“You’re not funny,” Jeanine said.
“Who’s joking?”
“Honey, you need light and air. You’re wilting,” Mom said, petting Jeanine.
“I’m not a plant. I don’t rely on photosynthesis for survival.”
Mom cracked a few knuckles. “You know what I mean.”
Jeanine laid the study guide down and looked at Mom. “What if I eat lunch on the porch?”
Mom twisted a finger, but it was all cracked out. “Fine. But you have to stay out for thirty minutes. And I’m locking the doors, I swear I am.”
• • •
“Tell Riley I loved the Farmers’ Wish!” Mom called from the porch as Josh and I walked our bikes down Terror Mountain.
“Farmers’ Wish?” Josh said.
“Some cheese she bought when she was there. Those grilled cheese sandwiches she made, that’s what she put in them.”
“Oh, those were awesome!” Josh blew at the wall of hair hanging in front of his face. He needed both hands to keep his bike from taking off down the driveway. “But I think that bread your mom makes is awesome even on its own.”
“I know. I don’t think I can go back to store-bought now.”
“Yeah, the packaged stuff is so much worse. It should be called something different.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He thought for a minute. “Something like bread, but something less than bread, like maybe just…‘ed.’”
“That’s so good,” I said, laughing. “The ads would be like, ‘Why eat bread when you can have Ed? Ed never goes bad because it starts out that way.’”
“I was telling my mom the other day how good the homemade stuff is. She thinks it’s really cool you guys make your own bread.”
Josh had been spending so much time with us, it made sense he’d talked to his mom about what it was like at our house. I just hadn’t thought about it before now. He’d probably told her that Zoe liked to eat frozen peas and uncooked pasta and that the Purple Demon got her kicks by turning out all the lights and that Jeanine studied for the Solve-a-Thon 24/7. I would have told her that stuff too if I were him. But it felt good to know he hadn’t just told her about the crazy stuff.
“You know, making bread’s not as hard as you think,” I said. “I’ve done it with my mom. I could show you, I mean, if you wanted.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely! And you think I could make it myself then?”
“Sure. I mean, you’d need a recipe, but yeah.”
“Cool! Maybe then I could surprise my mom with it, like for Christmas or something.” Even through all that hair, I could see he had a huge smile on his face.
I’d been trying not to think about Charlie since I’d gotten that last email. But right then, something popped into my head so fast, I didn’t have time to push it back out.
Charlie and I had never baked anything together.
He’d tasted almost everything I’d ever made. My peanut butter–white chocolate chip cookies were his favorite dessert in the whole world, or at least that’s what he said, but I’d never showed him how to make them himself, and he’d never asked me to. And somehow, I’d never thought how weird that was until right then.
At the bottom of Terror Mountain, we got on our bikes and pedaled off. The road was much flatter going away from town, and there were fewer patches of woods and more fields on either side.
“What do they grow here?” I asked as we passed a brown field covered in stubby stalks.
“Corn. It’s gone by the end of October, but in August, there’s a stand out here where you can buy it just picked.”
My mouth watered. Corn on the cob. Corn pudding. Corn muffins with whole kernels baked into them. Maybe even corn ice cream. I had to remember to tell Mom about the stand.
“Someone stands out here selling corn all day?” I asked.
“It’s an honor stand.”
“What’s that?”
“You know, you’re on your honor to pay. There’s a sign with the price and a pile of corn and a box for the money, and you just put your money in the box and take what you pay for.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’ve never heard of an honor stand?”
“Uh, no. Because that’s crazy. Is there like a security camera or something?”
Josh laughed.
“And nobody steals the corn or the money or both?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, they’d stop doing it if that happened.”
“I bet if you did that in New York City, you know, put out a table on the sidewalk with a sign and a pile of corn and a money box, people would think it was some kind of trick. Like the corn was poisoned or something. Nobody would believe it was for real.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want Josh thinking living in the city was sad, even just “kind of sad.” “Well, there was this flower shop on our block, and whenever Zoe passed by, the lady gave her some flowers for free.”
“I think Winnie would run through town naked before she’d give anything away for free,” Josh said.
I laughed. “Oh, and one time, this guy found my mom’s wallet on the subway, and he tracked her down by calling the number on her bank card. So, I mean, it’s not like nobody in the city has honor, you just don’t expect them to, you know?” I pointed to a tangle of wood boards in a field on the right. “That must be it.” Mom had told us that the road we needed to take was just past a collapsed barn.
“And there’s the road,” Josh said, pointing to a sign marking a dirt road.
“Hey, what do you know about this guy anyway?” I asked as we followed Valley View Road into a creepy forest of trees with white bark.
“Riley? Not much. My grandparents are good friends with his parents. They’re not here anymore though. They moved to Florida when Riley took over. My grandfather says this place has been a dairy farm for, like, four generations.
