Peaches

streak lined his neck. There was oil all over his hands.
    “I know.” He smiled and wiped his hands against his stomach. “It’s still at the bar in Mertie Creek, huh?”
    “Yeah, I don’t have any way to get down there.”
    Rex rested his hands on his hips and looked down at the tractor. “I’m just about finished with this. You want me to take you?”
    Murphy squinted at him. “Really?”
    “Any friend of Leeda’s is a friend of mine, no matter how much of a pain in the ass she is.” Rex grinned sarcastically. “We can stop at the junkyard and get you a new starter.”
    Murphy put her own hands on her hips, mirroring him. “You’re not getting anything in return,” she joked.
    “Please,” Rex said, rolling his eyes.
    She met Rex at his car ten minutes later and they started down the road.
    “Your garden’s looking good,” Rex said after a few minutes of sitting in the breeze in silence.
    Murphy sank back in her seat and looked at him. She wondered how he knew. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d even begun to think of it as her garden.
    “I think it needs something. A bench or something.”
    Murphy nodded. “Yeah. You know, there’s even a nectarine tree in there? But the nectarines are all buggy.”
    “Too bad,” Rex said.
    Murphy had rarely sat in a car with a guy who (a) wasn’t dating her mom or (b) wasn’t hitting on her. She didn’t know quite what to do. She just leaned back and looked out the window andlistened to Rex’s music. His taste was superb. The day, which was a little hazy, started to feel surreal. The grass was fluorescent. The smell of the air was dizzying. Murphy stuck her hand out the window like the wing of an airplane. The music coming from Rex’s speakers got under her skin and made her feel like that was what was pushing them forward.
    When they got to the junkyard, Rex sifted through several cars for a starter, digging in them with his deft hands until he’d finally found one. Murphy crouched beside him while he extracted it, breathing in the smell of motor oil. They drove on to Mertie Creek. In the light of day it looked different, like the knots on the back of the needlework that had made up the other night—all messy and slapdash. Yellowbaby was still there.
    Rex ducked inside through the passenger door and fiddled for about fifteen minutes, starting and restarting the engine until it hummed to life, and finally emerging with a concentrated look on his face.
    “We can get you a new door handle at the junkyard too. And I can tighten your clutch. I’ll try to do it sometime this week.”
    “Thanks.”
    He stood back so Murphy could crawl in toward the driver’s seat under his armpit, then leaned down to look at her. He blinked at her a few times, and Murphy pasted a nakedly friendly look on her face. “Yep.” She nodded, stiffening her body and hunching up her shoulders intentionally. It would be too easy to flirt with Rex. “Well…”
    “I still have some work to do back at the orchard. See you back there.”
    Murphy turned the key in the ignition and didn’t look at him again. “Sounds good.”

    Back on the orchard, Murphy walked back to her garden and did some more work. A few roses had snuck out of their buds since this morning. Murphy dug a hand shovel out of the tool-shed and turned the soil around; though she didn’t know quite what that was supposed to do, she’d seen it done.
    When she walked back to the dorms about an hour later, she ducked behind the faucet partition and washed her face, getting her hair soaked. She rubbed at the dirt on her cheeks and rinsed. Then she faced the wall, pulled her shirt over her head, and rinsed her armpits and her chest and her back. She held her shirt back to her front and turned to look for the soap.
    Rex was standing a few feet behind her, staring—not at her body, but at her face.
    “Oh. Hey.” Murphy crossed her arms tightly against her, which was a rare modesty for her. Rex stared at her, then looked at the ground.
    “Hey.”
    Murphy’s heart started to pound out a rhythm. Not like the rhythm she usually got with boys who saw her breasts. It was sort of bigger and more unpredictable at the same time. Holding her shirt tight against her chest with one hand, she ran her other hand through her hair, slicking it back.
    “Can I have some privacy, please?”
    Rex rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand, scratching it hard, and looked hard at her face but nowhere else.