The Avocado Grove Emily

By L.A. Wolfe

Emily is Kimmie at Denman high and wishes Mickey would figure this out and stop paying attention to the most popular girl in school before she takes Julio up on his offer and hops a train out of town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.A. Wolfe
• Release date: Nov 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310112140

L.A. Wolfe

“We're all characters.” – Marianne from "Blue Dreams"L.A. Wolfe is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. When she's not working on a story, she enjoys doing Pilates with her husband. (She counts her blessings to be able to walk after a sixty-minute class). The Avocado Grove Emily is a collection of short fiction available on smashwords.com. Blue Dreams and Fanciful Friends are short stories. She currently writes flash fiction and has a collection due out next year. She blogs at The Avocado Grove, www.theavocadogrove.blogspot.com.

Book preview

The Avocado Grove

Emily

By

L.A. Wolfe

The Avocado Grove: Emily

By L.A. Wolfe

Copyright 2015 L.A. Wolfe

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

To Marty, Ashley, and Noah for all of the roads we’ve traveled together.

This is life in low gravity, floating about on the moon except without the bulky astronaut suit. I kiss the moon and circle around through nebula after nebula watching stars being born. The brilliant light from the universe makes me cry. - Emily

Contents

Chapter I

October 31

Dear Marianne

My Lies I

Foul Shots

Necessary Detours

Wild Things

Chapter II

What’s Your Name?

The Cancer Lie

Before Skipping Gym

Skipping Gym

Chapter III

The New Girl in the House

The Deli of Distractions

The Butterfly Cake

Outer Layers

Outer Layers II

Beef and Cheese Meditation

October 15, 2014

Chapter IV

My Lies II

What’s Up with That?

Train Talk

Fashion Math?

Blue Jell-O Party

Liar Squared

Chapter V

Emily’s Shopping List

Julio’s Girls

Are You My Father?

Those Soccer Boys

Mother Talk

Chapter VI

The Girl in the Stands

Shush

Shush II

Mess, Mingle, and Chop

Centers

Are You My Mother?

The First Steeple Hands

Lady Steeple Hands

Chapter VII

Wanna?

Sparkly Shoes

Surfaces I

Surfaces II

Sparkly Everything

Chapter VIII

Ghost Girl

Mickey and Emily

Wanna? II

Typical Girl

Chapter IX

Shot Clock

Double Dribbling

Open Your Eyes

Pad Thai

Chapter X

At Night with Father Beni

Flickers

Crashing Prom (First Kiss)

Floating Glittering

What I Never Told You: There’s Something About Your Moves

Chapter XI

Easier

Fairies Riding Thunder

Outta My Room

Bleaching Out

Bleaching Out II

The Crumb Universe

Chapter XII

Fairies Riding Thunder II

Emily’s Room

Bad Company

Chapter XIII

Grizzly’s Time Travel

Mine and Mine

Concessions of a Monster Bride

Chapter XIV

Don’t Go: Minus Signs Flash Everywhere

All the Things

Marianne’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake

The Don

You’re not on a Train

The Face You Never Forget

Chapter XV

Confrontations

The Lifting Part

Chapter XVI

What Happened Girlfriend

Graduation Day

What Happened Girlfriend II

Chapter XVII

Dear God: Delucca Calls

What Happened Girlfriend III

About L.A. Wolfe

Excerpts from The Avocado Grove: Vanessa

More

Chapter I

October 31

October 31, 2013

Man, aren’t you going to ask her to dance?

And you morph into the girl that sits in front of me in math class and then into my aunt from Cuba, and then you are my latest girlfriend. How you change into these people I’m not sure, but all of you easy going souls get bored sitting on the sofa sipping beer and wander off, and I follow your changing shapes through the crowd and the way your hair goes from long dishwater blonde to short bleached blonde to almost black.

Which one? I laugh. I point you out to a guy I don’t know at all, but he’s nice enough so I play along. She has a cheerleading competition.

In Tampa, who’s he? You ask. I don’t even have to fumble for an answer. This guy wants to help you with the classes you already make A’s in. It doesn’t take you long to go turn the music up.

