Page 43 of Possibly Texas

“Ugh.” I leaned my head back to groan at the skylight, though I wasn’t unamused.

“Don’t be a spoil sport.” He nudged me like I’d nudged him. “In a week or so you can come see the finished product and you’ll know what I’ve been doing in here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ve seen it. You’ll show me the finished product soon. Got it. But…”

Auggie watched me.

“What?” he asked.

“Where—where do you live?” I looked around grandly. “I mean, I don’t see beds and stuff. Or…anything?”

Auggie chuckled.

“I don’t live here, live here,” he explained. “The house is a little bit further up the creek, but on the same property as the barn. The barn is just my workspace.”

“That’s nice?” I frowned. “You have a whole barn to do your…art.”

Auggie nodded. “Installation art.”

“Installation art.” I mocked him with another playful nudge.

Auggie stumbled back dramatically and the both of us laughed.

“Wise guy,” I teased.

“Sometimes.”

For a few moments, I looked around the gloomy barn interior, wondering what Auggie could possibly be doing that would be considered art. It didn’t take long before I found myself giving up, realizing that whatever it was, I wouldn’t figure it out before Auggie was ready to show it to me.

“So,” I turned to him, “are we still going to get coffee, or what? I haven’t had breakfast. Maybe Starbuck will have some of those muffins from the other day. It was really good.”

“Blueberry?”

“Blueberry.”

“Yeah,” Auggie made a slurping noise, “he always has those. They’re so good.”

“Well?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Auggie seemed to come out of some daydream. “Let me just turn my music off and we’ll go. Meet you outside?”

“All right.”

I headed towards the barn doors as Auggie ventured further into the barn, crawling over industrial duct work to wherever the music was coming from so he could turn it off. The barn door was considerably lighter than I had expected—or had just been hung exceptionally well—because I was able to swing it open with ease. Once the golden sunlight was flooding the barn interior once more, I turned to find Auggie had climbed over all of the duct work to a radio on the other side of the room from the doors. He switched it off and began his journey back over all of the duct work as I stood waiting for him.

Once he had made his way to the barn doors, Auggie ushered me out and then slid the massive green door shut behind us. Without another word to each other, we headed to the creek that the barn was settled beside and started to follow it further into town. Auggie and I, him with a light skip to his step and me slightly dragging my feet like always, didn’t try to make conversation. We traveled down the creek in comfortable silence. We passed the row of buildings on Liberty Lane and then the end of the tram tracks without a word. I could just see the Jolly Roger high on the mast of Starbuck’s, just over the tops of the trees, when we were nearing the back of the post office.

As we started to round the post office and hook a right towards Starbuck’s, the sound of voices at the front of the teal clapboard building grabbed our attention. Auggie and I glanced over at each other as we walked and listened to the commotion. Finally, we gave each other a nod and turned to head towards the front of the post office so we could see what was going on.

When we rounded the corner of the building, the source of the voices came into view, though the reason for the loud discussion wasn’t clear. Levi Lee, Starbuck, Sofia, and Wyatt were all out front, talking animatedly about something. I glanced at Auggie and he simply shrugged as we approached the small group of people.

Who’s watching the counter at the coffee shop? I thought to myself.

“Well, it doesn’t happen often,” Sofia was announcing to the others as we approached. “It certainly does not.”

“Arrrr, no it doesn’t,” Starbuck agreed.

“When did it arrive?” Levi Lee asked excitedly, prompting Auggie and me to exchange another glance as we came to stand beside the discussion group.