Ramona Blue

by Julie Murphy

  But then Hattie went and got pregnant, and even though neither of us have said so out loud, I know those plans have changed.

  Tyler is here for now, but I can’t imagine he’s anything more than temporary. My plans were never extraordinary to begin with, and now that Hattie has my niece or my nephew incubating inside of her, they’re even less important. Hattie’s my sister. She’s my sister forever.

  “And I can’t kick Tyler out, by the way,” she adds.

  I shake my head. “Yeah, you can. Just tell him to go home.”

  “This is sort of his home now.”

  I prop myself up on my elbow and open my mouth, waiting for the words to pour out. But I’m too shocked. And horrified.

  She loops a loose piece of hair behind my ear, trying to act like this is no big deal. “Dad said he could move in,” she whispers.

  There are so many things I want to tell her in this moment. Our house is too small. Tyler is temporary. There will be even less room when the baby comes. I don’t need another body in this house to tell me that it’s too small and we’ve all outgrown this place. And yet I feel like I’m the only one of us who sees it. I’m the only one wondering where we go from here.

  But with my legs dangling off the foot of my twin bed, I can’t help but feel that the problem is me. And that, somehow, I have outstayed my welcome here.

  Internally, I am screaming, but on the exterior the only sign of life is the tears beading at the corners of my eyes. “Is it dumb that I’m really upset about the Olympics being over, too?”

  She laughs. “It depends. Is that why you’re crying?”

  “No . . . maybe a little bit.”

  Hattie wraps her arms around me and pulls me to her like Mrs. Pearlman’s old Maine coon does with her kittens when they’re done feeding. It’s a momentary reminder that I’m the actual little sister. “I bet you could’ve been good enough for the Olympics if you’d ever even tried.”

  “Shut up,” I tell her, fully aware that she’s being so nice to me because I’m a mess of a human being right now. I’ve always loved the Olympics. Most kids were obsessed with SpongeBob or Transformers or One Direction, but something about Team USA and the swim team in particular always felt magical to me. It was like every person on that team was the star of their own Cinderella story and the whole country was rooting for them to get the prince—or princess. In fact, sitting on my dresser is an old Michael Phelps Wheaties box with Missy Franklin’s face taped over his; she rules and he drools, obviously.

  “You’re the best swimmer I know, Ramona Blue.”

  I roll my eyes, but my lids feel heavier than they did a moment ago. “You don’t even know any swimmers. You’re the best amateur hairdresser I know and I don’t see you styling the rich and famous anytime soon.”

  “I’m just saying.” She yawns. “You don’t have a tiny human in your body. You can still be whatever the hell you want.”

  I roll my eyes again and yawn back at her. I wish it were that simple. “I need to get some rest before our shift.”

  I close my eyes, waiting for her breathing to deepen. I will always love Hattie for her undying faith in me, but even from a very young age, I knew what it meant to be the kind of person with the time and resources to be something like a swimmer or a gymnast or a freaking speed walker. (Yes, race walking is totally an Olympic sport.) My sport—the special skill I’ve developed my whole life—is surviving, and that doesn’t leave much room for following Cinderella dreams.

  THREE

  The oysters at Boucher’s are the best reason to come to Eulogy. The decor at Boucher’s is the second-best reason.

  No, really. That’s what all the travel website reviews say. Year-round this place is dressed for Christmas, with multicolor lights dripping from the ceiling and artificial trees in every corner. Unless it’s pouring or unbearably hot, the patio doors roll up like the kind you see at an automotive shop. It’s the type of place where you can find locals and tourists coexisting, because it’s too hard to keep the food a secret.

  I plop down at the bar in front of Saul, who slings his towel over his shoulder and chuckles. “Too young to serve, sweetheart.”

  I groan, letting my head fall down on the counter. Hattie and I slept for a few hours before coming in a little early for second shift.

  “Hey, Saul,” says Hattie as she walks in behind me. We both work here, mostly because it’s in walking distance of our house and our forms of transportation are limited to our feet, my bike, and whatever rides we’re offered from Saul or whoever Hattie is currently dating.

