Read Necessary Lies for Free Online Page B

liked any excuse to touch him. I was so in love with that boy.
    “I brung you some of Desiree’s cherry pie.” He shined his flashlight on the pie plate, covered with wax paper.
    “Won’t she miss it?”
    “She’ll just think I got to it. Thinks I’m a pig. I got enough for you and Mary Ella and Nonnie. Maybe Baby William, too, if you slice it skinny.”
    “You’re the sweetest boy,” I said. “Nonnie can’t have none of it, though. I got to hide it. She already ate the banana pudding your daddy sent over.”
    “Oh yeah. I forgot about her sugar.”
    I noticed his hand was on some kind of big flat box-looking thing on the blanket. “What you got there?” I asked, holding the lantern closer.
    “I brung a new California book,” he said, and I saw it wasn’t a box at all, but a giant book.
    “You got to the bookmobile?” He visited the bookmobile every time it passed through, but it was hard to get away during the harvest.
    “Sure did.” He shined his flashlight on the cover.
    “It’s the biggest book I ever seen.” I ran my fingers over the glossy cover. The picture was of some cliffs and the sea, all of it covered in fog. It was real mysterious and beautiful and made me want to be there so bad my chest hurt. Grace County was pretty with all the trees and the fields that turned different colors depending on the time of year, but it couldn’t hold a candle to California.
    “Come here,” he said, flopping down on his belly. “Let me show you.”
    I laid on my belly next to him and he opened the book, shining his flashlight on the pictures. They was the most glorious pictures I ever seen. Henry Allen visited California when he was eight and he said he never forgot it and had to live there someday, as far from Grace County as he could get. He was suffocating here, he always said, and I knew how he felt. Sometimes when I got out of bed, it felt like there was no air in my lungs at all. Our dream was to get married someday and raise up our family in California. I wasn’t sure exactly when we started the dream. Seemed like one minute we was making bows and arrows in the woods and the next we was talking about getting married. It was my favorite thing to think about, living with Henry Allen and being his wife in beautiful California, where we could take our kids to Disneyland every single year. That dream got me through some mighty grim days. Nurse Ann said I should never have no babies because of the fits I used to get, though I didn’t think I had them no more. I stopped taking the fit medicine long ago and I was just fine, so I wasn’t worried.
    “This here’s the Golden Gate Bridge.” Henry Allen shined the light on a gigantic orangey-colored bridge sitting in a cloud of fog.
    “California’s got a lot of fog.” I handed him one of the honeysuckle flowers.
    “Well, in this here place, San Francisco, yes they do.” He pulled out the middle of the flower and sucked the honey from it. “Makes it pretty, don’t ya think?”
    “You been on that bridge?”
    “No, but I will someday. You, too.” He gave me a nudge with his shoulder and I smiled.
    That “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” song came on the radio and we both started laughing. That song always made us laugh. “In California, you can wear one of them bikinis on the beach,” he said.
    “How are we ever gonna get there without a car?” I asked. Henry Allen drove one of Mr. Gardiner’s trucks sometimes, but we couldn’t take that.
    “If we can dream up living in California, we can dream up having a car,” Henry Allen said. He turned the page and it was some kind of fair, with a Ferris wheel and people walking around and eating hot dogs. Way in the distance, I could see the ocean.
    “This here picture reminds me of that time your daddy took me and you and Mary Ella to the state fair. Remember that?”
    “How could I forget?” I said. “I got sick on that swing ride.”
    “It was a good time till then,” he