang out with you?”
Now, there were about ten questions in those ten words, like Are we really friends, even outside of school? and Could you stand seeing more of us? For every one of them, a No would hurt horribadibly.
Ferris Boyd stared into the green. She took out her pad and pen.
Delly felt sick, knowing the answer needed more than a nod. She had to make herself read it.
In big, dark letters it said, Yes.
“All right then.” Delly grinned so her cheeks puffed up like peaches.
“Yay,” RB cheered. He started dancing around the hideawaysis. “Yay, yay, yay.”
Then he stopped. “What about Gal?” He was worried, because she’d be watching them.
“I got that covered,” Delly told him.
He went back to dancing.
The whistle blew.
At the ladder, Delly said it, smiling. “See you Monday, Ferris Boyd.” Because now they weren’t just after-school friends. They were summer friends; they were every-bawlgram-day friends.
And Ferris Boyd nodded.
After dinner, Delly went to Galveston’s room. She knocked on the door.
“What?” Gal hollered.
“Can I come in?”
Gal waited awhile before she said, “Okay.” That made Delly mad, but she had questions for her sister, not a fight.
Galveston was on her bed with a book.
“Gal,” Delly began.
“Huh.”
“You know how you’re watching me and RB this summer?”
“Baby-sitting you. Yeah,” she said. It was just mean calling it that, but Delly let it slide.
“You know how you got to be with us all day and take us every place you go?”
Galveston groaned.
“What if you didn’t have to be with us so much? And you’d get paid.”
“Go on,” she said.
“Me and RB will do our chores in the morning; then we’ll take off for the afternoon,” Delly explained. “We’ll be home before Ma, and we’ll act like we were with you the whole time.”
“And where are you going to be?” Gal demanded.
“At the old Hennepin place.”
“Doing what?”
“Hanging around, with my friend.”
It was too good to believe, and it was too good to say no to. Gal started grilling her. “You going to the river?”
“Nope.”
“Taking people’s stuff?”
“Nope.”
“Fighting? Setting off firecrackers?”
“Nope.”
Galveston paused. If it worked, it’d be heaven. If something went wrong, there’d be the flames of Clarice’s fury. “What if something bad happens? What if you get in trouble while I’m supposed to be watching you?”
“I’ll say we snuck out on you. I’ll say it was me,” Delly replied.
Gal squinted at her. “Swear on it.”
“Cross my heart or cover me with cow chips,” she promised.
“Okay.” Gal went back to her book, letting Delly know they were done.
But Delly had more. “What’s Ma paying you to watch us?”
“Two dollars an hour.”
“How about splitting it with us?” she suggested.
Galveston laughed out loud.
“Gal,” Delly said, “RB tells Ma everything. I bet some money would help keep him quiet.”
Gal heard what she was meaning. She made an offer. “Two dollars a day.”
“A dollar an hour.” Delly countered it.
Gal chewed on that. “Okay, but if you mess up, I get all of it.”
“Deal,” Delly told her.
And that’s how the youngest Pattisons came into some extra money that summer.
Chapter 49
After that, the Pattisons were at the old Hennepin place every weekday by noon, bringing lunch, good times, and armaments.
With the money they got from Galveston, they bought fluff, chocolate bars, and a box of graham crackers.
“First, you spread the fluff on a cracker. Next comes the chocolate. Then you slap a cracker on top.” Delly demonstrated. “Fantabulous,” she declared, spitting cracker dust.
“S’more, please, s’more please,” RB sang as his belly got big with them.
Ferris Boyd just closed her eyes while she chewed and chewed.
Delly made slingshots for each of them. “Ready, aim, blast ’em,” she hollered, as she taught those two how to shoot.
She got eggs and left them in the sun.
“Won’t they go bad?” RB asked.
Her eyes sparkled as she said, “They’re stink bombs. You hit somebody with one, and the stench’ll knock him out.”
She brought a shovel and dug holes in the ground around the hideawaysis. She covered them with evergreen branches. Then she showed Ferris
Boyd and RB where they were. “Traps, for intruders,” she warned them.
It took over a month to get the jobs done. Delly didn’t mind. She was with her friend, with no school and no Novello to bother them. No green Impala, either.
