Spring Fever (4 page)

But Leonard had his orders. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bayless,” he’d say firmly. “But August is when we get together up in the mountains with Annajane’s grandma and aunts and uncles. I’d have the whole family down on my neck if I messed with the family reunion.”

So every summer, Annajane obediently joined her mother’s relatives in a crowded, damp mountain cabin on a dirt road, where the relatives played cards and listened to gospel music and the cousins slept on pallets on the porch, played endless games of Clue, and griped about the lack of television.

Finally, miraculously, the summer when Annajane was fifteen, Ruth announced that they would not be going to the mountains. Her sister and brother-in-law had sold the cabin and were moving to Florida and taking Annajane’s grandma with them.

Annajane was on the phone with Pokey moments later. “Guess what?” she said breathlessly. “No more stinkin’ mountains for me! I’ve got the whole summer to do whatever I want!”

“Guess what else?” Pokey countered. “Daddy says he’ll give us jobs at the plant this summer, if we want. Real jobs! With name badges and paychecks and everything.”

“No way!” Annajane squealed with delight. “Our own money. No more babysitting for me.”

The Monday after school was out found Annajane reporting to the Quixie front office, where Voncile, Glenn Bayless’s assistant, seemed surprised to see her.

“Mr. Bayless has a job for me,” Annajane said quietly. “Pokey said so.”

“Of course,” Voncile had said, smiling and leafing through some papers on her desktop. Growing up, Annajane and Pokey had always had the run of the Quixie plant. Voncile looked up at Annajane, standing there in the neatly pressed plaid dress Ruth had sewn just for this occasion. “Where is Miss Pokey this morning?”

“Oh. I thought she’d be here already,” Annajane said, her spirits sinking. Pokey had promised to meet her at the plant at nine sharp.

“Well. Do you know how to type?”

“Yes ma’am,” Annajane said proudly. “Forty-five words a minute.”

“Wonderful,” Voncile said. She ushered Annajane into a tiny windowless office not far from the reception room. A long table and two folding metal chairs were in the center of the room, and an enormous canvas mail bin sat beside the table, where a computer had been set up. A large plastic tub held boxes of business-sized white envelopes, and a smaller one held glossy Quixie coupons.

“Here we go,” Voncile said. She gestured at the mail bin. “Are you familiar with our Quixie Quickie summer promotion?”

“I don’t think so,” Annajane replied, trying not to giggle.

Voncile picked up a bulky padded envelope and ripped it open. Five distinctive red and green Quixie screwtop bottle caps tumbled out. Voncile swept them into the trash with one hand, and extracted a piece of paper from the envelope.

“This,” she said, waving the slip of paper, “is what we’re after. We’ve asked Quixie lovers to mail in five bottle caps, along with their name and mailing address, for a chance to win one of those.” She gestured to a row of gleaming red Coleman coolers against the far wall. Each of the coolers was printed with the oval Quixie logo, the one with the Quixie Pixie, leaning against a Quixie bottle, smiling and winking impishly.

Annajane counted two dozen coolers.

“So,” Voncile said briskly, handing the slip to Annajane. “You’ll type the name and address into our database. Right?” She leaned over the computer, tapped a few keys, and brought up a blank spreadsheet. “Just type on each line, and hit tab when you come to the end of the address. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Annajane said.

“Then,” Voncile said, “Come to my office and let me know when you’ve typed in all these addresses. I’ll print them out onto labels, and then you’ll put the labels on those envelopes.” She plucked an envelope from a box and showed it to Annajane. The Quixie logo was printed in the upper-left-hand corner of each one. “You’ll put one coupon for a free twelve-ounce bottle of Quixie in each envelope, seal up the envelope, and put it in that other bin. How does that sound?”

“Fine,” was all Annajane could think of to say.

“Good,” Voncile said, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got a meeting right now, but you just sit right down here and get started, and I’ll come back afterwards to see how you’re doing. All right?”

“Yes ma’am,” Annajane said. She sat down at the computer, flexed her fingertips, and got started. It was slow going at first, ripping open the envelopes, sorting out the addresses, and then counting out the bottle caps. She was shocked to discover some envelopes didn’t actually contain five bottle caps. Others might contain three or four Quixie caps, but with a non-Quixie cap thrown in to fill out the mix. Annajane counted Coke caps, Pepsi caps, Dr Pepper caps, even a few Hires and Barq root beer bottle caps. These she indignantly threw in the trash, along with the sender’s entry blank. Who did these people think they were fooling?

