Watermelon Summer (12 page)

 

    But I was going to need to grow a third hand
because...Jacob was just so darn appealing!  Hours had passed while
all these thoughts whooshed through my  head, and now I looked
over at Kat,
who was busy painting Lucy's toenails on the couch of the
farmhouse.  (If there was
ever a dog who less needed painted toenails, I had yet to meet one, but
Kat had trouble sitting still, and Lucy didn't mind any sort of
attention.)  "Do you think I'm going to make bad decisions because
of my crush on Jacob?" I asked her.

 

    "And the ball flies in out of left field!" Kat
proclaimed in a sports-announcer voice.  "Where's that coming
from?"  Then glanced over at the phone I was still fiddling with,
despite being way outside the cell-phone-reception zone, she added, "Oh,
you've been talking to your mom, huh?"  At my nod, Kat closed up
the bottle of polish so she could keep her attention trained on
me.  "Look, I won't tell you that I like the kid but, if anything,
he seems to be more of a workaholic than you are.  Young love
appears to be good for getting a community running."

 

    "But is that really what I should be doing?" I
pressed.  "Mom thinks Greensun is going to stand in the way of me going to
college.  And maybe she's right—the farm does seem more
important right now.  But is our community really my top priority, or am
I just making a decision based on Jacob's blue eyes?"

 

    Kat rolled her own eyes, making it clear that she was
heartily sick of hearing about Jacob's assets.  "Well, if I had
someone willing to put me through college, I'd leap at the chance," she
answered. 
"But I guess there's really only one way to know whether you're here
for
Greensun or for Jacob."  I waited with baited breath for the
solution to my dilemma, and Kat didn't leave me hanging.  "You'll
have to crush the crush," she told me.

 

 

 

    Kat's words startled me into a laugh, because I
hadn't been sure my sister had been listening when I explained how I'd
reached
seventeen without ever having had a boyfriend.  There was no TV at
Greensun, the radio only picked up two stations (spottily at best), and
Kat wasn't a reader, so we'd spent a lot of time talking in the
evenings.  Mostly, Kat told me about her extensive
experiences—she'd lived much more in her 24 years than I thought
possible—but now
and then my sister decided it was time to talk about me.  A week or
so ago, I'd explained how I wanted to get more out of my life than
being a suburban housewife like my mom.  I planned to see the
world, to figure out my passion,
and then to follow wherever that led me, and I had a sinking
suspicion that falling head over heels for a guy would only get in
the way.

 

    I can just see you shaking your head and saying,
"Very astute.  But you can't do anything about a crush. 
What you feel is what you feel."  In fact, those had been Kat's
exact words.  To which I'd replied—wrong!  While my
compatriots were kissing for the first time (average age: 15) and
losing their virginity (average age: 17), I had come up with a
time-proven method for getting over crushes large and small. 
In case you have a crush of your own to deter,
here's my crush-crushing procedure:

 

1. Decide you don't want to have a crush on this boy.  (An absolutely-essential first step!)
   
2. Make a list of his unpleasant traits.  We all have them—it won't take long for you to come up with a dozen or so.
   
3. Every time you start going gooey-eyed over his good traits,
   remind yourself about the bad traits.  I've found it's
   helpful to counteract each gooey moment with a litany of at
   least two or three negative qualities.
   
4. Wait it out.  A week or two should be sufficient to flush
   those hormones out of your body so you can move on with your
   life.
   

    The trouble was that my crush-crushing strategy
worked best if I nipped the problem in the bud, and my feelings for
Jacob had snuck up on me and gotten out of control fast.  In short,
I wasn't so sure this crush was crushable.

 

    But Kat was right.  If I wanted to know whether
my feelings for Greensun were real or hormone-induced, I had to
try.  Time to begin Operation Crush Crusher.

 

 

 

    Jacob seemed to sense there was something different
going through  my head when he picked us up the next day for our
inaugural neighbor visit, but other than throwing me a couple of
confused glances, he stuck to business.  Looking down at his list,
he informed us that there were nine neighbors whose properties adjoined
Greensun, making this part of Glen's challenge not terribly time
consuming. 

 

    "I figured we'd visit Mr. Thompson first because he's
almost family," Jacob explained.  "I  owe him some deer jerky
anyway from last year's hunting season.  Want some?"  I
accepted a handful of the home-dried meat, but Kat rolled her eyes—she
was a vegetarian and took the local hunting culture even less in
stride than I did.  But, luckily, she didn't say anything about the
snack.  "I call shotgun," was my sister's only response, and she
sent me a pointed look as she climbed into the front passenger seat of
Jacob's minivan.  I got the message—I needed to remember to
stick to business and to spend less energy watching the way Jacob's hair
glinted in the sun.  (Now, what were those negative traits I was
supposed to be quashing the visuals with?)

