Page 78 of Heartland

“What is it?” Ellie asks.

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head to clear it. I turn away from the window. “Dylan’s ex is in there.”

“What?” Ellie shrieks, pushing past me to peer through the window. “Who is she? Wait…” She rises onto her tippy toes. “The one with the fancy red scarf, right? She looks like the evil queen in Snow White.”

I laugh, because it’s not a horrible comparison. Personality-wise, anyway. “She’s smug, isn’t she?” I hate that she’s here, even though I can’t imagine that Dylan invited her. But either way, Kaitlyn outgunned me in a game of wits I’d never wanted to play.

“Fuck her,” Ellie says with surprising ferocity. “Let’s go. New plan. I’m buying us something to drink. But you have to flash your ID at the liquor store.”

I laugh as she grabs my hand. “Okay. What do you want? I think there’s cheap wine that comes in a box.”

“Cider,” she says firmly. “You choose the kind.”

Cider reminds me of Shipley Farm. I can’t sit around mooning about Dylan, drinking out of a bottle with his name on it. That’s too loser, even for me. So when we reach the store I choose a four-pack of Citizen Cider, a Shipley competitor.

Take that, Dylan.

“I’m still not ready to go home,” Ellie says. “Let’s go contemplate life from that weird sculpture in the quad.”

“Okay, sure,” I say. It’s cold out, but partying with Ellie is a heck of a lot more fun than moping at home.

* * *

Forty minutes later, I’ve forgotten to be cold. The cider has warmed up my insides, and Ellie can’t stop giggling.

“What do you think this sculpture is supposed to be?” I ask, leaning back against its granite base. I raise my chin and squint up at the odd twisting shapes corkscrewing toward the sky.

“No idea what the artist was thinking!” Ellie shouts. “But I have a theory. A dirty theory.”

“Really?” I eye the sculpture again. It’s easily twenty feet high, but even my dirty mind can’t see anything sexual there. “What do you mean?”

She pulls out her phone and unlocks it. Then she hands it to me. “Google ‘duck penis.’” She burps.

“Did you say ‘duck penis’?”

She pushes the phone into my hands. “Go on. I dare you.”

I never could turn down a dare. So I search that term and—

“Oh. My. God. We’re sitting under a giant duck penis.”

“Three of them!” Ellie shouts.

“How does this evenwork?” I squint at the phone.

“The duck vagina is very strange,” Ellie says with a sniff.

“And you somehow know the shape of the duck penis and vagina?” I have to ask.

“Apparently.”

“That’s pretty kinky for a virgin, Ellie.”

She hoots with laughter. “This is the only penis we’re seeing tonight.”

“Apparently.” Now we both giggle like idiots.

“I think it’s time to go home,” Ellie says.