Six Feet Over It Read Online Free PDF Page B

to replace Emily, an impossible task and not my aim at all. Besides which, being friends with me didn’t work out so well for Emily. Elanor is better off.
    My head pounds.
    Enya sings.
    “Anyway.” Elanor brightens. “So where did you live? Before here?”
    Where the hell is Wade?
    “Um. Mendocino.”
    Her eyes widen. “No.”
    “Yes.”
    “I have always, always wanted to go there! My parents never take time off. I’ve begged for us to all to go to the ocean together—and Mendocino is so close—but they think the plants won’t survive without them. It’s ridiculous. The second I can drive, that’s the first place I’m going. You must miss it.”
    I nod.
    “You go to school, yes?”
    I nod.
    “What grade?”
    “Ninth. At the high school.”
    “Is it fun?”
    I shake my head.
    “My mom says you have a sister.”
    I nod.
    “Younger?”
    “Older. Sophomore.”
    “I would love a sister. My dad says Balin really wanted a sister when he was little but now all we do is fight about dice so I guess be careful what you wish for.” She takes my empty cider cup and drops it with hers in a sink full of terra-cotta pots.
    The bells ring once more, and Wade finally backs in lugging a last flat of flowers. “Okay, you ready?” he says, as if he’s been waiting all this time for me to wrap up some lengthy business.
    I follow him to the truck. Elanor tags along.
    “Well. Maybe I’ll see you at Sierrawood sometimes. You work every weekend?”
    I shake my head.
    “Just after school?”
    I nod. She smiles.
    Her mom and dad come out then to lift the bored willow gate angel carefully into the flatbed beside the flowers. The dad wears baggy purple patchwork pants and has a long gray ponytail that I have an impulse to snip off with some pruning shears. He lifts wire-framed glasses and wipes sweat from his eyes.
    “Wade’s daughter?” He extends a calloused hand. I nod and offer him my own cider-warmed one.
    “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, milady,” he moons, bowing deeply.
    In the periphery I see Elanor’s head drop into her hands.
    I nearly smile.
    “We’ll call when the cherubs come in!” her mom trills, waving as Wade moves the truck slowly past the willow-bough gates. Cherubs. She’s got Wade dialed. He honks.
    I rest my head against the door and roll the window down for air, my stomach easing up the farther we get from the trees of Rivendell, from Elanor’s earnest, eager urgency. In the rearview mirror she stands in the road beneath the pines, waving.
    “See?” Wade says, claps my knee. “How fun was that, right?”

    The angel is so heavy she nearly breaks my back, but we get her to Sierrawood and planted safely in the lawn and Wade is right. She is perfect here in the daycare, watching over the babies. I lug the flowers from the truck.
    “Let’s go to Mama Dicarlo’s tonight,” Wade says. “Birthday spaghetti, yeah?”
    Amazing. He remembered. I wonder if Meredith will put her paintbrush down to fulfill her time-honored tradition of box-baking our birthday cakes. Duncan Hines, canned frosting, number-shaped candles. Last year I had two cakes: one coconut made from scratch with Emily and her mom after school, one devil’s food from a box at home with the Fools.
    For the first time in months I think I may be hungry.
    “Okay,” he says, and cranes his neck past me, squints into the rising sun, searches the graves. He smiles, bouncy and excited. “Ready for your surprise?”
    “What?”
    “Birthday! Birthday surprise, are you ready?”
    “No.”
    “Want to guess what it is? Do it! You’ll never figure it out—guess!”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Guess!”
    “I get to quit?”
    “Close! No. Not really. Not at all—trust me. You already love it.”
    Someone is spinning headstones. For the longest time I thought spinning meant actually spinning each stone, but really it involves wearing big goggles and swinging a loud weed-whacker spinning-blade type thing to cut the grass around each