Off. On. Off. On.
We stepped apart.
“I think I’m wanted inside,” she said.
“Yeah. Seems that way.” I sounded like I was out of breath. Because I was.
“Good night.”
“Good night,” I said.
I waited until I saw she was safely inside, then stepped down off her porch and started the long walk home. Not two seconds later I broke into a full-on sprint. I needed a way to vent all that energy.
I had this wonderful feeling inside as I ran. Like I’d gotten a sneak peek into love, and it was okay in there. It wasn’t a terrible place where I’d be torn limb from limb. I could go there like everybody else.
I was flying along the sidewalk, hardly noticing my feet touching down, and I was thinking, I can go to this love place and I can be okay.
And, as the old saying goes . . . that’s what I get for thinking.
Chapter Nine
The Belonging
When I got out to the cabin the following morning, the front door was yawning wide open. Mrs. Dinsmore was standing in the doorway, a toolbox at her feet, tinkering with the lock her daughter and I had so poorly installed.
“You’re alive,” I said, the dogs whipping the backs of my thighs with their strong tails.
I thought it was a subject I could half kid her about. It felt like it had become something of a dark private joke between us. But the minute it was out of my mouth, I doubted my words, and my nerve in saying them.
If she was offended, she never let on.
“Seems that way,” she said. Then her hands stopped moving, and she looked right into my face. “I was going to ask you how your date went. But now that I’ve looked at your goofy grinning face, there’s really no need.”
“She liked the movie,” I said.
She didn’t answer, so I just sat down on the edge of the porch and watched her work for a minute or two. Rembrandt plunked his big butt down on my left foot, and Vermeer kept licking the air about an inch from my face.
“Why do I worry so much what people think of me?” I asked the lady.
It surprised me. A lot. I’d had no idea I’d been about to ask that.
“Because you’re human?” She asked it like a question. Like maybe she wasn’t sure either.
“So you’re saying everybody’s like that?”
“Some more than others, I suppose. Being young doesn’t help. Younger you are, the more you’re not sure what’s the right way to be in the world. The more you think you might be getting it wrong, the more sensitive you’ll be about it. As you get older, like me, you stop caring so much what people think.” She tinkered in silence for a second or two, working with a screw that didn’t seem to want to go in straight. Then she added, “Not sure anybody ever stops caring completely, though.”
“Can I ask your advice about another thing?”
I could hear her sigh from a good four paces away.
“Have I got a choice?”
It stung me a little. I won’t lie.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She sighed again, and set down her screwdriver. Came and sat with me on the edge of the porch.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was just being snarky. Sometimes I think it’s expected of me. Go ahead and ask.”
“Thanks.” I think I was more relieved than I cared to let on. “I want to take her out for another date. The sooner the better. But now I’m totally broke. I’ve got fifteen cents to my name. And after I get my next allowance again, well . . . I want to take her out to eat. Maybe lunch, maybe dinner. I guess lunch is cheaper, but dinner is fancier. But even if I’ve just gotten my allowance, I don’t think I can afford that. Unless I just take her to the Burger Barn. But even at the Burger Barn . . . I can’t tell her what to order. What if she gets the most expensive thing on the menu? And then I have to just get water. But she’d see right through that and know I was out of money. Besides, who takes a date to the Burger Barn? It’s a date. It’s supposed to be someplace nice. Why is it so expensive to take a girl out on a date?”
I stopped. Breathed.
The air around the four of us seemed to throb with all those words.
“Whew,” she said. “It really is a tough place inside that brain of yours, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask if it was too weird in there. If she thought there was something abnormal about me. But if I’d asked, she might’ve answered.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what you do. You get yourself a nice big basket.”
That was definitely not the direction I’d expected the conversation to go.
“Basket? What kind of basket?”
“Just some nice big basket with a handle, like maybe a gardening basket. I’ve probably got something if you don’t.”
“My mom has a basket she used to use when we’d go out and get produce from the farm stands. Back when we used to take Sunday drives. You know. The whole family.”
Back when my brother wasn’t off fighting a war and my parents could stand to be in the same car together, but I didn’t say that. I still had no idea what a basket had to do with taking a girl out for a meal.
“That’s perfect. So you take the basket. Make sure it’s nice and clean. Wash it under the hose and then dry it out in the sun if you have to. Then you go into the fridge and make some sandwiches. You know how to make sandwiches, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Now, I don’t know what kind of food and stuff your mom tends to keep around the house. Maybe you’ll find everything you need right in the fridge, and it’ll be free. Or maybe you’ll have to get
