She was funny, and suddenly I felt incredibly plain standing outside this magical stall full of interesting jewelry and a Gypsy-like girl who made it by hand. I was wearing a green T-shirt that said NEW YORK on it, even though I had never been there, and jeans that were ripped at the knees when my mom brought them home from American Eagle. Looking at Nat’s sandals and the toe rings decorating her toes, I tucked my feet under the tablecloth so she couldn’t see my unpainted toenails.
I decided to get my mom a midnight-blue ring with a black band. When I handed it to Nat, she smiled and picked up the calculator again.
“Homeschooling didn’t help me with my math skills,” she said after two attempts at figuring out the tax. “Wait, do I even need to add tax?”
“I have no idea.” I shrugged. She was homeschooled, too. It made her even cooler to me.
“You know what?” She grabbed a little green bag from below the table and opened it. “You’re my first paying customer of the day, so no tax for you.”
I thanked her as she tucked my pieces into the bottom of the bag and filled the empty space with white tissue paper.
“I hope you like the jewelry, and if you don’t, just pretend you do?” Nat lifted the calculator to show me the price, $25.
“I thought it was twenty-four? You were right about the homeschooling not helping your math.”
I hoped that she would know I was joking, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made a joke to someone who wasn’t part of my family, or Laurie.
Fortunately, she caught on just fine and smiled. I wondered how old she was. How did she already have a business and I didn’t even think I was going to know what I wanted to do with my life when I turned eighteen? Jo knew what she wanted to do right after graduation; so did Meg. Amy probably even knew at twelve. Nat knew and was out selling her jewelry at the festival.
I glanced over at my sisters again to make sure they were still nearby and saw a group of girls my age approaching the booth.
“Thanks again.” I handed Nat two twenties from my pocket and she pulled a five and a one out of a brown leather bag and waved bye to me.
When I walked up to Meg, Jo, and Laurie, Jo was leaning against Laurie’s back, and he was taking a picture of the top of their heads? I didn’t ask why. They started doing that a few weeks ago. They even started taking pictures of all the food I made at home, and people on social media would comment that they wanted it or about how good it looked. Amy kept telling me that I should post videos of myself making food on some website she watches, but I didn’t see where the time or courage would come from. Between my dad being home and my aunt Hannah coming over every other day to eat, to ask for gas money, or to sit on the porch with my mom while she had a drink or two, it was a lot. I also had schoolwork to do; I was so close to finishing my credits for ninth grade. I couldn’t wait to be in eleventh, and I definitely couldn’t wait to turn sixteen.
Jo said sixteen was transformative, and I saw something change in her when she turned sixteen. Meg, too. Just as I was thinking that eighteen and nineteen changed Meg so much, too, she wrapped her arm through mine.
“What did you get, babe?” She looked down at the bag in my hand.
As we walked, Meg tried on the jewelry. She held her hand up and spread her fingers. I remember the sun shining through each one.
“These are fucking cool, Beth. How many did she have?” Meg reached past Laurie to Jo, who was just behind him.
“Oooh!” Jo said admiringly.
“We should go back there before we leave tonight,” Meg offered.
I nodded, sort of wanting to go back to the jewelry stand, too. I should have gotten Aunt Hannah a necklace, maybe a black and amethyst layered one to wear to Spirits. The bar practically glowed moody dark colors that I associated with the Crescent City. My aunt Hannah seemed to almost never work anymore, but I thought maybe it just felt that way because she was coming over to the house so much more.
“Okay, so what’s the plan? Do we want more music or more food, or what? We can grab a spot on the grass in front of Jackson Square where we came in and eat there. There’s going to be fireworks over the river tonight.” Laurie pointed behind me toward the Mississippi River, where rainbow colors would burst and bloom over our heads.
“What time is it now?” Jo asked, and instead of waiting for anyone to answer, she raised Laurie’s wrist and checked his watch. “It’s seven now, so we have about an hour of sunlight left.”
