Page 10 of Tulips and Lost Time

My job is to spoil her. To make her happy. To give her anything she wants.

No fucking chance I’m gonna tell her how to eat.

“She laughs about it,” I whisper, as the streetlights outside flicker to life. We’re on the very edge of town. The outskirts, where there are probably three lights in a three-mile radius. But one of those lights sits near the end of our driveway, providing a beacon for us to come home to.

It was a sign, Kari said, a few years back when I showed her the home we bought—the slightly dilapidated ranch that needed paint before the old coat dissolved and the whole house fell apart.

“But sometimes, Daddy does this creepy, old man laugh,” I continue. “I do it to get a rise out of her. And it works.” I drop my head back against the chair and study Billy’s long, long lashes. “Daddy loves it most when he can make Mommy laugh. She doesn’t do it often enough. Like Uncle Marc, she’s too serious for her own good. So it’s my job, my obligation,” I press, “to make Mommy smile.”

“Watch this!” I hold my board at the top of the halfpipe on the outdated side of town, where a skate park was once funded by the town council, and kids were given somewhere to hang out that didn’t include robbing Jonah’s store or racing around in the street and causing accidents.

A one-time infusion of cash was spent here, I guess. But no one factored in a maintenance budget. No one comes out here to check on the facilities. What is probably supposed to be lawn is just dirt. What is supposed to be smooth concrete slopes are now cracked and graffitied.

But they work for a group of kids who have no other options.

Not yet, anyway. But we’ll build our own eventually. At the Turners’ house, since they have the room and Mrs. Turner isn’t likely to strangle us for it.

“Marc!” I cup my mouth and shout to drag his attention from the girls.

Not, like, girls our age who might think to come out here to flirt and play. But the girls, as in Kari, Britt, Laine, and Jess. Because wherever we go, they like to follow.

“Hey!” I bend and grab a rock from the top of the pipe, then lob it the thirty feet that separate us, gritting my teeth and thanking the gods when it lands in the dirt and doesn’t hit anyone I love.

Maybe I don’t want to hang with our sisters all the time. But fuck, I wouldn’t dump them, I won’t hurt them, and I sure as fuck won’t let someone else bring them pain.

The rock thuds against the ground, spitting up plumes of dirt and drawing Marcus’ focus. Then he turns on his heels, shielding his eyes with the span of his palm as the sun begins to set behind me. “What?”

“I call this the Luca Lenaghan Classic.” I drop into the pipe while I’ve got his attention—not only his, but the girls’, too—and zoom across to the coping on the other side. Shifting my feet and grinning as wind blows through hair I’ve grown out shaggy over the summer, I snap a frontside one-eighty before switching into a nollie. My board slams down onto the steel coping, the noise a ricocheting blow that echoes from here to… well, probably back to town. But I land my move and turn to ride the board’s momentum back the way I came. “Fuckin’ nailed it!”

“That’s not a Luca Classic.” Shaking his head, Ang pushes away from an old, splintered wooden bench, the rough lengths of timber snagging his jeans as he steps away. But he’s smiling today. His hair, longer than mine, is tied back, and the black eye we all pretend we don’t see is fading.

His daddy’ll give him a new one before the week is out.

But today… today he’s smiling.

He tosses his board onto the pipe and steps on, a smooth transition as he zooms by me and winks for the girls who wander closer to watch. “That was a Nose Blunt Stall, stupid. Stop acting like you’re world class.”

“Oh!” I laugh. “My bad. You want the real Luca Special?”

“I thought it was Luca Classic?” Marcus grumbles. Always too serious. Too cranky. “Your story isn’t even lining up, bro.”

“Here. Let me show you.” I step off my board and jog to the top of the pipe, my shirt flapping as the breeze finally picks up and my skin prickles under the bite of the sun. I set my beloved skateboard on the coping—the board, second only to the drum kit I finally saved up enough for—then I place my foot in the center and send up my prayers.

Because this is gonna hurt.

Reaching up, I swipe the sweat from my brow as another summer day melts us where we stand, and Marc and I stare down the barrel of another school year. The twins watch me like I hung the moon and the stars. Their blonde hair, whipped back in high ponytails. The exact same height on their heads. The same colored elastic. The same wispy bits falling out the back.

They’re not the kinds of twins who match their outfits and accessories, so it’s not like we can’t tell them apart. But fuck, their faces are identical. Their mannerisms. Their smiles.

And the way they think I’m the funniest fucker on this planet.

I draw a deep breath and side-eye a smug Brittany—she knows what’s coming. Then a shy Kari, her eyes trained on my feet and her hand clutched around a book.

The others, I think, will give us a run for our money in a few more years. They’ll want to party. To talk to boys and dress in such a way that gives the rest of us a coronary.

But not Kari.

She’d sooner spend her Friday and Saturday nights with a book.

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