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38. When Lt_GlittrB0mb Met chickn_backflip

38

When Lt_GlittrBomb Met chickn_backflip

“I thought he was her boyfriend,” I explain as Luke and I race through the crowds.

“You’re really unbelievable,” Luke calls back.

“Lecture me later. Why isn’t she on tech? Where is she?”

Luke points beyond the stage to a line of elm trees. Wanda is standing beneath them with her father. He gives her the copy of Where the Wild Things Are . Relief replaces the adrenaline that was fueling me a second ago when Wanda smiles and takes the book.

“It’s ok,” I say. “She looks happy.” But I’m talking to myself. I turn and see Luke in the distance, walking away from me.

I take a deep breath and swallow down the fear building inside me despite my momentary relief. I join Wanda and her dad under the trees.

“My parents, your other grandparents, moved us,” I hear him explaining as I approach. “They thought your mom was trouble. I found real trouble. But I paid my debts and cleaned up my act. I swear.” He notices me. “That’s the book guy.”

“I figured,” Wanda says, the smile dropping from her face.

I gulp down the fear again. “I thought you two were dating.”

Wanda’s dad looks from her to me. “That’s nasty,” he says.

“I warned you to mind your own business,” Wanda growls.

“But you’re happy to meet him. It worked out. Right?” I ask.

Wanda smacks me with her purse. “Just because things work out doesn’t give you free license to mess with people’s personal business. Especially not when they make it clear they don’t want your help. You don’t get rewarded for your bad behavior. What if this had gone horribly wrong? What if my mom had been here?”

Wanda’s dad straightens and runs a hand over his hair. “Your mom’s around?”

I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but ask, “Do I sense some residual feelings, Mr. Backflip?”

Wanda smacks me with her purse again. “Stop it.” She raises her purse again. “We’re not blindsiding my mom with her high school boyfriend.”

“And baby daddy,” I add.

Wanda lifts her purse. “I’m warning you.”

I screw up my face waiting for her to hit me. “But long-lost loves, Wanda. That’s a top-shelf romance trope.” When I don’t feel the purse, I hazard opening an eye.

Wanda’s dad has his arm around her. “Yeah. They are,” he says.

“This doesn’t make things between us ok,” Wanda says. “Tomorrow, you and I are having a reckoning.”

“Come on, Wanda,” her dad says. “Forgive him. He meant well. And from one badass to another, being a tough cookie doesn’t get you anywhere good.”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “Boys! So clueless. You don’t feed the monster.”

There are very few books to bring back to Corner Books at the end of the day, which is good because we’re all exhausted.

The three of us make quick work of loading the few boxes into the rear of Uncle Andy’s truck and then back into the store.

The familiar chug of a motorcycle engine comes from outside. The second Gladys waves.

“That’s my ride to the unveiling. Looks like we’ll have just enough time to make it there after all.”

“You’ll have to fill me in tomorrow,” Uncle Andy grumbles.

“You can’t not be there,” I say.

“I don’t go where I’m not wanted.”

Gladys pokes me with one of her crooked fingers and whispers, “Let me handle this.” Rounding on Uncle Andy, she says, “Andrew, stop your nonsense this instant.”

“I was pleasant to customers all day. You can stop bullying me now. I’m not going,” he replies.

“If you don’t want to go to your oldest friend’s unveiling, that’s your business. Although I think you’re making a mistake, it’s yours to make.”

“Thank you, Gladys.” Uncle Andy opens a box and begins unloading its content.

“But you’re denying her only son the opportunity to see his mother unveil her final statue. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.” She lets her statement hang for a couple of seconds before she adds, “Oh, well. I’m off.”

“You can call a cab, Bobby,” Uncle Andy offers. “I’ll cover the cost.”

“By the time it arrives, the ceremony will be nearly over. Ta. See you Monday, boys.”

Uncle Andy groans as he retrieves his keys from behind the counter. “Get in my truck.”

Thank you , I mouth to Gladys through the glass of the front door.

I’m not certain because of the sun reflecting off her glasses, but I think I see her wink at me before she joins the second Gladys and they pull away from the curb.

We get into Uncle Andy’s truck but I’m too busy gripping the handhold of the door and digging my feet into the floor from Uncle Andy’s erratic driving to try to make conversation. He swings around corners and other vehicles like a stunt driver. He slams on the brakes as he pulls into a parking lot.

“Come with me?” I ask.

Uncle Andy stares out the windshield.

I don’t open my door. “I shouldn’t have gotten in the middle of you two.”

Uncle Andy shakes his head. “We didn’t do anything we didn’t want to. We’d been following our trajectory for a long time.”

“Do you regret it?”

Uncle Andy takes a deep breath. “The only regret I have is not doing it sooner.”

I reach under me and pull a used copy of Uncle Mame from my back pocket. I put it on the seat between us.

“Cass didn’t speak for me.” I open the door and slide out.

The driver’s door slams, and Uncle Andy is at my side, gripping my shoulder. “You’re a good kid, you know. Do you know if she managed to fix it?”

“I don’t. I guess we find out tonight.” And I guess I find out if I keep my scholarship.

I reach up and squeeze Uncle Andy’s hand before we walk into the library foyer. The room is packed. The central area is curtained off, the sculpture hidden behind draped fabric. I see Cindy waving at me, but we can’t make it to her through the crowd. Farther in I recognize Mr. Martinez and Mr. Shah seated with the other seniors. There’s Mae and Trisha and people from both Campus and Corner Books’ book clubs.

