I wondered how Lena was going to feel about that. If she noticed.
"I stil don't understand why there's a statue of a general from a war the South didn't win, and one which was general y embarrassing for your country, in the middle of town." Of course she didn't.
"Folks honor the fal en around here. There's a whole museum dedicated to them." I didn't mention the Fal en Soldiers was also the scene of my dad's Ridley-induced suicide attempt a few months ago.
I looked over at Liv from behind the wheel of the Volvo. I couldn't remember the last time there had been any girl except Lena in the passenger's seat.
"You're a terrible tour guide."
"This is Gatlin. There isn't al that much to see." I glanced in the rearview mirror. "Or just not that much I want you to see."
"What do you mean by that?"
"A good tour guide knows what to show and what to hide."
"I stand corrected. You're a terribly misguided tour guide." She pul ed a rubber band out of her pocket.
"So I'm more of a mis-guide?" It was a stupid joke, my trademark.
"And I take issue with both your punning and your tour-guiding philosophy, general y speaking." She was working her blond hair into two braids, her cheeks pink from the heat. She wasn't used to the South Carolina humidity.
"What do you want to see? You want me to take you to shoot cans behind the old cotton mil off Route 9? Flatten pennies on the train tracks? Fol ow the trail of flies into the eat-at-your-own-risk grease pit we cal the Dar-ee Keen?"
"Yes. Al of the above, particularly the last bit. I'm starving."
Liv dropped the last library receipt into one of two piles. "... seven, eight, nine. Which means I win, you lose, and get your hands off those chips. They belong to me now." She pul ed my chili fries over to her side of the red plastic table.
"You mean fries."
"I mean business." Her side of the table was already covered with onion rings, a cheeseburger, ketchup, mayonnaise, and my sweet tea. I knew whose side was whose because she had made a line between us, laying french fries end to end, like the Great Wal of China.
"'Good fences make good neighbors.' "
I remembered the poem from English class. "Walt Whitman."
She shook her head. "Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings."
I should've known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost's poems or twisted them into one of her own?
We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we'd made -- Mrs. Ipswich ( Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow ( Classic Pinups of World War II ), which we had given to his wife because he wasn't home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.
"I can't believe it." I wadded up my napkin. "Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?" I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.
"Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It's a wonderful combination, so --"
"Hypocritical?"
"Not at al . I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?"
"I thought that was a cookbook."
"Not unless Delilah's cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips." She waved a fry in the air.
"Fries."
"Exactly."
I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn't point out to Liv that Delilah's devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.
"So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?" I changed the subject.
"I'm mad about it." Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I'd already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketbal player at lunch. She didn't seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especial y since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.
"So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?"
"I don't know." I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn't about to share any of them.
"Come on. Everyone has secrets."
"Not everyone," I lied.
"There's nothing at al beneath your paper?"
"Nope. Just more paper, I guess." In a way, I wished it was true.
"So you're rather like an onion?"
"More like a regular old potato."
She picked up a fry and examined it. "Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry." She popped it into her mouth, smiling.
I laughed and conceded. "Fine. I'm a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tel ."
Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. "That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah."
"You caught me."
"I can't promise anything, but I wil tel you that I know the librarian. Rather wel , it turns out."
"So you'l hook me up?"
"I wil hook you up, dude." Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I'd known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.
She returned to her fries. "I find al the secrecy sort of romantic, don't you?" I didn't know how to answer that, considering how deep the secrets went around here.
"In my town, the pub is on the same street as the church, and the congregation moves directly from one to the other. Sometimes we even eat Sunday dinner there."
I smiled. "Is it divinely delicious?"
"Nearly. Maybe not quite so hot. But the drinks are not quite so cold." She pointed at her sweet tea with a fry. "Ice, my friend, is something you find on the ground more often than in your glass."
"You have a problem with Gatlin County's famous sweet tea?"
"Tea is meant to be hot, sir. From a kettle."
I stole a fry and pointed it back at her sweet tea. "Wel , ma'am, to a strict Southern Baptist, that is the Devil's drink."
"You mean because it's cold?"
"I mean because it's tea. No caffeine al owed."
Liv looked shocked. "No tea? I'l never understand this country."
