Peaches

life.

Chapter Nineteen
    L eeda’s two huge suitcases lay in the middle of the floor, half packed. She’d taken down her curtains and folded up her blankets, stowing all her breakable knickknacks inside. Sitting on the bed and looking around, she couldn’t believe how different the room felt. She couldn’t believe she’d lived here for a whole summer. It just looked so unlike anyplace she would spend her time.
    In the hallway the women were packing too, dragging things down the stairs and piling them up outside for the bus. Poopie would shuttle them in the bus to the Greyhound station and help them get everything on when the bus arrived. Leeda watched boxes and boxes of stuff go by and smiled. Greyhound didn’t know what it was in for. If Leeda were from Mexico, she mused, she would have done the same thing.
    She began pulling her clothes out of the dresser, packing them carefully: shirts on one side, shorts on the other. But her limbs felt heavy.
    Across the hall Murphy was blaring her music and lying on her bed. The last time Leeda had peered in, she hadn’t packed athing. Now Leeda ripped a piece of paper out of the notebook on her desk and folded it into a paper airplane. Then she unfolded it, wrote on it, folded it again, and sent it sailing across the hall.
    A few seconds later the airplane came back. Leeda unfolded it.
    In her writing it said, Get to work, slacker.
    In Murphy’s it said, Come over here and do it for me. Pretty pleeease?
    A second later Murphy herself appeared in the doorway, her eyes sorrowful.
    “Poopie’s here with the bus.”
    They walked out toward the drive, where everyone had gathered, including Birdie. Poopie had already taken a load of the men over, so already the group seemed small. The rickety white door of the bus hissed open, and suddenly everyone was piling on Murphy and Leeda and Birdie, hugging them.
    Next to Leeda, Emma squeezed Birdie’s chin and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Birdie.” A tear trickled out of her eye. This was not like other good-byes at the orchard, though Leeda had never witnessed one. This was people saying good-bye forever.
    As the bus pulled away, Leeda gently patted Birdie’s back. They watched it disappear down the long drive. Birdie turned, smiling, but with tears in her eyes.
    “Oh, honey.” Leeda hugged her, and Murphy stood behind her, rubbing her shoulder. Birdie pulled back and swiped at the rims of her eyelids.
    “It just feels like the world’s ending,” she said through a smile.
    They walked back to the barbecue pit.
    “Where will you go?” Murphy ventured, cupping her hands thoughtfully. “If you guys…have to sell?”
    “I don’t know. Dad talks about moving to California.”
    “California?”
    “What about Aunt Cynthia? She’s moving here, isn’t she?”
    Birdie shook her head. “Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know how we’ll work it out.”
    Leeda began ripping apart a long blade of grass. “Well, maybe you won’t have to sell….”
    Birdie let out a long sigh. “We can’t keep up with other farms with better equipment, more land, better connections to the grocery chains. Dad was never good at any of that stuff. He’s just good at growing peaches.”
    “But couldn’t you get all those things?”
    “We don’t have the money.”
    She was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up the drive. All three girls turned to see Horatio Balmeade’s black Mercedes slinking its way toward the house.
    “Buzz kill,” Murphy said.
    Leeda too felt like it was a total reality check. But Birdie didn’t look fazed. For once she looked excited.
    “Do you guys know we have a huge freezer in the back of the house?”
    “Are we gonna put his body in it?” Murphy joked.
    Birdie looked at her mysteriously.
    “Not quite.”

    Squid was Birdie’s dad’s favorite. He liked to buy it fresh from a guy who caught it in the Gulf and then freeze it in the giantfreezer out back. Murphy gave Birdie a boost above the toilet seat as she took a handful of the frozen fish and stuffed it into the ceiling tiles of the Magnolia Lady’s Lounge at Balmeade Country Club.
    “Birdie, be careful.”
    “Blah blah,” Birdie said, sliding the foamy square of ceiling back into place. She’d never done something this bad, ever, but she felt like an old pro at it. Her heart was racing but in a good way. This, she figured, must be what Murphy got off on, and now she understood why.
    Leeda had explained to the girls that there were