would probably know, and I didn’t want to be humiliated. I turned on my side, my back to the rest of the room, and gave my hand a little peck. I wasn’t sure how stiff to keep my lips. I wasn’t sure how much to move my lips. None of my friends had ever kissed a boy, but another girl in class had kissed a boy at a party, and after she did it, the boy passed her a note in class calling her the Rock of Gibraltar because he said her lips were so hard. She had cried in class, right in the middle of math. Something like that could pretty much ruin your whole life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I opened my eyes the next morning, Obaachan wasn’t on her mattress. Jaz and Jiichan were still sleeping. I climbed down—Thunder jumped—and padded toward the kitchen area. I stopped when I saw that the Irish guys, Mr. McCoy, and the Parkers were already eating cereal, all squeezed together on the built-in benches. Mr. Dark was probably on the road from Kansas, hauling the fourth combine. Then Obaachan spotted me and said, “Summer, you eat cereal. Hurry, before it all gone.” I walked into the room feeling thoroughly embarrassed to be seen by Robbie in one of the stupid T-shirts I always slept in. Across the front it said I LOVE HOUSEWORK— NOT.
“I love housework—not,” Robbie read in a monotone.
“Ah, ya’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” Mick said, and everybody laughed.
I was trapped. I snatched up a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured it into a bowl, adding just a little milk, since there wasn’t much left. Obaachan shook her head at me for some reason. I held the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other.
“Oh, sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Parker. “There, squeeze in next to Robbie.”
Everybody squished together even more, and I sat next to Robbie, our shoulders pressing against each other. Even though my T-shirt already reached almost to my knees, I stretched it down as much as I could.
“It’s the strangest thing—your face is flaming red,” Mrs. Parker said. “Do you have a fever?”
Everybody looked at me. “I’m fine,” I said. I faked a smile and spooned cereal into my mouth.
Mrs. Parker laughed. “I think you have the messiest hair I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, ma’am, it gets very tangled at night,” I said. “I thrash.” Could this possibly get any more embarrassing?
“Goodness, maybe you should cut it.”
“Yes, maybe.”
And yes, it
“Robbie has a very good nose,” Mrs. Parker said.
Great. “Last year I actually almost died from malaria that I caught in Florida, so I use DEET. It gets on my clothes.”
He looked at me thoughtfully, as if I had just said something profound. One of his green eyes held a tiny spot of hazel. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Then suddenly he looked mischievous. “You heard of washing machines?” he asked, almost tauntingly.
I paused. I thought about something smart to say, something that would un-embarrass myself. Then I said, “We don’t have a washing machine at home. We put soap and water in the bathtub, and I stomp on our laundry.”
Robbie paused. Then, since I was only kidding, I smiled slyly, and he smiled back.
“You’re kidding. You’re okay,” he said, then poured some more cereal.
Yeah! No matter what else happened, the entire day was now a success because I was okay!
I finished my Cap’n Crunch while everybody talked about harvest. If everything went well, we would be heading for Oklahoma in about a week. Rain was coming, but during growing season, Texas had been in a drought, so there wasn’t much business here. Some harvesters weren’t even bothering to come down to Texas. According to Mr. Parker, to get to Oklahoma in time meant sixteen-hour days every day. Farmers—and custom harvesters—weren’t happy until every single grain was in the elevator. Only then could anyone relax.
Robbie checked his watch, as if he had an appointment, and turned to me. “Did you bring a lot of schoolwork?”
“Yeah, but I probably won’t do all of it. The teachers really don’t expect harvesting kids to do all their homework.”
“I know, but I gotta do all mine, anyway. My dad’s a tyrant. Are you gonna help your grandmother cook?”
“Uh-huh. That’s my biggest chore. I have to help with every single meal. Washing the dishes, boiling turkey, whatever. Do you have chores?”
“Like I said, my dad’s a tyrant. So almost every time we change farms, I have to clean and check the combines. I check all the fluid levels—the engine oil, the water, the hydraulic oil. I check the tires. Then I look over the sickle sections and guards. Then I grease all the ten-hour zerks. There are also twenty-five-, fifty-, and hundred-hour zerks, but they need to be greased only after the machine runs that many hours. I blow out the filters. And I have to wash the windows and clean the inside of the cabs.”
“That sounds like a lot of stuff,” I said. I knew only a bit about cleaning combines, because once when I couldn’t sleep on harvest, I went outside and found my dad cleaning his combine. Many custom harvesters made each employee clean his or her own combine. We were lucky to have an extra person—namely, Robbie—to help us.
“It takes about an hour per combine.” He shrugged. “I like it. I’d better like it, because I’m going to be doing it until I go to college.”
“Wow,” I said. He had three little freckles right above his lips.
“Wow what?”
“Wow, I never even think about college.”
“How old are you again?” he asked.
“I’m twelve, but I’m really thirteen because that’ll be my next age.” That made no sense, but Robbie didn’t say anything.
There was a knock on the door, and then it opened before anyone had a chance to say “come in.” It was Mr. Laskey. “Has anybody checked the moisture level yet? We had a pretty dry night. Might be time to cut already,” he said.
“I checked thirty minutes ago and it was fourteen-point-five,” Mr. Parker told him.
“Then it might be ready now.”
Though he wasn’t finished eating, Mr. Parker got right up and went outside with Mr. Laskey.
Everybody followed except for Obaachan and me. It didn’t change my life if the wheat was ready to cut or not. I started clearing off the table.
It was pretty easy because, like I said, in the menu books, Sundays were the only days when we made a full breakfast, with scrambled eggs and sausage and toast and stuff. I loved
Obaachan picked up a bowl I’d put in the rack. “What this?” she asked, pointing at it.
I had to admit there was a little piece of gunk stuck to the outside of the bowl. I took the bowl back and rewashed it while Obaachan checked and then dried every dish in the rack.
“I clean counters, you walk Thunder, then do homework.”
I got a tennis ball and walked out with Thunder into the bright sunshine. I threw the ball for him for about fifteen minutes, until his tongue was hanging long out of his mouth. I got him some water, hoping he’d perk up and play longer, so I wouldn’t have to do homework yet, but he just lapped up the whole bowl and went to the camper door and looked at me. Okay, then. Homework time for me.
Inside, Jaz was at the kitchen table doing his so-called homework. He was supposed to be making a detailed
