Joan visited her dad in Buttercreek only one other summer. I was about to go into fifth grade, sporting a brand new cherry-red bike and trying out the whole backwards-ballcap trend. I dressed back then like the truckers I always saw at the gas station: oversized flannel rolled up to my elbows, jeans with faded stains, and short wild hair. No wonder Dad and Ramona knew I was a lesbian way before I figured it out myself. 

Joan, on the other hand, was a perfectly normal  going-to-turn-out-straight fifth grade girl. She had a myriad of glittery T-shirts and cotton skorts, and she wore her hair in a messy French braid she insisted on doing herself and securing with a velour scrunchie. She told me she had nearly covered her room at her mom’s house with Lisa Frank posters, creating custom wallpaper out of psychedelic tigers and unicorns with anime eyes. Her mom lived in Florida and was dating a guy named Cal who was already sporting the man bun in 2006. Joan said her dad hadn’t contacted her mom until last fall, three years after their divorce. He had demanded that her mom fly Joan out to Lubbock, which had the closest airport to Buttercreek, and then come pick her up again and pay for the plane tickets. All four round trips.

Of course, Joan’s mother had refused, and an email battle began, eventually quieting when Cal took over the communications. He was a surprisingly good mediator and handled Joan’s father with ease, even when Blaze emailed drunk. Neither of them had had enough money to conduct their warfare in court (or in the presence of a real mediator), so Cal was really their only option, anyway. They finally settled on splitting the cost of the round trips and that Joan would fly pseudo-alone. A friend of Joan’s mother happened to be a flight attendant at Orlando International Airport and one of Blaze’s friends would be going to Florida with his family around when Joan was supposed to return home. 

All this to say, it was too costly and stressful to make Joan fly out there with the next best thing to strangers every year. She never came back. Until the summer before my junior year. 

I didn’t even know she was coming. You would think someone new in Buttercreek—a town of 2000 people whose already dwindling population fluctuated during and directly because of skiing season—would pounce on the chance to gossip about any newcomers. But May passed as it normally did with finals, plans for cross-country roadtrips in someone’s dad’s RV, yearbook signings, and applications for summer jobs. 

The job applications were a race. They were hiring two new people at the gas station, 

one at Braum’s, and if your grandfather or uncle was a farmer, you would drive out there every morning at 7 AM and pull weeds or watch your older male relative work on his old 1950s pickup truck. This qualified as being a farmhand, and at the end of the week, you were handed a twenty dollar bill or a fifty, if you were lucky. 

Thankfully, neither Ramona or Dad were super keen on me working until college. Ramona, my stepmom, wanted me to have experience, but she said she would have me help her at her real estate office if I didn’t find anything. “I’m not paying you, though,” she said. “Get that straight.”

Which was fine.

I liked Ramona and going with her to her quiet office on Main Street was a pleasant alternative to working at Braum’s or, God forbid, the gas station. The CEFCO was the only thing that stayed open past 10 PM in Buttercreek and dealing with truckers and late-night drunks looking to round off the evening with a six-pack of beer was not something I wanted to deal with at sixteen. Or anytime. Ever.

So, Ramona it was.

A week into June, Ramona woke me up at 6:45 in the morning and told me to get dressed. “Morning,” she said. “Breakfast burrito wrapped in foil in the fridge. Get up and get dressed. Time to go to work.”

Texas summer mornings were not chilly, exactly. They were neutral; the sun’s brutal heat had not yet permeated everything. 

I looked out the window as we drove. Night clung to the sky, bruising purple and pink as the sun’s crown painted the horizon, illuminating the blurry shadows of grazing horses and old sheds spread out across the plains. When we turned on Main Street, I had a clear view of the chemical plant a few miles west. The gas flare flickered softly like a piece of sun had broken off and nestled in to hide from the darkness. 

Ramona’s office had two desks in the front: one for her and one for Vianne. A small conference room stood off to the side behind a thin frame door, and a small break area snuggled behind a floral divider. The break area was sparse, furnished with only a water cooler and a desk with a coffee pot and a basket of those hard butterscotch candies only old people and gays (me) liked.

Vianne, the receptionist, was already there, and she smiled at me when we came in. “Mornin’,” she said. “Anza, you better come give me a hug.”

So I did. 

Vianne squeezed me tight, smelling of waffles and flowery perfume, and then released me when the phone trilled. I wandered over to Ramona’s desk, sitting in the chair across from her. “Can I make some coffee?” I asked.

Ramona turned on her computer. “Don’t think we’ve got any, but you can check,” she said.

I looked through the desk thoroughly, finding nothing but an unwrapped piece of gum that hadn’t even been chewed. I returned with it, dust flaking from it like a shedding animal. “Well, no coffee, but I found something even better,” I said.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Ramona looked at the gum then at me then at the gum again and laughed. “Hard to brew anything with that,” she said. She bent down and rifled through her purse, pulling out a ten dollar bill and handing it to me. “Here. I won’t need your help for a while, so go get us some. And don’t forget the filters.”

I drove to the tiny grocery half a mile down the road. An orange rind of sun peeked over the horizon, sugarcoating the plains in a honeyed glow. The grocery was empty except for an old man perusing the bargain meat and some guy from my high school manning the cash register. I bought some cheap paper filters and a bag of French roast. 

