Closer To The Sun [Poly] [Bi]

7 - Nora

Q.O.T.D – Are you a green thumb, or can you not grow a plant to save your life? ;)

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As Charlie had predicted, Lucy did have some choice words about Callum.

"I swear," Lucy said, kicking to drive the gardening shovel deeper, wrapping up her minutes-long tirade at Callum's expense, "tell him to bring his hearing aids next time you have him over, because he'll need them after I'm done giving him a talking-to."

"You do that," Charlie said.

The unspoken truth was that Callum would be over again. Charlie and Lucy had long since stopped reminding Nora that there were other people in the world who would be happy to do more dating, less fighting. Nora knew she was on the cusp of her first break-up... she didn't want to think about it. She just wanted to listen to Lucy's idle insults and help reinforce the wobbly string bean trellises and patch the holes in the chicken run. She didn't want to think about Callum. But she had to admit she was a little insulted that her aunts had given up on Nora having the courage to break things off with Callum herself. They were probably assuming that would be on Callum at this point.

Did she really seem that desperate?

Nora helped her aunts string fresh chicken wire over the chicken run that spanned the length of the backyard. They were used to rats and raccoons scavenging chicken feed around the perimeter of the chicken's coop, but this year the foxes had been extra aggressive.

"If only the foxes would just go after the raccoons or the rats instead of the chickens," Charlie suggested. "We might all be able to work together here."

She unraveled a roll of rusty-looking chicken wire and doubled over a small hole something had tried to dig in one vulnerable section of the chicken run.

"At least they're not interested in eating their vegetables," Lucy said, picking a green caterpillar off a budding head of cauliflower.

"No, we have deer for that," Charlie said.

Nora loved the garden, but didn't understand the point of all of the work if her aunts had to spend so much time fending off every living creature in town. 

The chickens were tuckered out for the day, clucking idly in their pen. Beatrice had her beak tucked into her chubby neck feathers, fast asleep. Victoria and Anne watched the Buchanans work with glassy, dull expressions. Aunt Lucy threw a caterpillar Diana's way, and she pecked at it with interest.

Charlie had a fascination with European royalty.

Aunt Charlie strung out the last of the chicken wire and grunted. "That's the last of it. Nora, would you run around to the front and grab another roll from the garage?"

By "garage," she meant active disaster area. It was too cluttered to fit a car, stuffed full of rakes and fertilizers and compost bins and loose nails.

Charlie grabbed Nora by the shoulders and massaged them roughly. "Nothing like yard work to cheer you up after a fight with your boyfriend!"

"How would you know? You've never had a boyfriend."

Charlie laughed and thumped Nora on the back to get her moving, like she was a horse. 

Nora cut through the thin side yard that stretched to the front of the house, stepping on the crooked pavers that sufficed for a walking path. Charlie and Lucy's yard was overflowing with plants, of edible and inedible varieties. In a few short weeks, their garden would begin a months-long process of blooming in kaleidoscope colors.

Nora loved it here.

When she came around the side of the house, Nora saw a group of kids – she had no idea why she still called people her age "kids," considering she was 19 – walking down the block. She recognized two of them from high school – Shea LaRue and Leonard... something. The other two boys looked familiar, though she couldn't place their names. Probably because she was pretty sure one of them – a stocky boy with a crew-cut – had been in and out of juvie. He'd definitely gone to her high school, but Nora had no idea if he'd finished.

"You know those kids?" Lucy asked.

"Jesus," Nora said, flinching. "You scared me."

"Sorry," she said, stepping deftly between loose piles of drill bits. "Needed to grab weed fabric." She jerked her head back at the group of teens and asked, "They go to your college?" When Nora nodded, she asked, "Why don't you hang out with them?"

Nora laughed until she realized her aunt was serious. Did adults really have no memory of the delicate politics of teenager-dom? She hadn't hung out with Shea and Lenny back when they were all in the same four-hundred person high school, let alone the same sixteen-thousand person state college.

Shea and Nora had always had some sort of orbital awareness of one another, being two of a very small number of non-white girls in Soledad High School. But they'd never really spoken, outside of one or two class assignments.

Of course, Nora probably had a higher awareness of Shea than the other way around. It wasn't that Nora paid extra-special attention to her, it was just that she shared the same general curiosity about Shea as everyone else in town had. 

After all, for two years she had practically vanished off the face of the Earth.

In fifth grade, Shea had been in her elementary school classroom one day, and then the next, she had disappeared. Her family had called in an investigation of the surrounding woods, where Shea had spent a lot of her time. They hadn't found any trace of her. The investigation went cold. A vigil was held at the school. Shea's close friends had been invited to her funeral. Nora had not been one of them.

And then, two years later, she simply turned up. No memory of where she'd been, no clues, she'd just wandered home to her surprised parents. That was how she'd ended up in Nora's grade. But she'd still remained best friends with a boy two grades older: one Campbell MacGowan.

The group of teens started to splinter apart, and a fifth person materialized from the blob of camera equipment and excited teen energy. He was so skinny it was understandable how he'd been completely obscured by the other people. The slender orange backpacking bag he carried was nearly thicker than he was.

Shea, Leonard, and the two boys Nora didn't know started walking back up the street in the direction they'd come. Shea turned around and shouted something like, "see you soon," and then the skinny boy walked his backpack down the street toward Charlie and Lucy's house.

Nora's heart surged in ecstatic surprise. It was her cousin.

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