"Because she's mean the way people are mean when they're scared," Linh said. "Like the girl with the chocolate milk."
June thought about that all morning.
* * *
Sunday was the biggest day of the first weekend, and by eleven the concourse was so packed you had to turn sideways to get through. The heat had come in hard behind a front, ninety-three degrees by the bank sign on Grand Avenue, the air thick as cream. That should have been good for lemonade, and it was, a little. But across the concourse, Kruse's Famous had a line forty people long, because Rollie had put up a new banner overnight: LEMON SHAKE-UP 50¢ TODAY ONLY. FREE REFILLS.
"He's losing money on every cup," June's mother said, watching. "He's doing it to us."
"Can he do that?"
"He can do whatever he wants. He has four stands. We have one." Her mother wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. "We're at a hundred and twelve dollars. Yesterday at this time we were at a hundred and ninety."
June did the math. At this rate they'd go home with half of what they needed. Less, if Rollie kept selling at fifty cents.
The ring was in her pocket. She had threaded the line before the gates, with Wendell and Linh, just in case. It was up there now, right this minute, running invisibly under the edge of the striped awning from Wendell's pole to a little cup hook under the counter where she'd tied it off. One of the trick cups sat on the counter at the near end of the runway, threaded and waiting, with two inches of real lemonade in the bottom. Nobody had noticed it. Nobody ever looked at a cup that wasn't theirs.
She just had to do it.
She couldn't do it.
Every time she touched the ring in her pocket, she pictured the cup jerking and throwing lemonade into someone's face, and Shelby Kruse laughing loudest. She pictured her grandmother hearing about it. Your granddaughter tried to float the cup and it fell on the ground. It was worse than not trying. Not trying, at least, you could say she was sick.
At twelve-thirty, Shelby came back.