Free Eddie Signwriter by Adam Schwartzman

restaurant. But there she was sitting in the sun, dressed up, shooing gnats away from her with the newspaper, which was how Celeste knew something was wrong.
    So she asked Nana Oforiwaa why she was there, Celeste told him, and what the matter was. But Nana Oforiwaa said that nothing was the matter, and that she was fine, except that Celeste could get her some lemonade if she wanted to, which Celeste did get for her aunt.
    Then Celeste settled down at a table in the back to do her homework, while Nana Oforiwaa continued to sit there in the sun, the dampness creeping up the back of her dress, the empty glass at her feet in the grass.
    Celeste called out to her aunt a few times. “Did Nana not want to come in to the shade?” she asked. But Nana Oforiwaa said no, and the second time that Celeste asked, Nana Oforiwaa got cross, and said that she did not need to be told if she was hot, and so Celeste didn’t ask her again.
    None of this seemed like anything to the boy; it seemed like talk.Still, to be in any conversation with Celeste was pleasure, and so he asked her if these things with her aunt were normal.
    He needed to know her aunt, Celeste said. He would see himself.
    Later that evening, Celeste continued, after the customers had gone, the two of them were sorting the knives and forks. That was when Nana Oforiwaa started asking about him. About what he was like, and such questions as that.
    He was surprised to hear this. Celeste saw it in his reaction and she retreated. She said she probably ought not to be telling him this. That it was all strange and she didn’t want to talk about it.
    He pushed her. Not that he really wanted to know, or really suspected that she might say anything interesting, but rather to make something of there being a secret. For the drama of withholding and asking.
    But now Celeste did not want to talk anymore of this, and tried to change the subject. Halfheartedly he continued asking, until he realized that his persistence was upsetting her. When he saw this, that she was not far from crying, he stopped. He said, “Celeste, it’s fine,” and that she needn’t say anything. That it didn’t matter. That all that mattered was her—kind words, comforting words, words knocking up against the limits of what was possible then between them.
    But a little later he could see again that still she wanted to tell him, from the way she kept glancing at him, then looking down, and falling silent, only waiting for him to ask. And so he did. He asked her, “What?” he said gently, but also laughing.
    And then she said that her aunt had asked her questions that didn’t feel right. She asked if she and he were doing anything private, the two of them alone, and that she thought it was all right if they were.
    “Ah,” he said—a breath escaping him before he could stop it.
    “I know,” she said, and she too was embarrassed, for him and for the situation, and for seeing him so much at a loss, and she said she was sorry.
    “But I didn’t say anything,” he started to explain, his throat dry. “I didn’t say I wanted that.”
    “Yes,” Celeste said, “I know,” laughing, and he laughed too, though still neither of them could look at the other.
    “But do you?” Celeste asked.
    And then he did look at her.
    Celeste was sixteen then, and didn’t properly know what it was her aunt was expecting of her, what she’d be required to want, though for that moment all that was required was a kiss, and that—for then—was what there was.
    ONE SUNDAY MORNING a few weeks later, when the rest of the school was gathered in the hall for prayer, he slipped away. He wanted to be alone. He climbed down the embankment behind the administrative buildings. A blossom tree was leaning over the path shedding purple flowers across the gravel. He made his way through a grove of ceiba trees with their branches spilling into the air like river deltas. Across the path ants flowed in streams thick as overhead power