How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [49]
My dad signed the card but didn’t write anything else, just Love, Dad. I guess he’s mad at me, too.
Sixteen. Big deal.
That weekend was a festival for the town’s jubilee or something. At midday, Poppy and I took a picnic supper into town so we could watch the fireworks from the top of the rock, which didn’t look like a castle to me but just another mesa rock like the billions of others around here. I wanted someday to see a real castle, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t look like that.
Anyway, she let me stop at the library first while she went around to meet some of her friends for coffee. It had been so hot that I sometimes read a book a day. We got up early, worked in the garden, baked, or canned, then I read through the afternoon and through the clockwork thunderstorms that rolled in every single day. Nancy brought big fat books she thought I’d like, and I peeled through those, too. Poppy wanted me to read “better” books, something like Anna Karenina, but Nancy rolled her eyes. “Please. Krantz is going to feel a lot better right now than Tolstoy.”
At the library, I stocked up on glitz and stuffed them all into my backpack and wandered out into the heat of the late afternoon. Black clouds bore down from the west, flashing threads of lightning. Walking rain, smeary against the horizon, marched toward us, and a wind swept my skirt right up to my nose. I grabbed it with one hand and my hair with the other and closed my eyes against a second blast, turning my back to it.
“Better get inside!” a man called, slamming his car door.
Guiltily, I gauged the distance between me and the record store, wondering if I could make it before the rain caught me. Nearly two full blocks, but straight downhill. If I wasn’t pregnant, I could have dashed that distance in half a minute. Now probably not.
But maybe only a minute and a half. Twisting my hair, I tucked it under my backpack straps, then kept my skirt in my hands and hurried down the street. I had to stop for traffic at Main Street, and the first of the rain started pattering toward me, splashing on the hot sidewalk and sending up that hot, salty smell. The first drops on my skin were startling and cold. A truck clattered by, and I took the chance to dash across the street.
It was like running into a wall of rain. Drops splattered all over me, on my nose and head, my arms and belly. Even running, I couldn’t avoid getting soaked or stung by the hail. By the time I flung myself into the record store, my hair was dripping and my arms were dotted with red marks from the hail. The entryway bell rang and I slammed the door closed again. The hail roared out of the west with a sound like a thousand baseballs falling from the sky, slamming the roof and hitting the sidewalk so hard they bounced as high as my waist. “Wow.” I wiped water off my face and turned around.
Jonah was coming out of the back, a stack of records in his hands. He stopped dead still and looked at me with a little frown. I wanted to sink right through the floor.
“Hello there,” he said finally, and put the records down on the counter. “You look wet.”
I held out my dripping dress. “Kinda.”
“Let me find you a towel. Stay right there.” He disappeared into the back and returned with a big blue towel. “Might not be elegant, but it should do the trick.”
I was starting to shiver as I took the towel and rubbed my face, then dried my neck and arms. Jonah only stood there. “Are you okay?”
My teeth chattered. “Just cold.”
He gestured for me to follow him. Overhead, the hail pounded as if there was a war, and I sloshed forward, my feet squishing in my sandals. The books in my bag were heavy, and I suddenly worried that they might be damaged. “Yikes, these are library books!” I peered in to see if they were okay, holding the towel around my shoulders. Jonah disappeared again and came back with a heavy sweater