Goodbye Earl(14)

“So, whatcha got for us tonight, Reds?” Pete asked.

Reds. It was what a lot of the customers called her. Between her girlfriends and her grandma, she had a million nicknames already, and her red hair added even more opportunities. She’d heard every possible nickname for a redheaded girl. Big Red because she was five foot ten. Red Delicious by some of the guys who liked to holler out their truck windows as they whizzed by.

Ginger. Ginge. Fire Crotch. Do the carpets match the drapes?

She didn’t mind when the old men called her Reds. They were harmless and they loved her pies.

“Brand-new recipe, testing it out. I could wait for it to cool down some more but since you’re here now, give it a try. It’s my grandma’s gooseberry pie. Canned the gooseberries myself! And then I added some secrets,” Caro said, winking at them.

They both took big bites and dramatically mmm-ed at how good it was. Caro refilled their coffees as they talked to her about the Goldie High baseball team. They tipped more when she pretended to care about sports, and Caro didn’t mind listening.

When they left, there was a crisp twenty-dollar bill slipped underneath the pie plate.



More people had been coming from all over the country to eat at Myrtle’s ever since it’d been featured on one of those American road trip shows on the Food Network some months ago. Caro’s red hair made it onto the broadcast, whipping around the kitchen corner. Rosemarie, Ada, and Kasey liked to tease her about having a famous ponytail.

Myrtle’s was well-known for its double bacon burger platter, its grilled cheese too. Almost every day after school, Caroline was waitressing, sliding plates of fish and fries, meatloaf and potatoes, barbecue sandwiches, and cinnamon apples across the tables. The diner sat down the street from Plum Bakery, next to the antique shop, right where it’d been for almost fifty years after Myrtle’s father had opened it, naming it in honor of his only baby girl.

*



Mimi was waiting out front in her yellow Wagoneer right at ten, and like always, she asked Caro if she’d had time to do her homework.

“A little,” Caro said, lying.

Sure, she’d had the time to do it, but no, she hadn’t done it. Instead, on her breaks, she had sat out back and smoked with Beau, her favorite cook. She’d asked him to teach her how to French inhale, and he was trying his best. Caro didn’t normally smoke, but she smoked with Beau.

Beau had served in the military and now he was home. Beau had a fuzzy shaved head, a pretty mouth, and a way of looking at Caro that made her feel like she was a hologram floating in space. He smoked Camel Lights and loved Cash and Coltrane, drove a white truck with a tackle box in the back. Sometimes when he didn’t know she was looking, he’d put his unlit cigarette between his teeth and flick it back and forth with his tongue the same way Leonardo DiCaprio did in Titanic. And sometimes Beau called her Muffin Mix. He looked at her one day and said it out of nowhere. For all the nicknames she had, Muffin Mix was definitely her favorite.

Beau was twenty-two and she was seventeen, and she knew that could get him into some trouble, but she liked flirting with him anyway. Flirting with him passed the time when she was in between boyfriends, and she and her ex, Mateo, had broken up a month ago.



“Ain’t that the Foxberry boy?” Mimi asked as Caro put her seat belt on. She looked over to see two shadows shoving each other by the garbage cans in the alley. She quickly recognized Trey by his height and the way he was moving his arms. He was a big boy.

“Yep,” Caro said as Mimi drove away.

“Boys sure can act like dumbasses sometimes, can’t they, Ladybug?” her grandma said, coasting through the yellow light.

Caro mm-hmmed and turned around, waiting to see if the boys would spill out of the alley, but from where she was sitting, everything looked pristine and peaceful. Like a backlot from a comforting movie with a happy ending. Even though she knew it was the furthest thing from the truth, as she looked down that small-town street, it seemed Goldie was a place where nothing bad could ever happen.

*



The next morning at school, first thing, Kasey took Caro by the elbow and led her to the corner by their lockers.

“Girl! Silas kissed me last night and asked me to prom. Asked me to be his girl. It was wild…I wasn’t expecting it, but of course I said yes. It was…it was wild—” Kasey said.

“Excuse me?! What? Tell me everything right now!” Caro said.

As Kasey filled her in, Caro couldn’t help but feel like she’d missed out on something super you had to be there important. It hurt her feelings that Ada knew all this before her. Also, Caro was jealous because she still didn’t have a date to prom, but she was happy for Kasey too. They talked until the bell was about to ring, then went their separate ways.



Caro saw Trey Foxberry on her way to class. Most of the time he ignored her, but they’d gone to the same schools since elementary. He was looking real dumb but kind of cute in his Goldie High hoodie and jersey shorts, slowpoking down the steps with a copy of Wuthering Heights and a busted lip.

*



After school, the girls went to Rosemarie’s, where there was a tray of fudgy brownies waiting for them. Rosemarie’s parents had lived on more than one commune as they made their way from California down south, and in true hippie fashion, their house was forever stocked with far-out after-school treats. Spinach salads with apples, pepitas, and homemade dressing. Cookies made with carob chips and tofu. Sun tea with fat lemon wedges, fresh mango, and banana smoothies with almond milk. Vegan cheese grilled between the bread Rosemarie’s mom, Leilani, made. When Leilani baked “special” brownies, she pretended like they’d disappeared, never asking if the girls had eaten them.