I stumble to the patio with you. The music is fast and loud but we act as if it’s slow. My hands find their way up under your shirt.

Come on, let’s go finish this party in your car.

Later we are surrounded by smoke and noise. There’s a flash of red in your shiny blonde hair. We’re caught in the crush of people dancing together in a speeding car. Is the stereo screaming or are those sirens?

I’m messed up and you are not my mom. But for a second, I am a small child again and you are my mom and you tell me, You don’t look so good.

You look perfect. And you do – as perfect as if I just picked you up for our date. You spent hours curling your hair and those curls sparkle in the moonlight. What did you put on your hair? I ask.

But you do not answer me. You push open the car door that moments before was crushed in but now looks as if nothing at all happened. And the door seems far away and you seem far away too as if you are in another place. I try to get back to the car as fast as I can but there’s only the road beneath my feet. I can’t find where you are, you have disappeared, and after what feels like days I follow the road back home.

Dear Marianne

June 30, 2014

Dear Marianne,

When you chatted it up at the block party with Roberto Dennis and his pack of macho friends, it seemed as if you didn't know me.  A few months ago you acted like we were sorority sisters.

Tell me about the neighborhood, you said.  And you winked at me and looked at me encouragingly.  We sipped our tea.  You smiled but said little about anything.

I gossiped about everything.  How Roberto's wife, Delucca Dennis has the worst temper and hollers every morning at her dogs that will not stay in her yard and how those dogs run wild all over the neighborhood as if they are possessed.  I told you the Johnson's daughter is a high-school dropout and also has a druggie boyfriend.  I sipped my tea.  I gossiped more.

Your face is wise like Grizzly’s when she isn’t drunk, and I started to tell you about my sister and her child.  But it was like I forgot you were even there.  It was like I was speaking to a ghost in the room.  You sat so quiet and still.

My niece drives me crazy, I said.  And I hate her hair.  It looks angry as if she couldn't decide between pink and red and the gorgeous blonde she was born with.

That's just teenagers and that's just hair. And I jumped when I heard your voice.  You sipped your tea.  I spilled mine all over my new shorts.

I wanted to ask how much bleach makes you look like you were born with the pale, white blonde hair that some babies have.  But the most I managed after staining my outfit was, How often do you have to go to the salon, every four weeks, right?

You rolled up your pant leg and showed off an ankle tattoo. The brown spots fanned up. It looked as if you stepped into a giant mud puddle, except it felt like I was the clumsy one. I slipped up. I didn’t say anything about your tattoo.  

I thought I might catch it and see it in the pattern of the spilled tea all over my cream colored clothes.

When you wiggled out of your skinny jacket, I saw the butterfly canvassing your arm.  That butterfly looked alive, as if it might take off at any moment or stay and show me its teeth, and whisper your secrets.

You smiled at me but you never answered my question about your hair. But I felt as if I had helped you.  My house guests are all anyone gossips about now.   

Here's some of the stuff I've been asked:

Is Emily your daughter or your sister's kid?

Is Don Emily’s father?

Did you see the video of Emily and Delucca's boy and what she did? 

But I imagine you already know this.  I outrank the antics of Delucca's dogs or the wheelies Juniper's boyfriend does on his motorbike at midnight, or any of those guys Roberto introduced you to and you hang out with now (neighbors I never bothered to know well).

Welcome to the hood, this Avocado Grove.

P.S.  Father Beni says I don't have to give this to you, but I wish I were brave enough to do it.  There's a cool factor to you Marianne I'll always admire.  And I'd bet all the nurses I've met at the hospital would be your friends.  I don't have any good answers for them.  I've tried a dozen different ones. Everything I say sounds hollow or wrong.  Good enough isn't enough.  Maybe why perfect blonde hair matters?  I don't know.  Father Beni doesn't know and G-d remains silent.

My Lies I

1. Call me Kimmie.  My name is Emily; I’ve only asked you to call me Kimmie.  But sometimes I say, My name is Kimmie.  And yes this is a lie.