  “What’s her problem?” he asks my sister.

  She hops up onto the stool beside me. “Grace and her family went home this morning.”

  “And Tyler is moving in,” I whisper. And then mouth Help me.

  He rolls his eyes—not at me, but at my sister—and shakes a hand through my hair. “I told you not to fall in love, didn’t I? We’re young. We’re supposed to have sex with stupid people and get high at public parks or something.”

  I pick my head up enough to see him, and his ridiculous handlebar mustache is enough to make me smile again. Unlike Charlie’s, Saul’s mustache is thick and perfectly groomed. That, combined with his cutoff jorts and his Budweiser tank top, give him this dirty seventies porn-star look that would make anyone else seem like a pedophile, but not Saul. His look may age him a bit, but Saul is nineteen and fresh out of high school. The ’stache, shorts, and tank are all a part of what he calls his beach trash aesthetic. Saul treats his clothing like it’s a costume—or armor even.

  “Staff meeting in five!” Tommy, our manager and the owner’s son, calls from the kitchen.

  Saul pours me a glass of Diet Coke and, after checking to make sure no one is around, adds a splash of whiskey. He slides it over before leaning on the bar. “Sugar,” he says, “you broke my rules.”

  Saul is the king of summer hookups. His rules are law. And I broke all two of them. 1. Don’t date a tourist. 2. Hook up in the closet all you want; just don’t date in it.

  Grace and I talked about her being in the closet a lot, but I never tried very hard to push her. It felt like a violation. And honestly I hated to imagine the contrast between her life here with me and the one she lived back home. I knew there was one boy her mom always mentioned, but Grace never brought him up except to say that she planned on breaking up with him at the end of the summer. It might seem silly now, but when I was with her, it was easy to believe that he didn’t really exist. Or at least that he wasn’t a threat.

  “I bet your friends will be excited to see you,” I said a few days before she left as we sat on a bench in front of the beach, with Highway 90 at our backs. Grace was one of those rare people in high school who was friends with all the different groups—nothing like me. She actually looked forward to the first day of school.

  Her cheek was hot with summer as she leaned her head against my shoulder. I hoped that there was some piece of her that belonged only to me. A laugh or a smile or a look, even—some little corner of Grace that only I knew. Sometimes when I couldn’t fall asleep, I wondered if she loved me as much as I loved her or if maybe she just loved the person she was realizing she’d been all along.

  “Your parents love you,” I said, and kissed the curve of her shoulder all the way to the base of her neck before our lips collided. “You should tell them.”

  She crossed her arms over her stomach. “I want to. And I will. After I graduate, maybe. But I want to have all these good memories first, because . . . what if things change? Even in the smallest way?”

  “Don’t you wish you could be this person all the time?” I asked, trying not to sound pushy. “We could go on dates. Maybe even visit each other for dumb shit like homecoming and prom.”

  Knowing Grace’s parents, they’d probably join some kind of club for parents of gay kids and march in pride parades. And if there weren’t any pride parades to be found in Picayune, Mississippi, they’d probably start one.

/>   Grace turned to me. “You don’t get it.” She sounded exasperated already. “You don’t know my life back home. I can’t just show up on the first day of school and tell people I’m gay or bi. It’s not like a new haircut you get over the summer.” She pressed her lips into a thin line, and I could see she was searching for words. “I get that we’re supposed to hate high school, but I like my life. A lot. I like my friends and my classes, and I don’t want to ruin that when I only have a year left.”

  I took a deep breath and concentrated on the tone of my voice. “I understand. I do. But doesn’t it somehow cheapen the whole experience if you’re hiding behind the person everyone else thinks you are?”

  She looked away then, pulling her knees into her chest and picking at her chipped toenail polish. “There’s a lot I could lose,” she said. “A lot of people I could hurt.”

