Southern Charmed

by Melanie Jacobson

  That warmed my heart. “I brought her to your attention because I see you as the same.”

  “Because all black people look alike?”

  I gave Kiana a level stare.

  “Sorry, Miss Guidry. I know you’re not like that.”

  “I see in you what I see in her: strength of character, cleverness, determination. Maybe you don’t want to start a business to earn a million dollars, but there has to be something you want. What is it, Kiana?”

  Her face stayed blank beyond a quirk of her lips that communicated a careless “Nothing” without any words.

  I didn’t buy that for a second. I tried a different tack. “Let’s pretend you wake up tomorrow and someone is granting you a year of life to spend however you want without any obstacles. Money, time, other responsibilities—none of that’s an issue. What would you do with it?” I could count on one hand the number of kids who would answer seriously, and Kiana was one of them.

  Her response was instant. “I’d be a veterinarian. Or . . .”

  “You can tell me.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe a writer.”

  “So there you go. Read more about Madame CJ. Look at previous winning projects in the competition archives. Think about how to present Madame CJ. And then think about how much you want the future you would have if there were no obstacles. Think about her obstacles and if they were harder than what you’re facing. Think about whether you want your dreams as much as she wanted hers. Then come talk to me on Wednesday and tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She turned to take her seat but paused. “Why you giving this to me but not the whole class?”

  “Why would I waste their time when I know you’re going to win? They can all do their regular projects for class. You’re the one that’s right for this competition.”

  She smiled and went to her seat.

  Monday was a very good teaching day.

  * * *

  Wednesday afternoon I walked out to the faculty parking lot with a smile on my face but lost it as soon as I reached my car. I bit back my favorite Bible swear, but I did let it echo through my head a few times as I stared at my back left tire, which was so flat that my Civic looked drunk.

  I did not have time for this. I had the jack, tire iron, spare, and knowledge it would take to replace it, but I most certainly did not have the time. I was already fifteen minutes late because I’d gotten caught up talking to Kiana again about her project. Ideas poured out of her mouth almost faster than my ears could keep up.

  I loved hearing them. Kiana’s mood swings could be so extreme that early in the year I’d wondered if she was possibly bipolar, but patience and careful questioning had made it clear that her low ebbs were directly connected to incidents with her mother. Fights, broken promises, extended absences. I was pretty sure she was dealing not only with normal teenage moods but with far more extreme circumstances than most kids too. Just to be sure, I’d pelted the school psychologist with an earful of questions, and she’d confirmed my instincts. Kiana didn’t have bipolar disorder so much as a bad mom, which was an equally heavy weight to carry.

  But while I wouldn’t take back a minute of the extra time I’d spent watching her fizz with ideas and fascinating tidbits about her new hero, it had left me no margin for a flat tire.

  I stared down at my black wide-leg linen trousers. They might survive, but I was pretty sure my pink silk sweater would be a goner. I’d felt the need to redeem my wardrobe choices in front of Max after Sunday, but I regretted it now as I considered the flat.

  I pulled my phone out to text Max. He’d texted me earlier that morning. Got your number from LDS Tools. Confirming for our boat thing that it is not at all a date so don’t even try to back out.

  I’d laughed when I’d read it, but I could only sigh now as I tapped out an update. Walked out to a flat tire. May be late. If I don’t make it, go ahead without me.

  His reply was instant. Where are you? I can YouTube how to a change a tire and be an expert by the time I get there.

  Ha. I know how to do it. Just takes time.

  How about I pick you up now and help with the tire after the boat?

  I hated to make him drive over, but it was probably the most efficient solution. I’m at school. I’ll be the one in the teacher parking lot looking ridiculously peeved.

  I’ll be the guy in the Superman suit looking way too excited to have a mission.

  You’re a dork.

  Yes.

  He pulled up behind me not ten minutes later and rolled down his window. “You’re kind of on my way home from work. I don’t know why that makes me happy.”

