We’re silent for a long time before she says, “Please don’t say no yet.”
“Okay.”
“Even if the answer is no. Even if you know it in your heart already. Just let me have a couple more days to envision us there together.”
“All right.”
Her face goes distant and dreamy. “I’ve imagined us hanging out at school, wearing goofy-ass private-school uniforms. We have this group of friends who don’t know anything about our lives before. They understand us like no one here does. We visit New York City together some weekend and go to museums.”
“That sounds great,” I say, and I’m not lying.
“What are you gonna do with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“You even thought about it?”
I fidget uncomfortably. I haven’t, much. That’s what happens when your life is constantly shifting beneath your feet. You never have a firm enough footing to gaze into the distance. “I don’t know. Work hard. Meet someone. Have a family. Start my own landscaping business.”
“Sounds normal,” Delaney says.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not normal. You’re not ordinary.”
“Well, thanks, but I’ve had an unordinary life and I’d have given anything for an ordinary life.”
“Shitty life and ordinary life aren’t the only two choices.”
I slap a mosquito on my forearm. “Going to some rich-kid-ass school up north or having an ordinary life aren’t the only two choices.”
“Didn’t say they were.”
“Then why are you on my case?” I walk to the river to wash the blood off my arm.
“On your case?” Delaney’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Don’t be stupid.” We both know she’s smarter than me, so she saves this one for when she either doesn’t care that it will sting or wants it to.
“I try not to be.”
“All I’ve ever thought is that this could be the sort of opportunity that neither of us has had many of.”
“Fine.” I splash water on my arm and scrub off the blood and mosquito guts.
“Ain’t saying you won’t have a good life if you don’t come. I’m saying you won’t have the same life if you don’t.”
“Fine. Let’s change the subject.” I walk back to Delaney.
Her face is defiant. “What do I tell the school?” She starts to put her thumb to her mouth.
I catch her hand. “I’m serious about you getting diarrhea from the river water. Don’t. And tell them I’m still thinking.”
“Okay.”
There’s another long silence.
“Promise me you won’t replace me with a new best friend,” I say.
“Only if I meet someone better at mowing lawns.”
“It’ll never happen.”
“Some of those kids will’ve trained at the most elite lawn-mowing academies. They’ve come up working on their daddies’ golf courses.”
I snort. “They got servants and shit.”
Delaney gives me an impish grin. “Gonna write you a letter. Dear Cash. I regret to inform you that I have filled the position of best friend with Mr.—What’s a good rich kid name?”
“Um…Remington.”
“Like the shotgun?”
“Okay…Chauncey?”
“I have filled the position of best friend with Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea.”
“Ikea! Like the store?”
“Yes. With Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea, scion to the Ikea fortune—”
“Have you ever even been to an Ikea?”
“Stop interrupting with your irrelevant questions. With Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea, scion to the Ikea fortune and graduate of the Wellington Academy of the Lawn-Mowing Arts and Sciences.”
“Dear Delaney. I regret to inform you that I am the lawn-mowing king and that I am forced to throw you in the Pigeon River.” I roar and dart toward her, arms outstretched, like I’m chasing a little kid.
She shrieks, giggles, and bounds backward a couple steps. “I just got dry, you piece of shit!” She raises her tiny fists like a boxer and bounces on the balls of her feet. “I’ll whup your ass.”
I pretend to spit on my palms and raise my fists, like an old-timey prizefighter, moving them in circles, bobbing and weaving. “All right. Come on. Let’s go. Come on.”
She feints and breaks for the water, reaching down, grabbing some in both hands, and throwing it at me, cackling. She reaches down again and splashes me.
I duck and move toward the river myself, hurling water at her. She kicks water at me. We go on until we’re both as soaked as if we’d thrown each other in the river, laughing until we’re breathless and hiccuping.
“Okay, truce,” I say, extending my hand.
“Truce.” She takes my hand.
“Let’s show you how to skip a rock properly. You suck. Seems like you would have figured out all the angles and trajectories and shit.”
“Because studying rock skipping is the thing that most intrigues me.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes while Delaney works on her technique. Then she says, “I wanna go to the zoo this summer.”
“You’ve never even been to the Knoxville zoo?”
“Nope. I want to see meerkats. And a sloth.”
“We’ll go.”
A few more minutes of skipping rocks (or at least attempting to).
“You ever imagined going somewhere where we don’t live in the shadows of our mamas’ sickness?” Delaney asks quietly.
The question hits me like a stepped-on rake. “I mean. It’d be nice.” I nod for a few seconds as the idea gains traction inside me. “Yeah,” I murmur.
We skip rocks for a while longer, talking about nothing in particular, until it’s time to leave. Delaney takes her position in the front of the canoe and I wade into the cool of the river to launch it.
For a heartbeat or two, I only stare at Delaney’s hunched back as she gazes off into the distance, lost but to herself and whatever great question gnaws at the hems of her thoughts. She rests her elbows on her knees, her chin in one hand, playing with the end of her ponytail with the other hand. She already looks like a memory in the gilded, hazy summer light.