  Or a single person, I thought bitterly. Andrew. Her boyfriend. In moments like these I couldn’t help but wonder if the temporary thing in Grace’s life was me.

  I shake my head, trying to somehow get rid of all thoughts of Grace. Saul was right about dating in the closet, and this is what I get for thinking I might somehow be different.

  Ruth, Saul’s younger sister, reaches over my shoulder and grabs my drink, knocking the rest of it back in a single gulp. She cringes immediately, coughing into the crook of her elbow. “Um, okay, that was way more than Coke.”

  “Ruthie! That was mine,” I tell her. “I earned that little bit of whiskey.”

  She sits down next to me, tying her short waitress apron around her waist. “And how do you figure that?” she asks drily.

  Ruth has the kind of outlook I would kill for. To her, this life here in Eulogy is temporary. A pit stop on her way to bigger and better things. And she’s totally unapologetic about it.

  “I paid for it in heartbreak,” I tell her, eyeing the now empty glass.

  “Hey, she might be back next summer,” offers Ruth. “But probably not.”

  Saul swats her arm with a rag. The list of things Saul and Ruth have in common is short. Other than being related, they’re both gay, Cajun, and white. That’s pretty much it.

  She shrugs. “I’m trying to be realistic.”

  And if Ruthie is anything, she is realistic.

  I almost smile. Ruth and I have known each other almost our whole lives, because Eulogy is only so big, but we didn’t become friends until the end of freshman year. Saul had just come out to his whole family, and no one took it well. And then Ruth came out, too. I remember not seeing either of them at school for a while, like they had something the rest of us could catch. Now I know they’d been sent to Florida for a few weeks to live with their grandparents and attend their church’s revival.

  It wasn’t like that for me. When I came out, it was a blip. The type of news that flashes across the bottom ticker of the screen and then is quickly forgotten. Hattie shrugged and said, “Well, that explains a lot.” And Dad thought about it for a few minutes before adding, “Nothing wrong with that.” My mom, though . . . she still thinks this is a phase.

  Eulogy isn’t all potholes and trailer parks. There are chunks of this place that passersby drive through that make them think they could live here and that small-town life can be quaint and cozy. That’s the part of town Saul and Ruth come from, and since Eulogy only has one high school, there are no walls to keep kids like them from kids like me, even though their mom would love that.

  When Saul and Ruth came back from Florida, Hattie sought them out. Growing up, I was never invited to birthday parties or ever really had a best friend outside of Hattie or Freddie. Most of my social interactions were a result of being the little-sister tagalong. So it only makes sense that Ruth and Saul are in my life because Hattie put them there. Sometimes when she seems so thoughtless, I remind myself of all the times she made room for me in her life.

  Tommy sticks his head out the kitchen door. He’s a short black guy with a bald, shiny scalp. “Let’s move it!”

  Saul winks at me, and I follow him to the back.

  After our staff meeting, we all go about our business for the afternoon and on into the evening. Ruthie and Hattie tend to their sections while Saul works the bar, which isn’t entirely legal since he’s not twenty-one, but that’s never seemed to be an issue.

  I bus table after table all night. I love the routine, and only wish it kept my mind busier. Between every trip to the kitchen I find myself checking my phone, hoping for a message from Grace. This morning, after falling asleep alongside Hattie, I woke to a picture from her. It was a dark, blurry photo of the NOW LEAVING EULOGY! DON’T BE A STRANGER! sign. I texted her back a frowning emoji but was unsure what else to say. I didn’t want to look too needy, even though I very much felt that way.

  She lives only an hour and a half away, but that’s one and a half impossible hours for a pair of high school girls without cars.

  “Ramona!” calls Tommy from the kitchen. “I need you on to-go pickup!”

  I dump my tub of dirty dishes into the soaking sink and hustle to the to-go counter.

  A light-skinned black boy with a near ubiquitous amount of freckles and short, curly hair sits perched on a bar stool beneath the takeout sign. I would know those freckles anywhere. “Freddie.”

  He’s so intently focused on his phone that he doesn’t even hear me.

