Page 21 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“I thought you people had an accent,” Livvie said. “You know, like ‘Da Bears’ or whatever.” She said it with a flat nasal “a.”
Rhett shrugged. “My mom’s from here. I guess my accent is kind of a blend.”
Once again, a whole conversation had gone by and I had literally contributed two words. But my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my brain refused to engage beyond screaming,Say something!
Not helpful.
The waitress walked up. Peggy usually wrote up our ticket without asking because she knew our orders by heart, but Rhett changed the mix. She didn’t say anything, only stared at him.
He shot us a quick glance.
“She wants your order,” I explained. Yes! Maybe the dam had broken and intelligent, funny, enthralling words would now flood out.
“Catfish po-boy,” he said. “And a side of cheese fries. With a water.”
Peggy strode off. Silence. Livvie’s wide eyes willed me to say something.
There was no flood after all.
Bran stepped in. “Which classes did you get?”
Rhett broke it down. He was on the honors track, like Livvie. Besides calculus, he had AP English and world history, physics and AP art history. Pretty standard college prep schedule.
“What’s your elective?” Livvie asked.
“Orchestra, right?” I asked, glad to find my voice again.
“No,” he said, and smiled at my surprise. “My two instruments don’t really work with an orchestra.”
“What’s the other one?” I asked.
“Guitar.”
Peggy walked up then to drop off our drinks. Rhett turned to accept his, and Livvie mouthed, “Hot.”
Did she mean his face or his guitar?
Both. Because that was what I thought.
I took my Diet Coke from Peggy and dumped in two sugar packets, ignoring Livvie’s grimace, but the sugar spilled on the tabletop. She swept the grains to the floor. “Just get the regular Coke,” she said.
“It tastes better like this. So what are you taking if it’s not music?” I asked Rhett.
“Drama,” he said.
Well, well, well. We’d have a class together after all.
“Cam has that, too. She can show you where to find the theater,” Bran said.
“I didn’t peg you for drama,” Rhett said.
“You have no idea,” Livvie said. “Cam here is our little diva.”
I choked on my soda. “Bless your heart for saying so,” I said, and Bran snorted. Livvie constantly complained about my low-key approach to everything from Angelique to Delphine, the two bookends to my misery. She insisted that my refusal to engage pretty much ever was unhealthy. “You need to explode on them a time or two,” she had lectured me more than once. “They’d quit messing with you then.”
“You’re a diva?” Rhett repeated it like he didn’t believe it.
“No.”
