Popsicle Confessional

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked me with a sly smile playing on her blue-popsicle-hued lips.

  “Sure I can,” I replied with a shrug and bit the end of my own red popsicle right off. I’d never been a patient person like Stella obviously was, seeing how much of hers still remained.

  “Good, so can I,” she said with a giggle and took another long, ponderous lick of her icy treat. 

  I rolled my eyes and ignored her feint. She just wanted me to beg her to tell me whatever it was she was hinting around at and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She did something similar every summer when her mom dropped her off at our house and then took off to Fiji or France or Japan, once. I always wondered why she didn’t take Stella with her and felt half-bad that the kid missed out on all the travel and the adventures and half-annoyed that I’d be stuck with the blonde pig-tailed munchkin for eight whole weeks.

  Not that having her around changed my routine all that much. I still had chores around the house, and volunteer work at the local library twice a week, and a long summer reading list that I’d write out in the beginning of June and usually have entirely crossed off by the end of August. If Stella was there it just meant that I’d have someone to share the burden of my chores with, and someone to follow me around the library as I restocked shelves, and someone to read out loud to while we hung out in the backyard under the willow tree. 

  Which, when compared with the exotic allure of jetting off to Fiji or France or Japan seemed like a pretty lousy way to spend your summer. I guess I figured buying her a popsicle every afternoon from the whirring ice cream cooler toward the back of Duke’s Bait & Tackle shop was the least I could do for her.

  “I’m gonna be thirteen next month,” Stella said suddenly, lazily swinging her Ked-covered feet back and forth as we sat on the weather-worn fence that enclosed Duke’s dirt parking lot watching the bustling traffic speed down Highway 35. ‘Bustling’ meant there was one more than the usual two trucks passing by in the span of half an hour. 

  “Is that the secret?” I asked, licking a streak of red ice-melt running onto my hand. 

  “No,” she said emphatically, rolling her cornflower blue eyes at me. “It’s just a fact.”

  “Thirteen, huh?” I gave a low whistle like I was impressed, but seeing as I’d passed that particular benchmark myself nearly three years ago I can’t say that I found it all that impressive.

  “So Mom says that next year I can go with her. She says she wants to take me to New Zealand.”

  I whistled again, making her laugh this time. “Is that the secret?”

  “No, just another fact… Where is New Zealand, exactly? She didn’t say.”

  “By Australia. It’s like a twenty-four flight, I’ve heard. But beautiful once you get there. You’re a lucky girl.”

  Stella shrugged like it was no big thing, and looked eastward down the paved road, tar-patched in more places than not, down to the unseeable horizon. It seemed to go on forever. I know, because I’d looked down it both ways many, many times. 

  “So, she was waiting until you were thirteen to take you traveling?” I asked, letting my own sandaled-feet swing casually beneath me, feeling a little envious of Stella’s upcoming international excursion. I’d never been farther than three states from my own in any direction. I didn't even have a passport.

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Well, we’ll miss you here, but I’m sure you’ll have a lot more fun getting to go to the Outback. Or whatever it is they colloquially call New Zealand.”

  “It’s just that…” she trailed off, her usually-bright eyes eyes dimming as she glanced over at me. 

  “What is it?” I asked gently.

  “It’s just…I don’t really want to go.”

  “Why ever not?” I asked with a surprised laugh. “Haven’t you wished you could go with her all this time?”

  She shook her head, her long golden plaits bouncing about her shoulders.

  “How come?”

  “I love mom, of course, but…” she shrugged one shoulder and gave her popsicle an absent-minded lick. “I never feel like she really sees me, even when I’m standing right in front of her.”

  I frowned a little but kept my mouth shut.

  “I don’t really think she wants me to go with her, but since I’ll be a teenager, maybe she feels like she doesn’t have an excuse for me not to, anymore.”

  “Stella…”

  “Besides, I like it here better anyway.”

  “Really?” I asked, more than a little surprised now. 

  “Well, yeah,” she replied like it was obvious. “I mean, uncle Stan and aunt Meryl are so kind to me and I get to hang out with you and it’s just more…peaceful. I feel like I belong here, y’know?”

  “Wow, I didn’t know you felt that way,” I said honestly, and a wave of shame flooded through me for all the times I got annoyed at her presence, and begrudged having her following me around every summer. My cheeks felt as red as my melting popsicle. 

  “Can you keep a secret?” she asked again, shooting me a blue-toothed grin that I couldn’t resist mirroring back at her.

  “Sure I can,” I repeated gamely.

  “The secret is I told her I didn’t want to go. That I wanted to come back here next summer instead.”

  “What’d she say to that?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.

  “She actually looked pretty relieved and said that it was my decision.”

  I gave another low whistle, but this time I was impressed for real.

  “Don’t tell uncle Stan and aunt Meryl, ok? They’d try to change my mind. I know they would, because they love me.”

  “Are you sure it’s what you want? I mean, Hawthorne isn’t nearly as exciting or glamorous as—”

  “I’m sure, all right?” she said with a giggle, and I knew she’d been right. I was questioning her odd choice because I loved her, because I wanted her to be happy, even if that meant that I didn’t get to see her every year. 

  “I’m sure,” she said again, gripping my forearm with her small, sticky hand. 

  “Well, if you’re sure,” I said with a shrug.

  “Hey, Jess?” she asked, her feet swinging back and forth again, her heels bouncing against the bottom rail.

  “Yeah, Stella?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Another one? Sure I can.”

  “I know I said blue is my favorite, but I think I secretly like green better.”

  I chuckled and swung an arm around her slim nearly-thirteen-year-old shoulders and asked her in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure I can,” she murmured back.

  “My favorite is green too.”