Free Love and Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson Page A

the feeling had turned to one of restlessness foractivity and action, waiting for the chance to socialize and to wear her impatient body out with physical labor. But this year, she was like an inhaled breath. She had hung herself up on a question. Would he come? Wouldn’t he? The wondering was almost a welcome distraction from thinking about other woulds and wouldn’ts. Like, what would her house sound like if they tore it down?
    Leeda finally got off the phone, shaking her head. “I’m never gonna get out of here,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s the rush?” Murphy gurgled.
    â€œNo rush,” Leeda said, looking unsure. “Just…I told Eric I’d be back. I miss him.”
    â€œAww.” Murphy pulled back from the sink to make little kissy faces. Leeda stuck out her tongue at her.
    â€œThere are all these great things we’re supposed to do,” Leeda said, defending herself as she took a sip of her lemonade. She looked funny, sweaty and red-faced, a cobweb stuck in her hair, holding her BlackBerry and sitting with perfect posture. Murphy pulled away from the sink completely, her hair dripping down her forest green tank top, and mumbled, “Your turn.”
    Birdie and Leeda took turns dunking themselves under the icy cold sink water. With water dripping off her nose and gathering at her lips, Leeda looked like a forties pinup girl. Birdie pulled her own hair from where it stuck to her face. She probably looked like bigfoot.
    â€œLet’s get in the shade,” Murphy said, flopping her head across the picnic table as if across a soft mattress. A june bug landed on one of her curls, and then lit off again.
    Birdie picked up Majestic, tucking her under her arm, and ledthem out of the shade onto the lawn and across the grass to her tree house.
    They climbed the ladder, cresting the landing and settling down onto the plywood floor and across the mattress Birdie had managed to haul up. Majestic lay down at Birdie’s feet, her butterfly-like ears swiveling and twitching like satellites.
    In the two weeks since Birdie had started building it, the tree house had started to feel like home. At the top of her bed, which was just a twin mattress from her room, stood her little wooden bookcase filled with favorite books: 501 Spanish Verbs, Birds of South America, The Book of Tarot, and her collection of World Book Encyclopedias. On top of the shelf, she had put a little vase full of survivor flowers from Murphy’s decrepit garden. Because it was nestled in the leaf-thickened limbs, it was gloriously cool and shady. The sweat was drying so quickly on Birdie’s body that she was suddenly chilly. She ran her fingers through her long hair, reddish in the light coming through the leaves, and started to braid it.
    Murphy lay back, making herself at home, and propped her feet up against the trunk of the tree. Up here, the orchard took on an orderly, geometric look. It fell into a pattern that couldn’t be seen from the ground for all the chaos of leaves and colors and bugs and birds. Birdie, unable to sleep for the last few nights, liked to sit up in the dark, stretched out under the moon, and watch and listen to it all. She would swear she could almost hear the tree itself growing.
    â€œWell, I should have known your grandmom was a ho.” Murphy’s arms lolled to her sides as her feet stuck up in the air. Leeda had told them about the mysterious letter she had found in her grandmom’s room.
    â€œHey, take it easy on the tree,” Birdie said, staring at where Murphy was chipping away at the bark with her heels.
    Murphy looked down at her feet, and then laid them flat on the wooden floor.
    â€œI wonder why she married my grandfather,” Leeda mused, “if she and this guy were so in love.”
    â€œI wonder who he was,” Birdie said.
    â€œI wonder who my dad is,” Murphy interjected, trying to sound jovial.
    Leeda studied Murphy.