“Yep,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I know what you can get me for my birthday.”
A grin split my face. Brenda made this phone call every August, a week or so before her birthday. She always proposed something completely out of reach, like a date with Shaun Cassidy or the red leather boots we’d seen Nancy Sinatra wear on an Ed Sullivan rerun.
I moved on to the Salisbury Steak box. “What?”
“You can go with me to the party that Ricky’s having on Friday. After we play the fair.”
The smile dropped off my face.
“Stop that right now,” she said, as if she could see my expression.
“Ricky’s a bum,” I said. It was true. Even before he’d started hanging out with that Ed guy, Ricky had been getting weird. I was willing to bet he’d missed more school this past year than he’d attended. He hardly even showed up for church anymore. None of us Pantown kids wanted to go to Saint Patrick’s, but we did it anyway, everyone but Ricky.
“No doy he’s a bum,” she said. “But he’s got the key to a friend’s cabin, out by the quarries. It’s for sure gonna be a good time.”
“When did he tell you all this?” I asked.
I recognized my mom’s suspicious tone in my voice. I didn’t like the jealousy chewing up my guts. First Maureen was hanging out with “sexy as hell” Ed, and now Brenda was getting invited to Ricky’s party without me. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to go. I still wanted to be invited, a real invite, not a dusty secondhand one rolled downhill from a friend.
“He called me. I just got off the phone with him.” Her voice turned teasing. “You know who else will be at the party?”
“Who?”
“Ant.” Brenda paused like she expected me to respond. When I didn’t, she continued, sounding peeved. “Ricky said Ant likes you, Heather, that he thought you looked really hot at practice today.”
“Gross,” I said, remembering how weird he’d acted in the garage. Anton Dehnke could grow up to become a brilliant brain surgeon or an astronaut, and I’d still only see the kid who ate paste in first grade. “And what’s Ricky doing calling you, anyhow? The way Maureen acted today, I figured they were a couple.”
Done prepping the Salisbury Steak, I slid the Beans and Franks out of the box. They looked worse than I remembered, like a D+ science project. I unwound the phone cord so I had enough give to reach the freezer. I scrounged inside, hoping to turn up a TV dinner hidden in back, one I’d missed, anything but wieners and beans.
No luck. Why’d Dad buy this one, anyhow?
“No, they’re not together,” Brenda said, after a too-long pause. “You know how Mo is. She likes to flirt. Ricky said they never dated and that she’s into Ed as of today. Guess she was excited that we’re gonna appear at the fair and wanted to ‘thank him properly.’ Can you believe we’re going to play an actual gig? It’ll be so wild! Like our own personal High Roller!”
“You better hope not,” I said, smiling again, reluctantly. Her parents had driven us to Valleyfair, the new amusement park outside Minneapolis, two weeks after it opened. We’d waited in line an hour for the roller coaster. “You lost chunks.”
Brenda giggled. “Like the High Roller without the barf, then. So you in for the party?”
I sighed. “Sure.”
“Good.” She was quiet for a few beats. “Did you hear about that waitress? Beth something or the other.”
“No.” I opened the last box, Junie’s Polynesian dinner the color of a sunset. “What about her?”
“She works at the Northside Diner. Goes to Saint Patrick’s, I think. My dad ran into her mom at Warehouse Market. She was real worried, said Beth has gone missing. I thought maybe your dad might have mentioned it.”
I shook my head even though she couldn’t see it. “No, which means she’s likely not really missing.” I bit my tongue before I added something mean, like she probably ran off with a boy like you and Maureen do. “I’m sure she’ll turn up any day now. Hey, you want to come over tonight and play TV tag in the tunnels? After dinner?”
I didn’t know why I’d said it. TV tag was a kid’s game, one we hadn’t played in a couple summers. It was a cross between hide-and-seek and freeze tag. If you couldn’t holler out the name of a television show—and it was surprisingly hard to think of one under pressure—before whoever was “it” touched you, you were frozen until a teammate grew brave enough to leave their hiding spot and set you free.