Eureka leaned forward to kiss her uncle’s weathered cheek. “Thanks, Uncle Beau.”
He nodded. “Gotta get home, let the dogs out. Y’all come by the farm anytime, okay?” He gave the girls a small salute as he walked to his old truck.
Eureka turned to Cat, cradling the book against her chest. “So the question is—”
“How do we get it translated?” Cat rapped silver fingernails on the dash. “I had a date last week with a classicist-veterinarian double major at UL. He’s only a sophomore, but he might know.”
“Where’d you meet this Romeo?” Eureka asked. She couldn’t help but think of Ander, though nothing Ander had done in Eureka’s presence bore the vaguest semblance of romance.
“I have a method.” Cat smiled. “I go through my dad’s student rosters online, pick out the hotties, and then position myself strategically in the student union after class gets out.” Her dark eyes flicked up to Eureka and a rare self-consciousness displayed itself. “You will never tell anyone any of that. Rodney thinks our meeting was pure serendipity.” She grinned. “He’s got dreads down to here. Wanna see a picture?”
As Cat pulled out her phone and scrolled through her photos, Eureka looked back at the spot where Ander’s truck had been. She imagined it was still there, and that Ander had brought Magda back to her, only now the Jeep was painted with snakes and flames and asymmetrical emeralds.
“Cute, huh? Want me to call him? He speaks, like, fifty-seven languages. If your uncle’s telling the truth, we really should get it translated.”
“Maybe.” Eureka was distracted. She slung the book and the thunderstone and her mother’s letter into her backpack. “I don’t know if I’m up for this today.”
“Sure.” Cat nodded. “Your call.”
“Yeah,” Eureka mumbled, fidgeting with her seat belt, not thinking about her mother’s tears. “Would you mind if we don’t talk about it right now?”
“Course not.” Cat put the car in drive and ambled toward the exit of the parking lot. “Dare I suggest we actually study? That Moby-Dick exam and our GPAs’ subsequent plunges might take your mind off things.”
Eureka looked out the window and watched pale golden buttonwood leaves drift over Ander’s empty space. “What do you say we don’t study—”
“Say no more. I’m your gal. Whatcha got in mind, sister?”
“Well …” Was there really any point in lying? With Cat, probably not. Eureka raised her shoulders sheepishly. “A drive-by at Manor’s cross-country practice?”
“Why, Miss Boudreaux.” Cat’s eyes took on their captivating glimmer, usually reserved for older guys. “Whatever took you so long to say so?”
Manor was several times bigger than Evangeline and several times less funded. The only other coed Catholic school in Lafayette, it had long been Evangeline’s chief rival. The student body was more diverse, more religious, more competitive. Manor kids seemed cold and aggressive to Eureka. They won district championships in most sports most years, though last year Evangeline went to State for cross-country. Cat was determined to hold on to the title this year.
So it was like crossing enemy lines when Cat pulled into the Manor Panthers’ jock lot, which opened onto the bayou.
When Eureka opened her door, Cat frowned down at her own knee-length navy uniform skirt. “We can’t go out there dressed like this.”
“Who cares?” Eureka got out of the car. “Are you worried they’ll think Evangelinos are here to sabotage them?”
“No, but there might be some studs out there working up a sweat, and I look like a total frau in this skirt.” She unlocked the trunk, her mobile closet. It was heaped with colorful prints, a lot of Lycra, and more shoes than a department store. “Cover me?”
Eureka shielded Cat and faced the track. She scanned the field for signs of Ander’s frame. But the sun was in her eyes and all the cross-country boys looked similarly tall and lanky from here.
“So. You’ve decided to get yourself a crush.” Cat rummaged through her trunk, muttering to herself about a belt she’d left at home.
“I don’t know if it’s that acute,” Eureka said. Was it? “He came over a couple nights ago—”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
Eureka heard a zipper and glimpsed Cat’s body shimmying out of something.
“It was nothing, really. I left some stuff in his car and he came by to return it. Brooks was there.” She paused, thinking about the moment she’d stood sandwiched between two boys on the brink of a fight. “Things were really tense.”
“Was Ander weird with Brooks or was Brooks weird with Ander?” Cat spritzed perfume on her neck. It smelled like honeydew and jasmine. Cat was a microclimate.
“What do you mean?” Eureka asked.
“Just”—Cat was hopping on one foot, fastening a high heel’s strap—“you know, Brooks can be rather possessive about you.”
“Really? You think so—” Eureka broke off, rising swiftly on her toes as a tall blond boy rounded the curve of the track ahead of them. “I think that’s Ander—no.” She lowered her heels back to the ground, disappointed.
Cat whistled in amazement. “Wow. You don’t think your crush is ‘that acute’? Are you kidding me? You were just crestfallen that that dude wasn’t him. I have never seen you like this.”
Eureka rolled her eyes. She leaned against the car and looked at her watch. “Are you dressed yet? It’s almost five; they’re probably about to start cooling down.” She and Cat didn’t have a lot of time.
“No comments on my look?”
When Eureka turned around, Cat was wearing a skintight leopard-print tube dress, black stilettos, and the little lynx beret they’d bought together last summer in New Orleans. She twirled, looking like a taxidermist’s centerfold. “I call it the Triple-Cat.” She made claws with her hands. “Rawr.”
“Careful.” Eureka nodded at the Manor kids on the field. “Those carnivores might eat you up.”
They crossed the parking lot, past the line of yellow buses waiting to take kids home, past the phalanx of orange water coolers and skinny-legged freshman boys doing sit-ups on the bleachers. Cat was getting catcalls.
“Hey, homie,” she purred at a black kid checking her out while he jogged past.
Eureka wasn’t used to seeing Cat around black kids. She wondered whether these boys saw her best friend as half white, the way white kids at Evangeline saw Cat as half black.
“He smiled!” Cat said. “Should I catch up? I don’t think I can run in this dress.”
“Cat, we came here to look for Ander, remember?”
“Right. Ander. Supertall. Skinny—not too skinny. Delightful blond curls. Ander.”
They stopped at the edge of the track. Even though Eureka had already run six miles that afternoon, when the toe of her shoe touched the pebbly red gravel, she got the urge to sprint.
They watched the team. Boys and girls staggered around the track, running at different speeds. All of them wore the same white polo shirt with the dark yellow collar and yellow running shorts.
“That ain’t him,” Cat said, her pointer finger following the runners. “And that ain’t him—cute, but not him. And that guy certainly ain’t him.” She frowned. “It’s weird. I can picture the aura he projects, but it’s hard to remember his face clearly. Maybe I just didn’t see him up close?”
“He’s unusual-looking,” Eureka said. “Not in a bad way. Striking.”
His eyes are like the ocean, she wanted to say. His lips are coral-colored. His skin holds the kind of power that makes a compass needle jump.
She didn’t see him anywhere.