Ramona Blue Read online

  DEDICATION

  For my own holy trinity: Bethany, Natalie, and Tess—

  this book would not exist and I would not have survived

  writing it without you three

  EPIGRAPH

  Well, I may be just a fool

  But I know you’re just as cool

  And cool kids, they belong together

  —Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Poor Song”

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  August One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  September Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  October Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  November Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  December Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  January Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  February Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  March Thirty-Nine

  April Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  May Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  June Forty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Julie Murphy

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  AUGUST

  ONE

  This is a memory I want to keep forever: Grace standing at the stove of her parents’ rental cottage in one of her dad’s oversize T-shirts as she makes us a can of SpaghettiOs. Her mom already cleaned out the fridge and cabinets, throwing away anything with an expiration date.

  “Almost ready,” says Grace as she stirs the pasta around with a wooden spoon.

  “I should probably leave soon,” I tell her. I hate prolonged good-byes. They’re as bad as tearing a Band-Aid off one arm hair at a time.

  “Don’t pretend like you have somewhere to be right now. Besides, you should eat before you go.” Grace is like her mom in that way. Every time we’ve left the house over the last month, her mom has tried to unload some kind of food on us, like we were taking a long journey and would need rations. “Don’t make me eat these SpaghettiOs by myself.”

  “Okay,” I say. “The thought of that is actually pretty pitiful.”

  She takes the pot from the stove and drops an oven mitt on the kitchen table before setting it down in front of me. Scooting in close, she winds her legs between mine and hands me a wooden spoon. We’re both white, but my legs are permanently tanned from life on the coast (though a little hairy, because shaving is the actual worst), while Grace’s normally ivory skin is splotchy and irritated from all the overexposure to the sun. And then there are her feet.

  I grin.

  “What?” she asks, tilting her head. Her raven waves brush against her shoulders. She’s obsessed with straightening her hair, but even the mention of humidity makes her ends curl. “Don’t look at my feet.” She kicks me in the shin. “You’re looking at my feet.”

  I swallow a spoonful of pasta. “I like your feet.” They’re flat and wide and much too big for her body. And for some reason I find this totally adorable. “They’re like hobbit feet.”

  “My feet are not hairy,” she insists.

  I almost come back at her with some dumb quip, but the clock behind her melts into focus, and I remember.

  Grace is leaving me. I knew she would leave me from the first moment we met on the beach as I handed out happy-hour flyers for Boucher’s. She lay spread out on a beach chair in a black swimsuit with the sides cut out and a towel over her feet. I remember wishing I knew her well enough to know why she was hiding her feet.

  This is our last meal together. In less than an hour, her mom, dad, and brother will all wake up and pack whatever else remains from their summer in Eulogy into the back of their station wagon, and they’ll head home to their normal lives, leaving a hole in mine.

  “I’m gonna be miserable without you,” says Grace between bites. We’re both too realistic to make promises we can’t keep. Or maybe I’m too scared to ask her to promise me anything. She tugs at my ponytail. “And your stupid blue hair.”

  “Not as much as I’m going to miss your hobbit feet.”

  She smiles and slurps the pasta off her spoon.

  Grace loves this shit. It’s the junk food she craves after growing up in a house where her mother fed her homemade meals like stuffed salmon and sautéed asparagus. SpaghettiOs or any other kind of prepackaged food marketed toward kids—that was the kind of stuff Hattie and I grew up on. With Dad working and Mom gone, we ate anything that could be microwaved.

  I think I’m in love with Grace. But sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m in love with her or her life. Her adorable little brother, Max, who is still sweet, because he has no idea how good-looking he will be someday, and her mom and dad, always checking in and leaving out leftovers for us. And this house. It’s only a vacation rental, but it still feels so permanent.

  Grace tucks her black bob behind her ears. “Did you ever look up any of those schools I put on that list for you?”

  I shrug. This is our sticking point—the one thing we can’t get past. Grace says the only thing keeping me here after high school is me. And I can concede that, in a way, she is right, but Grace is the kind of girl who never has to look at a price tag or tell the clerk at the grocery store to put a few items back.

  We sit here curled into each other as the clock on the microwave melts into morning.

  “I should go,” I finally say.

  She nudges her forehead against mine.

  If we lived in a world where only my rules applied, I would kiss her. Hard. And leave.

  Instead we walk hand in hand to the porch, where my bike sits, and then we make our way down the gravel driveway to the mailbox still shrouded in darkness.

  I rest my bike against the post.

  “Text me when you get a chance,” I tell her.

  “Olive juice,” she says. I love you, her lips read. Her mother used to mouth it to her when she was dropping Grace off at school so she didn’t embarrass her in front of all her friends.

  “I love you, too,” I whisper back with my lips already pressed into hers. She tastes like SpaghettiOs and the cigar we stole from her dad’s portable humidor. Her lips are chapped and her hair dirty with salt water from our midnight swim just a few short hours ago. I feel her dissolving into a memory already.