  I didn’t know why it made me happy to hear it, so I frowned at him. He left the car idling but stepped out to scoop up my school bag so full of essays it looked like it was vomiting loose-leaf. “Is this coming with us or staying with your car?”

  “My car, I guess.” He reached around me to open the back door and set my bag inside.

  “We’ll only be about five minutes late if we take off now. You good?”

  “I’m good.” He opened the passenger door for me before getting in on his side. “You know, here in our elementary schools, they teach us about how you Yankees are cold, soulless robots who don’t believe in manners, but you handled that whole door thing nicely.”

  “We’re soulless, but they did program us to open doors, so I can only take so much credit.” He said it in a flat robot voice.

  “Your programmer did good work.”

  “Thanks. Her name is Catherine Archer, and she spends a lot of her time wondering how she got all her childrens’ coding so wrong, so I’ll pass along your compliment.”

  We’d reached the exit to the parking lot, and he stopped to let a group of students on the sidewalk cross before he pulled out. A loud bang on the hood made us both jump, and I glared out at Jamarcus’s grinning face, his hands flat on the car where he had slammed them. “That your boyfriend, Miss Guidry?”

  I lowered the window and stuck my head out so I could give him my dirtiest look.

  He lifted his hands and held them up in the air, backing away until he reached the sidewalk. His grin didn’t fade one bit.

  “You got him to do that with a look?” Max asked. It was like I’d performed a perfect gymnastics vault or something.

  “That’s nothing. I can shut down a whole mob of teenagers in a movie theater the same way.”

  “Good trick. I should always have you come to the movies with me to handle the mobs.”

  Nice try. “Or I can teach you how to do it.”

  “My way’s better.”

  “For you.”

  He grinned. “So. Tell me about your day.”

  “It was great until one of my kids tried to embarrass the snot out of me. I guess he’ll be sorry when I flunk him.”

  “Somehow, I’m betting this is not the first time he’s given you a hard time. And I’m betting you don’t mind him much.”

  “I don’t,” I confessed. “I have to walk a line with them as far as how much they’re allowed to joke around with me, but mostly I like my little weirdos.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “Hardest thing I’ve ever done.” His questions about work kept us occupied all the way to the boat landing.

  “I’d love to see you in action in the classroom sometime,” he said when he came around and opened my door for me. “Except it would make me regret you weren’t my teacher.”

  Was that a “hot for teacher” innuendo? It was funny how many guys thought that was original, but Max’s expression was truly wistful.

  At the Creole Belle’s gate, we gave our name to the ticket taker, who checked his list and made a call. “Mrs. Chapel will be down in a minute.”

  We sat on a bench to wait. “Names that are also things are goofy,” I said.

  “Like chapel?”

  “Or Baker. Or Archer.” I kept a straight face.

  “Hey!”

  “Oops, sorry.”


  He narrowed his eyes. “You should feel bad. When I was a kid, I used to imagine what it would be like if you could only do the job that matched your last name. So since Guidry isn’t a name that means anything, in my alternative universe, you wouldn’t even have a job. Now you’re sorry for real.”

  “I take it back. Please don’t exclude me from your imaginary reality.”

  He shrugged. “Too late. You’re cut off.”

  “That’s sad. Do you have a different imaginary world I could join?”

  He gave me a long, thoughtful look, like he was assessing my worthiness for admission. “There’s the one where everyone is only allowed to do jobs that rhyme with their names. Like I could do something with taxes. Or faxes.”

  “Lila. I could do something with . . . aisles?”

  “Lila doesn’t rhyme with aisle.”

  “It rhymes with aisle a. Like aisle a soup. So grocery manager?”

  “Don’t limit yourself. What about the Isle ‘a’ Man? You could be a tour guide.”

  “That’s it! Where is that? Ireland? I’m moving to Ireland! Enjoy your faxes. I’m going where the action is.”