As I was checking out, a girl came in, a stranger. There were no strangers in Buttercreek, and roadtrippers never came farther than the gas station along I-27. 

Her hair was bleach-blond, shorn down until it was hardly more than peach fuzz on a teenager’s upper lip. She had a nose piercing and half-shaved eyebrows. Her oversized hoodie nearly reached her knees, and I could only see a sliver of her biker shorts. Very Princess Diana. 

Very gay chic.

I couldn’t help but stare. She headed straight for the condiment aisle and returned with a bottle of syrup. I paid the cashier just as she put her bottle on the conveyor belt. “I like your hair,” I said.

She looked up at me, her mouth tight. She gave me a quick onceover, seemed to decide I wasn’t covertly making fun of her, and relaxed. “Thanks,” she said with a small smile.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

The cashier handed me my bag, and I stepped away but couldn’t leave. Something tugged at my brain. A memory, maybe? Or sexual attraction? I tried to force my tongue to form words and finally managed, “You new ‘round here?”

It was the most redneck way I had ever said anything ever. A flush spread across my cheeks, and I wanted to turn and run away and maybe die a little. But the girl tilted her head at me and said, “Staying with my dad. I’ve been here before, but it’s been a while.”

“Oh.” I struggled to keep this very riveting conversation going. “Well, um… nice to meet you…?”

The girl took pity on my pathetic attempt to get her name. “Jo,” she said.

The information felt precious. Jo. She had to be gay, right, or at least bisexual? I wondered if I should ask, but that would be too much. 

“Oh, okay. Well, see you around, Jo,” I said and turned around, making a beeline for the sliding doors.

“You gonna tell me your name?” 

I stopped in my tracks. Turned around. She was smiling at me again, that amused little half smile. My heart morphed into a butterfly and tried to flap out via my esophagus. “Yeah, uh, it’s Esperanza,” I said.

“Cool. You can go now,” she said, tilting her head again as if she could see inside my horny sapphic soul.

The combination of the smile and the head tilt jello-ified my knees, and I scampered out, my face a tingling blushing mess. I fumbled with my keys, jumped into the car, and drove away before she saw me fail at being a normal human being for like the twentieth time in the span of two minutes.

When I walked in the door, Ramona was on the phone with a client, the bridge of her nose pinched between her fingers. “The buyers are not going to budge. It’s a seller’s market, Mr. Lerome,” she said, her voice as pinched as her nose. “Yes, I know. Yes, fourteen months… I understand. I understand, but the basement is slowly caving in from all the water damage this April, and the buyers don’t want to fix it. Second offer, actually…”

I waved to Vianne who rolled her eyes and then jerked a finger at Ramona. “John Lerome’s on the phone. That guy who keeps wavering on whether he really wants to sell his papaw’s house or not,” she whispered.

“Ah,” I said. Ramona would sometimes come home from work extremely wound up and rant to Dad about a few of her clients, but if she had ever mentioned names, they had screamed in one ear and yelled out the other. “Sounds like a real piece-a-work.”

I made my escape into the break corner, measured out the grounds, and then carried paper cone after paper cone of water to the coffee machine. I found a few mugs stashed in a cabinet behind the water cooler and rinsed them in the bathroom sink. I set one on Vianne’s desk and then carried two to Ramona’s, setting hers away from any papers or folders that could potentially be ruined by spillage.

Ramona was no longer talking with John Lerome, but she looked especially irritated; her mouth was a perfectly flat line. “Here,” I said. “Thought this might help.”

She glanced down at the mug. Her face loosened, the muscles drifting down like a petal landing on a still lake’s surface. “Thanks,” she said. “Where’s the change?”

I dug in my pants pocket and handed it to her.

She went back to work, and I sat there for a while, sipping my coffee as the temperature climbed and sun slanted over faded awnings and brick storefronts, most sporting FOR SALE signs. Buttercreek was not a town most people knew existed. Though it had garnered more tourists during the golden age of Route 66, its commercial space had always been lacking. The town council had tried to renovate the old auction house twenty years ago, but nobody had wanted to pay more taxes. So, it stayed a place for teenagers to dare each other to go into and record videos in the hopes of going viral, graffiti with inspiring messages like FUCK U and LUCYS A GODAMN LOOSER, and take senior pictures at during the daytime (bonus points if you sneak in some graffiti and your parents don’t notice and it makes it onto the graduation invitation.)

From Ramona’s office, I could see the corner of it where the windows had been smashed in. Ivy clung to the bricks, spiraling up and up and up, making galaxy patterns out of earth green tendrils. A sense of déjà vu washed over me. The memory was soft, hazy, like an early spring morning. I grasped for it, but it danced away, receding into a nagging tingle at the nape of my neck.

I faced Ramona. “You remember a girl named Jo?” I asked. “She used to come here to visit her dad? Maybe during the summer?”

Ramona tilted her head at me. “No,” she said. “Why?”

“Well—”

The phone trilled, interrupting me quite rudely.

“Hold on,” said Ramona with a heavy sigh. She reached to answer it, and the caller ID flashed. John Lerome. She sighed again and closed her eyes, her fingers automatically reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. She brought the phone to her ear. “How can I help you this time, Mr. Lerome?”