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“Okay, Didi, you’re the boss,” I drawl. “Whatever you say.”
She smirks, satisfied, and I pick up my drink to smile into it as the realization dawns on her. I may hate being called a control freak, but she really hates being called bossy.
“Maybe you need a boss,” she huffs. She is still smiling, but I know in the back of my mind this could go either way.
“Maybe I do,” I shrug, knowing that it’s probably really grinding her gears right now. “I kind of already have one, don’t I?”
Didi’s eyes are bright with mischief as she glares at me, her nostrils flaring with every breath. Then she smiles suddenly and turns toward Hannah and Desi.
“Joe has always been kind of controlling,” she announces, her voice suppressing a laugh.
Desi’s eyebrows go way up. “Oh really? Care to share?”
I reach out and touch Didi’s arm, delivering a gentle warning pinch.
“Well, I’ve only known her for her whole life,” she continues, ignoring me. “Do you know that she wouldn’t even let her mother pack her lunch for school? Joe always had to do it herself.”
“Seriously?” Hannah blanches. “You wouldn’t even let your own mother make your lunch for you?”
“Shit, I wish my mother would’ve made my lunch for me,” Desi mutters.
“Oh, jeez, it’s not that big of a deal,” I laugh, hoping my breezy attitude will make this story completely uninteresting to everybody. “Lots of people make their own lunches for school.”
“Lots of people have to make their own lunches for school,” Didi corrects me. “Not a lot of people insist they make their own lunches for school.”
“This is a boring story, isn’t it?” I ask Desi, looking for some backup. “You probably had to make your own lunch too, right?”
“I usually just ate somebody else’s,” Desi shrugs. Hannah glances at her in surprise.
“And when she made the lunch,” Didi continues in a louder voice, “it was all, like, perfect. Perfect little sandwich square, right next to a perfect little juice box, that made the perfect little cubby for a perfect stack of carrot sticks.”
“What? I like puzzles,” I explain.
“So you guys have been friends forever?” Desi asks shrewdly. “Like forever? How come you never mentioned this before? What’s Florida like?”
“Actually it’s kind of like Atlantic City,” I shrug, remembering the smell, the filth, and the obnoxious people.
That’s not really what Willowdale is like, but people seem to enjoy the mythology. As Floridians, we are obligated to keep northerners in the dark, at least a little bit.
“Only hotter. And there’s alligators,” Didi adds.
“I hope I never have to go there,” Hannah pouts.
“That’s what we want everyone to think,” Didi replies smugly. “There are already way too many people in Florida. You guys just stay up here, and we can keep things how we like him. All old-timey and shit.”
“Old-timey as in age of the dinosaurs?” Desi quips.
I can see that Didi is actually getting a little defensive. “No, like a Hallmark card,” she snaps, too tipsy to realize that she is directly contradicting the point she just made about not wanting anybody to know. “Like small towns and neighbors and old-fashioned values. The good stuff. It’s not all mosquitoes and poisonous snakes, you know.”
“You can be neighbors... with the snakes,” I add wryly, ignoring the poisonous look that Didi shoots at me.
“You expect me to believe it’s like Little House on the Prairie or something?” Desi arches an eyebrow.
“In a way, it kind of is,” Didi insists, her gaze going far off as she visualizes our little town and turns it into some kind of fairytale setting. “I mean, we have old-fashioned houses with porches and lawns. We have a general store right on the main drag, which just got its first stoplight about three years ago. As a matter of fact, our doctors even make house calls! Tell me when was the last time you heard about that!”
“No way, nobody does that anymore,” Hannah insists.
“Yeah, it’s totally true,” I nod. “Dr. Warner took care of all of us from my grandparents on down. He even delivered me right there in the bedroom, just like in the olden days.”