We agreed to find a place on the grass and took turns getting food. A band was going to be playing at eight anyway, then the fireworks were scheduled for nine. I hoped that the grass wouldn’t be too crowded by the time the show started, and when I looked around the festival, it seemed to have changed a little since we arrived. In just over an hour there were fewer kids, and more plastic cups full of alcohol in the hands of people swaying just a little more than before. The voices of said people were louder, too, and I suspected that the higher the moon rose, the rowdier the people would get.
The moon made me think of the jewelry girl, and I wondered if the moon made her bloom, too.
37
meg
My ass hurt from sitting on the ground, even on top of the two blankets Laurie bought from a vendor. The ground was hard and the spot we chose to sit down on was more dirt than grass, but I was having a good time. Jo and Laurie had obviously agreed to date each other, and he was everywhere she was. When she was eating truffle fries with a fork, his eyes followed up and down, and when she dropped one, he caught it with a napkin.
I thought maybe his obsession was with the fries, because, girl, were they good. But then he stuck the flake-covered fry between her lips, and she gave him a sheepish grin, and that grin widened as he moved a little closer to her. His legs were so long that they stuck out past hers, and his foot almost touched Beth’s flip-flops. She was lying on her back, staring at the sky. I didn’t want to bother her; I knew the crowd size had to be intimidating to her. She, unlike me, hadn’t been through the madness that was Sephora on a Black Friday near an Army post. I figured that she needed the break.
“Is that Bell Gardiner?” Jo asked, her mouth full of potato chunks.
She grabbed a napkin and wiped her chin and lips. I looked across the grass, scanning the crowd for Bell, and found her after only a few seconds. She was wearing cutoff shorts with rips in them, flip-flops, and a dark orange tank top with a shawl over her shoulders. A shawl, really.
“Go say hi,” Beth teased from the grass. I leaned over her and she closed her eyes, smiling.
“Should I?” I turned to Jo.
“Hell, no. No way. She was a total dick the last time she saw you and never even apologized. Don’t even give her the satisfaction, Meg.”
Beth added that I should only talk to Bell if she approached us. I wiped off my dress and straightened the ribbon choker around my neck. I tugged on one of the satin strings to even the two ends out. I ran my hands over the top of my hair. This heat hated my hair. The humidity in the New Orleans area was a good conversation starter for every week from April to August. When I first started working for Mrs. King, I complained about the frizz-causing humidity and she laughed and said, over a glass of pinot noir, “Oh, wait until August. This is nothing.”
And, boy, was she right. But the weekend of the French Quarter Festival was only April, and my hair was already curling at the scalp. I had spent almost an hour pulling a flatiron through sections of my dark hair. Jo always hated the smell of heated hair, but I would burn candles of it.
I pulled a little bit of my hair over both of my shoulders and unsnapped my bag to get out a gloss for my lips. Beth was back to staring at the sky, and Jo was looking at Laurie’s phone screen with him. I had the late realization that Amy would have been better to drag along to this type of festival than Beth was. Not only because Beth hated crowds, but also because Amy would have gone along with anything I wanted to do. I could have convinced her to do a lap around with me, and she would
have gone up to Bell and her friends right beside me. Granted, it would have been lame as hell to have my twelve-year-old sister on my back, but Beth would find a way to avoid the confrontation altogether. I would go ahead and say that Beth was the smartest, most thoughtful of us Spring Girls.
The sun was starting to set and the grass area in the front of Jackson Square was getting more and more crowded as the light disappeared. Out of all the, I don’t know, thousand people on the grass, we got mushed up against a group who looked to be my age at first glance. I scanned over them but didn’t recognize anyone except one guy with white hair grown just a little past his ears. I couldn’t remember where I knew him from and wasn’t about to ask, so I just turned to Jo and made conversation.
“What are you two talking about?” I asked Jo and Laurie.