Uncle Andy and I squeeze in, getting pressed forward by the people coming in behind us. There are whispered greetings nearby. Some call me Bobby and, some, the Book Whisperer.

Dean Perez is already partway through his speech.

“Where some might have seen tragedy in the loss of the etched window, I saw promise. I knew this was a piece of Little Elm College’s legacy I could bestow back to its future generations,” Dean Perez says. “Without further delay, the incomparable Cass Ashton, out of retirement.”

Cass looks around the full room as she stands up. She’s in an old pair of paint-smeared coveralls, her hair tied up with a bandanna and work boots on her feet. She adjusts the mic and there’s the squeal of feedback. She scans the crowd, squinting into the audience.

“Woo!” I hear from me beside me. Uncle Andy raises his hands above his head and begins to clap. “Woo! Cass!”

I whistle and begin to clap too. The rest of the room joins in until everyone is hooting and applauding.

Cass takes a deep breath and says into the mic, “I will keep this brief. This statue almost didn’t happen. There were a lot of accidents that lined up for it to come into existence. A sculptor had to get pregnant and give up her art. A boy had to break a window and his own heart. Then a misstep broke the statue and improved the design. A lot of unplanned coincidences had to happen to bring everything together. Drop the curtains, please.”

The sheets around the statue drop. Attached to the frosted glass base are what appear to be clear glass padlocks in the shapes of hearts. The plates of glass are stacked into two shapes. The sculptures appear suspended on impossibly small foundations. But it doesn’t look like anything. A loud click like gears turning fills the quiet room. The plates twist.

“I call it Lovers Locked ,” Cass says.

Murmurings begin among the crowd.

“What is it?” someone asks nearby. Soon, that sentiment is being echoed through the viewers.

Cass stands at the mic and smiles. She gives a nod. More clicking of gears silences the room, and the plates begin to move, spinning on their axes. As if by magic, two lovers appear, made of layers of glass. They each rest on tiptoe, their other leg stretched out behind them as if they’re running toward each other, palms almost pressed together, lips almost touching. It’s hard to tell whether the statues are male or female. I know Cass did that on purpose. The crowd gasps before the room fills with ooh s and ahh s.

“Once a day, the statue will shift into this form, because like the statue, life and love are kinetic and mutable and defy the odds that oppose them.” She scans the crowd, searching but doesn’t seem to find who she’s looking for. “The rest of the time, it’s in flux. Now, I invite you all to be a part of this artwork by attaching your own lover’s locks to the base of the statue. Bring a padlock and lock it on.” The crowd begins to chatter but Cass holds up both hands for silence. “One more thing. I said the last accident improved the statue.”

The room dims as lights in the base of the statue come to life. The lovers illuminate. The glass sparkles and beams of light refract over the crowd, walls, and ceiling in dancing rainbows.

The audience erupts into cheers once again.

“It’s magnificent,” the mic picks up Dean Perez saying as he pumps my mom’s hand up and down in his own. “As I knew it would be.”

I turn my head, looking for Uncle Andy, but he’s no longer at my side. I catch sight of Luke who is staring right back at me. He turns his eyes toward the statue.

Uncle Andy has pushed his way through the crowd toward Cass and Dean Perez.

“Cass,” he calls to her. “Cass!”

She spots him and waves security away as he mounts the steps to join her.

Dean Perez removes the mic from the stand and slides behind Cass.

“We’ve been spinning around trying to find each other for enough years now,” Uncle Andy says. The mic catches him and plays his words through the speakers. “I don’t think I can spend one more day waiting to be with you.”

“It’s about time we changed that,” Cass answers.

The cheering of the crowd for the statue is nothing compared to the sound they make as Cass steps toward Uncle Andy, and he takes her in his arms. They kiss and it happens with such rapidity and ferocity, I can’t tell who kissed whom first.

“Absolutely lovely,” a bald man in a black suit says beside me. He dabs at the corners of his eyes with a red handkerchief. “A happily ever after still gets me every time.”

I squint at him. I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before. “Have we met?”

He smiles. “Have we?” He points above the sculpture where rainbows have dappled the ceiling. “How she thought to turn the planes of glass into prisms is a stroke of brilliance.”

“Or a lucky mistake,” I say, remembering how I cracked the plates during the moving.

“Life is full of those, isn’t it?”

Suddenly my mind clicks into place like Cass’s statue. I do know him. All I needed was to add hair and makeup. “You are. Aren’t you?”

The man raises a finger to his lips. “Shh.” He opens his coat. It’s lined with red leopard-print satin. From his inside pocket he takes a slim red metal case and slips a business card out.

“I heard about a young man who simply adores romance novels and works in a quaint little book shop downtown. I almost had the pleasure of meeting him. Perchance we could correct that with the release of my next book. I feel inspired to tell more of the story I began in Pebbles and the president of Little Elm’s Baroness fan club should help plan the launch.”

He holds out the card. I take it disbelievingly.

“I’d be honored,” I say, tucking the card into my pocket safely and fumbling through my brain for something to say. “I have so many ideas.”

“Excellent. I expect an email within the week. Lovers Locked . Wouldn’t that make for an interesting title?”

He slips through the people marveling at the statue. I can’t believe I met one of my personal heroes. I bounce up and down and turn my head to find someone I know to tell. I first look to where Luke was. I search the room, the joy I felt at meeting the Baroness deflating. Luke is nowhere in sight.