#shaverne

Laverne & Shirley 

Cool, evening breeze brushed Laverne’s face as she zig-zagged down the narrow road leading from the Pizza Bowl to the Feeney family apartment on her old bike. It would need new pedals soon--the right one snapped in half and the left one cracking. Her knees brushed the handle bars with each push, her mid-winter growth-spurt setting her now-lanky legs at an awkward angle, but she didn’t care. The bike was the last gift her mother gave to her before her cancer spread four years back, and she didn’t plan on parting with it any time soon. Or at all. And even if she did, it wasn’t like her pop had the money to buy her a new one, so she was content. Gripping the worn, rubber handlebars, Laverne came to a screeching stop as a large, black cat ambled inches away from her front tire. Instead of arching its back and darting away as she came to expect from city cats, it merely looked up at her, entirely undisturbed and unimpressed. Thick fur still hugged the cat’s body, not yet shed despite the Milwaukee snow having melted away. Slowly, Laverne reached into the faded straw basket secured on the front of her bike and pulled out an old camera. She had found it abandoned on a shop windowsill the day before on her way home from school, and stashed it away from her pop’s eyes. If Shirley had been there, she would’ve called Laverne’s actions “stealing,” but Laverne preferred the term “borrowing,” since she was gonna put it back once they were done with it. Probably.

“Are you sure we can do this?” Shirley asked, leaning out the driver’s side window of Mr. DeFazio’s truck. She watched as Laverne tugged in vain at the thick metal chain wrapped around the fence that stood between them and a winding dirt road that snaked into a thick expanse of trees.

“Sure,” Laverne said. “Lots of people have come up here. It’s the most private place in Milwaukee.” She pulled a pin out of the back pocket of her jeans and jammed it into the lock fastened at the middle of the chain. “Don’t worry, we’ll leave it just as we found it.”

Shirley hummed, unconvinced. “Lots of people? Like who?”

Laverne’s hand paused on the lock just long enough for Shirley to notice.