Red Velvet Crush by Christina Meredith

Author:Christina Meredith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

11

Winston and I are at our kitchen table the Saturday night after Ty’s graduation, a map of the Pacific Northwest and the itinerary for the tour spread out before us.

Billie is sitting on the front porch, just outside the screen door with a cigarette that is at least 85 percent ash tucked between her fingers. She is trying to work some shorts, but it really isn’t that warm yet. Smoke drifts in on the fresh start-of-summer air.

I watch her cigarette burning down to the filter as Winston double-checks Randy’s notes and makes dots with a marker on each of the cities where we will stop. Portland, Bend, Eugene, Ashland, Yakima, Boise, even Pocatello, some spots in suburban Seattle, and almost every tiny town in between. Then a red star for home.

“No one is touching the Z,” he says, overly concerned about his car. He stubs his cigarette out into the ashtray that is holding one corner of the map.

Transportation is the one minor detail that Randy and Winston have somehow overlooked during their intense planning. We are debating a caravan of my car and maybe Jay’s.

How Winston forgot about transportation is beyond me. He lives for cars. And sex. And snack cakes. Yep, sex and cars and a creamy filling stuffed into straight-leg jeans: that’s my brother.

I am practically clawing my eyes out, trying not to take over. Winston seems amazed that he has done something this well, and I don’t want to wreck his moment; but his oversight isn’t inspiring a lot of faith. I also don’t want to walk when my car gives out somewhere near the base of the Three Sisters. It dies when I drive it through a deep puddle.

Winston has lists upon lists and a strange subcategorization system that involves checkmarks and asterisks and scribbles that look mysteriously like his pen is running out of ink.

It seems like he has everything figured out other than the car, but I can’t be sure, I’m not wearing my secret decoder ring.

A beam of headlights crosses the yard, and Billie gets up. It is probably just Dad, home early. She swats at a bug that is circling her head; then she presses her nose flat against the screen door.

“You have got to see this,” she says.

I push away from the table, glad to leave the marker smell behind. Winston grabs his smokes and follows me out.

An old white van is pulling up into our front yard, leaving two strips of crushed grass behind it. I stop on the bottom porch step and stare.

It looks like Winston has been saved.

Jay is in the passenger seat with a baseball cap on backwards. He leans out the window, waving like a madman. CRAZY CARPET KING is painted on the dented sliding door. The words are faint, barely hidden by a thin layer of white paint that still has brushstrokes in it. A tiny silver crown topped with fake jewels dangles from the rearview mirror.

“Look what graduation got us,” Jay says as the van lurches to a stop.

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