Chapter 8
EIGHT
Essentially the entire first floor of the farmhouse is visible to the outside world, at least if you choose the right window; Will, resigned to his fate, scoops up the clothes and heads for the Lime.
He walks in now, already pulling his sodden sweater and shirt off over his head, grateful to be rid of them.
He makes quick work of stripping down and drying off, shimmying into the clothes Casey tossed down to him with a groan of gratitude—he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be both warm and dry.
He sits down on top of the closed toilet for a second, taking a deep breath, reveling in the sensation of basic comfort.
Looking down at himself, he starts to smile; he is, he realizes, wearing head-to-toe farm merchandise.
Kudos to Casey, he’s guessed Will’s sizing right; every piece of bright red, clearly holiday-themed clothing fits him perfectly, and something about that is oddly satisfying, for reasons he’s not prepared to consider.
He settles, instead, for glancing around him with the smug self-satisfaction he’d never risk if anyone had any chance of seeing him.
It bears strange fruit, this little moment of smugness, because after a second, Will notices the Lime is…different.
It takes him a while to place it, but the color hits him first. The green is the wrong shade—the color that assaulted one’s eyes while using the facilities in the Lime was not a good color, but it was unforgettable.
If lime green could vomit, was the experience…
or maybe if an olive and a yellow highlighter had a child.
The color on the walls now is green. Not the strange, unsettling green of before—this is a bright, clear yellow-forward green you’d find on the rind of an actual lime.
It even shifts, Will notices as he looks around the small bathroom, yellower in some places and more chartreuse in others, like the skin of an actual lime.
Will stands at this point, and leans in close to be sure—oh, wow, there’s texture . The particular stippled texture of citrus rind, worked into the wall. It must have taken someone ages to do, and…
God. “Someone.” As if Will doesn’t know exactly who it was.
As if Will couldn’t just walk upstairs and ask him about it.
“Hey, seems like you did something really awesome and interesting with an inside joke my family left alone out of amusement and then simmering resentment for fifty-odd years, good for you,” might not be the best conversation opener, but it wouldn’t be the worst, either.
Would it be better or worse than, “Hey, it seems like you do all kinds of weird, interesting art projects around here—that’s neat, don’t you think?
I think it’s neat, anyway, unless that makes you hate me even more, in which case I feel totally neutral about it and forget I said anything at all.
” What about a good, old fashioned, “Hey, it seems like we got off on the wrong foot, is there any chance you’re kind of a cool person?
Because I’m not, but hey, if you are, that might be nice. ”
It doesn’t come to that, anyway. As Will leaves the Lime behind, a pile of wet clothes balanced precariously in one hand and soaked shoes in the other, a knock sounds at the front door.
“Coming!” Will calls automatically, and then winces; it’s not his house.
Or, well, no, it is his house, technically, but no one is likely to be coming by for him.
But Casey doesn’t yell anything down, so Will decides he might as well follow through on his promise, however automatic it might have been.
He leaves his shoes on the mat, and his clothes, after a moment’s agonized thought, in a tight little ball on top of the shoes.
The knock sounds again, annoying Will; don’t they know he’s working on it? “I’m coming , you’re going to live ,” Will snarls, not caring how much he sounds like himself at fifteen, but he does hurry the last few steps to the door.
It’s Noel on the other side, because why wouldn’t it be.
“ You ,” Noel says, as though they’re the aggrieved one of the two of them.
Then, their jaw dropping open: “Oh my God, is that the new sweatset? For the store? For Christmas? He said we weren’t allowed to see them yet!
He said we had to wait until we put them out for the guests—I drew the design on that one, you know,” Noel says, pointing proudly at Will’s sweatshirt.
Will looks a little closer and realizes that what he’d thought was a Christmas tree is, in fact, a little apple tree, one fruit still on it like an ornament, strung loosely with string lights.
In spite of being swindled by this child earlier this very afternoon, Will can’t help but feel a certain fondness for them as he looks upside down at their handiwork. “I like it.”
“Thanks,” Noel says, grinning and then ducking their head, seeming abruptly to go shy. It only lasts a merciful half a second, though; after that they lean over Will’s shoulder, stick their head into the body of the house, and yell, “Hey, Casey!”
