Peaches

over the open fire.
    And being outside with the tight-knit group of workers, smelling the grill and listening to all the talk afterward, was so much better than sitting around Uncle Walter’s table, which was cool and comfortable, but dreary and dead.
    The nights changed too. For the next week, which slumped hotly into July, the girls snuck down to the lake every night.Once they’d started going, it was impossible to stop. At the end of a long day, the thought of the cool water and the cool wet grass and lying around in the dark, out of the heat of the dorms, became too enticing to resist. One girl would show up in the doorway of one of the others, looking at her with raised eyebrows like someone might proposition someone who might turn them down, and then the two would move unsurely on to the last girl and look at her with the same raised eyebrows. But then it became a non-question, and there was no need to even ask, and nobody raised their eyebrows at all.
    Though the other women in Camp A seemed to be on to them, they never said anything. But Leeda felt that since they’d started, she and Murphy and Birdie oozed secret excitement, like the fire ants and their pheromones, and that everyone caught the scent, and it lit up the rooms of the dorm a little more.
    Leeda hardly spoke with Birdie or Murphy during the day. Birdie said her dad would probably pull her out of the dorms if he knew they were having too much fun, and if he found out about the lake, he would definitely lock her up, fun or not. When Leeda asked how she knew, Birdie directed her to the expression that had planted itself permanently on Walter’s face. It was definitely antifun.
    It was like they had double lives, separated distinctly into night and day. But Birdie was the first to break that when she told them about the cider house.
    The afternoon was too hot to be real. The white dirt drew the heat in and the trees made a blanket that trapped the smell of the ripe peaches and the ones already rotting on the ground. It made the orchard feel more closed in than ever, like the air caughtbetween the trees was pinning it to the ground and holding it there. Leeda knew she must be on the verge of sunstroke because it had actually started to feel romantic to be so sweaty, and to look around and see the red cheeks of the workers, and to feel how slow and heavy and relaxed her limbs had become. She was wiping the sweat off her neck in a long, languid gesture when Birdie appeared out of nowhere, her big brown eyes on Leeda sympathetically. She didn’t appear to be suffering from the heat at all.
    “Did you find my note yet?” she whispered.
    Leeda squinted at her, her heavy hands sinking to her hips. “Note?”
    Birdie raised her eyebrows comically and jerked her head to the left, to a tree Leeda had just picked. There was a tiny white piece of paper tucked into a crotch of two limbs.
    Leeda smiled. She widened her eyes and nodded back at Birdie, in mock conspiracy, and waited for her to turn and walk away before shaking her head at her cousin and how goofy she was. She pulled the note out of the tree and unfolded it.
    Cider house. See you there. Fifteen minutes.
    Leeda kicked a smushy, rotting peach out from under her feet and got a head start.
    About half an hour later, she, Murphy, and Birdie were sitting on the cool, smooth concrete of the cider house floor. When they’d met at the door, holding their notes, Murphy and Leeda had teased Birdie about what a kid she was. Murphy had said, “Birdie, do you like me? Check yes or no.” But Leeda was grateful. The cider house, as it turned out, and as of course Birdie knew, was the coolest spot in the whole orchard. It sat up on a hill that overlooked the rest of the orchard, where it got abreeze, and it had the most delicious concrete floor Leeda had ever put her butt on.
    Leeda had ducked back to the dorms and brought her notebook. Murphy lay flat on the ground, her arms and legs flopped out on the cold concrete, one hand holding a magnolia leaf she’d yanked off the tree outside. Birdie sat cross-legged beside her.
    Murphy pulled up her knees and clicked her tongue against her cheek a few times. She looked over Leeda’s shoulder. “What’re you doing?”
    “I’m writing out ideas for my sister’s bachelorette party.” Leeda had been putting it off forever. Every time she’d even thought about it made her bitter. But August was closer than it seemed—and Leeda was a planner by nature. She