“Edith?” my mom says. “Are you still on the line?”
I close my mouth.
“Sorry, I thought she might have forgotten to hang it up,” my mom says to Officer Elwayne.
He lets out a snicker. “Watch out for that one. She sure is a sweet girl, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Something about his mischievous tone makes me think of the night he brought us home from the hurricane. “My old friend Hannah.” And then I have another memory. Welles. “Wild as a thicket of blackberries.”
A few minutes later, after we’ve all hung up, I hear the floorboards of the stairs squeak, and my mom tries to walk nonchalantly past the study.
“Mom?”
She stops walking.
“I actually was listening.”
She makes a tsk sound. “Well, that’s called eavesdropping, Edith, and—”
“I know, okay? And I’m sorry. But what did he mean by that last thing he said?”
“By what, honey?”
I tilt my head and look at her. “The apple not falling far from the tree. Because I’m guessing that this is about me sneaking out the night he brought us home. I’m the apple and you’re the tree, aren’t you?”
She seems to shrink. “Okay, Edith.”
I wait for her to continue. When she doesn’t, I say, “Well?”
“Well.” Her exhale sounds like a slow leak, and like a raft she seems to deflate. “The fact is that I had my share of antics when I was a teenager.”
“Antics?”
“Like, well, also sneaking out. And having Officer Elwayne bring me home.”
“You did? I don’t believe it.”
“Edith, I’m not proud of it, and you shouldn’t be either.”
I smirk. “What else?”
“Well, a lot of skipping school. In fact, so much that I was this close to failing ninth grade.” She pinches her thumb and forefinger together so close that they almost touch.
“No, you—you couldn’t have. You’re . . . well, you’re you. With a Ph.D.! In statistics! You don’t fail anything. You might even be the smartest person I know!”
“Thank you, Edith, but doing well in school isn’t necessarily the same as being smart.” She comes in and sits down in a chair in front of the desk. “I guess I took a lot of silly risks when I was young.”
“At least Petunia let you take them.”
“It’s more that she didn’t try to stop me. I did a lot of things just to try to get her attention. Sometimes I felt like she cared more about her animals than she did me.”
“But . . . that can’t be right,” I say. “Maybe she loved you so much that she wanted you to have your freedom. Like the way she handled Barbara. You know, maybe she was worried about ‘killing your spirit.’”
She seems to consider it. “Well, Edith, I suppose that’s possible. But I think I needed more of a mom, less of a handler.” She smiles a little at me. “Maybe that’s why I hang on so tight sometimes. I never want you to feel that way.”
“Oh.” I feel a little stupid at always being so upset with my mom.
“I am sorry you didn’t get to meet her, Edith.” She smiles. “You probably would have liked her.”
“I do like her,” I say.
My mom lifts her eyebrows.
“I kind of feel like I know her—just being here, you know, and meeting people who knew her.”
She gives me a sad smile. “I wish she and I had worked out our problems. But—and you’ll hear this a lot as you get older—relationships aren’t always easy. They can really get complicated.”
I think about what she says, and the fact that Rae is out bird-watching and I’m here without her. And Mitchell—well. That’s even more complicated, with all that bud stuff. And then, of course, there’s Taylor and all those scary things that I don’t even know what to do with. Yes, relationships really aren’t easy. I have a summerload of proof of that.
“Mom?” I say this even though she’s already looking at me.
“Yes?”
“Taylor’s been with Sophi at Camp Berrybrook all summer. They’ve been hanging out together nonstop.”
“Oh.” She grimaces.
“And I picked up the phone because she was supposed to call me today—it’s visiting day and her mom was going to make sure she called me. But she hasn’t.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t know any of this. Is that who you’re writing to?”
I look down at my page. “No, this is just—” Another failed checkmark. “Something else.”
“Well, maybe you should write to her.” She lets out a long sigh, one that sounds a lot like relief. “Sometimes it feels better to get things out there.”
Then she tells me she’s going to make some coffee and asks if I want a cup. One cup.
Now it’s my turn to confess. “To tell the truth, I’ve been sneaking it all summer.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve been keeping tabs.”
“And you let me?”
She smiles in a way that makes me feel a little more grown-up. Or at least more almost thirteen, and less twelve. I take her up on that cup of coffee.
She gives me a little head squeeze of a hug and leaves me to writing. But I think about what she said, and crumple up my story. What scares me most—it’s not snakes.
It’s losing the one person I look forward to seeing every day, the one person who truly understands me. It’s lonely Saturday nights. It’s making new friends. Forget flirting and dancing in abandoned buildings. Sure, those things have freaked me out, but it’s losing Taylor that scares me the most, and maybe, like my mom said, it will feel better to just get it out there.
I try this scary thing again.
Dear Taylor.
Wait. I cross it out. Too serious. Too brooding.
Taylor, hey you!
Too flippant. This time I tear the sheet off the tablet.
Hi, Taylor—
There’s something I need to tell you.
I stop again. Now what? I tell her how I’ve spent the summer doing all these crazy things just so I wouldn’t lose her to Sophi Angelo? And she doesn’t even know it?
