the hallways and rate the girls as they walked by. Mostly you’d see him reading or hanging out with his longtime best friend, Christian Moore.
Nothing ever happened with me and Marc Roberts. When Sarah hinted around that I might like it if he asked me to the eighth-grade dance, he told her he was going to Washington, DC, with his parents that weekend, to visit the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. That was the kind of boy Marc Roberts was. That was what I liked about him, really—that he was still a boy. The other eighth-grade boys I knew were on their way to becoming something else. Criminals. Fraternity brothers. Humongous pains in the butt.
Looking up at Monster, it occurs to me that he’s on his way to becoming a grown-up. He has his own apartment, a job, a truck. He’s tall and powerful, kind and a little wild, but in a good, bighearted way.
He is—I realize, standing next to my favorite goat in the world—way too much for me.
Still, we stand there staring into each other’s eyes like we just can’t stop.
And then Monster stops. He blinks, takes a step back. Says, “You know, if you were a couple years older, I’d probably fall in love with you.”
I nod my head. “Me too.”
The kiss is short and very sweet. We step away from each other.
“We can still play rock and roll together, though,” Monster promises me. “That don’t have to change.”
“And we’ll always have Paris,” I reply.
We walk toward the back door, swinging the bucket of milk between us. I imagine one day in the future, when the difference in our ages won’t seem like such a big deal. Mr. Pritchard was eight years older than Mrs. Pritchard, after all, I remind myself.
I hope they’re together somewhere right now. Maybe they’re on the front porch of their old house, looking out across the wild abundance of their yard, remembering how the morning glories climbed the burnt cross every spring, how just by leaving it there and letting nature take its course, they’d turned it into art.
That’s when it occurs to me to wonder: What will happen to the cross after the house is sold?
And that’s when I get that feeling again, the feeling that I want to do something—something meaningful. Something big.
“When my dad drives you over to get your truck, I’m going too,” I tell Monster, opening the back door for him. “I need you to take me somewhere.”
“The prom?” Monster asks. “’Cause I gotta tell you, my tux is at the cleaners, and I got two left feet.”
“Somewhere a lot more interesting than the prom,” I promise.
“Consider me intrigued,” comes Monster’s reply.
By the time Monster and I get to Mr. Pritchard’s house, it’s almost nine o’clock, and the sky is blazing with stars. The cross stands in the moonlight, the brown vines of faded morning glories still clinging to it.
“So I guess you’re wondering why I brought a couple of shovels,” I say to Monster as we climb out of the truck. “In fact, I bet you’re wondering what we’re doing here at all.”
“Considering that I’ve asked you seventeen times since we left your house, that’s a pretty safe bet,” Monster replies, reaching into the truck bed to get out our tools.
I point to the cross. “We’re going to dig that up and take it back to my house.”
When Monster’s eyes land on the cross, he takes a few steps back. “Man, I got to warn you, them Baptists get mean when you start digging up their holy relics.”
“This isn’t a church,” I tell him. “It’s Mr. Pritchard’s house. That’s the cross the Klan burned. He left it there. But as soon as his house gets sold, the new owners will take it down probably. They won’t understand that it’s art.”
“They’ll probably put in a few lawn gnomes instead,” Monster agrees. “Not that you can necessarily blame ’em. That’s a pretty powerful statement to have to mow around every Saturday.”
We walk over to the cross, which has to be at least ten feet tall. I look up at it and feel a shiver go through me. “Is it sacrilege to dig up a cross?” I ask, starting to have doubts about what we’re going to do. “Or, I don’t know, weird?”
Monster considers this for a moment. “Well, it’s gonna get dug up one way or another, right? Probably by a real estate agent now that Mr. Pritchard’s gone and don’t have a say in