Audre & Bash Are Just Friends(38)
Audre looked over her shoulder in the direction of her mom and Shane’s bedroom. No sign of them. Quickly, she grabbed the Post-it.
LIZETTE: WHERE’S THE LINE BETWEEN TELLING THE TRUTH… AND SHAMING YOUR MOTHER?
GRANDMA DELPHINE: PASSING FOR WHITE IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH = A MEANS OF SURVIVAL. DO NOT DEMONIZE.
GREAT-GRANDMA CLOTHILDE: FACT-CHECK 1930S EXORCISM PRACTICES WITH CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Audre read this over a million times before sticking the Reese’s Pieces exactly where she’d found them. What the entire hell did any of it mean? Had Grandma Lizette done something so horrible that Eva was afraid to mention it? Passing? Exorcism? What? Whatever these notes meant, it sounded like fiction, not the golden, aspirational reality of the Mercy girls. But Back to Belle Fleur was a memoir. Nonfiction. What did it all mean?
Who were the Mercy girls, really?
Before she had a chance to take the thought further, she heard a soft knock on the door. Who’d be knocking at this hour? It had to be a neighbor from one of the building’s four apartments—an outside visitor would ring the outside doorbell.
She climbed off the couch, too drained to change out of her bedtime topknot, sports shorts, and old Renaissance tour T-shirt. Yawning, she peered through the peephole.
It was Barry, her downstairs neighbor. What did he want at eleven thirty? Also, he didn’t speak, so she couldn’t imagine how this was going to go.
“Hey, Barry,” she said as she opened the door. “Is everything okay?”
He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up, and then handed her a reusable tote from a nearby supermarket.
“What’s this?”
With a shrug and a goodbye wave, Barry padded back downstairs in his slippers.
Audre watched after him for a moment, confused. Then, still standing in the doorway, she opened the bag. It was her phone! And a note, handwritten with gloopy blue pen in half-uppercase, half-lowercase letters. It looked like a serial killer’s scrawl. And it seemed to start in the middle of a thought.
Hey Audre,
So, yeah, I texted you a couple times tonight. And after I didn’t hear from you, it hit me. You left your phone on the sand. And it was my fault. I felt bad b/c I brought you out to Rockaway and maybe pushed you too far. I’m sorry if I did. I just thought you’d have fun surfing, being half-Malibuian (not a word). Anyway, I went back and got it from the Rockaway lost and found. They know me there. I’m a serial forgetter of keys.
-Bash
PS: After you charge your phone? Ignore my thirsty texts. I was worried.
PPS: Barry’s that dude. Have you had his hamburgers?
Chapter 15
Audre wanted to squeal. She wanted to cartwheel around the room. She wanted to run downstairs and high-five Barry. She really wanted to call Reshma, until she remembered she was probably asleep in an Argentinean five-star hotel.
She couldn’t believe that Bash had smuggled her phone in from the beach. When they got back to Park Slope, it was almost sunset. Which meant that after he realized that Audre’s phone was missing, he got back on the train and traveled ninety minutes back to the beach—in the dark. He wasted a Friday night! It was so thoughtful and selfless, and no one had ever done anything like that for her.
(Out of nowhere, Audre had a vision of an outrageously muscle-bound Bash machete-chopping his way through a wild, overgrown rainforest, leaping over an alligator-infested swamp, and double-barrel-rolling down a waterfall to capture her phone from the jaws of a mighty tiger. A hero and a legend.)
She scrambled back to the couch and plugged in her phone. The second her charge light came on, she pulled up her text messages. She had three missed calls from Reshma, five from Eva, and four missed texts from Bash.
The first thing she did was call Reshma. A part of her was putting off reading Bash’s texts. She didn’t like how excited she was. Her heart was thumping a little too fast, and she felt a little too invigorated. She had nowhere to put this feeling.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, she thought. Fine, Bash Henry might not be the person everyone says he is. He might, indeed, be a misunderstood cinnamon roll. Okay… and? It doesn’t mean you have any business liking him. And you’d be smart not to forget it. Decenter this boy.
Reshma wasn’t answering her phone. So Audre had no choice but to face Bash’s texts—the very ones he told her to ignore.
8:20
u get home ok?
8:31
wassup, u home
8:46
hope we’re good. I liked being ur funsultant
9:02
lol just realized I’m texting into the void. u left your phone on the beach . don’t worry, I got u
10:30
figured your parents wouldn’t like some strange guy showing up hella late @ ur house. so, I left your phone w my good buddy Barry. funny guy. we talked for like 30 min before I realized it was only me talking. is he a warlock
Audre let out a chirpy yelp of a laugh into the dark, quiet apartment. Then she held her breath, listening to hear if she had woken up The Goblin. When she decided she was safe, she exhaled and texted Bash back.
Audre: BASH! THANK YOU! u saved my life
Bash: nah, i didn’t do anything