I feel a jolt of panic. Who am I fooling? She’s been off gallivanting with Sophi at Camp Berrybrook for almost a month. The scary-awful truth is that the worst thing has probably already happened—I’ve probably already lost her. And if I haven’t, none of the stuff I’ve done or haven’t done is going to keep her interested in me.
This letter is useless. Pathetic. Ridiculous.
But the list? It’s just become more important. Because suddenly it has nothing to do with proving anything to Taylor. And it has everything to do with proving something to myself.
I will cross Corkscrew Swamp. Under that full moon. Which will be rising on Sunday night.
I’ve been helping my mom and uncle out all afternoon—it seemed like they could use it. It’s pretty late in the day when Rae and the twins burst in from their day-cation. I’m in the upstairs hall taping over a patch of new drywall when I hear the thud of the back door, and then the twins laughing their heads off like they’ve had the time of their lives.
“Edith?” Beatrice calls out.
“I’m upstairs!”
They flop and thwack their way up the stairs, and I notice their hair and clothes are damp.
“Um, last I checked, the Florida scrub jay is a bird, not a fish,” I joke.
“It still is,” Henry says.
“Oh! We spent almost four hours just filming, waiting for it, but nothing,” Rae says. “So then we decided to jump into the lake. And guess what, Edie? Already a hundred and ninety-four likes! And everyone thinks the supertwins are really”—she sort of winks—“smart as a button.”
“Yeah, we did carpe diem!”
So now Beatrice is saying it too?
“You don’t do carpe diem,” Henry corrects Beatrice. “You just carpe diem. Right, Rae?”
“Right.”
The t
wins run off to their room to change, and Rae and I go into ours.
“So, drywall?” Rae says as she flops down on her bed, damp clothes and all. “That’s what you’ve been doing all day? I thought you wanted to work on your story.”
“Yeah, I did work on it.”
“So can I read it?”
“It’s mostly in my head,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “I thought you wanted to check something off that list.”
“I did. I do,” I say. “I mean, I tried, but—let’s just focus on Sunday night.”
“What’s Sunday night?” she asks.
“The full moon.”
She looks at me blankly.
“Rae,” I say, trying to hide my simmering annoyance. “Item seven. Cross Corkscrew Swamp under a full moon? And you said—”
“Oh. Right!” she says. “I remember. I said I’d do it with you.”
“Because I need you to—”
I stop. Now what exactly do I need her for? Am I too scared to do this on my own, or is this just another case where I’ve made things so much scarier in my head than they are in reality?
“I know, I get it. We have to sneak out, and get to the swamp in the dark, and then—wait, have you ever rowed a boat?”
“No,” I admit.
“Well, I have,” she says. Of course she has. “The oars can get heavy. It’s a little hard at first, but you get used to it, so it’s not, you know, impossible.”
I sigh and deflate. Like it or not, I do need her.
Chapter 20
Corked
It’s Sunday evening. The moon is full. And I don’t want anything to ruin the plan tonight. Not Rae’s flagging enthusiasm and increasing absences. Not the constant interruption of all things Leo, and all things “like”-able. Not the fact that everything feels like it’s changing in some way, like a day being deprived of a few seconds.
The furniture—at least what’s being kept to stage the house—has been moved into the center of the room and covered with canvas, and Rae and I are painting the study. Our arms are sore from using the paint rollers; our skin is splattered with specks of du jour white.
Uncle A.J. checks in on us. “How’s it going, sports?”
“Horrible,” Rae says. “I thought you weren’t supposed to paint on a rainy day.”
“It’s just drizzling. And anyway, that sounds like some sort of superstition,” he says.
“No, actually, paint takes longer to dry on a rainy day,” I say, and then immediately shut up. I sound so Posey-Preston.
Uncle A.J. laughs. “Well, if we had all the time in the world, maybe we could wait. But fact is, we’re running out of it. So paint on.”
He leaves, and Rae says, “Now he’s hovering.”
“Yeah, I think my mom might actually be contagious,” I say, and sigh. “I just hope they’re working as hard as they’re making us work. Maybe they’ll sleep like babies tonight.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” she says. Her voice is a little flat, but she’s been so moody lately, it doesn’t really surprise me.
“So,” I say, “I checked on the rowboat while you were—well, what were you doing?”
“When?” she asks.
“When you sort of disappeared this morning.”
“Oh, well, I was trying to call Leo.”
“Again?”
She looks a little embarrassed. And maybe she should be. She’s always calling him.
“Anyway,” I continue, “everything’s ready. I . . .” I walked down to the swamp all by myself! I can’t say that. I’d sound like a kindergartner. And of course I was making all sorts of kissing noises. And I might have tiptoed and run as fast as I possibly could, like some sort of scurrying mouse-human. So maybe I should just keep it to myself. “I mean, the rowboat is ready to go.”
“Oh, okay. Cool.”
“We’ll need our flashlights. And you’ll probably want to wear your black sweatshirt—or something dark like that.”
“Okay.” She keeps rolling the wall with the paint.