Sometimes she thought about asking, Ferris Boyd, where’s your dad? Because even though Boomer and Clarice were gone a lot, there was always somebody around to watch Delly and RB. Nobody was watching Ferris Boyd.
But she couldn’t say it, as if the words might bring the green Impala back. She wouldn’t risk ruining the happiness.
And in June, she got another Delly Day.
Clarice borrowed a canoe, but she wouldn’t go down the river; they took it to the lake instead.
They went in the morning, before everybody else got up. They paddled around for a while, and it was so peaceful Delly almost fell asleep again.
Till something blew up beside them. Smack, it hit the water, then splash. Smack, splash. The water kept exploding, like they were in a minefield.
“Grenades!” Delly screamed. “Ma, get down!”
Clarice was laughing. “That’s the carp,” she explained. “They rest in the shallows. We’re waking them up.”
“Oh.” She calmed down.
They cruised to the middle of the lake, and Clarice got breakfast out—egg sandwiches and doughnuts. And Delly was so happy all she could do was smile.
They watched the deer come down to the water to drink. “Ma,” Delly whispered and pointed, and Clarice nodded. Then they stayed still for a long time.
“This is the best summer ever,” Delly breathed to the wind and the sun and the water. “Nothing can wreck it.”
Brud Kinney was having the best summer, too.
Weekdays he worked on his grandparents’ farm, and that was all right.
But on Sundays he was with his friend. He didn’t go to the park anymore; he stayed at Ferris Boyd’s all day.
One Sunday at the end of June, after they played H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S for the third time, he was so happy he had to write it, This is the best summer ever.
Ferris Boyd’s eyes smiled.
Nothing can wreck it, Brud wrote surely.
Ferris Boyd closed her eyes, as if she were wishing the words would be true.
But Brud was wrong.
They all were.
Chapter 50
It was July. It was Sunday. For the Pattisons, that meant church. But this Sunday there wasn’t just church in the morning. “We got church the whole bawlgram day,” Delly griped. Because after the sermon, there was a picnic for everybody at the park outside town.
“Yay,” RB cheered when Clarice said, “We’re going.”
So Delly set him straight. “A church picnic’s not like a real one,” she told him. “There’s no swimming in your underwear or mudball fights. You just play baby games and talk to old people.”
RB looked like he might cry, so she added, “They got good food, though.”
After the service they all got in the van. Delly took a window seat.
“Move over,” Galveston ordered. “I feel sick,” Delly replied. “You want me to throw up on you?”
So Gal climbed in behind her, and the questions won again.
As they drove down the River Road, RB yelled, “Hey, Delly, we’re going by—” but she shh-ed him silent.
Then she turned to the window, because she wanted to see if Ferris Boyd and that cat were outside.
She spotted the cat on the stoop. And there was Ferris Boyd, playing ball in the drive.
But she wasn’t alone. Somebody was with Delly’s friend.
The somebody turned to the road, smiling. The sun shone on his two front teeth so they glowed.
“That’s Brud Kinney,” RB said, like it was a happy thing.
Delly just kept turning in her seat, watching those two together. “What the glub?” she mumbled.
“What are you griping about?” Galveston asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered. But it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like something. Something bad.
Suddenly Delly had all kinds of questions. For herself. Questions like, How long’s he been going out there? Are they friends? How much fun are they having? And the only answer she had was, I don’t know, because my friend doesn’t tell me anything. Delly hadn’t felt this bad in a long time.
At the picnic, Clarice sat her between Mabel Silcox and Angel Grace Pincher. While the two old ladies chatted about prunes and support hose, the questions wouldn’t leave Delly alone. How long does he stay out there? they asked. Did she show him the hideawaysis?
After lunch there were games. Clarice made Delly and Galveston do the three-legged race together. “So you work as a team,” she told them. Gal’s legs ended at Delly’s eyeballs, though, so they kept falling over each other.
Delly won the seed-spitting contest without even trying. They let her pick a prize, but all they had were socks and mittens the church ladies had knitted. “Chizzle,” she grumbled.
She sat on a bench, and the questions followed her. Does she like him better? they wondered. Now that she’s got him, will she get rid of me?
RB sat beside her. “You got socks!” he exclaimed, like they’d given her a chocolate cake.
