stroking a shiny penny taped at the bottom of the entry.
Isabel closed the journal and lay back on the bed. She looked at me with wide eyes, a technique that dries out watering tear ducts. Thought I’d invented that technique.
I must’ve looked like a dead bug, still stuck in the web of Mina’s words, with no reply coming to rescue me. When I finally wriggled free, I found myself still holding two very heavy bags. I dumped them on the other bed, while Isabel stared at the ceiling. She was crossing and uncrossing her toes.
“You remember Mina with those baby rabbits?”
I shuddered in the humid room. “You really wanna talk about that now?” I whispered like someone might hear us. Who?
“Mina never got over it, Sam. She told me whenever she looked at that maple tree, she thought about the bunnies.”
Mina’s backyard, Springfield, VA, 1993
Mina’s father loved yard work. In Virginia, there’s plenty of it year-round. He left Mina and me to cook ramen noodles with frozen peas so he could rake leaves. He couldn’t watch our homespun dance recitals because there was grass to cut. And there was no time for algebra help as long as mulch needed to be spread around.
Sometime when we were freshmen in high school, Mina worked up the courage to ask her dad if yard work was more important than her. He only frowned in response, but he let a whole week go by without even entering the yard.
The following week, as if Mina had angels at her beck and call, a neighborhood kid knocked on the door to ask if her dad needed help with the yard.
Not just any kid. Brandon Bateman. The hottest kid in school. A junior. He had thick dark hair like Tom Cruise and tan muscles from playing football. Mina and I had a new pastime. We drank Cherry Cokes at the kitchen table and watched Brandon go back and forth with the lawnmower or dig up weeds or prune trees. With military efficiency, we took turns offering him more water or clean towels. He knew we were watching and giggling. One day he strategically took his shirt off and poured his glass of water down his muscled chest. The next Saturday, Isabel and Kendra joined us.
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