Toni #4 by LJ Alonge

Author:LJ Alonge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-05-15T10:01:03+00:00

Memories are always a little brighter, a little sharper in the rearview. But if you asked me right now, I don’t think I’d be able to tell you the names of the other kids who lived there. You could stand them right in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to recognize most of them. Those were probably the best three months of my life, and even now I can only remember all the time we spent together in movie clips: girl meets girl; girl shows other girl how to plant tomato seeds deep so they stay rooted when it rains; girl lets other girl take Boardwalk every time they play Monopoly, hoping she’ll like her more; girl starts biting nails like other girl and walking on toes like other girl without knowing she’s doing it; girl grabs girl’s sweaty hand and squeezes it when the coyotes howl in the night; girl doesn’t know if other girl also feels electric shocks when they touch; girl cries secret, shameful tears every time other girl doesn’t notice the cartoon vegetables she draws to impress her; girl gets better and better at swallowing her feelings, at keeping the bitter taste down and pretending everything’s sweet.

She was a collector of things—butterflies, seeds, bees. When I told her about the Snail-o-Rama, she laughed and asked how I could forget to poke holes in it. One night we tried to catch bullfrogs in the tall grass behind the house. We split up, following two different frogs, but the moon was so bright, I could still see her dimples from across the field. The frog I was after sounded so close, I thought I was going to step on it.

“Toni!” she yelled. All the frogs went silent. “Come here!”

The moon had gone behind a wall of clouds. It was dark, and every time Angelica shouted to me, the breeze carried her voice one way and then another. Soon I was walking in circles, trying to find the moon, trying to find the path I’d been on. I sat down next to a giant root and took deep breaths to hold back my tears. I dug my fingers into the cool, wet dirt and listened for something. I tried to make out what the grasses were saying to the owls, what the frogs were saying to the crickets. It seemed, for a second, like the whole world was full of messages and none of them were for me. Well, here came Angelica, zigzagging at full speed through the grass, beating her chest and yelling at the top of her lungs. When she got close, I stuck a leg out to trip her.

“Hey!” she said, rubbing her neck. She had mud all over her face, all over her mouth.

It was barely a kiss, a peck really, but I immediately felt bad. I thought I could feel her pull away. I groaned and dug my fingers back into the dirt.

“I got an idea,” she said.

I don’t know how she knew where the old man’s whiskey was.

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