  TWO

  I leave Grace’s house and ride past the trailer park, where my dad and Hattie are asleep. My days always start like this—before everyone else’s, in the moments when the only thing lighting Eulogy is the casino on the waterfront. Today, I’m a little earlier than usual, so I take the time to ride straight down to the water. Carefully, I lay my bike down on the sidewalk and kick my flip-flops off before walking down the rickety wooden steps to the beach.

  My Mississippi beach is very rarely love at first sight, but an endearing, prodding kind of affection. Despite her lack of natural beauty, there are many like me who love this place more than she deserves. It’s the kind of place people on a budget choose for vaca
tion. Thanks to the line of sandbars trimming the shore and our proximity to the Mississippi River, our water is brown and murky. Nothing like Florida’s blue-green waves. But a family like Grace’s can get a lot of vacation for their buck if they’re willing to overlook the imperfections.

  Sand kicks up around my ankles until I reach the water’s edge. I press my toes deep into the sand as the cool water rinses over them briefly before pulling back. The moon hangs in the sky, chasing the horizon, as the sun whispers along the waterfront.

  Water has always been my siren song. Any kind of water—oceans, lakes, pools. There’s something about being weightless that makes me think anything is possible. My whole body exhales in a way that it can’t when I’m standing on land.

  The brightening horizon reminds me that I have somewhere to be. Shaking sand from my feet, I run back up to the sidewalk and slide my flip-flops back on.

  A continuous stream of tears rushes down my cheeks as I direct my handlebars around the corner and down the hill to where Charlie waits in his truck. I hate crying. I mean, most everyone does. But some people, like Hattie, feel better after a good cry. When Hattie cries, it’s like watching a snake shed its skin. Tears somehow let her regenerate, whereas crying only makes me angry I cared so much to begin with.

  “You’re late,” Charlie calls. He wears his usual uniform of coffee-stained undershirt and twenty-year-old jeans. With his shaggy thinning hair, he looks like an old white guy who either traps little kids in his van or grows weed in his backyard. Thankfully it’s the latter.

  I squeeze the brake on my handlebars and push the tears back into my eyes with my other fist. “Overslept.”

  I don’t have a history of being late, so Charlie shrugs it off. Maybe a five a.m. start time is earlier than most teenagers could commit to, but I treasure all my little jobs. My paper route, busing tables at Boucher’s, and working whatever under-the-table cash gigs I can find. I guess, growing up, most kids wonder what they will do for a living. But for me, there was never any worry over what the job would be, just how soon I could start.

  Charlie loads the basket on the front of my bike with papers for the second half of my route, while I fill my messenger bag. Charlie is the kind of man who will always look like a boy, and the uneven whiskers lining his upper lip don’t do anything to help the matter.

  “Going for the mustache look?” I ask.

  He strokes what little facial hair he has. “Wanted a change. You like?”

  “Change is good,” I tell him as I swing my leg over my bike and wave good-bye.

  I weave up and down the streets on my route, letting my memory guide me until almost every house has a paper waiting in its yard. The routine of it keeps the thought of Grace at bay, at least for a little while.

  At the corner of John Street and Mayfield, I pass Eulogy Baptist, a bright-white building with perfectly manicured lawns and flower boxes under each windowsill. Dim light from the back office bleeds into the street, and I wonder if Reverend Don is getting in or leaving.

  I turn the corner down Clayton Avenue, pedaling as I lean back in my seat and gently tap the brake while I careen to the bottom of the hill. It’s in this moment when I always feel like I’m flying. But then the bottom of the hill brings me back to reality.

  Standing in front of my last house, which was recently added to my route, is a black woman in an unzipped terry-cloth cover-up with a bright-yellow bathing suit underneath, watering her flower bed. I always love morning people. They feel solid and reliable. Not like my mom, who sleeps past noon if no one wakes her up. Grace wasn’t a morning person either. It was a small detail that always bothered me for some reason.

  Grace. Grace, who I might not ever see again. I feel the tears begin to threaten.

  “Mornin’,” says the woman as the paper hits her lawn.

  “Mornin’,” I call back, pedaling past.

  “Hey!” she shouts. Something hits me square in the shoulders, knocking the wind out of me.

  “What the hell?” I mutter to myself as I loop back around to find I’ve been hit with one of my own papers.

  As I reach down to pick it up, the woman’s voice says, “Ramona Blue! Get back here!”

  Her voice. I know it. And that nickname. Ramona Blue is what my dad called me when I was a little girl, because he could never get me out of the water. It’s a name not many people know.

  The woman walks to the edge of her yard and as she does, I see past the ten years of wrinkles. Dropping one foot to the ground, I stop my bike from rolling any farther as memories trickle back. “Agnes?”

  “You get your heinie over here and gimme a hug!”

