Page 91 of Again, In Autumn

I point a finger to the open door, the chilly air penetrating my thin shirt. “Do you know what they’re doing?”

She doesn’t look up. “If you’re going to participate, you might want to change into grubby clothes.” Her eyes run over my body, and she adds coolly, “Actually, you’re probably fine.”

The laughter outside doesn’t warm the air between us.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Fine!” she snaps. “I’m just not playing.”

It must have been the engagement thing. She didn’t take to Adam’s declaration well, and it’s causing her to scowl and scroll social media alone. I know the sting of liking someone and not having it reciprocated. Before going outside, I offer, “There’s some pie in the kitchen if you want it.”

I close the front door behind me and wait on the porch.

The yard lights are on, the moon glows in the background, and my family and the two neighbors stand in a wide circle on the grass with food spread out between them. It’s either a ritual sacrifice or a weird sort of picnic. Mashed potatoes, bags of spaghetti, cans of whipped cream, containers of yogurt.

Adam jogs up from the woods. “I put Copper away,” he breathes.

“What’s happening here?” I demand. “You do know you can’t grow a garden of spaghetti by planting it in the dirt.” Suddenly, the realization dawns on me, cracked over the head by the falling lightbulb. “Oh my God.”

Francesca waves me down with a sly smile. She sings, “Come on, Auntie Vee. We have one more game to play.”

“Diego, Maggie and Adam planned a little game of their own,” David explains.

I lock eyes with Adam, whose expression reads as waiting, hoping. He calls out, “Come down here!”

I cross my arms. “A food fight? Seriously?”

“Food fight!” Grayson squeals, jumping up and down. Alice tries to join him, but she falls in her poncho.

“It’s forty degrees,” I point out.

Adam replies, “A little cold never killed ya.”

“We’re grown-ups.”

“Boo.” He gives Grayson a thumb’s up. “Maybe on the outside, but we’re all kids at heart.”

“This looks very wasteful,” I observe pointedly, hoping that Adam will remember his claims of caring about food waste and the environment.

I slowly walk down the stairs, unsure of when the attack starts. I check out my outfit. Sneakers – washable. T-shirt – washable. Leggings – Lululemon, so some kind of alarm will go off that I’m not in hot yoga and I’ll be expected to burn them for desecration.

“I don’t fight with my food,” I argue. “I love with my food.”

“Oh, we know,” Adam responds, walking behind his sister and coming up to greet me. I lean backward. His bites his bottom lip, grinning, a glint in his eye, and his hand scoops something from the ground that I didn’t see before. He exhales. “You put a lot of love in your food.”

Confused, I look down at the object in his outstretched palm. “No!” I scream. “Not my chocolate pie!”

“This old thing?”

“Adam, put the pie down!”

He throws his head back in a laugh. “Oh. It’s gonna go down.”

“Please, not the pies!” I beg once more, ducking and running into the lawn as something cold splatters on my back.

Screaming and laughter fly into the air along with globs of yogurt and swooping spaghetti noodles. It’s complete anarchy. It’s my first year of teaching.

At a run, I grab a fistful of mashed potatoes and fling it at Diego, who wields his whipped cream can like a weapon, spraying the side of my head before turning to Alice’s open, sacrificial arms.

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