A pause. Then, filtering down from what sounds like quite far away, “Yeah?”
“You know this dude’s in your house, first of all?” Noel gives Will an apologetic look at this, as though sorry to blow up his spot. “In the Christmas sweats?”
“ Yes , Noel. Is that all?” Casey’s voice sounds closer now, like maybe he’s leaning over the stair landing.
“No. Mrs. Baumcombe is at the market? She’s here to pick up her order for next Saturday.”
A pause. Then, wearily, as though knowing there’s little point in saying it: “Is she aware that it’s currently this Saturday?”
“Yes,” Noel says, as solemnly as one can while yelling to a person on a different floor. “And yet. There she is! Hungry for the pies of next Saturday. Twelve of them, in fact.”
Footfalls on the stairs; then Casey appears on the landing, changed into a pair of charcoal jeans and a new, less wet flannel shirt, this one grey-and-black plaid.
Eyebrows up, he says, “Do we not have twelve pies we could give her now?” He makes eye contact with Will and, with an odd, hard to read expression, pulls a small lump out of his pocket and wiggles it at him, then tosses it over .
Will catches it, barely, and realizes after a second that it’s a pair of clean, dry socks.
“Oh, easily,” says Noel, not seeming to notice Will’s wide-eyed, blinking surprise at all, and punctuating it with a wave of their hand.
Will gets the sense that they’re really enjoying themselves, and maybe thought about how they were going to present this on the way over here.
“We have pies enough to fill her request and then some! But she doesn’t want any of the pies we have.
She wants her pies, Casey. That we’re going to be baking.
Specifically for her. And no one else. Next Saturday.
When she ordered them.” With a wide, beatific grin, they add, “I’m terribly afraid she wants to see a manager. ”
“Christ almighty,” Casey mutters, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
“Of course she does.” He turns and, putting a hand to the back of his neck and not quite meeting Will’s eyes, says, “You’re welcome to hang out here, if you want, but there’s more to eat at the market, so.
You can borrow a pair of my extra boots, if your shoes are still drying out. Over on the mat by the door.”
Feeling the heat of Noel’s curious stare drilling into his skull, Will tells himself very firmly not to flush, or rub at the back of his neck, or go on any kind of face journey at all—teenagers can smell fear.
He simply steps into a pair of Casey’s workboots, which are worn and broken in and about half a size too big for Will, but should be fine enough for walking around in, and says, “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Casey says, without looking at him, and leads the way out of the house.
Will notices as they do it, that they’re all, without having to talk about it, taking the Unofficial Market Employee Rainy Day Break Run Route.
Nobody who had worked in the market when Will was a kid had wanted to spend a second of their break time in there if they didn’t have to.
He’d passed them outside in the parking lot, or, if the weather was particularly brutal, huddled up in one corner of the farmhouse’s wraparound porch, praying Old Bill wouldn’t see them and kick up some dramatic fuss.
And if he did, the trick to get from farmhouse to market without getting wet was just a matter of knowing where to step in the tight little tree line, hugging close to it around the back end of the field, letting the trees shield you from the worst of whatever the sky wanted to throw at you until you could dash under the cover of the market’s large awning.
Will finds himself oddly exuberant to be doing it now, hastily clamping down on his grin when he notices Casey looking him over assessingly.
It’s just…the familiarity, he thinks, that’s all.
Like singing a song you’ve forgotten over the years, only to realize, bar by bar, that all the words are still floating around inside you, packed away in a corner but never lost. Will is pleased, in spite of the hopes he’d had at the time, not to have burned away all he once carried of Glenriver and the farm, and the life he’d thought, once, was the only future he’d ever be allowed.
Maybe it’s this spirit that carries him into the backed-up market, oddly crowded for such a rainy afternoon.
Maybe it’s this spirit that, as Casey picks up the frustrating pie thread with Mrs. Baumcombe and Noel steps back behind the safety of the apple display, moves Will not only to round the corner into the bakery, but to take a deep breath, and start walking towards the counter.