Page 81 of Promise Me Sunshine

“Excellent.” I hand over my bag and phone to Miles and cart a truly ridiculous number of T-shirts back to the changing area.

We make a deal to show each other every shirt, no matter how heinous. I whittle my pile down to two, an orange baby tee with an inexplicable cob of corn on it, and a gigantic darkblue T-shirt featuring Schroeder tickling the ivories. Ainsley is far more discerning than I am and chooses only one: a gray long-sleeve with Baby Spice on it.

She whips back the curtain of the dressing room to reveal Miles standing ten feet away, my bag over his shoulder, looking down at his phone.

“Look!” Ainsley holds up her prize.

“Are you familiar with the Spice Girls?” he asks in surprise.

“Areyoufamiliar with the Spice Girls?” I ask in even more surprise.

“I was alive in the nineties. So, yes.”

“PopPop left me his record collection,” Ainsley says by way of explanation. “Should we return these to the dollar bin?”

I signal to the bored employee scrolling TikTok behind the register and he shoots me a thumbs-up. We cart the piles of unselected shirts back to the bin.

“So, your pop-pop was into the Spice Girls?” I ask Ainsley.

“He was into all kinds of music,” she says.

“I didn’t know that,” Miles says. He hands over a five-dollar bill and it covers our three T-shirts and a horrific green thermal hoodie thing that he hands to me on the way out.

“What’s this?”

“You need more coats.”

My stomach swoops and I stop to watch while he and Ainsley walk on ahead of me, my backpack still slung over one of his shoulders. Upon further inspection, I actually love this ugly hoodie.

We walk Ainsley home and she disappears with a book. Miles and I left kind of a mess from our after-school snack, so he washes the dishes and I dry them.

“Is that your phone?” I ask. There’s been an off-and-on buzzing for the last few minutes.

“Hm? No, mine’s set to ring.”

“Well, then what the hell is vibrating in your pants?”

“What? Oh, I forgot you handed me your phone in the store.” He digs into his back pocket, which he apparently can’t feel, and hands over my phone.

My stomach drops. I missed another call from my mom. And then she left a voicemail. And sent a text.

I fear that myEverything’s fine, I’m just really busy, I swear!excuse is wearing thin. She smells a rat. Her assertion that I need to come over and submit to a motherly inspection is growing more and more insistent.

“It’s gonna be warm this weekend,” Miles says. “For the camping trip.”

“Hm?” I pull myself out of my phone and focus on him. “Oh. Really? How warm?”

“It’ll hit eighty on Friday.”

“Wow, I thought fall was gonna stick this time.”

“One last heat wave, I guess.”

It’s been two weeks since we got our tattoos. Two weeks since we promised a camping trip to our new friends.

Here’s our text thread from last week:

Jericho:When are we camping?? Next weekend work for everybody?

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