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“For the record, I have never once called him Jakey-poo. And secondly, yes, let’s hang out.”
“Can I stay at your place? I’m sick of being home.”
Her hesitation is almost palpable through the phone lines. “There’s a new cupcake shop that just opened off Mixon-Cemetery Road. We should check it out.”
“Why can’t we just hang out in your room?” I ask. I’m about to argue that I don’t want to go anywhere, but if that was the case, why am I doing my makeup?
Shelby sighs. “Ash comes home tomorrow so . . . you probably don’t want to stay over.”
I watch my own expression go from curious to jaded in the mirror and I try to shrug it off. Maybe Jake isn’t the only reason I haven’t seen Shelby as much lately. Maybe some of it is on my end, avoiding the one person who reminds me of him. “Fine,” I say, faking a smile for the mirror. “Let’s go get a damn cupcake.”
*
“Why is it called Mixon-Cemetery Road?” I ask as I turn my truck onto the narrow road on the outskirts of town. There’s an old liquor store on the side of the road, the kind that looks so rickety that one swift kick to the doorframe might bring the whole thing down. Ahead of us, the road is draped in a canopy of oak trees that have probably been here longer than Mixon has been a town.
“There’s a cemetery at the end of the road,” Shelby says. She’s watching her phone, tracking the app that’s showing us the way. Nana’s Cupcakes didn’t appear on the map since it’s so new, but we found the address on the online edition of the Mixon Daily News and typed it into the GPS.
We pass an old country house with newly painted shutters and a wraparound porch. There are a few more houses scattered about, but mostly it’s just fields and cows kept in barbed wire fences as we drive for a few miles.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask, slowing down for a sharp turn in the road. The trees have grown thicker, almost swallowing up the single-lane road, and now even the cows are scarce. I had thought my house was in the middle of nowhere, but this is even more isolated.
“Yeah, it’s just a little further up,” she says, her eyes on her phone. “My aunt went there last week and said the cupcakes are to die for.”
“To die for on a cemetery road, eh?” I snort at my own joke as I come to a stop on the side of the road. We’ve made it to Nana’s Cupcakes, and apparently so have all of the dead bodies.
Mixon Cemetery is an ancient burial ground that truly sits at the end of the road. It literally dead ends right in front of us, and all around, the end of the little count
y road is bordered by a tiny black fence being strangled by years of overgrown grass and weeds.
I put the truck in park and climb out, momentarily distracted by the morbid beauty of the place. The headstones are barely visible through all of the tall grass, and it’s clear that no one has been buried here in probably a century. To our right, at the east end of the little cemetery, is a white shack of a building with a welcoming fresh coat of paint and a set of wooden stairs with a wheelchair ramp that is so new I can smell the fresh cut lumber.
There’s also a new sign hanging down from thin chains. Nana’s Cupcakes is painted on in shaky pink letters.
I put my hands on my hips. “Okay this is the weirdest snack run we’ve ever done.”
Shelby grabs my hand. “Come on. These are the kind of adventures summer breaks were meant for.”
We step inside the small bakery, and our senses are overloaded with the rich goodness of desserts lovingly crafted from scratch. A woman behind the counter wears a name tag that identifies her as Nana. She has short curly hair that’s mostly dark brown with only a little sprinkling of gray. She’s thin and seemingly frail looking, but then she pulls out a massive tray of cupcakes from the oven with one hand and waves to us with the other.
“Good afternoon, girls! So lovely to see fresh faces in here.”
“Good afternoon, Nana,” Shelby says, walking up to the display case and peering down at the cupcakes inside. “What would you say is the best cupcake here?”
Nana’s hands tap the top of the display case and she peers at us with this grandmotherly sort of charm. “They’re all the best, darlin’. I don’t make them if they aren’t delicious.”
“What the heck,” Shelby says cheerfully, turning to me. “You’re not on a diet or anything are you?”
I shake my head. “If anything, I’m on the anti-diet because Molly has been serving healthy crap at home lately.”
“Excellent,” she says, throwing me a sly look before turning to Nana. “Nana, we’d like two of each type of cupcake, please.”
*
“Oh my god . . . so good,” I say a while later as I balance my half-eaten cupcake in one hand and drive the truck with the other. Of the dozen cupcakes we purchased, Shelby and I have each downed two of them already. “This is so good I could die happy right now.”
“Imagine if someone overheard us right now,” she says, licking some icing off the top of her third cupcake. “Probably sounds like we’re making a porno in here or something.”
“Ew, gross!”
