Peaches

way. It was in their eyes.
    She went into the bathroom and saw they were out of cotton balls. Birdie sighed. She made a mental note to get some for Leeda the next time she and Poopie drove the workers to town.
    Once she ran out of unpacking to do, Birdie cleaned the kitchen. A few minutes later the women started trickling in, fiddling with the radio and clucking over Birdie’s new living arrangements. Birdie sat with her legs together, unnerved by the commotion that she was supposed to live in for the next five days. When Leeda floated down the stairs to grab a snack from thekitchen, they all gave one another meaningful looks until Leeda’d gone back up. Then they started in on Birdie and what a good girl she was, and on how lazy other people could be. Emma raised her eyebrows in the direction of upstairs and squeezed Birdie’s knee affectionately as if they—the women and Birdie—were older and wiser and Murphy and Leeda belonged to some other generation entirely. Someone switched the radio to weatherband, which they were all addicted to, though it was all in English.
    The radio buzzed with static as they chatted and waited for the Southeast forecast. When Florida was mentioned, everyone quieted down.
    Farmers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are gearing up for a late frost, scheduled to descend on the Southeast later this week. Temperatures are expected to drop to twenty-eight degrees, a level that for the season’s early crops could mean…
    Birdie pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her opal necklace between her fingers. When she looked up, the women were all staring at her. She let out a ragged breath, smiled her grimace smile, and walked out onto the screen porch. There she sank onto the decrepit wicker rocker and rocked back and forth, sweating from the heat of the indoors and trying to quell the rising panic in her belly.
    “ Por qué tan triste, Birdie?”
    Birdie looked up. Enrico had his face pressed against the screen so that his nose was flattened back against his face. Birdie could imagine, with his nose smushed up like that, that he wasn’t so cute after all and that she didn’t want him.
    She wiped at the sweat on her upper lip and smiled. “Heugh.”
    Enrico stared at her. Birdie had meant to say “hi” but then atthe last second had decided “hey” was more casual, and it had come out “heugh.” She blushed. “Um. Estoy muy bueno. ”
    “Muy bien,” Enrico corrected.
    “Muy bien.” Birdie beamed at him.
    Enrico smiled back, not warmly but only politely. He seemed to be staring at something near her mouth. She wiped at her upper lip again.
    “I try to find your dad. Do you know where the label maker is? I thought I start that early, for bottles.” He was very earnest and all business, his brown eyes steady and not at all sparkly like they’d been last week.
    “Oh.” Birdie patted her ponytail. After a long day of work she was covered in a gritty layer of sweat and dust. “I think we still need to order them,” she said.
    “Okay. You let me know when they come?” Enrico smiled tightly. He could have been smiling at her dad.
    “Yep. Will do.”
    As soon as Enrico walked away, Birdie trudged to the bathroom to peer in the mirror and get a glimpse of the Birdie Enrico had seen. She let out a groan.
    Where she had wiped at her upper lip, she had wiped a swath of dirt over her mouth so that she had a thick dirt mustache. The only thing missing was a sombrero.
    She turned to peer through the rectangular window that looked out from the bathroom onto the path toward the house, where Enrico was still visible for a moment before he veered toward the cider house.
    Who could blame him for not wanting to flirt with a chubby girl with a mustache?
    She watched him walk away, holding her hand up to her neck, letting her pulse thrum against her fingers.

    Over the next few days Leeda’s wounds, inflicted by the thirty-seven fire ants that had swarmed on her legs, formed zit-like pus bumps that she tried to fastidiously dry with the rubbing alcohol Poopie gave her. She hid from Rex whenever he was around, ducking back into the trees whenever she saw him walking across the property, which made him laugh while he pretended not to see her. It was just too gross for a guy to see his girlfriend’s pus bumps. Leeda knew her mother would agree.
    Birdie was like an angel, checking on Leeda constantly in her quiet way, turning the fan on above the couch when Leeda was crashed out