I stole another fry. "You want to talk about blasphemy? You weren't there when Mil ie's Breakfast 'n' Biscuits over on Main started serving premade freezer biscuits. My great-aunts, the Sisters, pitched a fit that nearly took down the place. I mean, chairs were flying."
"Are they nuns?" Liv stuck an onion ring inside her cheeseburger.
"Who?"
"The Sisters." Another onion ring.
"No. They're actual sisters."
"I see." She slapped the bun back down.
"You don't, not real y."
She picked up the burger and took a bite. "Not at al ." We both started laughing again. I didn't hear Mr. Gentry walk up behind us.
"Y'al get enough to eat?" he asked, wiping his hands with a rag.
I nodded. "Yes, sir."
"How's that girlfriend a yours?" He asked as if he was hoping I had come to my senses and dumped Lena by now.
"Um, fine, sir."
He nodded, disappointed, and walked back toward the counter. "Say hel o to Miss Amma for me."
"I take it he doesn't like your girlfriend?" She said it like a question, but I didn't know what to say. Was a girl stil technical y your girlfriend if she drove off with another guy? "I think Professor Ashcroft may have mentioned her."
"Lena. My -- her name is Lena." I hoped I didn't look as uncomfortable as I felt. Liv didn't seem to notice.
She took another sip of her tea. "I'l probably meet her at the library."
"I don't know if she'l be coming by the library. Things have been weird lately." I don't know why I said it. I barely knew Liv. But it felt good to say it out loud, and my insides untwisted a little.
"I'm sure you'l work it out. Back home, I fought with my boyfriend al the time." Her voice was light. She was trying to make me feel better.
"How long have you guys been together?"
Liv waved her hand in the air, the weird watch sliding down her wrist. "Oh, we broke up. He was a bit of a prat. I don't think he liked having a girlfriend who was smarter than he was."
I wanted to get off the subject of girlfriends, and ex-girlfriends. "So what's that thing, anyway?" I nodded at the watch, or whatever it was.
"This?" She held her wrist over the table so I could see the clunky black watch. It had three dials and a little silver needle that rested on a rectangle with zigzags al over it, sort of like one of those machines that track the strength of earthquakes. "It's a selenometer."
I looked at her blankly.
"Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon. Metron, or 'measure' in Greek." She smiled. "A little rusty on your Greek etymology?"
"A little."
"It measures the moon's gravitational pul ." She turned one of the dials, thoughtful y. Numbers appeared under the pointer.
"Why do you care about the moon's gravitational pul ?"
"I'm an amateur astronomer. I'm interested in the moon, mostly. It has a tremendous impact on the Earth. You know, the tides and everything. That's why I made this."
I almost spit out my Coke. "You made it? Seriously?"
"Don't be so impressed. It wasn't that difficult." Liv's cheeks flushed again. I was embarrassing her. She reached for another fry. "These chips real y are bril iant."
I tried to imagine Liv sitting in the English version of the Dar-ee Keen, measuring the gravitational pul of the moon over a mountain of fries. It was better than picturing Lena on the back of John Breed's Harley. "So let's hear about your Gatlin. The one where they cal fries by the wrong name." I had never been any farther than Savannah. I couldn't imagine what life would be like in another country.
"My Gatlin?" The pink spots on her cheeks faded.
"Where you're from."
"I'm from a town north of London, cal ed Kings Langley."
"What?"
"In Hertfordshire."
"Doesn't ring a bel ."
She took another bite of her burger. "Maybe this wil help. It's where they invented Ovaltine. You know, the drink?" She sighed. "You stir it in milk, and it makes the milk into a chocolate malted?"
My eyes widened. "You mean chocolate milk? Kind of like Nesquik?"
"Exactly. It's amazing stuff, real y. You should try it sometime."
I laughed into my Coke, which spil ed on my faded Atari T-shirt. Ovaltine girl meets Quik boy. I wanted to tel Link, but he would get the wrong idea.
Even though it had only been a few hours, I had the feeling she was a friend.
"What do you do when you're not drinking Ovaltine and making scientific devices, Olivia Durand of Kings Langley?"
She crumpled the paper from her cheeseburger. "Let's see. Mostly I read books and go to school. I study at a place cal ed Harrow. Not the boys' school."
"Is it?"