  I drop my bike right there on the curb and fall into an embrace.

  Agnes used to come down every summer from Baton Rouge with her husband and their grandson, Freddie, who they were raising. She was as much a part of my childhood memories as my own grandmother until the summer I turned nine and they just stopped coming. That was the first time I’d really understood that even if it feels like summer lasts forever here in Eulogy, Mississippi, it doesn’t.

  I can’t think of many moments when I’ve looked in the mirror and taken an inventory of all the ways my body has changed. But here and now with Agnes squeezing me tight, her forehead barely brushing my chest, I feel like I’m some giant cradling a baby doll.

  Agnes pulls away but holds my shoulders tight, examining me. She tugs on my long, wavy ponytail, and says, “Of course I’m not surprised. Your daddy always did let you get away with everything short of murder.”

  My cheeks burn, and even though the ache in my chest is as heavy as an anchor, I smile. She’s referring to my hair. Ramona Blue with the blue hair.

  Depending on when you catch me, my hair could be any shade ranging from royal blue to turquoise. I was thirteen the first time I dyed it with Kool-Aid mix and a little bit of water. To no one’s surprise, I was sent home from school, but my dad came to the rescue despite how much he hated what I’d done to the blond locks I’d inherited from my mother. He fought with my principal until the whole ordeal had eaten up more time than it was worth. And my hair’s been blue ever since, thanks to Hattie and her amateur understanding of cosmetology.

  Today, though, I am in need of a dye job. The sun, salt water, and plain old time have left my hair a powdery shade of turquoise.

  “You sprung up like a weed.” She shakes her head, and I wonder what it is she’s seeing in her memory of me. She points to my empty messenger bag. “Last house on your route then?”

  I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You come hungry tomorrow morning.” She pats my belly. “We’re gonna have us a big ol’ breakfast.”

  “I can do that,” I say. “Okay.”

  Agnes’s lips spread into a wide, knowing grin. “Freddie is going to die.”

  Freddie. All my memories of him are sun bleached and loud, but I try not to let myself be fooled by the past. Growing up can change you.

  Hugging Agnes may have made me feel tall, but nothing makes me feel as large as home sweet trailer. Like always, I duck my head to pass through the front door of our trailer and walk down the narrow hallway leading to Hattie’s bedroom and mine. They used to be one room, but with help from our uncle Dean, Dad blew out part of our hallway-facing wall, put a door in, and then added a plywood wall to divide our space on Hattie’s twelfth birthday. After that, he bought her a wardrobe at the Salvation Army and all of a sudden our shared bedroom had become two.

  I began to outgrow this place somewhere around the summer before ninth grade. I’d always been tall, but that last growth spurt tipped me over from tall to too tall. The ceilings of our trailer stretch as high as seven feet, which means my six-foot-three frame requires that I duck through doorways and contort my body to fit beneath the showerhead in the bathroom.

  Inside my room, I rest my bike against my dresser, and just as I’m about to flip on the lights, I notice a lump lying in my bed.

  “Scoot over,” I whisper, tiptoei
ng across the floor.

  Hattie, my older sister by two years, obliges, but barely. “Tyler is a furnace,” she mumbles.

  I slide into bed behind her. Always the little sister, but forever the big spoon.

  We used to fit so perfectly into this twin bed, because like Dad always said: the Leroux sisters were in the business of growing north to south, and never east to west. But that’s no longer the case. Hattie’s belly is growing every day. I knew she was pregnant almost as soon as she did. So did Dad. We don’t waste time with secrets in our house.

  “Make him go home,” I tell her.

  “Your feet are so cold,” she says as she presses her calves against my toes. “Tommy wants to know if you can come into work early.”

  “Grace left.”

  She turns to face me, her belly pressed to mine. It’s not big. Not yet. In fact, to anyone else it’s not even noticeable. But I know every bit of her so well that I can feel the difference there in her abdomen. Or maybe I just think I can. Wrapping an arm around me, she pulls me close to her and whispers, “I’m so sorry, Ramona.”

  My lips tremble.

  “Hey, now,” she says. “I know you can’t see this far ahead right now, but there will be other girls.”

  I shake my head, tears staining the pillow we share. “It’s not like she died or something,” I say. “And we’re going to keep talking. Or at least she said she wanted to.”

  “Grace was great, okay? I’m not saying she wasn’t.” Hattie isn’t Grace’s biggest fan—she never has trusted outsiders—but I appreciate her pretending. “But you’re gonna get out of here after graduation and meet tons of people and maybe figure out there are lots of great girls.”

  Maybe a few months ago, Hattie would’ve been right. Up until recently, the two of us had plans to get out of Eulogy together after graduation. Not big college plans. But small plans to wait tables or maybe even work retail and create a new life all our own in a place like New Orleans or maybe even Texas. A place without the tiny little trailer we’ve called home for too long now.