 

    Mr. Thompson lived in a double-wide just a couple of
minutes down the road, and as we piled out into his yard, I could see
Jacob open his mouth a couple of times, then close it again.  I'd
like to say he wanted to ask me why I'd been so quiet, but his eyes were
actually trained on Kat, who had dressed up for the occasion in a
body-hugging tank top accessorized with a nose ring and extra studs
running up the sides of her ears.  Even worse, the scanty shirt
bared a lot of skin, revealing extensive tattooing on her upper
arms.  While the designs were intricate and appealing to my eyes, I
hadn't noticed much body art in Appalachia, and knew Jacob was
concerned Kat would give a bad first impression.  Eventually,
though, he just shook his head slightly.  Like me, he was clearly
more afraid of Kat's sharp tongue than he was of Mr. Thompson's
reaction.

 

    In retrospect, I should have spoken up.  That
seemed to be one of my core jobs in this Greensun-saving team—to
bridge the cultural divide between crunchy-city-mouse and
conservative-country-mouse and to smooth over differences—but I was
too engrossed in my own thoughts to find the tact to suggest Kat throw
on another shirt.  Unfortunately, Mr. Thompson didn't see any
reason to be tactful.

 

    "Who are you?" the middle-aged man demanded upon
answering the door.  He hadn't even glanced at me and Jacob enough
to recognize the latter since his eyes had gone straight to Kat and
stuck.  In particular, the ink spider crawling out from under my sister's tank-top
strap seemed to demand his total attention.

 

    "You remember me, Mr. Thompson," Jacob said, stepping
forward slightly so he hid Kat, at least partially, from view.  "I'm
Jimmy's nephew.  We went hunting together last year?  I brought you some jerky my mamaw made from that deer."

 

    Mr. Thompson's arm came out to clasp Jacob warmly on
the shoulder.  "Of course I know you, Jacob.  I didn't see you
there."  But despite the bit of warmth that came into our neighbor's voice
when he noticed Jacob and accepted the dried meat, he remained in place, barring
the entryway.  I'd seen enough of Appalachia already to know that
Jacob would usually have been invited in, especially by someone who
seemed to be a sort of honorary uncle.  Instead, the man just
asked, "Who are your friends?"

 

    "This is Thia and...um...Kat," Jacob answered,
rushing
through the introductions.  "You know the Hippie Farm down in the
holler over there?  We're trying to buy it and bring it back to
life.  I was wondering if you'd have time
to sit down and talk to us about what you'd like to see there."

 

    This was supposed to be the easy neighbor to sell on
our idea, given his family connection.  But Mr. Thompson's eyes
stayed cold.  "Now's not really a good time, Jacob," the man
replied.  He took one more long look at Kat, this time letting his
glance settle on her nose ring.  Then he closed the door in our
faces.

 

    Kat, Jacob, and I stood on the wooden porch for a
minute, staring at each other in dismay.  My face was hot and everything felt a
little distant due to my usual angst over meeting strangers, combined
with our cold reception, and Jacob seemed thrown off as well.  Kat,
though, was oblivious, and soon shrugged as she turned to lead us back to the van.

 

    "Maybe Thia and I should take over neighbor meeting
for a while," Jacob suggested finally, holding the van door open so I
could
slide into the front seat.  I could feel Jacob's warmth as I
brushed past his body to hop up into the vehicle, and my cheeks redenned
again, this time for a more pleasant reason.

 

    "Whatever," Kat answered, pulling out her
cell phone to check her messages.  "I've got some ideas for finding
new members, so I wanted to focus on that anyway."

 

    In anyone
else, the words would have sounded like a way to save face, but Kat
really did seem to be oblivious to Mr. Thompson's snub.  Even
though I was relieved my sister wasn't angry, I couldn't help wondering
if our young community was already following in the old Greensun's
footsteps, and not in a good way.

 

 

 

    The next neighbor came to us, and he was a welcome
surprise.  "Arvil!" I exclaimed as I saw my mother's old friend
walking down the hill.  Kat had taken off that morning to round up
cronies from Knoxville to attend a work day, hoping at least one of them
might fall in love with the farm and decide to join us.  In the
meantime, I'd been hoeing weeds around the young pumpkin plants and
waiting for Jacob to turn up, but Arvil was an even better
surprise.  While I relished every moment I spent with Jacob, it was
becoming increasingly confusing to try to think of negative traits in
his company—I kept getting sidetracked by Jacob's numerous
attractive qualities instead.  Arvil's presence was equally
welcome, but much less complicated.

 

    "Don't get too excited," warned my exuberant
neighbor, although his smile belied his words.  "I'm here as a spy
for your mother."

 

    I couldn't help laughing—only Arvil could make
those words sound ominous and humorous at the same time.  "She's
still worried about me?" I asked, dropping the hoe and coming
over to greet my neighbor at the creek.  Unlike during Arvil's last
Greensun visit, the water was low and easy to cross in a single hop, so Arvil soon joined me in Greensun's front yard.

 

    "Worry is the purest form of love," Arvil
answered.  We chatted for a few minutes about Glen, who I was
surprised to realize I was actually a little concerned about despite his
hit-or-miss interest in being a father.  Notes kept turning up in
Greensun's library, the most recent being a birthday card with $18
dollars in it—a buck for every year of my life.  The card and
money were slipped inside