Matt #2
“Brody’s dog is the size of a dog, Jude, and his name is Waffles, and he was at the school’s dumpster eating a shoe last Tuesday, and not once did anyone feel like their life was in danger.”
“You weren’t there. It was lunchtime when I was jogging by the school. It came out from behind the dumpster—”
“Because that’s where the shoes are?”
“—on all fours, moving fast, and I made a threat assessment.”
“You made a noise,” Harper said. “I have it on good authority you made a noise.”
Jude pointed his pretzel at her. “Bella told you that. The kids were at recess on the playground—”
“Bella tells me everything. She’s seven, and she’s a better witness than you.” Harper sat back, entirely satisfied. “She said, and I quote, ‘Jude screamed like a scared barn owl.’”
“That is defamation,” he argued.
“That is testimony.”
“Elizabeth.” Jude appealed down the table. “You know wildlife. Tell her a dog can look like a bear if it’s big enough.”
“I’m not getting involved,” Elizabeth said, “except to say that if a bear did come out of a dumpster and it answered to Waffles, this town has bigger news than the Harvest Festival.” She reached across me for the mustard—she could have asked me to pass it.
But she didn’t. Her shoulder pressed warm against mine for exactly one second, and my pulse did something out of control—and Becca watched the whole maneuver over the rim of her glass like a scientist recording results.
“So, Matt,” Harper said, abandoning the bear. She had a direct look, Harper, the kind that came from raising a kid alone and not having time left over for small talk. “Becca tells us you’re the front-runner.”
“For what?”
“Mr. Pumpkin. Word around town is you’ve got the sympathy vote, the uniform vote, and the whipped-cream-in-your-eyebrows vote, which apparently is a large demographic.”
“There’s no front-runner,” I said. “There’s barely a contest. It’s a group of men being publicly humiliated for no good reason.”
“He read the entire rulebook,” Elizabeth told the table. “Cover to cover. Then he came to me with a list of clarifying questions, in order, in writing. I found your folder, by the way.”
“I like to understand what I’ve been entered into.”
“There were subheadings, Matt.”
“They were organized questions.”
“Meanwhile,” Elizabeth said, “your competition over here”—she tipped her chin at Jude— “came into the Stop & Go and asked me in a low voice whether the pie round used a regulation pie.”
“That is a fair question,” Jude said, with dignity.
And the table came apart, Levi pounding the wood, Becca wiping her eyes, and I sat there getting laughed at by everyone, and found I was grinning too, because Elizabeth was looking at me while the table laughed, and there was something underneath the look, warm and private and left over from a pumpkin patch in the rain, that said the joke was hers and mine before it was anybody else’s.
She got up for the jukebox a while later, and I watched her go—I was aware of watching her go, and aware of being watched watching her go, and elected not to care—and Becca leaned across Levi with her chin in her hand.
“So,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re setting me up. That’s what this is,” I whispered. “You told me it was dinner and you filled a booth with accomplices and Elizabeth, and left exactly one seat.”
“I invited my brother to a pub.” She widened her eyes, innocence itself. “I invite my best friends to places all the time. If the two of you happened to end up in the same booth, that’s just how booths work. It’s seating, Matt. Take it up with the booth.”
“Becca…”
“You’re wearing the green shirt,” she said softly, and there was no teasing left in it at all, just my little sister looking at me across a table with her whole heart in her face.
“You never wear what I tell you to wear. You haven’t listened to a suggestion from me in your entire life.
You wore the shirt.” She reached over and squeezed my hand once, quick, before I could get embarrassed about it.
“I just wanted you somewhere warm with people who love you, on a night you’d have spent alone.
Whatever else does or doesn’t happen is nobody’s business.
But for the record, she looked at the door four times before you walked through it. I think she was hoping…”
I looked over at the jukebox. Elizabeth stood in its glow with one hip against the glass, scanning the columns, and as if she felt it, she glanced up and caught me, and didn’t look away, and neither did I, and across the whole noisy room something passed between us that had no words on it yet and didn’t need any.
“Four times,” Becca said. “I counted.”
Elizabeth’s pick came on—something slow and old, guitar and a voice like honey over gravel—and she came back to the booth and slid in beside me, closer than before, or maybe I was imagining it, or maybe I wasn’t, because Harper stopped mid-sentence and looked at the space between us, and then at Jude, who looked back at her, and the two of them declared a silent truce over the bear in order to communicate something with their eyebrows.
“What?” Elizabeth said.
“Nothing,” said Harper.
“Nothing,” said Jude.
“Good song,” said Levi, to the ceiling.
Simon sent out dessert without anyone ordering it. That’s what finished the evening off.