Peaches

head. She didn’t know. Go back to the usual. That was what you did, right? You stretched out your life, then realized life wasn’t stretchable, and so you went back to the way things were before.
    “Are you gonna keep in touch with the girls from the orchard?” Jodee asked.
    “They hate me.” This was a rare intimacy for Murphy. She waited for her mom to ask questions. She wanted for the two of them to go into her mom’s room alone so she could pour the whole thing out and hug her mom and cry and have her get her a tissue and some hot tea. But her mom waved a hand at her lightly.
    “Oh, honey, they don’t hate you. Girls are just hard to be friends with in high school. It gets easier when you’re older.”
    Murphy wondered what women friends her mom actually thought she had. Women all over Bridgewater were probably breathing a sigh of relief Jodee wasn’t single anymore so thatthey wouldn’t have to lock up their husbands and boyfriends.
    “Right.”
    Murphy watched Richard’s stupid football game until the light outside started to fade. Then she just couldn’t stand being indoors anymore.
    She got in her car and turned the engine. Ever since Rex had fixed it, it had been starting fine. She stepped on the gas and turned left out of the development, not sure where she’d go. She knew she should call somebody, there were tons of people who would be around to hang out with, but she just couldn’t think of anybody she wanted to see.
    Finally she turned toward the orchard.
    She parked the car near the railroad tracks and walked along the perimeter of the property so that nobody would see her, sneaking into the garden from behind it, approaching it from the side coming toward the house. She looked up at Birdie’s window, but the lights were out. For all she knew, Birdie had gone to live with her mother. It didn’t matter.
    At the garden a few weeds had crept toward the roses, and Murphy yanked them out, surveying the area for more weeds, more threats to her precious flowers. It would all be bulldozed eventually anyway. Finally she gave up.
    She sank onto the bench and ran her fingers along the wood, tracing the little patterns that Rex had carved into the armrests. He hadn’t had to do these little delicate patterns. He could have made her a normal bench, and it would have been more than enough.
    Murphy knew she was feeling sorry for herself, and she also knew that she wasn’t going to cry. She refused to be a victim.Murphy, the martyr. Murphy, the wronged. Murphy, who’d thought she had friends.
    A figure appeared beside her on the bench and sat down.
    “Hey, Birdie.”
    Birdie looked around, plucked one of the dead flowers off a branch, and started picking it apart, all the while staring at Murphy with her doe eyes.
    “I was just checking on stuff,” Murphy said, nodding toward the garden.
    “I know. I figured.”
    “I hope you won’t report me for trespassing.” She couldn’t help throwing it in.
    Birdie sucked in her breath. “You know, they’re calling for a tropical storm?” she said quietly. “So much of this summer without any rain. But peaches taste sweeter when there’s less rain. Rain dilutes the sugar.”
    “Huh.”
    Birdie folded her hands on her lap.
    “I thought you were going to live with your mom.”
    Birdie sighed. “I’m kind of straddling houses at the moment.”
    Murphy didn’t reply. She knew how hard that had to be for Birdie, but she was too angry to offer any kind of sympathy.
    “Murphy, I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you and Leeda. I didn’t mean to.”
    Murphy nodded and pressed her lips together, staring up at the sky. “No big deal.”
    Birdie seemed on the verge of tears. “I’m such a bad liar, and she asked me what was wrong. And she guessed, you know. She guessed it was something about you, then she guessed it wassomething about you and Rex. It was like this psychic premonition she had. If you knew how sorry I was…”
    “I said it was no big deal. I gotta, um—” Murphy hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
    “Murphy!” Birdie leaned forward and threw her arms around Murphy’s neck. “Please please please forgive me. Please. It was none of my business, what happened with you and Rex. Well, I should have talked to you, but then Leeda came in….” Birdie pulled back and blinked her brown eyes. “I don’t care what you did as long as we’re friends.”
    Murphy shook her off, frowning. “I didn’t even do anything.”
    Birdie