The Probable Future

II.

THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME, but Stella had been asked to clean up the science lab, and so she was late. She had to run all the way to the station, splashing through puddles, winded by the time she arrived. The rain had eased to a drizzle, but the sky was still as dingy as steam. Juliet Aronson sat on one of the green wooden benches out on the platform, smoking a cigarette and sipping from a cup of coffee she’d bought at the vending machine inside the station. Juliet had her hair pulled back and her lipstick had worn off; leaving the city for parts unknown made her nervous, and she’d been biting her lips. She was wearing a black dress she’d borrowed from her aunt’s closet and a silk blazer that was too lightweight for the day’s cool, damp weather.

“Finally,” Juliet announced when she spied Stella. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

Juliet tossed her cigarette away and the girls hugged each other. Then Juliet held Stella at arm’s length in order to examine her. “Oh, my God! You’re a country bumpkin.”

Stella looked down at her yellow rain gear, her heavy lace-up boots, her waterlogged jeans. Her hair had frizzed up in the humidity and she hadn’t a touch of makeup on her pale face. She had strapped on a backpack filled with books and test tubes to collect more water samples.

“Bumpkin sounds like a bad thing.”

Juliet laughed. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix you. Although I seriously can’t believe you actually live here.” Juliet grabbed her overnight case, Gucci, stolen from Saks. “Good gracious. You have trees out here.”

The trees had leafed out after the past week of drenching rains. Now, when the girls looked upward, the sky itself seemed green. Stella usually slopped through puddles, but Juliet Aronson was wearing good leather boots, so they avoided the common and walked through town. Stella had homework, but she didn’t care. She felt lit up inside. It was Friday and Juliet was finally here and the rain was ending.

Juliet sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like something around here.”

Stella laughed. “Mud?”

“Ah, mud. The bumpkin perfume. We have got some changes to make in this town.”

They went to the pizza place and ordered four slices, then sat across from each other in a red vinyl booth. Juliet leaned her elbows on the table. Stella hadn’t noticed before that her friend had a nervous tick above her eye.

“Did you try the love-foretelling thing?”

“It didn’t work.” Stella recalled the look on her mother’s face when Matt walked into the tea shop. Close the door, you need not see more. “At least, not for me. I think I screwed it up.”

“That just means you haven’t decided who it is you want to be in love with you. So when do I get to meet the famous Hap, so brilliant, so fascinating? I can compare him to the infamous Jimmy, who sounds like a dimwit.”

Stella hadn’t exactly imagined Juliet meeting anyone in town. Rather, she’d thought of this visit confined to a bubble, rising above the rooftops and trees so there was no real contact with local residents and fewer occasions for Juliet to critique her life.

Juliet had dropped her voice to a whisper. “Is that guy staring at us?”

It was the pizza delivery guy. Stella recognized him from the night he’d made a delivery to the doctor’s house. He must have been fairly new at the job, because Jessica Harmon, married to Joe, the older of the Harmon brothers, and who managed the shop, was going over a map, giving the deliveryman directions.

“I swear he was staring at us. Yuck. He’s probably thirty years old. Don’t look at him,” Juliet hissed when Stella turned to gaze over her shoulder. “We have other things to think about. Tonight we can look through your wardrobe and toss out everything that doesn’t work. That ought to debumpkin you.”

“I don’t have a wardrobe. I have three pairs of jeans, four T-shirts, and four sweaters. Oh, and some socks.”

Juliet grinned. She reached into her overnight case and pulled out several packets of Rit dye. “Black,” she said. “Don’t leave home without it. By tonight, you’ll have a wardrobe.”

Hap Stewart caught up with them soon after they’d been to the pharmacy, where Juliet had managed to swipe a tube of long-lash mascara and a pair of hoop earrings.

“Always in style,” she said when she pocketed the earrings.

“It’s not the same here,” Stella informed her friend as they walked down Main Street. “Everybody knows everybody else. You can’t just steal.”

“But I just did.” Juliet made a face. “Little Miss Honesty.”