After an hour or so, she got a system going, opening twenty-five envelopes at a time, scanning the caps, and then typing the names into the computer. Every once in a while, she’d get up, walk around the room, and peek out the door, wondering what was taking Pokey so long. Hadn’t they agreed they would start their careers today?

At noon, her stomach started to growl. Her shoulders ached, and she was getting a headache from staring at the flickering computer screen. She wished she’d thought to bring along a lunch. At one, she walked over to Voncile’s office, to inquire about taking a break. But the office was empty, and Mr. Bayless’s office door was closed, too.

Finally, she remembered the break room, where she and Pokey had played restaurant as little girls, serving paper cups of Quixie from the fountain machine to the plant workers and being treated to packages of Tom’s salted peanuts or Cheetos from the vending machines.

She was back at her computer, sipping from a cup of Quixie and nibbling a Mr. Goodbar when the door flew open.

“Come on, you little brat,” a man’s deep voice called. “Mama sent me to take you to lunch.” He stepped into the room, and Annajane was so flustered by an in-the-flesh glimpse of Mason Bayless that she knocked over her drink.

Speechless, she watched a bright red river of soda splashing onto the stack of contest entry blanks she’d just stacked beside the computer.

“Oh no,” she cried, jumping up. She reached into the trash bin and grabbed a discarded envelope and started madly dabbing at the mess. But it was too late. She’d greedily poured herself a huge cup of Quixie, and now everything on the tabletop was soaked.

“Damn,” she wailed, mopping and breathing hard, and trying not to look up at her best friend’s big brother. When she realized that she’d cursed out loud, she blushed harder and mopped faster.

Mason Bayless was sunburned, which made his blue eyes look bluer, and his dark blond hair needed cutting because it brushed down his high forehead and across his thick dark eyebrows. His prominent nose had a bump across the bridge, but he had perfect white teeth, except for one chipped incisor. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and well-worn high-top leather work boots and a green Quixie Beverage Company uniform shirt with red pinstripes and an embroidered patch over his breast that said
MASON
.

Not that he needed a name patch. Not much. Every one of the three hundred employees at Quixie Beverage Company knew Mr. Glenn Bayless’s oldest boy, as did just about everybody in the community. Passcoe was a company town, and Quixie and Passcoe had been inextricably linked for more than seventy years.

Mason’s uniform shirt was untucked and the top three buttons unfastened. After a moment, he grabbed another envelope and began sweeping the ruined papers into the trash.

“Sorry,” he drawled. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that. I was looking for my sister.”

“Oh, wait,” Annajane said, grabbing for the trash can. “I can’t, I mean, those are contest entries. And I’ve got to type them into the computer. Maybe I can get them dried out…”

“Forget it,” Mason said. “Those are toast.”

“But I’m supposed to type them all in. It’s a contest, and the winner gets a cooler, and it’s not fair…” she sighed. “I’ll have to tell Voncile, I guess. I don’t know what she’ll say.”

“Voncile won’t give a rat’s ass,” Mason said. He smiled. “I’ll just tell her I did it. Which is kinda true. It was my fault.”

He cocked his head and considered her. “Hey. You’ve got stuff on your dress.” He reached out and his fingertip brushed the sleeve.

She jumped several inches.

He laughed. “Sorry. You’re kinda jumpy, aren’t you?” He held out her hand. “I’m Mason Bayless. I don’t think I’ve seen you around the plant before. Are you new?”

“I know,” Annajane said, “I mean, I know you’re Mason.” Idiot! He’d think she was stalking him. She blushed and tried to start over. “Well, I mean, we’ve met, but it’s been a long time. I’m Pokey’s friend, Annajane Hudgens.” She smiled nervously, glancing down at the large red stain blossoming across the front of her new dress.

“Pokey’s friend,” he said. “The one who disappears every August. Hell yeah. So you’re working here?”

“Just for the summer,” Annajane said. “Your dad gave us jobs. It’s my first day.”

“And where’s my bratty sister?” Mason asked. “Did she bail on you already?”

“Um,” Annajane stalled, not wanting to rat out her best friend.

Mason rolled his eyes. “That’s what I thought. She never even showed today, did she?”

