Chapter 37 - Luna #2
"You did not do exactly what I said." Gigi doesn't look up from her own bowl. "You poked at it like it might bite you. Get in there, push it with the heel of your hand, and turn it a quarter to incorporate the flour."
"Eww, I can feel it drying on my skin." She makes a disgusted face and tries to shake it off sending a splat of it to land on Gigi’s cheek.
Kara is faring slightly better, which she’s smug about. Her sleeves are shoved up to her elbows and she's got the rhythm almost right, pushing and folding while the ball under her hands goes smooth.
"Am I doing it?" she asks.
"You're doing it."
"I'm doing it." Kara turns to Briar with pure delight on her face. "Briar, look at me. I'm a pioneer woman."
"You're a show off."
"Those things aren't mutually exclusive."
I'm cutting up the toppings at the table, which is the job I claimed on purpose because I've seen the two of them try to use a kitchen knife.
Peppers, onions, and a mountain of grated cheese from the blocks we got during our SaveMart spree.
Somebody found a case of canned mushrooms in the visitor centre kitchen, and Briar has already announced that she would rather starve to death than eat those.
Between the two of them there's probably a million dollars of education tuition but neither one of them can knead dough or chop vegetables. Crazy.
"Okay, but why does it have to be sticky at the start?" Kara asks. "That seems like a design flaw."
"It's wet, that's why. It'll come together once the flour takes it up." Gigi finally looks over and sighs at Briar. "Baby, you've got to commit. That dough can smell fear."
Briar makes a wounded sound and goes back in with her eyes scrunched closed.
I laugh so hard I have to put the knife down.
The whole afternoon carries on that way.
Briar gets dough in her hair somehow and refuses to believe one of us didn't do it to her.
Kara names her dough ball Gerald and then gets genuinely offended when Gigi punches it down.
Penny stations herself under the table with the patience of a saint, waiting on the cheese she knows perfectly well is coming.
By the time the trays are covered with towels and lined up on every flat surface we have in here, I've stopped thinking about the look on Clayton's face I saw at the top of those stairs.
We get cleaned up, which takes Briar the longest, and then the two of them get an idea and decide to gang up on me.
"You're wearing something good tonight," Kara tells me.
"I have good clothes."
"You have clothes that stretch and you have those baby doll dresses, which I love on you, but tonight calls for more of a wow look.
" She hooks her arm through mine and steers me toward the door.
"Come to our camper. Between the two of us there's an entire wow wardrobe in there and some of it has never been worn. "
"Because it’s gauche to wear any outfit more than once." Briar adds in a tone that says everybody knows that as we come leave the washroom hallway and step into the bay with Penny trotting ahead of us.
"Nothing too revealing." I tell them firmly, because I know exactly how this goes if I don't. "I mean it. Marlene already hates me, and I don't want to hand her one more reason tonight. This party is supposed to fix things, not blow them up."
Gigi filled them in while we were making the dough about some of the things she’s heard from others that Marlene has been saying.
Kara sighs in exasperation. "I wish that woman was smart enough to know how stupid she is."
"Kara."
"I’m serious. She’s got a Bible verse for judging everyone else and not a shred of self-awareness for herself." Then something wicked moves across her face and she stops walking. "Oh. Oh, I have a glorious idea. We should all wear something scandalous." She looks at Briar. "Not you, Briar."
"What?" Briar's whole face falls. "Why not me?"
"Because your fifteen and Julian would peel my skin off."
"That's so unfair."
"You can be scandalous in spirit. Think of it as aspirational.
Give it three years and you can be as scandalous as you want.
" Kara turns back to me, warming up. "Imagine it.
One low neckline and she'll be so shocked she'll run straight to bible study and stay there.
Problem solved, and we don't even have to talk to her. "
"Damn it, Kara, please don't make this worse by antagonizing her."
"Oh, come on." She spreads her hands. "Nothing brightens a room like her leaving it."
Briar giggles, and I point at Kara without slowing down.
"See, this is what worries me. She's taking notes. You're going to turn her into a worse version of you and then there will be two of you in here we’ll have to deal with."
"That's the dream, Luna. My very own protege."
We're halfway across the floor when I stop walking, and both of them stop with me when one of the roller doors goes up. One of the work trucks drives in flooding me with disappointment when I see it’s not my guys.
Tanner comes out of the driver's side fast, slams the door, and runs straight for the stairs without looking at anything on his way.
His urgency has worries flooding through my head of what could be wrong to make him move that fast. Dewey gets out the other side and leans against the front fender, but he doesn't go anywhere.
His hands stay in his pockets while he checks the bay in one direction, then the other, then back again.
Something about it pulls at me as wrong. It’s almost like he’s keeping watch.
"Keep walking," I say quietly but then he looks our way and his eyes do a slow full body scan of Kara.
"Hey, Blondie."
Kara keeps going without turning her head.
"Hey! Blondie!" He calls to her again.
This time Kara stops walking and turns around slowly and gives him a look of deep pity.
"You didn't have to repeat yourself. I ignored you just fine the first time."
Briar laughs out loud, and I watch anger go across Dewey's face and settle in.
Everything in this building is one spark away from igniting right now, and I am not letting it be this.
I put on a smile that hurts my cheeks and walk toward him instead of away, which is not what my body wants to do at all.
Kara huffs behind me. Briar makes a small noise of protest but both of them follow me