  “Are you saying that faxes and taxes are boring? That’s slander. Probably.”

  “If you thought of all this stuff as a kid, why are all your scenarios about work? Like jobs people can have?”

  “Never thought about that part. What kind of thing would you make up about names?”

  “Something way cooler than rhyming jobs,” I said. “Like that everyone has a karmic namesake so you have a direct connection to a famous dead person with your name. It appeals to my inner historian.”

  “Which dead person do I get?”

  “You’re Maximilius Severus reincarnated. Dude was a homicidal Roman general.”

  He stared at me. “You made that up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I spend a lot of time thinking about shoving you off of docks and piers. Maybe I do have some Maximilius Severus in me.”

  “Hey, y’all.” A middle-aged woman with a name tag reading Linda Chapel had walked up during our bickering and stood smiling at us. “I understand you’re interested in checking out the Creole Belle for an event. A wedding, I assume?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, not looking at Max, who gave a laugh-cough. “Our church is looking for a place to host a dance for about two hundred singles, ages eighteen to thirty, but mostly they’ll be under twenty-five.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Y’all have such an easy way with each other that I assumed. Forgive me and my big mouth. Pretend I never said that, and let’s go tour the boat. If you like what you see, we can talk dates and rates.”

  She was full of facts about the history of paddle-wheel boats on the Mississippi, the origin of the Creole Belle, and its romantic past. “If you book with us, that’s the angle y’all want to sell,” she said. “Lots of fraternities and sororities like to hold their formals here because once we leave the dock, it’s like stepping into another world. People tell us all the time how magical it is. There’s nothing as beautiful as the moon shining down on the Mississippi while the shore lights slide by.”

  Even though we still had plenty of daylight left, I could imagine it. An inky black sky, the splash of the river against the boat, the sound of laughter drifting toward the banks, everyone dressed to the nines and hoping for a fairy tale. And it would happen. People would meet and marry because of this conference.

  We stopped in the bow while Mrs. Chapel explained the possible setups they could do. I pictured it in my mind’s eye, and my chest twinged like I had jalapeño heartburn. Yeah, magic would happen for some couples on this very deck. But not me. I by no means felt old, but a guy my age would have already been off his mission for at least three years. There were not a lot of those single guys around who were active in the Church.

  I surveyed the deck again, following as Linda’s finger pointed to where the refreshments would be set up, then to the deejay station. I was imagining myself as an observer, someone who would be monitoring the levels on the cookie trays and making sure it all went smoothly. I wouldn’t be dancing my feet off, giddy over a new face.

  Max’s hand brushed against the small of my back, and my spine tingled. They were waiting on me to answer something.

  “Sorry. Thinking about the possibilities. What was the question?”

  Max gave me a funny look, but he didn’t say anything as Mrs. Chapel repeated herself. “I wondered if you would be interested in a full dinner option before your dance so you can keep the group together longer?”

  “We’d like to see your price for both.”

  “Wonderful. Is there anything else you’d like to see before we finish?”

  Max and I exchanged glances, and he shook his head. “No, ma’am. I think we have a good feel for the venue. We still have other places to look, but price will be a big factor in our decision.”

  “If you have a few minutes, you can explore some more while I work up a preliminary quote.”

  Max lifted an eyebrow at me.

  “That works for me.”

  Mrs. Chapel smiled and headed back to her office.

  “What do you think?” I asked when she was out of earshot. “Too traditional and Southern?”

  “No. I thought it would be, to be honest. But it’s pretty awesome. I like the idea that we’re on the water for two hours and people can’t duck out until we say the dance is over.”

  “Really,” I drawled. “Is this a manifestation of some latent control-freak tendencies?”

  He blinked at me.

  “Were my words too big?”

  His cheekbones flushed the tiniest bit as he opened his mouth to deny it, but my mouth dropped open first. “Max Archer. It honestly surprises you when I use big words? Or is it just that I use them correctly?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “It’s written all over your face. Are you seriously not over the whole ‘Southern accent equals stupid’ thing?”

