Shine - Lauren Myracle [16]
I stood my ground.
“Aw, I’m kidding ya.” He nudged my shoulder, making me rock back. “What’s a fella gotta do to make you smile, dumplin’?”
“I was just wondering if Beef was here,” I repeated.
Gwennie, Beef’s little sister, appeared behind her daddy, peeking at me from under his propped up arm. Gwennie and I used to spend a lot of time together, and she told me things about how her daddy treated her. Nothing sick, just lots of yelling and hitting and cruel remarks. Just one more reason I didn’t think Roy was “cool,” like most of Beef’s and Gwennie’s friends did.
“Cat,” Gwennie said from behind her daddy. She was surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?”
The sight of her made a pit open in my heart.
“Hey, Gwennie,” I said. Her dishwater hair was shot through with blond and done up in an attempt at fancy. Half of it was falling down, framing her round face. “I like your hair. When’d you do the streaks?”
“‘Bout two weeks ago. I used Sun In. You like it, for real?”
Roy grew bored and dropped his arm, making Gwennie have to duck to avoid being whacked. “I’ll leave you girls to your girl talk,” he said. “I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”
He moved past me in a way that required I step back. He sauntered to his truck, hopped in, and cranked the engine. He reversed out of the yard and onto the road, roaring away in a cloud of dust.
“He means get more beer,” Gwennie said. She stepped aside. “Come on in.”
I did, and it brought back memories. Same old linoleum on the floor. Same pictures hanging in the living room. The kitchen, where Gwennie led me, still smelled of bacon, even. Their kitchen always smelled like bacon.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“Oh, you know,” I said. “Nothing, really.”
The lie felt awkward, because Gwennie and I used to be close, even though we were a grade apart and even though she was kind of not so bright. I didn’t say that to be cruel. God gave everyone different gifts, that was all, and hers wasn’t brain smarts. Something I learned from Gwennie was that being smart wasn’t the only quality that mattered in a friend.
Anyway, we used to hang out in youth group and stuff. It was easy to make her giggle, and being around her was just . . . nice. She looked up to me. Then, in the summer after eighth grade, I dropped her cold, just like I dropped the rest of my friends.
“Is Beef here?” I asked.
“Nah, I don’t know where he is.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic pitcher. “You thirsty? I just made some Crystal Light. Want some?”
“Um . . . sure,” I said, taking a seat at the table.
She brought me a glass of bright yellow lemonade so fakely sweet it made my teeth hurt. She plopped down beside me, and before I even swallowed, she dove straight into talking about Patrick. She said how awful it was, just awful, and a lump rose in my throat. Unlike the Crystal Light, her reaction wasn’t one bit artificial.
Most people were shocked and upset about Patrick’s attack, but also excited, the way people got excited when they saw a car wreck, and the bloodier the better. But Gwennie had a big heart, same as Beef, despite being raised by her full-of-himself daddy and her hardly-ever-home mother, who was a nanny to some rich kids in Asheville.
She also had a big body. She’d grown a lot since we were thirteen. Unlike Beef, she’d always been plump, but now she had to angle her chair out from the kitchen table to make room for her thighs. Her breasts were big, too, and her upper arms puffed out of her tank top like marshmallows. I felt bad, knowing the sort of comments Roy surely made about her weight.
She was doing something about it, though. She told me so after we’d said all there was to say about Patrick. She wiped her eyes, blinked a few times, and pushed a fresh smile onto her round face.
“Guess what?” she said. “I’ve gone on a new diet, and it’s awesome. I think it’s really going to work. It’s actually more of a lifestyle approach. Can you tell?”
Fondness made my lips curve up. A “lifestyle approach.” She must have read the phrase in one of those magazine articles saying only