Goodbye Earl(54)

Everything felt better when they were together.

*



Graduation went off without a hitch. The girls wowed at Kasey’s ability to give her valedictorian speech so perfectly with everything weighing on her. They were all frazzled, anxious with nerves because of The Plan.

But.

Rosemarie’s station wagon wouldn’t start after the ceremony. She’d left the headlights on.

“Fuck!” Rosemarie said in the parking lot. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault! This is all my fault. Shit!” She smacked her hand on the steering wheel. Kasey was up there next to her; Ada and Caro were in the backseat. Ada was looking out of the window chewing on her thumb, and Caro had already popped the lukewarm bottle of cheap champagne that Ada’s mom let them swipe and started drinking it. She handed it to Ada, who took a glug too.

“This is a sign. This is a bad sign,” Ada said. Technically, Rosemarie giving them all a ride to Ada’s wasn’t an important part of the plan; it didn’t matter how they got there. Roy would be dead whether or not they rode in Rosemarie’s car. But it couldn’t bode well for the rest of the night if the first thing they needed to get done had gone wrong.

“I said it’s all my fault, Ada! I’m sorry!” Rosemarie said.

“Right. Okay. I’m sorry. I can call Grayson. He might still be here somewhere,” Ada said.

“Nope. He and Silas are gone already. I saw them leave,” Kasey said.

“We could get a ride with—” Caroline got out before hiccuping.

“No. I don’t want to be around anyone else right now. Um…okay. Okay. Um…we’ll just walk. Let’s go,” Kasey said confidently. She opened the door.

“Wait! Let us drink some more of this. It’ll help. Do you want some?” Caro said, shoving the champagne bottle up to the front. Rosemarie took it, sipped. Kasey took a pull, handed it back to Caro. She’d shotgunned two Goldie Lights on an empty stomach with some guys from her anatomy class after the ceremony, which gave her more of a buzz than she expected. The champagne was already meeting the beer somewhere in the middle of her bloodstream, sparkling. She chugged and chugged, handing it to Ada one more time before finishing the rest. Rosemarie and Kasey were quiet up front.

“I’m so sorry, Kase,” Rosemarie said softly after a moment.

“Don’t be. We’ll walk. It’s okay. Roy might be dead already. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go,” Kasey said.

They got out of Rosemarie’s car in their white graduation dresses and started walking the two miles to Ada’s place with the boys from their school honking at them and hollering, pulling over to offer them rides. There were cans tied to their bumpers, and the truck beds were filled with seniors in their graduation robes, seniors in their gold CLASS OF ’04 T-shirts.

The sun was slowly slipping toward the hills, and wow, Caro was drunk. She motioned to the girls that she was going to duck into the alley by the diner to puke.

“Congratulations, Muffin Mix! What—” Beau stopped with a big black bag of trash in his hand.

Caro held her finger up to him. Just a sec. Her girlfriends were right behind her, glowing like angels. She got to the garbage can first and Kasey held her hair back.

“Yeah, she had beers…and champagne too. Bless her heart, she’s a bit of a mess right now,” Ada said.

“She’ll be fine,” Rosemarie said to Beau.

“Understood. Been there. You all right?” Beau said to Caro when she was upright again.

“Oh, Beau, you’re so fucking cute,” she said, wiping her mouth. She hadn’t thought about the words; they fell out. When she hugged him, he dropped the trash.

“You’re so fucking cute,” he said with his arms around her. “I won’t put my hands on you. They’re dirty.”

“I don’t care! I’ll be eighteen in July!” Caro said as she let him go, as if she’d invented birthdays.

“Whoa! Okay! Okay, Caro, let’s go. We’ll see you later, Beau! Bye!” Ada said, putting her arm around Caroline’s shoulder and guiding her toward the street.

“All right, now,” Beau said through his chuckle. “Congratulations! Y’all be careful.”

“Bye, Beau,” Caro said in a soft Minnie Mouse voice. She turned to wave as they stepped out of the alley, back into the light.

“Roy might be dead already. He’s probably dead already.”

Caro heard Kasey say it more to herself than any of them as Ada’s big pink house came into view, sitting there like a parade float.





2019


21





Rosemarie


Rosemarie, Ada, and Kasey were standing right outside of the ICU when Mimi told them that not only was Caro still in a coma, but she was pregnant too.

Ada and Kasey gasped and anxiously asked questions; Rosemarie felt a stillness come over her. A few weeks ago, she and Caroline had taken Basie for a walk and talk by the lake. Caro mentioned thinking she was pregnant a couple months before, taking a test, and it being negative. Then she said she felt like it’d happen sometime soon, and she wasn’t stressing about it. She told Rosemarie that Mimi let her know a long time ago that all the women in their family got red-hot cheeks to go with their red-hot hair in the first few weeks of their pregnancies. Rosemarie noticed Caroline’s cheeks flaming like her hair for the past week, but Caro had been drinking a lot too, and it’d been so hot.