Excerpt: Watcher and Dancer

Annie pulled the car into a service station with a Burger King and a Pizza Hut attached. I vaguely remembered a time when gas stations were just gas stations.
“Here,” Annie said, reaching into her wallet and pulling out a five-dollar bill. “Go get yourself a snack. We'll meet back here at the car.
As I walked away, I turned and saw Annie and Belle still in the car. They were talking to each other, throwing their hands in the air occasionally and gesticulating wildly. Were they angry? But why? Angry at me?
I turned around and walked to the gas station. I didn't really feel like food, but I bought a package of sour worms and a liter bottle of Coke. I was angry and tired, and sour worms and Coke usually helped with both.
At the gas station cash register, there was the usual display of postcards, keychains and other assorted tchotskies. “Welcome to the Land of a Thousand Lakes,” announced a wooden refrigerator magnet. I thought about Mr. Hurley, my geography teacher, who had pointed out that depending on how you defined the term “lake,” that slogan was either ridiculously high or ridiculously low. Maybe they just decided to take the middle path, between two ridiculous extremes.
I paid for my candy and walked back to the car. Annie was standing outside and pumping fuel into the car, while Belle sat inside with the door open, staring at a point on the gas station ground.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” said Annie. Belle didn't even look up.
I tore open the bag of sour worms with my teeth and offered it to Belle. “Want one?”
Belle looked at the open bag, then back at me. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. Why else would I offer you a sour worm if I didn't want to?”
Belle smiled. This time it was a real smile. She took a sour worm. “Thanks, sweetie,” she said.
“You're welcome.”
Her smile made me think back to when I was nine and Annie and Belle came to take me on a camping trip up on Lake Superior. She wasn't Annie's girlfriend yet, I guess, just a good friend, but I could tell that they were interested in each other as soon as we got out of town. And I liked her – the way she talked to me like I was an adult, not some stupid kid, the way she made my big sister laugh all the time, the way she knew how to cook amazing things over a campfire. (“Living on a farm teaches you a few things,” she said. I later learned that living on a farm also taught her to get kicked out of home when she was only fifteen, but that's another story.)
Annie came around the car. “Hey, can't I have one too?”
I offered the bag to my sister. “Yeah, I suppose. Don't eat all the orange ones, though.”
Annie grinned and picked out an orange and purple sour worm. “I'll eat what I want, little sis, and just you try and stop me.”
“Hey!” I reached out to tickle her in the stomach like I used to do when I was a kid. When I was little, she could just reach her hand out and hold my head while I tried to get her. Now, I could easily reach her stomach as she tried to twist out of the way.
“Oh, you two,” Belle said, laughing. “Get you two together and it's like I'm living with a couple of monkeys.”
“Not true,” said Annie. “Monkeys are much more well behaved than my sister.”
“You're going to pay for that,” I said, cackling with glee as I started chasing Annie around the car.
“Watch out for the gas line,” shouted Belle. Annie stepped over it gingerly, but I jumped over it handily.
“Gotcha!” I said, throwing my arms around Annie's waist. She turned around and grabbed me back as we dissolved into a fit of giggles.
But then the giggles faded, and we were still standing there, arms around each other. My eyes started to water as suddenly, the situation I found myself in started washing over me like high flood waters. Momma was gone. I was leaving my home with my big sister to go live in Minneapolis, a place I had only ever visited. I'd be going to a new school, trying to make new friends, facing new challenges. And I would be doing it without my dear mother at my side.
Sobs suddenly started to rake my body. I felt Annies arms wrap tightly around me, her hand stroking my hair, but it was only a small comfort. I loved my sister, but my mother... she couldn't ever be replaced.
Suddenly, I became aware of stares directed at us. I looked up and saw a family in a Suburban, every one of them looking at me and my sister. What a pair we must have looked – me with my long blonde hair and faded sundress, her with her short dyed black hair and enough piercings in her ear to keep the steel industry in business. And Belle in the passenger seat of their Camry with the rainbow bumper sticker across the top of the back windshield. It would be enough to cause a scandal here in the prairie.
I took deep breaths to calm myself. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry.”
“You've nothing to be sorry for, Ky Ky.” Annie patted my back softly. She took my chin between her thumb and finger and lifted my face to hers. I could see that her face was teary as well. “Don't be sorry for feeling what you're feeling. Never be sorry for that.”
I nodded dumbly and allowed myself to be led back to the car.