  “Freddie!” I shove his shoulder a little.

  Finally he spins around on his toes, and his deep brown eyes widen with recognition. Without even taking a breath, he pulls me in for a hug. “Ramona Blue!”

  My chest tightens a little, and I don’t completely know why. This morning with Agnes, I felt like the giant, but now it’s the other way around. Freddie, who was always a few inches behind, is still an inch or so shorter than me, but something about him makes me feel cozy. His arms and legs are gangly, but still lined with a thin layer of sinewy muscle. He almost reminds me of one of those plastic dolls with long, stretched-out limbs you can tie into multiple knots. His jawline is rough with stubble and acne scars. His dark-brown eyes are a little sadder than I remember.

  “Are you guys here for a few weeks?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “For good.”

  My heart skips, and I push him a little too hard. “Seriously?”

  “Grams retired, so she and Bart bought a place down here like she always wanted.”

  “Bart?” I ask.

  His mouth turns into a frown. “Gramps passed away a few years back. She got married to Bart last February.” He shrugs. “Good guy.”

  “Damn,” I hiss. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandpa.” There’s so much more I want to say. But there’s some invisible barrier there between us created by the years we’ve spent apart.

  He nods. “I think my gram called in an order?”

  “Right. Let me track that down.” I run around to the other side of the counter and pack his bag full of extra hot sauce, ketchup, and plasticware. “Y’all need plates?”

  “Sure. Fewer dishes for me to do after dinner.”

  “Ramona!” snaps Hattie from the hostess stand. “I need table eight clear!”

  I hand over the food and quickly make change for him. “Hey, I saw Agnes earlier today and she invited me over for breakfast, so I’ll see you in the morning? Maybe we can catch up more then?”

  He grins, and I notice he still has the same sliver of a gap between his two front teeth. “For sure.”

  We say good-bye, and I watch as he gets into a bright-white Cadillac turned orange by the setting sun.

  FOUR

  Hattie and I lie sprawled out on the couch. She woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to come out here and watch TV with her because she had really bad indigestion from the crawfish étouffée we shared over our dinner break. I don’t think pregnant people are supposed to eat fish, or maybe that’s sushi? But Hattie said it was like wine and that a very little bit was okay.

  Hattie’s been having more and more trouble sl
eeping. When the Olympics were on, I didn’t so much mind staying up with her, but now our late-night TV options are limited, and I can already tell it’s going to be a total headache trying to get my body used to a school year schedule again.

  I check the time on my watch—a hand-me-down of my dad’s with an olive-green canvas strap and a black face. I have only an hour and a half until I have to be up for my paper route, and my body is already trying to fight off the idea of morning. Being a morning person is a lot more difficult when you don’t get any actual sleep.

  With Hattie fast asleep and her head in my lap, there’s no going to bed now.

  I scroll through my contacts until I land on Grace’s number. Somehow the thought of texting her in the middle of the night is less daunting. Something about the moon makes us a little braver. Or a bit more foolish. I’m not sure. Thinking of you, I type. Miss you.

  As soon as I’ve hit send, I immediately regret it. She could think I’m needy or clingy, sending her text messages this late at night.

  But moments later, my phone vibrates.

  GRACE: This is so much harder than I expected.

  My lips spread into a wild grin. She misses me. And then an attachment comes through—a blurry, watery picture of her street in the midst of a downpour taken from what I assume is her bedroom window. The street is almost steaming with humidity.

  I hold the phone to my chest and pretend that her view is my view and that instead of my sister’s, it’s Grace’s head in my lap. I imagine different versions of us leading a life I can barely recognize.

  “Ramona, Ramona.” A rough hand grips my forearm. “Wake up, little bebette,” says my dad, using old Cajun slang passed down from Grandma Cookie. Bebette, his little monster. “Gonna be late for your route.”

  I open my eyes to find the television turned off and my father hovering inches above my head. “I’m going back to bed before I gotta get back to the hotel,” he says.