“She might have had summer school this morning,” Annajane lied. “She’s trying to get her Spanish grade up to a B.”

“Riiight,” Mason said. “What do you wanna bet her lazy behind is lying right beside the pool at the club, while you’re stuck here at the plant, counting bottle caps?”

“Summer school could have run late,” Annajane said, loyal to the end.

“If you do see Pokey, tell her I came by,” Mason said. “I’ll stop by Voncile’s desk and let her know I kinda messed things up in here.”

“Thanks,” Annajane breathed.

“And don’t worry,” he added. “I won’t blow Pokey’s cover story. Not this time, anyway.”

4

Annajane never told Mason she’d fallen in love with him that first day at the plant. She’d never told anybody. Not even Pokey. After all, she’d been fifteen, he was nineteen, working in the warehouse for the first time that summer after his freshman year of college, at his father’s insistence. As far as Mason Bayless was concerned, Annajane was just some goofy girl who hung out with his baby sister.

He hadn’t given her a second thought, or a second glance. It would be another four years before they exchanged their first kiss.

Her cheeks burned now at the thought of that first time. She shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the memory.

“You okay?” Pokey whispered. “It’s not too late to make your escape.”

But it
was
too late. The music swelled again, and the violins and flutes and organ began the fluttering notes of the Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Every head turned toward the back of the church.

“Ahh.” Annajane heard the chorus of approving sighs, and in a moment she spotted Sophie.

The five-year-old tiptoed slowly up the aisle. Somebody had attempted to tame the wild mane of blond curls, but the circlet of baby’s breath and pink rosebuds rested at a crooked tilt, listing slightly over her right ear. She was angelic in the ankle-length pink organza dress with its delicate pin-tucked bodice and bell-shaped sleeves. Annajane held her breath as Sophie made her way up the aisle, flinging fists full of rosebuds from the satin basket dangling from her skinny wrist. Her sparkly pink cat-eye glasses slid down her nose, and she paused once, to push them back into place.

The sight of Mason’s daughter caused Annajane unexpected tears. Sophie was not her child, although she should have been. Mason had fathered her during a brief one-night stand not long after their separation and had legally adopted her after the mother couldn’t care for the baby.

People in Passcoe expected that Annajane would be outraged by the child’s birth, so soon after her split from Mason, but Sophie had stolen her heart the first time she held her in her arms. How could anybody resent bossy, enchanting, Disney-princess-loving Sophie? Her Aunt Pokey’s house was Sophie’s second home, and since Pokey’s best friend, Annajane, was there nearly as often as the child, Sophie considered her family. Which she was. Sort of. Leaving Sophie, losing her to Celia—the prospect of it felt like the unkindest cut of all to Annajane.

As always, Sophie seemed to move to her own inner soundtrack, which was unfortunately nowhere in sync to Canon in D. The little girl was anxiously scanning the aisles as she walked, looking, Annajane knew, for familiar faces. Finally, she spotted Annajane and her aunt Pokey and nodded solemnly. But behind the thick lenses of her glasses, her usually impish gray eyes were dark-rimmed and heavy-lidded. Her cheeks were hot pink in contrast to her alabaster skin.

Pokey leaned into the aisle. “You’re doin’ great, baby,” she whispered encouragingly, and Annajane nodded silent agreement and blew her a kiss. Finally, the child gave a tremulous smile and pressed a wad of rosebuds into Pokey’s outstretched hand. As she moved past, Annajane noticed that the streamers of the long satin sash were lopsided, and wet, which surely meant that the sash had somehow gotten dunked during a prewedding potty stop.

Why, Annajane wondered, hadn’t somebody spotted the wet sash? Perhaps, somebody like Sophie’s about-to-be stepmother? The dress was Celia’s own design, and no matter what Pokey or Annajane thought of her as a person, it was no secret that Celia’s successful children’s clothing business, Gingerpeachy, had recently sold to a national chain, netting Celia and her backers a rumored ten million dollars.

A few steps past their pew, two-thirds of the way to the altar, Sophie came to a dead stop. She was looking uncertainly, right to left. The music kept playing, but Sophie was not moving. Annajane held her breath.

She looked up at the altar. Father Jolly seemed oblivious, but Davis and Pete were frowning, exchanging worried asides. Mason had taken a couple steps forward. He was half-kneeling, smiling, his arms extended to his little girl, encouraging her to finish her triumphant voyage up the aisle.