Free Knee High by the 4th of July by Jess Lourey Page A

lurched a sharp right and purred down the back streets of Battle Lake. If I brought my car home, I’d never make it back in time for the parade, so I pulled into an alley and left the Toyota in the rear driveway of my friend Gina’s house. A quick knock at her door told me she wasn’t home, but when I tried her doorknob, it turned. I went inside, grabbed a red, white, and blue Minnesota Twins baseball cap off the rack next to the door, left a quick note, and headed toward the high school where Johnny’s gardening class was being held.
    In most parts of the United States, community education classes aren’t held on national holidays. In Battle Lake, a local ladies’ gardening club had started a petition to have Johnny’s classes held every Saturday morning, come holidays, hell, or high water. Their reasoning was that he was providing an important service to the community and that many of his students were tourists, who were the thickest on the weekend holidays. This was true and true, if you agreed that looking hot at a chalkboard is an important service and that the out-of-town friends and family of the ladies’ gardening club count as tourists.
    I had debated not coming to today’s class, but then I would have had to admit to myself that I really liked Johnny. Inside the classroom, I slid into the back row, next to two chirpy women in their early twenties. They both had golden hair, and the fluorescent lighting picked up their perfect honey highlights. Their skin was tawny, their breasts impossibly full yet perky, and I bet I couldn’t have found an inch of cellulite on them even if I tweaked them head to toe in a vise grip, one inch at a time. I’d attended enough of Johnny’s classes to know that they were the young groupies.
    They scooched their chairs over slightly as I sat down and whispered between themselves, glancing cattily at me. I was in a suddenly foul mood, so I decided to play with them.
    “Hi. I’m Mira.”
    They both studied me for a beat or two and decided I wasn’t competition. “I’m Heaven, and this is Brittany.”
    I nodded at both of them. I knew the type—fresh out of high school, sure of their place in the world but ultimately lacking confidence in anything other than their immaculate makeup and hairless bodies. If they didn’t wise up in the near future, they’d be married and pregnant within two years. Meanwhile, they looked like they had just stepped out of a J. Crew catalog, and it was cheesing me off.
    “You guys like to garden?”
    This sent them into peals of laughter. Heaven caught her breath first. “No, chick. We don’t come for the gardening.”
    I chafed at the condescension in her voice and was gearing up for a verbal smackdown, but just then Johnny walked in, thick hair spilling around his sun-browned face. He scanned the room, stopping tentatively when he spotted me, and walked to the front of the classroom. My dirt-grimed fingernails from last night’s gardening suddenly seemed conspicuous, so I sat on my hands.
    “Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. Today, we’re going to talk about the second sowings of beets and lettuce—when to do it, what types of seeds to use, and where and how to plant them. I’m glad you’re here, and I want you to know that in this class, there’s no such thing as a dumb question.”
    Heaven raised her hand. “What do you consider a dumb question?”
    I rolled my eyes under the bill of the Twins cap. I’d be surprised if this one was smart enough to turn left, yet here she was, pretty pretty pretty and making me feel like a dirt clump next to her.
    “Heaven, right? Don’t worry about it. Just ask any questions you have.” He smiled encouragingly and turned to the chalkboard. His arm muscles, lean from outdoor work, rippled as he made notes.
    We all had three tight packages of Seeds of Change organic seeds on our desks—one Detroit Dark Red beet, a depiction of lusciously maroon beets like pirate’s jewels amid deep-green