  “That’s not what I was thinking.” His cheeks were still red, but he reminded me of my littlest cousin, Luke, who had once worn the exact same expression before he’d confessed to setting a garter snake loose in my bedroom. “I’m not at all surprised at how articulate you are. But it made me think about how much I used to tease you before. I had a flashback to some of the dumb stuff I said. I can’t believe you didn’t smack me upside the head.”

  I leaned against the boat rail, and he joined me. “If my mother wouldn’t have killed me for it, I would have.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to apologize enough.”

  I stole his shoulder bump move to let him know it was okay. “I don’t need it. You’re forgiven.”

  “What about confessions? Can I make confessions?”

  “Um, yes? Should I sit down for this?”

  “Nah. You’ll probably want to stay on your feet so you can take off running.” He made a quarter turn toward me, and I did the same, so now we were leaning on the rail facing each other.

  “Confess,” I said, and I meant it to sound like an order, but it came out as the most flirtatious invitation I’d ever made.

  A slow smile spread across his face. “I teased other kids about Louisiana because I hated it. I teased you about it because I liked you.”

  So I hadn’t imagined it back then. The way it had felt beneath the rowboat, the looks he’d sent me all the way until the night of my first dance. “If you liked me, why . . . ?”

  “Why did I like you? The same reason I like you now.” My heart gave a hard knock against my ribs. I’d meant to ask him why he’d humiliated me at the dance, but I wasn’t about to correct him until he finished this fascinating thought. “Fifteen-year-old boys fall for girls for dumb reasons. You were so pretty. I couldn’t think straight around you.”

  “Max.” I cleared my throat. “I’m not trying to ruin your moment here, but you just said you were really dumb for liking me.”

  Hi
s smile only widened. “That’s not what I said at all. I said my reasons were dumb. That was past tense. I know you don’t teach English, but try to keep up.”

  He slid closer. It would take only the barest lean in for our lips to touch. I rested my hand against his chest for a moment before I stepped back. “We need to go, Max. Because I want you to finish that thought way too much, which is not smart. I’m going to walk away and see if Mrs. Chapel has anything for us. Then I need you to drive me to my getaway car because I have got to get away from you.”

  He straightened from the railing, his smile now looking satisfied. “I’m getting to you, Lila.”

  “I’m getting away from you, Max.” I headed toward the business office, and he followed with a soft laugh.

  Mrs. Chapel was waiting for us with an envelope when we got to the gate. “There’s a printout on the prices, and here’s my business card. We’ll look forward to hearing your decision soon.”

  We said good-bye to her and walked toward the car. As Max opened my door for me, he caught my eyes. “I’m wired to tease, but I don’t ever want to do it in a mean way again. Let me know if I ever step out of line, okay?”

  “Sure. And, Max, I know you were teasing on the boat, but to be clear, we’re a bad idea.”

  I sat in the passenger seat and shut the door. He started the car but looked at me before putting it in gear. “I disagree. Have I made that clear?”

  I did not like bossy men. I should have hated everything about what he was saying and how he was saying it. But heaven help me if it didn’t flip my stomach faster than the Creole Belle’s paddle wheel.

  “Vámonos to my car, Romeo.”

  He grinned and started the engine, getting us onto I-110 and on the way back to Lincoln in no time flat. I let out a long sigh.

  He laughed. “Am I getting on your nerves that much?”

  “Surprisingly, no. I was thinking about how much I’m not in the mood to change my tire.”

  “I told you I’ll help.”

  “You said you don’t know how to change a tire.”

  “We did it in Scouts once. Good enough?”

  “Good enough. Thanks.”

  For the rest of the drive, we discussed possible themes if we went with the Creole Belle for the dance. By the time we reached the turnoff for Lincoln, we decided on “Stay in the Boat,” from Elder Ballard’s talk about sticking to what you believe.