Peaches

back.
    This time she let the juice run down her fingers.
    “Now you know how to enjoy, ” Birdie said in a perfect Poopie accent, waving her arms in the air in a giant dramatic gesture and taking Leeda enough by surprise that she snorted peach juice into her sinus cavity. Birdie had two bits of peach skin sticking out of her teeth like fangs.
    “Great, now I’m gonna get a sinus infection,” Leeda said, even though she was still laughing.
    “Damn, Birdie, you are full of hidden talents,” Murphy said. “Brown-rot queen. Impressions.”
    “I don’t think I wanna be a brown-rot queen,” Birdie said earnestly, making Murphy smirk.
    “What’s your hidden talent, Leeda?”
    Leeda slurped, still slightly self-conscious about the juice running down her chin. “I make great lists, ” she said darkly, giving Murphy a look to let her know she knew this wasn’t a talent at all.
    “That’s good,” Murphy offered. “I couldn’t make a list if I tried. Seriously. It’s chaos up here.” Murphy tapped her forehead.
    “Whatever.” Leeda knew Murphy was uncommonly smart. “Oh, I’m also an excellent shot,” she added.
    “Leeda’s good at everything,” Birdie said. Leeda eyed her quizzically. She couldn’t think of anything Birdie had ever seen her be good at.
    “Well, you’re definitely not as much of a loser as I always thought,” Murphy added.
    “Oh, thanks. ” Leeda wanted to be offended, but actually, she felt warmed up with pleasure. Flattered. And she felt something tiny click into place. It made her whole body relax. It was like they had settled it. They weren’t strangers again. It had just been decided.
    The sun had just dipped low enough to shine into the shade of the barn and it hit her face, but she decided not to worry about UV rays giving her freckles and premature wrinkles. She’d never felt her body relax so completely, resting from the hard work and loosening up in the company of the two sitting next to her. She felt liked. Leeda was liked by a lot of people, but usually for things that didn’t matter. She felt she was liked by Birdie and Murphy for no reason at all, and that made the experience, for however long it might last, more real.
    Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next.In the movies they always made it look permanent, and for a long time Leeda had expected to find friends like that. But there was always some gap that developed; there was always a glitch.
    She didn’t really know Murphy, or even her cousin, at all. But for that tiny space of time, savoring the taste of her peach, feeling the sleepy laziness of someone who’s earned it, it felt like Birdie and Murphy might turn out to be friends like that. Even though they had nothing in common and there was fuzz stuck under her fingernails and the juice was drying in a sticky mass on her arms, Leeda was happy.
    The moment slipped away, but because it wasn’t perfect, it was the most perfect one she could remember having.
    On a July evening in 1993, synchronous lightning bugs were discovered on the Darlington Orchard property, lighting up the night like blinking Christmas lights. These obscure insects were known among nature enthusiasts for their unique ability to light all at once, unexplainably in sync with thousands of others of their kind. They were known to reside in only a few places on earth, none of which were anywhere near Bridgewater. That week entomologists from far and wide descended on the orchard to see them, but within days they had disappeared, never to be seen in the region again by more than a select few.

Chapter Fourteen
    L eeda started staying for dinner. The workers always invited her to share, and it was pretty obviously connected to the fact that she’d actually started to really work. At first Leeda resisted out of politeness, but the food was just too delicious.
    Every night she was shocked by the many uses of peaches. The women knew how to make anything out of them—peach-and-pecan soup, peach salsa, peach-and-onion fritters, peach-and-amaretto jelly. They combined them with the produce of their vegetable garden, which lay behind the men’s dorm. When the men cooked, it was less creative—burgers, sometimes steak. But there was always corn on the cob, cucumber-and-parsley salad with cider vinegar, beans, mild white cheese crumbled on tortillas and cooked