Peaches

layers of crapshe’d have to peel away to let people see her feelings cross her face that way. It was too many to count.
    “Well…” Birdie said. “I’m going to get the field heaters ready. We have a few that work.” She gave a little half wave. “I’ll see you.”
    “See you.” Murphy watched her disappear down the trail.
    When Birdie was out of sight, Murphy turned and eyed the garden, focusing on a tiny rosebush that was being devoured by a gang of grapevine weeds. It suddenly offended her deeply. Murphy crouched and started yanking out the weeds one by one.
    She lost track of time. When she looked up, it was dusk, and her skin was cloaked in a slight chill. She sank back onto her haunches, her hands covered in dirt and stained in green stripes of chlorophyll. The lights of the Darlington house had come on, spotlighting the inside for the outside. In one of the upstairs windows Murphy could see Birdie’s figure clearly. She was on the telephone, sitting in her window. She hadn’t noticed Murphy. She was turned toward the fields beyond the dorms, her body looking curved and defeated.
    Murphy looked around the garden, feeling like she’d been in a trance, noticing that she’d cleared a large circle of weeds. She let the handful of weeds her fingers were clutching fall to the ground, stood up, and headed back down the trail.

Chapter Nine
    A ll the next day the orchard felt like a ghost town inhabited by predominantly Mexican ghosts. The workers drifted from tree to tree, frowning, talking to one another in whispers, and rubbing their hands together. The air was noticeably cooling as the day went on. It sent a chill into even Murphy’s heart, which was usually cold enough.
    Ghostiest of all was Walter, who lingered on the porch, watching over the orchard with slumped shoulders, looking still and solitary. He stood out as a gray figure, much like the lord of the underworld probably would.
    By dinner the static flying through the workers’ talk was matched only by the energy with which the thermometer beside the Camp A door dropped, and by nightfall the static had become a steady buzz.
    Murphy was thinking about tomorrow, and whether her mom and Richard would still be an item, and how much he’d be around if they were, but she could also feel the frost buzz through her closed door, and it was hard to ignore. Late in the afternoon Walter had had them drag out the few field heaters to the farthesttrees, which were the lowest, and where the frost was most likely to settle. They had started their way in the back and worked their way up, so now when Murphy looked out her window, she could see the place where the heaters had run out and there were only solitary trees for the last stretch toward the dorms.
    Tap tap tap. Sniff sniff sniff. Murphy stood up and opened her door. One of the dogs, Honey Butt or Majestic, she didn’t know which, stared up at her pitifully.
    “Where’s Mama?” Murphy asked. The papillon tilted its head at her.
    “You are an ugly dog. But come in.”
    Murphy plopped back down on the bed and let the dog hop up beside her. Birdie had been running around like a madwoman all day, which was probably why Honey Butt felt deserted.
    Murphy stared at her toes. Maybe she had foot fungus. She’d had that once, back at Camp Bright Horizon, which was a camp outside Macon for supersmart broke kids. She’d been able to pick her toenails off then; they’d just painlessly shed in her fingertips. She tried that now, but the toenails stayed. She was interrupted by a knock at the open door. Leeda stood there, her gray eyes unsure and her slate gray silk pajamas shining silkily.
    “C’min.”
    She plopped down on Murphy’s bed, making Murphy move her feet.
    “What’re you doing?”
    “Trying to figure out if I have toenail fungus.”
    She thrust her feet out toward Leeda, who surveyed them casually, trying to impress Murphy with how unsqueamish she could be. Murphy stretched farther to touch her toe against Leeda’sthigh. At the last minute Leeda bailed, shoving at her calf. “Ew.”
    “It’s too nerve-racking being in my room. Everybody’s so tense.”
    Murphy nodded. “Yeah.”
    Leeda reached out and stroked Honey Butt’s back, which made Honey Butt let out a whimper for sympathy.
    “The dogs are obsessed with Birdie, aren’t they?”
    Murphy shrugged. There was a long silence while Leeda seemed to try to think of some other topic of conversation. Murphy, in a rare act of