Page 40 of Possibly Texas

“Yeah?”

“What’s with the name?” I asked. “Possibly? Why do they call the town Possibly?”

Auggie grinned.

“Well,” he said across those yards between us, “they say when the first settlers came here—like a really long time ago—that they weren’t sure where they were. They didn’t have GPS then, right? They didn’t even really have reliable maps. They thought this might be Texas, but they weren’t sure. So, one of them said it was ‘possibly Texas’ and it just kind of stuck. Possibly, Texas.”

I snort-laughed at that explanation.

“What was the other possibility?” I asked. “Oklahoma?”

Auggie gave me an odd smile.

“It was possibly not Texas,” he said.

“Right.” I drew the word out with a smirk.

“But it’s quite possibly the best place to be.” Auggie winked.

Then he was skipping away towards the creek once more, his flip-flops slapping at his feet and the hems of his clam diggers fluttering. I sat there, in the grass across the street from Mystic Molly’s tent for quite a while, sweat slowly making a light sheen on my skin as the hours passed. Finally, when the heat was becoming overbearing and I was certain I’d had enough sun for the day, I got up and walked back to Jack’s place. He was still in the backyard, working on his table project, though he seemed close to finishing it. I merely gave him a wave, letting him know I was home. I didn’t go over and interrupt his private time working. There was no reason to make him regret my presence more.

Later that night, in bed, as I sat atop my covers and stared out at the hazy golden glow coming from the roof of the big red barn in the distance, I replayed that morning in my head. Things just got stranger and quirkier around Possibly. Even if I had Auggie to explain everyone and everything to me. The people, the places, the layout…it was all so alien to me. And I’d been just about everywhere in the country you could get to by car. Maybe I hadn’t walked enough dirt roads?

After the lights at the barn disappeared, I crawled under the covers, and lowered my head to the pillow. Other than Wyatt’s gunfire, I thought of how peaceful the town was. How everyone seemed to get along. One more thought entered my mind.

It possibly was the best place I’d ever lived.

Sometime, in the middle of the night, I thought I heard a door opening and closing.

But I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming.

It wasn’t knocking that woke me up the following morning; it was the incessant buzzing of something just outside of my half-asleep consciousness. Everything sounded muffled, as though I was hearing things underwater, and I finally realized that I was asleep, slowly coming awake thanks to the sound emanating from…somewhere. I rolled over in bed, away from the dormers, and blearily searched for the source of the noise. My eyes landed on the blue glow of my phone on the bedside table, barely visible now that the sun was just starting to shine through the window.

I slapped a hand over my phone and dragged it across the smooth wood surface, dropping it onto the bed in my rush to answer it. When I brought the phone up so that I could see it through my hazy, half-asleep vision, I saw it wasn’t a saved contact. But it wasn’t a number I recognized, either. Well, I didn’t think I recognized it. My eyes hadn’t decided to work yet. I slid my finger across the screen and brought the phone to my ear a little too roughly, whacking myself in the side of the head in the process.

Man, I was sleeping good.

“Huh-hello?” I croaked.

I reached up to rub my eyes with my free hand.

“Hey.” A familiar voice replied. “Jordan?”

“Yeah?” I yawned.

“Hey. It’s me. Auggie.”

I felt very awake suddenly.

“Oh,” I said,” hey.”

“Hey,” he replied. “I hope you don’t mind—I got your number from Jack. He said you’d probably be awake. It doesn’t sound like it, though.”

His expressive chuckle sounded on the other end. I chuckled back.

“Nearly,” I said. “I was probably going to wake up any second.”

I looked out the window. The sun was just coming over the horizon. I probably wasn’t going to be awake any second.