Page 29 of Possibly Texas

“Anderson?” I asked. “Are you one of the Anderson’s who lives in the big red barn down by the creek?”

The boy nervously met my eyes, as though unsure of whether or not he should tell a stranger in town where he actually lived.

“Um,” his eyes flittered around, “yeah.”

“Sorry,” I said. “That was weird. It’s just, I’ve seen your, uh, lights? My bedroom window is pointed in that direction. Jack, uh, told me Auguste Anderson lived there.”

“Oh.” That seemed to soothe the kid’s nerves.

“Yeah.”

Again, we were standing in silence, our eyes looking at anything but each other.

“So,” I said, “uh, have you always lived here?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool.” I nodded slowly. “I’m, uh, from everywhere, I guess?”

I chuckled lightly, hoping that the small joke might break the ice. I really wanted to ask the kid everything about himself—anything to have someone to talk to who seemed relatively normal—but I could tell that would just scare him off.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

We were getting nowhere fast. I was almost tempted to say ‘well, nice meeting you,’ and then walk away, but I really had nothing else to do with my time. There were only two more streets in downtown possibly to check out and that would take less than ten minutes. I knew for a fact that those ten minutes would be uneventful. Unless Wyatt actually hit something with one of his bullets.

“Um,” I forced myself to continue the conversation, “there’s not really a lot to do here, huh? I’ve been here less than a week and I think I’ve seen everything in this town.”

This brought a small smile to the kid’s face, though his eyes still refused to look up at me.

“The coffee at Starbuck’s is kind of good,” I said. “I didn’t know there was a Starbuck’s that wasn’t, like, part of the big chain of coffee shops.”

The kid’s smile grew and I could tell he was this close to looking up at me.

“Levi Lee is a nice guy,” I added.

Those were the magic words. The kid looked up at me.

“A lot of people here are really nice,” he agreed. “Have you met Grandy yet? He’s the guy who runs the gas station?”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “He seemed nice enough.”

That was the politest way I felt I could respond. Grandy had, in fact, been nice when I had met him. He’d just been weird. But something told me that mentioning this to the kid—Auguste—was a bad idea. I certainly didn’t want to tell him what I thought of Grandy’s question about caterpillars and butterflies.

“Yeah,” Auguste said with a grin, “he’s a little odd. But he’s super nice. Promise.”

“Oh, yeah.” I waved him off. “He was really nice to me. But, yeah. He’s a little weird.”

Auguste chuckled.

“Yeah.” He nodded before looking down at his feet again.

Since he wasn’t watching me any longer, I took a second to glance down at his outfit again. His jeans and tank top seemed normal, but the flowery scarf he’d chosen as a belt was obviously an item that he had found in his mother’s closet or something. I’d seen plenty of people who experimented with clothes—shedding the idea of what is boys’ clothes and girls’ clothes—all over the country. I’d never seen a teenage guy in a small southern town do it, though.

“I, uh, like your belt,” I said.

Compulsively, Auguste’s hand grabbed the tail of the scarf and twiddled it with his fingers, though his eyes stayed down.