Page 72 of Possibly Texas

My frown deepened.

“You don’t really understand business, do you?” I quipped.

Though I was mostly joking, I made sure to add enough sass so Molly knew I was displeased. She didn’t care. Both her and Auggie chuckled at my comment. Auggie rose from his chair, obviously better at taking hints than I, and grabbed my arm.

“Come on, Jordan,” he said. “You got your reading.”

Molly and I stared at each other as I rose from my seat. As Auggie skipped from the table and across the tent, out into the sun once more, Molly and I kept our eyes on each other. I backed away from her table, trying to read into her soul through her eyes, to decipher what her small grin and those sparkling, lamp-lit eyes were telling me.

Maybe I believed in mystics a little.

When I felt the sun on my back, I looked away from Molly and started to turn towards the opening between the tent flaps.

“Jordan?” Molly called softly.

“Yeah?” I turned back to look at her.

“Pay attention to the stones.”

“Uh…”

“They’ll help you understand.”

Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

With that, Molly flicked a hand, dismissing me with another smile. So, I turned, breaking eye contact, and stepped out into the summer sun once again.

The Possibilian breeze was back, blowing through downtown pleasantly. Although it was still warmer outside than it had been inside Molly’s tent, the coolness of the breeze brought a smile to my face. I’d been inside Molly’s long enough to staunch the flow of sweat on my back. Glancing around, looking for Auggie, I found him standing at the front door of Samuel’s, waving me over ecstatically.

“Well, come on!” He waved me over. “The line’s empty now!”

I grinned proudly.

“Told you I have the best ideas,” I said as I sauntered over arrogantly, swaggering, my arms swinging at my sides comically.

“You, my friend,” Auggie said, magnanimously as I approached, “had the best idea.”

“Thank you, my good sir,” I said with a bow of my head.

Auggie laughed and held the door for me as I ducked into Samuel’s.

Only one person was left in line when we approached the gleaming white and stainless-steel counter. The crowd had died off enough that Levi Lee was no longer at the register, leaving Samuel to make his concoctions and cash out customers. It took Samuel seconds to provide a fountain drink to the customer ahead of us, then a few seconds longer to produce the two ice-cold Mountain Dews in glass bottles for Auggie and me.

Auggie and I spent a few minutes examining the Rorschach ink blots that decorated the wall opposite the counter in Samuel’s. My interpretation of a particular print that caught our eye was a ghost, and Auggie agreed. Whenever we found an inkblot the two of us could agree on in Samuel’s, we stopped looking. Why find something to argue over when you can leave a place in agreement over something?

We made our way back outside, ready to continue our Fourth of July BBQ adventure in downtown Possibly. Between sips of the refreshing Mountain Dew and the breeze blowing in off the creek, the Fourth of July was turning out to be a pleasant day in town.

Instead of immediately making our way back to Liberty Lane, we hung a left at the corner of Samuel’s marching through the grass towards Starbuck’s. Levi Lee was already next to the door of the pirate ship, his green-screen suit on, bunching up rudely in certain places, pretending to be a robot. I wasn’t sure why he had brought the green-screen suit back and continued his robot schtick, but it wasn’t for me to show concern. Levi Lee would figure his art out on his own, just as I would.

Auggie and I stood across the street from Starbuck’s sipping our sodas and watching Levi, trying not to distract him as we considered his new pursuit of art.

“An invisible robot?” Auggie suggested.

I shrugged and we both chuckled.

When movement down the street caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head to see what was going on by the post office. Sofia was standing outside, doing something to the door. It being a holiday, I had to wonder why she was within so much as a hundred yards of her work. Then again, it was hard to be a hundred yards away from anything in downtown Possibly, such was its size.