Laura Miller - By Way of Accident

She gives me a soft look and then goes back to her floatin’ and the blue sky.

“You hungry?” I ask.

Her eyes land on mine.

“I’ve got some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“What kind of jelly?” she asks.

“Strawberry, I think.” I don’t know why I say I think because I know. These damn nerves make ya plumb stupid.

Either way, she shows off her pretty white teeth. “My favorite,” she says. And with those words, I feel as if I’ve just won the world.

“Come on,” I say, wading back through the water to the bank.

After a couple steps, I turn around to see if she’s following me. And I don’t know why my heart jumps when I find out she is.

I dry my hands off on my tee shirt hangin’ from the tree and find the paper bag. “Here,” I say, handing her the sandwich. She’s already found a spot on the grass.

“You make this for me?” she asks.

“I might have.”

She laughs and buries her face in her bended knees. I just stare at her. I wish I knew what she was thinkin’. What is she laughin’ at?

“Thanks,” she says, taking the sandwich. “I’ve never had a boy make me a sandwich before.”

I just smile as she takes a bite. But then she stops mid-chew and looks at me. “You didn’t poison it or anything, did you?”

“What?”

“I know your name. I know you’ve lived here your whole life, and I know you’re not a thief, but I don’t know if you go around poisoning people.”

I chuckle to myself and lower my head. But she’s still lookin’ just as serious when I lift my eyes again, so I lean into her and take a bite of her sandwich. “If you’re poisoned, I’m poisoned.”

She looks me square in the eyes. I can tell she doesn’t quite know what to do. But eventually, one eye narrows, and she takes another bite. “It’s good,” she says. It looks as if she’s trying to squash a smile.

I take a big bite of my own sandwich, and I swear I just grin the dumbest, goofiest grin known to man.

“Oh,” I say, remembering, “your necklace.”

She shakes her head and puts out her hand. “You can keep it.”

I pull out the necklace from underneath my shirt, and its little prisms catch my eyes. Surely, she’s just messin’ with me. I start to pull it over my head as she lays one of her soft hands on my arm.

“Really,” she says. “It’s yours.”

Her soft hand distracts me for a second. And a warm feeling courses through my veins, startin’ at the base of her touch and movin’ to the tips of my fingers and toes.

“But it’s yours,” I manage to get out.

She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

I slowly let the necklace fall back under my shirt again. I want to ask her why she’s giving it to me, but at the same time, I don’t want her to change her mind because I know when I wake up tomorrow mornin’ I’m gonna need somethin’ to remind me that I’m not crazy thinkin’ a girl like this exists.

“It’s quartz crystal,” she says.

I look at her and then pull the necklace and its heart back out from underneath my shirt.

“Ancient people used to believe it was alive.”

I focus my attention on the heart. “Alive?” I ask.

She squints one eye to block out the summer sun peeking its way through the trees. “Yeah, they believe it takes a breath once every hundred years.”

I furrow my brows first at the heart and then at her. Is this girl serious? It’s a damn rock. And it sure as hell ain’t takin’ a breath anytime soon.

She must read my face or somethin’ because she looks at me and laughs. “I’m not kidding. It’s what they believed.”

I keep a watchful eye on her, but I return my attention to the heart again and on the way it changes colors in the light.

“Quartz crystal is supposed to hold your dreams until they come true,” she says.

She goes back to eating her sandwich, and I just stare at the heart. This rock might just be a rock, but there’s a part of me that hopes Brooke is right. I silently recite a prayer — a dream — before tucking the necklace back into my shirt. Then I bite into my sandwich again just as she’s taking her last bite.

“Thank you,” she says, brushing her hands together.

“It was nothin’.” I say it with a mouth full of peanut butter.

She lies back against the soft grass then. I watch her rest her head on her hands as I stuff the rest of my sandwich into my mouth and decide to do the same. There’s only about a foot in between us, and I’m aware of every heated inch of it.

“You have to bale hay today?” She rolls her head to the side.

“What?” I ask.

“Yesterday, that’s what you were doing.”

“Oh, yeah. No, not today.”

“Tomorrow?” she asks.

I feel one corner of my mouth twitch up. “Yeah, tomorrow,” I confirm. “And the day after that. And the day after that, and if it doesn’t rain, the day after that too. And if I’m still kickin’ when I turn ninety-seven, then probably that day too.”

She smiles wide, but she keeps her eyes on me. It prevents me from breathin’ normally, and I swear, my heart hasn’t stopped racin’ since I found her hoverin’ over me earlier. God, this girl is gonna kill me one way or another; I just know it.

“Can I help?”

I instantly feel my forehead fill with little wrinkles.

“Help?” I ask. Surely, I heard her wrong.

“Yeah,” she says. “Bale hay.”

“You wanna help bale hay?” I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders and nods. “Yeah.”

People don’t want to bale hay. In fact, they don’t even want to think about balin’ hay.

“Have you ever done it before?”

She shakes her head no .

“Then, naw,” I say, “you don’t want to bale hay. Believe me. And plus, if they catch wind that you can do it, they’ll have you doin’ it for the rest of your life. Believe me on that one too.”

She laughs. “You make it sound like it’s a death sentence.”

I just look at her with the most serious face I’ve got. I’m hopin’ it gets the point across. Instead, she just looks at me and laughs some more.

“Brooke, you don’t want to bale hay.”

“River.” She sits up. The new tone of her voice makes me take notice all of a sudden. “You’ve known me for barely a day.”

I sit up too and just study her. I think I’m still in shock, but I don’t think it’s a bad kind of shock. I’m shocked I made it through nearly a day before pissin’ her off. That’s got to be some kind of a record for me. And I’m shocked and half amused by her desire to do farm work. That proves it; she must be crazy.

“Fair enough,” I admit. “You can help. We’ll probably start after the hay dries around noon.”

Her serious expression melts to happy again just as I catch a glimpse of her shoes restin’ at the edge of the bank. “Do you have any other shoes besides those?” I gesture with my eyes toward the not-quite-tennis-shoes shoes of hers.

She nods her head. “Yeah, I’ll try to find something.”

I suck in a breath and then force it out. “And you might want to wear a pair of jeans — a little longer than those.” I glance at her little shorts now lying against the weeds a few feet away. I already can’t believe what I’m sayin’. I’m askin’ her to cover up her legs. I must be crazy too.

She looks at me with arched eyebrows. “It’s almost a hundred degrees out here.”

“Trust me,” I say. “You’ll want to wear jeans.”

She narrows her eyes at me and then nods her head — almost in a surrendering kind of way. It’s kind of cute. But then she’s grinnin’ from ear to ear in no time. This girl has no idea what she’s gettin’ herself into, and she’ll probably change her mind tomorrow mornin’ after she looks up balin’ hay or somethin’ in the dictionary, but as for right now, I’ve got this moment. And I ain’t lettin’ it go for nothin’.