Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown Page B

to start the “slow changing of minds”my dad’s always talking about.
    B.T.B. nods and grins. “And I’ll make you banana pancakes.” He starts singing that Jack Johnson song in a perfect voice. Wake up slow, hmm, hmm, hmm. Wake up slow.
    It’s obvious B.T.B. doesn’t realize he’s singing a love song.
    â€œSo you’ll come?” Mary Carlson’s looking straight at me. And I know I’m imagining it, I have definitely got to be imagining it, but I swear I have a feeling. A her-to-me feeling. Like she’s hanging on my answer. Or she’s as intrigued by me as I am by her.
    I glance away, looking down toward my lap. The shy isnot a put-on when she stares at me that way. “Yeah. Sure.” When I glance up, she hasn’t looked away and her lips are ever so slightly parted. Then sunrise slow, they edge upward into a smile.
    â€œGreat.” Her voice is soft and I swear there’s a hidden message lurking in the corners of her lips, and do I ever want to discover it.
    Then crash. Remembrance.
    I promised to lie low.
    So I turn to George. “Tell me about yourself.”
    I’m probably imagining it all anyway.

Eight
    â€œA FOOTBALL GAME, HUH?” DAD chuckles. He and Three are snuggled on the couch watching the news. I’m in the club chair I’ve claimed as my own.
    â€œYeah. B.T.B.’s sister and her friends invited me. They want me to stay over.”
    Three shifts so she can look more directly at me.
    â€œI’m not going to do anything to ruin your reputation, Elizabeth.” I don’t dare call her Three in front of Dad.
    She sits up. “Joanna, that wasn’t what I was thinking. I just wonder if you want some pointers. Football games and RHS girl slumber parties aren’t really your territory, but they certainly were mine. Those kinds of things are how you make lasting friendships.”
    â€œDana’s a lasting friendship.” I throw the words out with more force than the situation calls for.
    Three opens her mouth, then shuts it and looks away. I keep flinging stuff at her and she keeps knocking it to the side like she hasn’t even felt it, but this one seems like it might have grazed her.
    Dad gives me a raised eyebrow. The big Italian one that says, Child of mine, you best fix this . He learned the move from Althea.
    â€œSorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”
    Three looks at me again. Her face is stripped of makeup, and even with a fine etching of laugh lines around her eyes, age-wise, she looks like she could be my sister. Maybe that’s why I’m pissed. Maybe a part of me wanted magic number three to actually be maternal. After Two left, I’d fantasized about a mythical dark-haired Jersey woman with a big smile and loads of extended family, who gave amazing hugs and insisted I call her Mom. Which I would have resisted at first, but maybe, eventually, caved. Or I would have called her Mama G or some cute step-name like that. But Three? She’s like having your best friend’s older sister’s hand-me-down Barbie or something. I mean, not that she’s turning out to be entirely plastic, she’s just not mother material.
    What’s that saying? Keep your friends close and yourenemies closer? I clear my throat and dredge up a pleasantry. “What kind of pointers?”
    She sighs. “I was only going to say, get some cute pajamas.”
    â€œRight. Party pajamas.”
    This prompts a laugh. “Gemma, you must have met her? Anyway, she started that. I helped Pastor Hank with a sleep-in at the church a couple of years ago. That group was probably in middle school. She was funny even then.” Three smiles at a memory. “I’m sure her pajama tastes have changed, though. Back then she was still clinging to her Dora the Explorer jammies.”
    â€œIn middle school?”
    â€œAlways a bold one, that Gemma.”
    I can’t