“Take them,” she said.
“I got socks, I got socks,” he sang.
Delly wasn’t getting any answers on her own, so she asked RB. “How come Ferris Boyd didn’t let us know she’s friends with Brud Kinney?”
“Maybe she didn’t think we’d care,” he answered.
“I don’t care.” She huffed.
Instead of saying, Yes you do, RB told her, “Maybe because they play basketball and you hate that game.”
She chewed on that for a bit; it could be true. Then she rasped, “RB, do you think Ferris Boyd likes us?”
“She likes us a lot.” He said it so surely she believed it. Almost.
“Because she doesn’t tell us anything,” she argued.
He laughed. “Delly, she doesn’t talk.”
“Bawlgrammit, RB,” she shouted. “I mean she doesn’t let us know stuff.”
“We know about the hideawaysis, and that she loves basketball and animals.”
Delly knew all that was a big deal. “But . . . about her.”
“She’s just sad,” he replied.
“Huh,” she said, because she knew that was true. Now she had more questions, though, like, Does sad make you stop talking? And, Does sad keep secrets?
Clarice came by, herding her horde to the van. “Delly, you sit up front with me.” She directed her.
They rode for a while before Delly asked, “Ma?”
“Yep.”
The rasp was so soft Clarice could hardly hear her. “If you got a friend, then she gets another friend, do you get less friend?”
Clarice thought about it. “I don’t know about friends; I know about kids. Will that do?”
Delly shrugged.
So Clarice told her, “After I married your dad, we had Dallas. He was the only one, and I loved him a lot.
“Then Tallahassee came along, and I had less time for Dallas, but I loved him more because we were a family.
“It was the same with Montana, Gal, you, and RB. I got less time for anybody, I know it, Delly. But I got more love for everybody. More than I knew I had in me.” Clarice’s voice cracked. “That make sense?”
“Maybe,” she answered. Because Delly liked everybody more since she had Ferris Boyd.
Everybody except Brud Kinney.
Chapter 51
Monday, Delly waited till they were at the hide-awaysis to say, “Shikes! I left my bag at the bottom of the tree. RB, will you get it?”
He was already settled in beside Ferris Boyd; he didn’t want to go.
“Please?” she asked. “The sandwiches are in it. Plus I brought cookies.”
And he couldn’t say no to that.
When he was out of earshot, Delly started. “Hey Ferris Boyd, I don’t have a questio
n for this; I just got to say it.”
The girl’s eyes came to her.
She said it quick, so it wouldn’t hurt so much. “I didn’t have friends for a long time before you. Sometimes I think you might quit being my friend, because everybody else did. So if you got other friends, that’s all right.”
Delly couldn’t look at her for the last part. “Just keep being my friend, okay?”
Ferris Boyd gazed into the green. She took out her pad and pen, then passed the note to Delly. OK, it read.
Delly leaned back against the rail and breathed out all the worry that had been weighing on her. “All right then.” She and Ferris Boyd were okay.
Brud Kinney, however, was a different matter.
Chapter 52
Tuesday after supper, RB and Delly had nothing to do.
“Want to make worm muffins?” he asked her.
“Nah.”
“Want to listen to Gal talking to her boyfriend on the phone?”
“No,” she told him, because that was just weird. “How much money we got?” she asked.
“Lots.”
“Let’s go get some doughnuts.”
They got two triple chocolates. They sat in front of the IGA eating them, not spitting once.
And didn’t Brud Kinney ride up on his bike, because his mother sent him for milk.
Before Sunday, Delly’d always liked Brud. She liked his stutter and his fake teeth. But now she had something she wanted him to know. “Hey, Brud Kinney,” she called.
Brud Kinney liked Delly, too. He liked her voice and how she took on Novello. But he knew about her fighting. He waved from far away.
“Hold on,” she said as he walked toward the door.
So he did.
“I saw you playing ball with Ferris Boyd. You go out there every Sunday?” she wondered.
Brud nodded; then he watched her. He wanted to see if a fight was headed his way before it hit him.
“Well, she’s my friend, too,” Delly told him.
Brud’s eyes got big, like she’d punched him. “Wh-Wh-Who?” he said.
“Ferris Boyd,” she announced. “She’s my friend. First.”
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