Her roller seems a bit dry, so I pour some more paint into the tray and offer it to her. “Do you want—”
But she’s hardly paying attention, and she answers the question I haven’t dared to ask. “Yes, I told you I’d go with you, Edie.”
“I meant do you want some more paint on that roller?”
Then she finally notices I’m holding the paint tray.
“Oh.” She lets out a weak laugh. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. And I want that to be true—that everything is actually okay. So I put on a voice as flowery and dramatic as I can muster. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Right?”
She brightens. “Oh my god, Edie. That’s right. Love Story. You really are getting good at this.”
Or maybe I’m just getting pretty used to it. The same way Petunia got used to having her mouth washed out with soap. I prefer Ivory.
But she lets out a laugh, and I make myself smile back, because I want to believe in the dynamic duo again. Like nothing between us has changed.
But apparently something has. Because at dinner at the BEST Diner in Town, Rae says, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay,” I say.
She lowers her chin. “No, I mean we have to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Okay.” But instead of feeling a sense of togetherness, I feel a sense of dread.
In the bathroom, Rae takes a breath and says, “So I have to tell you something.”
“What?” I try not to let it sound like an accusation, but it probably does.
“Don’t hate me.” She bites her bottom lip.
“You’re canceling on me, aren’t you? Unbelievable.”
“No, Edie. I’m not, okay? But I might be a little late.”
“Why?”
“You’re going to think I’m so stupid. It’s—”
“Is it Leo?”
She stares at the floor. “If you must know . . . ,” she says, and then stops.
“What?”
“If you must know.” She meets my eyes, sighs, and looks down again. “Leo is FaceTiming me. I have to go out to the shed to take his call, since it’s the only place I have good reception.”
I exhale. “How late are you going to be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour? It’s our six-month-iversary. And okay, Edie, to be honest, he’s been kind of hard to reach lately. But he wanted to make sure I could talk with him tonight—”
“Month-iversary?” I’m sure I sound disgusted. If this is what having a real boyfriend is really all about, maybe I’ll go back to the fake ones. And just stick to buds.
“See?” She looks hurt. “I knew you’d think it was stupid.”
I don’t correct her—she’s not wrong. I just push the door open and head back to our table. Once there, I wedge myself in between Henry and Beatrice and play a million rounds of tic-tac-toe—enough to numb my brain. I feel Rae staring at me from time to time, but I don’t look at her, not once.
And although we sit next to each other in the van on the way back from dinner as usual, I sit as far away from her as possible. When we hit a bump in the road and my ankle accidentally touches hers, I pull it quickly away.
Chapter 21
Knock Knock
The house is completely quiet. After saying good night to everyone and pretending to come to bed, Rae snuck out to the shed to take her stupid month-iversary FaceTime call. But it’s been over an hour, and I’m flopping around on my couch bed on this last full moon of our stay—which has turned out to be incredibly bright after all—feeling like I’m letting a critical opportunity pass by.
Mitchell.
His name pops into my mind, and I sit up in bed. Never mind Rae and her precious Leo. Maybe Mitchell will come with me, friend or bud or whatever he is.
I quickly get out of bed and feel around for my clothes and shoes. After I dress, I run my fingers through my hair and tiptoe down the hall.
I pause in front of the twins’ bedroom door and hold my breath. But I don’t hear a thing—not a rustle, not a whisper. I’m safe from their prying eyes. I continue my slow creep down the stairs. Through the kitchen. Out the back door.
Outside, I stop. My hands are empty. I’ve forgotten the flashlight! But I can’t risk going back, and the brightness of the moon lights the path ahead. It seems like there’s nowhere to go but forward.
I move into a fast shuffle across the yard. Smack. Smack. Smack. I make the snake-clearing kissing noises as I run toward Mitchell’s house. I’m relieved to see that the lights are still on, and I can hear the sound of the TV as I get closer. I also smell something baking—cookies, maybe?
I knock, but the TV’s pretty loud. I hear an Italian-accented voice. The Godfather?
I try again, but some talking and a burst of laughter from inside drowns it out.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think a party was going on. Old Edith would have tucked her tail and gone home, but now, I just knock harder.
“Hey, Mitchell?”
“Edie?” I hear. The laughing stops. The TV is turned down. “Hang on a sec, okay?”
When the door opens, he gives me an awkward smile. “Hey. How’s it going?”
“It’s—” I stop myself. I don’t want to get caught up in small talk and lose my nerve, so I just Geronimo my way into the invitation. “I wanted to ask you—”
But then I notice something. A pair of flip-flops. Hot pink. Rae’s. And it all makes sense. Rae’s disappearing acts. Mitchell’s weirdness. The Godfather. They’ve been secretly hanging out together and haven’t wanted to tell me.
I’ve been a complete moron.
“What did you want to ask me about?”
Uh, uh, uh. “Turtles,” I say quickly. Once again, it’s clear that I don’t think well on the spot. Klaus. Toilets. Turtles. Wonderful.
“Turtles?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Never mind,” I say, backing off the porch. “I’ll just see you around.”
“Edie?” he says, but I turn and start walking away.
Then I hear her voice. “You think she knew I was here?”
The Summer of Bad Ideas Page 15