Goodbye Earl(8)

Sorry about our dinner date. I can’t

turn down extra shifts. We can use

the money.



i know mama. it’s fine. c u after

school tmrw.



Love you, Kasey Jo.



luv u 2.



Ada and Kasey were up in Ada’s big bedroom doing their homework. Taylor had hung around in there until Mrs. Plum told her for the third time to go to her own room and get to bed. Mrs. Plum’s voice was so starry and wine-drunk Kasey couldn’t help but shake her head and laugh as she refocused on the AP calculus on the page in front of her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my drunk-ass mama,” Ada said.

“She cracks me up, though,” Kasey said. Mrs. Plum had plenty of ridiculous moments, but Kasey preferred wine-drunk Mrs. Plum to everything has to be perfectly perfect Mrs. Plum.



When the girls heard the plinks of gravel against the glass, they both hopped up to look down. Ada pushed open the window.

“Come out,” Grayson whispered. He knew very well Ada’s mama took her wine to bed and that her daddy slept like the dead.

“You can’t call me like a normal person?” Ada whispered back at him.

“This is more romantic.”

“Well, I can’t come down every time you ask. You’ll get tired of me. I read about something like this in a magazine last week.”

“Never. I’ll never get tired of you, Ada Plum. You’re my favorite,” he said, putting his hand on his heart.

“Kasey’s spending the night,” Ada said, nodding toward her.

“Fritz is up there?” Grayson’s brother, Silas, whispered, stepping out of the shadows.

“Hey,” Kasey said down at him. She twinkled hearing her last name in his mouth.

She shouldn’t have been surprised Silas showed up too. Silas Castelow was everywhere all the time and everyone loved him, even the teachers. Kasey knew of at least two who’d tried to set him up with their daughters. He was as much a part of the town as the water tower and the lake. When she got special attention from him, Kasey felt lucky to be in his light. The Castelow boys were kind and fun and wild, in the best way. Almost too good to be true if Kasey hadn’t known them herself. They had trees for middle names—Grayson Sycamore and Silas Hickory—like their mama just knew they’d grow up to be that tall and strong.

“You brought your little brother with you to whisk me away on some romantic rendezvous?” Ada’s fake fussing made Kasey laugh.

“Damn, girl. Just get down here,” Grayson said.

Ada grabbed her pink cardigan off the chair and stepped out onto the balcony. Kasey got her Goldie High hoodie off the bed and pulled it over her head, her stomach swirling like cotton candy.



The boys had parked their truck around the corner, and the four of them were quiet getting in. Grayson was behind the wheel with Ada scooted next to him; Kasey and Silas were smooshed together in the backseat. Grayson started the engine and drove toward the lake in the dark.

“This is my favorite kind of surprise,” Silas said, leaning close to Kasey’s ear.

“What is?” Kasey asked.

Silas Castelow’s long, lean body was next to her, smelling like woodsmoke and apples in brown jeans and a red-and-black buffalo plaid flannel. He loved that outfit, wore it all the time. She’d committed a lot of Silas info to memory. Like the time RACK bumped into him at the bakery last summer. How it’d just finished raining and he stopped whatever he was doing and somehow grabbed all four of them at the same time, gently pushed them out the front door without explaining why, and pointed up because he wanted to make sure they saw the big rainbow pouring over the hills.

“Finding you…on a night like this,” he said.

They’d grown up hanging out occasionally and a lot more ever since Ada and Grayson got together sophomore year, but for the past few months, Kasey and Silas had been circling each other like sharks. He’d had a girlfriend and the day before they broke up, Kasey started half dating a boy from school who worked at the bakery. She and Silas kept missing each other, but she liked him so much. Too much. She hadn’t even brought it up often to the other girls, for fear of jinxing the whole thing, even though for the past few weeks she’d been whispering Silas Castelow quietly to herself as she was falling asleep because his name sounded like the wind.

Kiss me. Kiss me, Silas Hickory. I want to climb you like a tree. I’ve had the shittiest day and that would make it better, forreal, she thought as he put his arm around her. It was dark-dark in the truck when the streetlamps weren’t flashing through. It smelled like boy plus girl in there—gas and gum, gray and pink. His brother gunned it.



When they got to the lake, the sky was clear, the stars were out, the curved slip of moon was shining its milky light on the black water. The radio was on in the truck. Ada and Grayson were already kissing on a blanket in the back and Silas and Kasey looked for a spot.

“Here’s good, Dandelion,” he said to her as he put the blanket down on the grass.

Kasey giggled. “What’s that? Dandelion?”

“You. Because you popped up outta nowhere and you’re stubborn and tough…pretty too.”

“Oh! Thank you. Thanks for saying that,” she said. It felt like she’d been strapped to a rocket, firing up. “That’s a really sweet thing to say to someone. I don’t know how else to respond.”