He walked out, leaving me alone with me thoughts and test samples. Six months ago, men a decade my senior were saluting me. Now, I was dismissed. Dismissed from a podunk fire department in the middle of nowhere North Carolina. I picked up an empty jar and would’ve fired it against the wall if a knock hadn’t interrupted me.
“Spare me, Mom. I’ve had enough lectures for one day.”
“Then I’ll skip the discussion on Newtonian physics.” Cedar swept inside, holding a shopping bag. “How about a snack instead?”
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” She looked up at my sample jars. “That’s your Olympiad project? Awesome. Disgusting and disturbing on many levels, but awesome.”
“Sorry, I thought you were—“
“An over-reaching parent who doesn’t know how to land the helicopter? I’ve got two of those myself. Just one of the reasons I’m looking forward to transferring to Carolina.” She took two containers out of the bag. “Hope you like sweet and sour.”
“I like sweet.”
I ran a thumb along her cheek and leaned in for a kiss. As our lips met, I caught a whisper of citrus from her body wash. Wearing no make-up, dressed in only an untucked button-down and jeans, she could make fresh-scrubbed look alluring.
“That was pretty sweet.” Cedar put her head on my shoulder. “Where’s the sour?”
“I save the sour for other people.”
“So I noticed.” She looked up. “What’s been going on? Your folks looked really tense.”
“It all started when Abner decided to take a detour on the way home.” I told her the whole story, including Lamar’s decision to dismiss me.
“That sucks.” Cedar gave me a big hug, which made me grunt with pain, though I wouldn’t admit it. “If it weren’t for you, the body would still be there. Can’t they see that?”
“They have a blind spot when it comes to me. They think I’m still a kid.”
“Well, you’re not. You’re grown man who’s about to enjoy a movie with a nerdy young woman. Where should we sit?”
I motioned to a bench near the horse stalls. “That will work. But there’s no TV out here.”
“Check out my backpack.” She carried our food to the bench. “There’s a laptop, and I have a Netflix account.”
“Are you one of those people who thinks of everything?”
“Not everything,” she said smiling. “But pretty close.”
We spent the rest of the day eating Chinese and chain watching one movie after another, sitting on the bench at first, then snuggled under a blanket in a pile of clean straw.
It was well after dark when we finished the last film. The stars were out when I walked Cedar back to her car, and the moon was a huge ball of light on the horizon, bright enough to cast shadows on the fields.
“Thanks,” Cedar said after I put her on the car hood and softly kissed her goodnight. She still smelled like oranges, while I stank like old boots and hay.
“Thanks for what?”
“For not pushing me.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Just the two of us under a blanket? Nobody watching? Making out during the slow scenes like something from a romantic comedy? It would’ve been really easy for you to ask for more.”
“If we’re being honest.” I held her hands in mine to warm them. “It’s not like I didn’t want to.”
“I know.” She kissed my cheek and slid off the hood. “That’s why it was special.”
I opened her door.
She slid in and started the engine. “Better get some rest. We’ve got a big day tomorrow, and you don’t want to oversleep.”
“I have a feeling,” I said, “that I’m going to rest pretty well tonight.”
“On second thought, I’ll be here at 7AM to pick you up. Don’t make me drag you out of bed.”
“You could never drag me out of bed.” I flashed a grin. “Or push me.”
She put the car in gear. “Step back, before I run over your foot.”
As she pulled out, I did as ordered. When the lights were out of sight, I turned toward the house, where Mom was standing on the porch.
I snapped off a salute.
She watched me for a moment, then went inside.
FRIDAY
1
The next morning in bio lab, Luigi was squinting at the workstation computer screen.
“What happened to your specs?” I asked him while stretching to work out the intense soreness in his ribs.
“Specs?”
“Eyeglasses.”
“They are broken.”
“How did that happen?”
“Ronald Reagan broke them with a plastic bat.”
Ronald Reagan, aka, Dewayne Loach, was sitting in his usual spot on the opposite side of the classroom.
“You have a backup pair, right?” I asked. “Your mother would never let you travel six thousand miles with only one pair of glasses.”
“Hai, hai.” He leaned into the screen and sucked in air. I wasn’t the only one with sore ribs. “I have an up back.”
“Back up. Where are they?”
“I prefer not to wear them.”
“Why?”
“I believe the term for them is Coke bottles. How will I win Gretchen Nunzi’s heart if I look like a gobber?”
“You mean goober.”
“That, too.”
“Move over then,” I pushed Luigi out of the chair and took the seat himself. “I’m taking the comm, captain. I’m not such a great writer, but I’m faster than a half-blind Japanese guy typing in his second language.”
“Third language.”
“What’s your second language?”
“Australian.”
“Very funny.”
Luigi laughed. “Got you. Spanish is my second language. It is very unusual in Japan. English. Mandarin, and Russian, these are common languages in our schools.”
“Why take Spanish, then?”
“Because it is so uncommon. A Japanese man who can speak English and Spanish can do well in the Western Hemisphere, no?”
“Hang on to that thought while I clean up these data tables. Did Cedar do this? She calculated to wrong decimal point.”
“I will tell her.”
“Stow that,” I said. “Never tell Cedar her math is wrong.”
Luigi didn’t answer. He had drifted away to talk to Dr. K. He said something about needing some advice for his research project, and she whisked him over to confer with Gretchen.
“Hi,” came two voices in tandem behind him.
I saw the girls’ faces reflected in the computer monitor.“I’ll be finished with the machine in about ten minutes,” I said.
“No, silly, we wanted to talk to you. You’re the guy that like found the dead woman, right? That was totally cool.”
I spun around. They both had blue eyes and wore thick mascara.
“I’m Britney.”
“I’m Heather.”
“I’m Boone.”
“We know.” Heather giggled. “The whole town’s talking about how you found that dead woman. Are you like a fireman or something?”
“I’m a firefighter.”
“Cool.” Britney twirled a sprig of blonde hair around her finger. “Everybody says the body was like a really big roasted marshmallow.”
I was starting to see Mom’s point about treating the dead with dignity. “No, it wasn’t like that all. Human remains don’t just melt like a marshmallow.”
“Cool,” Heather said. “Anybody tell you that you’re totally hot?
“Only when I’m putting out fires.”
“Huh?” Britney said.
“But you make fireman stuff totally like interesting and stuff.” Heather pulled up a chair and wiggled close to me. “What else can you teach us?”