I'm BACK from summer camp, exhausted, but wanted to get going on this again! Here you go!
Something 'Bout a Small Town Girl
“Mom, I’m taking Frankie out back to play football,” Nick called as he passed his brothers.
Kevin and Joe, eating lunch at the counter, looked at each other knowingly. A few minutes passed, then the back door opened. Joe counted, “Three, two, one,” and Nick shuffled into the room, face red.
“Apparently my shirt is too short,” he muttered, sulking. “I hear screams every time I lift my arm to throw.” He demonstrated the action and his shirt separated from his pants, revealing several inches of smooth, tanned abdomen.
Joe scoffed. “That doesn’t mean your shirt’s too short. Means you work out too much.”
Kevin shrugged. “It means this house is too public. I can’t even step out of the bathroom in a towel anymore, after the last girl snuck upstairs. And, Joe, how many autographs and hugs have you given inside our house in the last week?”
“Uh…” His face scrunched as he calculated. “Lost count at ten.”
“You would,” Nick dug, grabbing a Red Bull from the fridge. “And yeah, I’m with Kevin. We need to get out of this town.”
Kevin smirked. “Done and done.” He pulled out his phone, opened a text, and read, “Brunswick, Maryland, population eight hundred, primary commerce trains and farming. Twenty minutes from the next major city. And a fully equipped recording studio on the outskirts of town.” He smiled. “Dad told me to talk to you guys. He’s got a house for rent, and if we want we can be there in three days.”
Joe stuck the wrong end of his fork in his mouth and let it hang carelessly. “Well,” he drawled, “who’s ready to be a farmer for the summer?”
Nick shrugged. “Sounds like there’s not a better place to hide out. Let’s do it.”
Three days later, before the sun rose and the fan girls arrived, the Jonas boys packed up Kevin’s Jeep Commander and a U-Haul trailer and tore out of their neighborhood at Kevin’s typical high driving speeds. It took them three days, Kevin and Joe trading off driving nonstop across the country, to arrive at the tiny town. They smelled it before they saw it. “Ew! What is that?” Joe exclaimed.
“That would be, um, field fertilizer,” Nick answered. “Lovely.”
Joe put on his drawl again. “Where’s my cowboy hat and my gas mask?”
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of a little white cottage-like house. “Home, sweet home,” Kevin declared.
“It’s cute,” Nick commented, “but small. I’m going to have to share a room with Joe, won’t I?”
“No way!” Joe protested, “Share with Kevin!” as Kevin emphatically agreed with Nick.
Then the oldest boy laughed. “No, actually. There are four bedrooms--two in the basement. When Mom, Dad, and Frankie join us, he’ll be in one of our rooms, but until then we’ll have our own.”
“Dibs on the biggest,” Joe crowed, and sprinted up the steps, only to slam painfully into the door when he turned a locked knob. As he reeled back, Kevin walked calmly past him, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Recovering, Joe dashed past him and claimed the biggest room he found.
“Take it, bro,” Kevin conceded. “I’ll just take the one with air conditioning.”
Joe’s eyes widened. “Mine doesn’t have AC?”
He grinned wickedly. “Window units, and yours doesn’t have one. Welcome back to life in a small town. It’s been a few years since Wyckoff, huh?”
Across the hall, pointedly firing up his window AC, Nick crooned in his best Jordin Sparks imitation, “How you gonna live with no air, air…”
Joe groaned. “I can tell where my spending money is going.”
Later that day, there was a knock on the door and Kevin answered. “Oh, hi.”
And elderly lady stood on the step with a loaf of blueberry bread. “Just wanted to welcome our new neighbors to the community, young man. I’m Elsie. I live across the street.”
“Um, nice to meet you. I’m Kevin.” Joe and Nick, curious, came up behind him. “And these are my brothers, Joe and Nick. We’re just here for the summer.”
After a few more polite words, she gave them the bread and left, but there were three more visits that night. “So, laying low,” Joe remarked after they greeted a family of four from down the street, “maybe not working so well.”
“Hey, no on recognized us,” Nick pointed out. “Ten people and no one knew us. Pretty unusual.”
The other two agreed. “And hey,” Kevin added, “we have blueberry bread, banana nut bread, a bread casserole, and sugar cookies as a result. I can handle that.”
They shared some cookies and headed to their beds. As Joe stripped off his shirt and flopped onto the lumpy mattress that had been pre-furnished, the cicadas started chirping. Sirens, honking horns, and plane engines he could handle--cicadas, train, and whippoorwills were a little different. It was a long night for Joe.