2. This is my house.  My aunt is staying with us for a while.

3. My dad is on a long trip.  (I don’t say he’s been dead for seven years.)

4. My mom is the most responsible adult I’ve ever known.  She works downtown at a bank there.  If you ask me which one, I’ll tell you a story about the big bank, you know the one that’s been in the news?

5. I’ve moved a lot too.  All the cities in California turn into cities I’ve heard about in China.  The same goes for Colorado and Florida.  Sometimes I switch China out for Japan.   A lot of people have been to Europe, but Asia is farther.

Foul Shots

The whole place stinks.

Ready for the tour? My aunt says.

New place, new stuff stink is everywhere here mixed with the heavy scent of burning vanilla candles.  I wonder how long they have lived here but don’t ask.

I hear the word new in speaking about the house.  But I don’t have to hear that word to know it, to smell it, to understand this house is bigger and better than anything I have ever lived in.

The place reeks of new furniture smell and paint and all the walls look covered with some shade of vanilla ice cream minus the black spots from the bean. There isn’t any plastic on the floor but it’s like the builders have just pulled away. Windows are everywhere too letting in the brilliant South Florida sunshine, an incredible brightness that bounces off all the plainness.

Grizzly coos, This is some place.

And Ally answers back, Six bedrooms.

We only had two in California along with a tiny cramped bathroom and that had been fine.  This has a three bathroom look, it’s big, has fancy furniture and my arms and legs feel clumsy as if I could easily break something and, Sorry Grizzly this isn’t going to work out, you and Emily have to go.  If I stick to the sofa, I won’t have to worry about having a safe place to pee in the middle of the night.

You wouldn’t believe how they cut corners, they leave out screws. Don was too busy golfing to notice, Ally says. And I imagine Grizzly’s eyes are hungry and my whitish, bony and fried looking mother tries hard to understand what Ally is even complaining about.

Emily, do you want to check out your room? My aunt asks.

I jam the fat pillows on the sofa over my head and muffle my aunt’s whiny notes and all of her shrill sounds.

It is too sunny in Aunt Ally’s house where she lives with my six-year old cousin Thom and her boyfriend, Don.  I remember what Grizzly said on the drive down about Don. He isn’t a talker on the phone but what she’s heard has made her want to find out if he looks as smooth as he sounded, like a dude she’d ask out for a beer. I wonder if Ally has anything to drink besides soda.

When Ally walks back downstairs with Grizzly, I repeat, Uh-huh, over and over in response to their chatter.  All the prettiness around me makes me twitch in places I have never twitched.  Even the muscles in my face above my eyebrows dance.

I’m going to check out the block.

My aunt and Grizzly are so busy talking and not talking the only indication either of them gives of hearing me is a look on Grizzly’s face, a look that says, Take me with you.

The crystal comes at me from every corner, from the curios, the China cabinet, even the water glass in Ally’s outstretched hand.  They are all opportunities for me to slip up. Outside isn’t much easier.  I look down at the sidewalk to avoid the blaze from the sky.  The radiance follows and ricochets off other things, the sparkling pools in the distance, the sidewalk, and the brightly colored homes.  I dream of the light like I remember in California, the periwinkle blue, the comfortable cloudless skies, where I imagine Peter Pan and the lost boys still sail their ships into sunsets.  And I pretend that sky is just around the corner and I can slide into it again.

Necessary Detours

The pretty looking soccer player looks about my age and seems as if he is having a good time in this thicker feeling air, a thickness I will need to get used to.  He is black and fine, with the kind of lean, athletic body that comes from dedicated physical exercise and from chasing a ball and attempting to control its destiny.  After a time, he notices me.  Our eyes meet and he kicks the soccer ball up into his hands in one smooth, rolling motion.

Good moves.  This appears to work a kind of magic because he smiles then, a most brilliant smile, the kind of smile that reminds me of those times I'd done something really smart and my dad beamed at me like I was the most awesome creature on the earth.  Soccer Boy tells me he watched me