Umbrella Summer

by Lisa Graff

  “Thanks.” I went to go stand next to Sue Beth McKernin in the circle, but Mrs. Harper stopped me.

  “Annie?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you. You don’t remember what I did with Mr. Harper’s book, do you? The green one we were looking at the other day? He’s been searching for it, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

  I gulped. “No,” I said, shaking my head fast. “Don’t remember. Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I’m sure it’ll turn up sooner or later, don’t you think?” The way she was looking at me right then, like her eyeballs were squinty little laser probes, I thought for a second that she must’ve known I was the one who stole it. But she didn’t say anything else, just gave me one last giganto hug and called the Sunbirds to order.

  Sue Beth gave me a friendly smile when I went to stand next to her, which was nice because across the circle Rebecca and Nadia were both sticking their tongues out at me. I tried to ignore them while we started up the “Welcome Fellow Sunbirds” song.

  Welcome fellow Sunbirds

  We’re glad to have you here

  It’s nice to have the Sunbirds

  To help me through the years

  Jared always called it “Welcome Fellow Dumb Birds,” and once when I was all dressed up for a troop meeting, he even made up his own words to it.

  Welcome fellow dumb birds

  We’re glad that we are dumb

  Our outfits look so stupid

  And our cookies taste like scum

  I’d been real mad when he sang that one, his voice all high and squeaky. But I was starting to think that it was actually a pretty good version after all.

  twelve

  When we were finished with the singing and the official Sunbird announcements, Mrs. Harper split us up into groups. I went over to the side of the parking lot with the washers and we started filling up buckets with hose water.

  Jessica and Tanya were in charge of suds. They were best-friends-forever and also kind of mean, so no one ever argued when they said stuff. That’s why they got the bright blue sponges shaped like giant dog bones and buckets of soapy water, and Sue Beth and I got stuck with the hoses. It could have been worse, though, because at least we got to blast things with water. Kate had to do drying, which was the worst job there was, but she was the nicest of anyone, so she got stuck with it. Also her mom said she’d help.

  While we were hosing, me and Sue Beth played I’m going on a picnic, except instead of picnic we said Mars, because that was more fun. Sue Beth was the county spelling bee champion for our grade last year, so she knew tons of good words. Except I don’t think she knew what all of them meant.

  “I’m going to Mars,” I said as I sprayed a car, “and I’m going to bring an abalone shell, a banana, a cataract, a dog, an enzyme, a fish, a guerrilla warfare, a hat, an iris, and…” I worked hard clearing off some suds while I thought up a word for j. “And a joke.”

  “A joke?” Sue Beth asked. She had lots of pretty curly brown hair, and it was pulled back with a pink polka-dot headband. I wished I had a polka-dot headband.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I bet you’d need a lot of jokes if you went to Mars. So you’d be able to tell them to the aliens and crack ’em up.”

  We played the Mars game three times. Only once we did Jupiter. And we sprayed cars with water and I did not look at Rebecca and Nadia, way over by the sidewalk, with their stupid bake-sale table. I was getting pretty wet from the water spraying off the cars on me. My ugly purple skirt was sticking to my legs, and my socks with the ugly green tassels looked like something Mr. Normore’s wiener dog puked up. And all my Band-Aids on my arms and legs were soaked again and the edges were starting to curl. Everyone else was wet, too, but they were all wearing normal clothes so they didn’t look so dumb.

  Sue Beth and I were just refilling the buckets for Tanya and Jessica, deciding if we should take a picnic to Saturn, when I saw who was next in line.

  It was Doug Zimmerman. On his bicycle. He grinned at me, mouth wide open like a jack-o’-lantern.

  “Hello, Aaaaaannie,” he said.

  I just kept on filling up the bucket and pretended I didn’t even see him. I was still mad at him for safari ninja-ing me and almost giving me gangrene and saying I wasn’t fun anymore.

  He pedaled forward in the car-wash line until he was real close to me. His bike tires were making sudsy tracks all over the parking lot, so you could tell exactly where he’d been. “Aw, Annie, you’re not still mad at me, are you? I said I was sorry about ninja attacking you. How’s your arm?”

  Doug Zimmerman didn’t care one ant’s behind how my arm was, and I knew it. “What do you want?” I said.

  “Are you going to the picnic tonight?” he asked. “Because we’re going to build the best obstacle course ever. Aaron got about a billion pool noodles ’cause he’s been lifeguarding all summer, and we’re going to use them as limbo lines. Also maybe pole vaulting. And then when you get to the last part of the obstacle course, in the lake, you have to tightrope walk on the noodles. I’ve been practicing at the pool. It’s real hard.” He looped a figure eight. “So? You coming?”

