Free Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti Page A

in exhilaration, my name a battle cry.
And then one day Travis Becker came into Johnson’s Nursery and challenged me to leave right then and there, to get on his bike and step away from the counter and thecustomer I was helping. Right as kind Libby Wilson watched with a box of vegetable seed packets in her arms. I did it. I just walked out of there. I decided I must be in love with Travis Becker. Something that horrible and wonderful had to be love, because what else could it be?
I was sure that wearing the necklace would make my mother ask questions, but this didn’t happen. I was also sure she would hear from Libby about me abandoning work that day, but this didn’t happen either. My mother, to whom I usually told everything and who noticed everything, was lost in the blue haze of grief. We avoided any talk of my father and this person now in the world who was related to Chip Jr. and me. I went one step further and avoided any thought of it. My mother seemed to have the opposite problem, the thought having moved in and taken over, same as she worried one of those musicians might. She was a figure in a thick fog, recognizable as a human form but fuzzy and appearing more distant than the physical reality.
Mom’s lack of concentration was obvious; she put her car keys in the refrigerator and made us strange, haphazard meals she didn’t eat herself—a hot dog, a bowl of yogurt, an orange on a plate. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face raw and bare in the way it gave away what she wouldn’t say. Her whole personality seemed to be on that fragile edge of near tears. I would see the light on under her door until late into the night. I didn’t want to add to her worries. My mother was one of those rare, truly good people. She still felt guilty about the one time she put herold baseball cap on one of those huge bags of dog food that was in the backseat so that she could drive in the carpool lane.
I was angry at her too. She should have been better at losing him. She’d had enough practice.
If I were Libby Wilson, I would have told on me, but she didn’t. She only called me into her office, a small shed piled with books and paper and plant crates used as file storage, and had me sit in the big leather chair that was worn to a soft pale on the arms. Libby herself was a bit like that chair, big and worn with kindly wrinkles. As I sat there, shame crept around my insides and found a comfy spot, settling heavy in my chest.
“His face is too pretty,” Libby said.
I folded my hands in my lap. I didn’t know what to say to that. Of course she was right.
“And he wears his money like a cologne. Frankly, I don’t like the smell.” She poked her finger in the white rock of a cactus garden on her desk.
“I’m really sorry about what I did,” I said.
“Ruby . . .” She sighed. “How do I say this?” She tilted her chin up, as if the words might be up there on the ceiling. “I once ditched my mother at a chemotherapy session for a man. I’ve hated myself every day for it since. I know how these things can make you wacky. He liked enchiladas, I liked enchiladas. I hate enchiladas. You know what I mean?”
“I promise it won’t happen again.”
“To tell you the truth, there are a thousand things Iwant to say to you right now, but the most important is that, as you know, I never was lucky enough to have kids, but if I had a daughter I’d have wanted one like you,” she said. “So, you know. Stay true.”
For the first time since we’d met, I went straight home that day and didn’t stop to see Travis. It was almost a relief to walk home a different way, behind the nursery, the way I used to go home from school with Sydney. Libby was right. The stuff with Travis was getting bigger than me, overtaking who I was. I felt strong and clear, proud of my stride, of this passing up. I felt like a burden had been lifted. When I got home, though, and was alone for a while again, that restless summer feeling filled me and I let go