in another two weeks, and she would no longer be able to make the collection rounds with her father. Which of course meant that she would probably never see Cole Payne again.
Melinda couldn’t ask either of her brothers to drive her out—there would be too many questions asked. She didn’t have any friends to speak of and the local buses didn’t go that far away.
Melinda looked down at her feet. She could walk, but in the heat she was sure she’d melt away in under an hour.
Her mind ticked.
There was her bicycle. A brand-new Schwinn she’d gotten as a birthday gift and had only ridden twice.
She smiled.
The following weekend, Melinda announced that she was going to the library. Her mother, Connie, was in the kitchen instructing their maid in the art of stringing a rump roast.
“Okay, see you later,” Connie sang without taking her eyes off the raw meat.
Melinda rolled the bicycle down the driveway and onto the street. She mounted it and began to peddle. The bicycle wobbled wildly through the first few rotations. Finding her balance, Melinda shot like a rocket through the center of town and past the Sidon library, out toward the rural area. The breeze raised her hair off her neck and forehead, and Melinda had the sense that she was flying.
Cole was outside and shirtless, tossing a ball back and forth with his younger brother, when Melinda rolled into the yard.
He blinked unbelievingly. “Melinda?”
She offered a breathless, “Yeah, hi.”
The sight of his bare sun-kissed torso set her skin on fire.
Cole strolled over to a nearby tree, snatched his shirt from a high limb, and shrugged it on. “What are you doing out here?”
Melinda hadn’t thought about the questions and so she had no prepared answers. “Just riding.” She laughed a little too loudly.
“All the way out here?”
She bounced her head up and down like a seal. She felt giddy, like her head was filled with soap bubbles.
Cole’s eyes moved to the road and then back to Melinda’s flushed face.
“Do your parents know you’re out here?”
“It’s okay,” she sputtered, “I told them I was going to the library.”
Melinda Thompson hadn’t crossed Cole’s mind since he last saw her. But he could see now, as she stood there quivering with excitement, that she had done little else but think about him.
“Oh, so you missed me, huh?” Cole teased smugly.
Melinda blushed.
“Come on,” he said as he wrapped his hands around the handlebars and guided the bike to the house.
“Whose that?” Cole’s little brother asked.
“This here is Melinda Thompson. Now go find something to do elsewhere.”
The brother threw his mitt angrily to the ground and stomped off.
Melinda and Cole sat down on the porch steps. Cole did most of the talking. He talked about baseball, comic books, and farming. Every so often he would lightly touch her arm when making a point, and it was all Melinda could do to keep herself from falling to pieces with pleasure.
Inside, Barbara eavesdropped and fretted from behind the curtained window. She couldn’t imagine that the girl’s parents knew she was out there keeping time with Cole Payne—the son of a sharecropper. And if they found out, what would the implications be? Would Arthur kick them off his land? Raise their rent? Ask for a larger portion of the crop? Barbara’s head began to hurt.
“That girl,” she muttered to the air, “is going to bring us a whole heap of problems.”
When Melinda finally left, Barbara breathed a sigh of relief. Cole sauntered into the house and tossed a “Hey, Ma” at her before throwing himself down into a kitchen chair.
“What that Thompson girl want?”
Cole grinned. “Me, I s’pose.”
Barbara bristled at his arrogance. “She outta your league, boy, and we don’t need no trouble from her daddy, ya hear?”
Cole heard her, but that didn’t matter. Melinda was prime for the slaughter; he just had to decide where and when.
Melinda arrived home just in time for dinner.
“My,” Connie exclaimed. “You been gone all day. You must have read a dozen books!”
Melinda floated up the staircase, down the hall, and into her bedroom. If the world had come to an end right then and there, Melinda wouldn’t have complained. She had had the most perfect day of her life and the destruction of heaven and earth couldn’t take it away from her.
Was she happy? Happy was too small a word to describe what she was feeling.
Melinda flung herself onto her bed and screamed with glee into the pillow.
Three days was as long as Melinda’s desires allowed her. Any day beyond that and she was sure her heart would burst from her chest, mount her bicycle, and ride itself out to visit Cole Payne.
“I’m off to the library, Mom!” Melinda shouted from the driveway.
Barbara was sweeping the porch when Melinda rolled into the yard. Barbara’s heart sunk, but she still managed to force a bright smile.
“Well, hello there, Melinda,” Barbara said as she folded her arms across her stomach.
“Hello, Mrs. Payne. How are you?”
“I’m well, and yourself?”
“Fine, ma’am.” Melinda’s eyes swung to the house. “Is Cole home?”
Barbara hands reached for her elbows and she dug her fingernails into the tender skin.
“No, he’s not.”
“Well, where is he?”
Barbara blinked at the girl’s forwardness. She didn’t want to respond and even considered grabbing her up and swatting her across her behind to teach her some manners, but instead she said, “He’s in the fields, working.”
“Where’s that?”
Barbara bit down on her lip and nodded back in the direction Melinda had come. “Down the road a bit on the left,” she said through gritted teeth. “But like I said, he’s working.”
Melinda thought about it for
