Face Your Fears

Chapter 23

Rebecca slid into the booth across from me in Vesta's restaurant, plopping her purse down beside her.

The place was a little too noisy and a little too rowdy for my taste, what with parents halfheartedly watching their shouting children, teenagers lounging about and challenging each other to games on the old arcade machines - but Rebecca had said the pizza was to-die-for, and who was I to pass up good pizza?

And after everything that had gone down at her parents' house today, I really was in no position to deny Rebecca anything.

A waitress wandered over a second after we sat down, and Rebecca waived away the menus she offered.

"We'll have a large Warrior's pizza and two Shocktops." She glanced over at me in question. "You like beer, right?"

That was a dumb question.

"Can't live without it."

"True enough."

The waitress scribbled down our order on a notepad and wandered off again.

Only a beat of an awkward silence passed before Rebecca looked to me again, placing her hands together on the table in front of her.

"So." The expression in her blue eyes was expectant, eager. "Tell me about the girls."

I had been preparing myself for that very question the entire drive down to Boonsboro. I still didn't know what to say. There weren't any words that could possibly describe how uniquely individual April, May and June really were.

That question could only be answered if Rebecca met the girls for herself. Which, if I had anything to say about it, would be sooner rather than later.

"What do you want to know?" I said carefully.

"Everything."

I rested my elbows on the table and made a steeple with my fingers, frowning in thought for a few moments.

"Well, April is technically the eldest by about sixteen minutes," I began when Rebecca looked like she was about to burst with anticipation, "and she's probably the most outspoken one out of all of them. She likes to sing in the shower, gets into too much trouble at home and school, calls me at random hours of the night and day just to piss me off."

Rebecca's mouth softened into a grin. "Sounds like a girl after my own heart."

I found myself grinning, too.

"May is the quiet one. She spends most of her time reading and writing. We all think she's going to end up being a journalist for the Times one day. And she complains the least out of all three of them."

"A feat in a fourteen-year-old, believe me," Rebecca said with a small laugh.

There was a lapse in conversation as the waitress returned to our table with two pints of Shocktop, the rims of the glasses topped with a couple of orange slices. We said our thanks and then both grabbed for the glasses at the same time, eagerly swallowing down a few mouthfuls. 

After what Rebecca and I had been through today, I think we deserved all the beer we wanted.

"What about June?" Rebecca asked, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin after another mouthful of beer.

"June." I hummed in thought. "June's a bit different. She does what she wants when she wants without caring what anybody thinks. She dances to the beat of a different drummer, really. She usually spends most of her time messing around in the coffee house kitchen as it is."

Rebecca's face lit up with excitement and she gasped.

"God, that place is still open?"

"Always will be," I assured her.