I’m honestly not sure we’d be friends if it weren’t for Kiera. They’d become close during home ec class in seventh grade, but we’ve never exactly been BFFs.
“Yeah, but not if they’re rotten,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Ryan laughs at that, and Matt cracks a small smile, but then an awkward silence settles back over everyone.
“Well, we better get these back to Nina’s,” Blake says, nodding to the apples. “I’ll see you guys at work tomorrow.”
There’s a chorus of goodbyes, directed entirely at Blake, before we head in the exact opposite direction of the exit. I glance behind me at Matt as his broad shoulders disappear from view, the look he gave me still fresh in my mind.
“So, clearly,” Blake says when we’re a safe distance away, “things are not at all awkward between the two of you.”
Her tone is light and joking, and I breathe an internal sigh of relief. She doesn’t know anything new. “Yeah,” I say, looking up to see the sunlight filtering in through the trees, my arms getting tired from carrying the basket of apples. “We still haven’t spoken since the breakup. Honestly, none of them has spoken to me since the breakup. This one’s… definitely the worst.”
“This one?” Blake asks.
“We’re a bit like a faulty light switch,” I say. “Most times, we’re back on before you can tell it flickered. But this time’s different.”
The other times it had always been small, stupid incidents. Moments I’d ended things because I felt like we weren’t clicking in the way I wanted to, the way my mom talked about with my dad. Moments I didn’t feel butterflies in my chest. Moments when I felt like he was being too clingy. Or too distant.
That time he said I’d kept myself in a little box the past three years.
I always hoped when we’d get back together that it would bring about a new result. Would make things feel less… off.
Would they really this time?
“I mean, it’s just my luck we would see them here today.” I groan and spin around to face her, turning my back on the tree, on my mom’s list. “Why did she do this? Why am I doing this? What if I trip? Or we get caught? What will people say? What—”
“Don’t overthink it,” Blake says, her voice stopping me from spiraling. “Who cares what other people think? Maybe that’s why your mom did it. To get out of her head. To stop obsessing over what other people thought about her. To break the mold she was stuck in.”
I think about my mom and her manila envelope of awards. All the years she had spent cementing her golden image in the eyes of Huckabee, this small act of rebellion a sharp turn away from that. A way to break her mold.
A way to break my mold. Or at least put a crack in it.
I think about how stuck I feel. Stuck in other people’s perceptions of me, in that moment at junior prom, in my mom dying, in my own friends’ opinions of me, all of it completely weighing me down.
“I’ll admit, blowing up Santa may have been my idea,” she says, a trace of that mischievous smile lingering on her lips. “But you’re the one who planned it.” She spins me back around to face the clearing. “So, what’s the plan this time?”
I look up to see a squishy, worm-ridden apple dangling on a branch in front of me, and like she willed it into existence, an idea pops into my head. I start to unload my good apples into her basket and add the grossest ones I can find into mine, a plan taking shape.
I swear I can hear a choir of angels as the afternoon sun hits the First Tree just right, the red apples practically glittering in the light.
And directly underneath the tree are three guys, hand selected from Huckabee High’s football team. Tom Mendoza, Aaron George, and T. J. Widner. They had all just graduated this past June.
If you ask me, bouncers for an apple tree is definitely more than a little overkill. But apparently necessary, all things considered.
Luckily, the warm weather and the weekend has brought a decent crowd of people to the orchard, and my wide-eyed staring at them goes unnoticed. I gulp as T. J. stretches, his biceps rippling impressively.
I peer around the tree to see Blake stationed on the opposite side, hidden just outside the clearing, two baskets of apples in front of her.
One filled with Nina’s Honeycrisps.
The other filled with the mushiest apples Snyder’s Orchard has to offer.
I reach into my pocket to feel the lucky quarter, my heart dancing in my chest as Blake waits for my nod.
I think about checking my first item off. How great it felt, even though it was so easy. So unearned.
This, though? It’s next level. My mom did this. She felt the fear I’m feeling now, and she still stole the damn apple. She pushed past her golden reputation, her stack of awards, her fear of what people would think, and did it anyway.
So, before I can think too much about it, before I can let my nerves get the better of me, I look Blake dead in the eyes and give her the nod.
Then, everything begins to move in slow motion.
Blake begins hurling the mushy apples at the football players, distracting them, while I make a break for the lowest hanging branch. My eyes lock on a perfectly round, perfectly red apple, and I sprint over, apple chunks splattering all around me, people watching on in horror at the scene unfolding.
The moment my fingers wrap around it, the moment I pull it free, I feel a hand wrap around my other arm.
I turn my head to see Aaron George, our eyes locking.
And then a mushy apple pegs him square in the face, his mouth opening in surprise as I wrench my arm free, running in Blake’s direction.
“Go, go, go!”