  I sprayed suds off the car in front of me and didn’t look at Doug. “You’re not supposed to horse around in the pool,” I said. “You could drown.”

  “I think the obstacle course sounds fun,” Sue Beth said, but I glared at her and she went back to hosing.

  “You should both come,” Doug said. “I invited other people from school too. We’re gonna have a contest.”

  Someone in line behind him honked a horn.

  “Get out of the way,” I told Doug. “We’re trying to wash cars.”

  Doug looped another lazy circle. “Well, what if I want a bike wash?” he said.

  “This isn’t a bike washing place, Doug,” I said. “It’s a Junior Sunbird car wash. And you didn’t even pay. So go away.”

  “Yeah,” Sue Beth said. “Go away or we’ll hose you.”

  I decided right then that if Rebecca really wanted to be mad at me for good, I was going to make Sue Beth my new best friend. I liked the way she thought.

  Doug put his feet flat on the ground. “Nope,” he said. “I want a bike wash. And you should give me one for free. It’s a community service project, and I’m in the community.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I turned to Sue Beth when I said it. “I guess if you really want a bike wash…”

  I think maybe Sue Beth was my brain twin or something, because she figured out what I meant right away. We both put our thumbs on our hoses so they sprayed real powerful, and we shot the water right at Doug. We did some screaming and shouting too.

  Doug wasn’t mad like I wanted him to be, though. He put his arm up in the air and pretended to scrub in his armpit like he was taking a shower. I guess that was pretty funny, and Sue Beth and I started laughing at that and spraying him more, and Doug kept taking his pretend shower.

  But then Jessica and Tanya saw us, and they must’ve wanted to help Doug’s bike wash too, because they ran over and started rubbing his bike all over with their soapy sponges. Kate’s mom got mad and started yelling, angry like a hornet, and Sue Beth and I stopped with the hoses right away, but Jessica and Tanya kept going. They soaped Doug’s bike all up, and then they started soaping him. They soaped his sneakers and his shorts and his T-shirt, even his hair. I could tell Doug didn’t like the soaping very much. He tried to get away, but Tanya grabbed his bike handle and wouldn’t let him.

  “There’s soap in my eyes!” Doug started hollering. “There’s soap in my eyes!” He tried to wipe at his eyeballs with his hands, but they were soapy too.

  That’s when I remembered I had a hose. “I’ll help!” I shouted at him. Because if you got a foreign object in your eye, you were supposed to wash it out right away, or you could go blind. So I sprayed him, right in the eyes. But I guess he wasn’t ready for it, because the spray knocked him over on his butt, bike and ev
erything. And even though he was a boy, he started crying.

  “Girls!” Mrs. Harper came running over, her elbows jiggling like Jell-O, and she looked angrier than a cat in a bathtub. “What’s going on?” she asked. Rebecca and Nadia were right behind her. “What happened?” She helped Doug off the ground.

  “The girls attacked him,” Kate’s mom said. “They just started spraying water at this poor boy.”

  I could tell Kate’s mom had never met Doug Zimmerman before, because she called him a “poor boy” instead of an idiotic tree jumper.

  “She started it,” Jessica said. And she was pointing at me. Her and Tanya’s sponges were on the ground, like they hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

  “Did not!” I shouted.

  “Annie,” Mrs. Harper said, “I’m very disappointed in you. This is not the way Junior Sunbirds behave.” She frowned at me, and I got the feeling that she thought Not Acting Like a Junior Sunbird was worse than punching puppies. I bet if she really knew about the book stealing, she would’ve kicked me out of the troop for sure. “Now I want you to apologize to Doug, and then I’m going to help him get cleaned up.”

  “Sorry, Doug,” I said, the water still whooshing out of my hose onto the pavement, splashing up onto my socks.

  Nadia smiled at me with a not-very-nice look on her face. “Good thing you’re not friends with her anymore, huh?” she said to Rebecca, and not even quiet either. “She’s crazy.”

  That’s when I sprayed her. Just to show her how crazy I was. She screamed loud as a fire truck, but I didn’t care, I just soaked her, toes to hair. And I sprayed Rebecca, too, for standing right next to Nadia and letting her be mean and not even saying anything.

  “Annie!” Mrs. Harper screeched, shocked all over. “That is not the way Junior Sunbirds beha—”

  But she didn’t get to finish her sentence, because I soaked her too.

  Then, while they were all busy dripping and screaming and thinking what a crazy loon I was, I ran into Sal’s Pizzeria and locked myself in the toilet stall. I didn’t leave until the pizza lady came in fifteen minutes later and said my dad was there to pick me up.

  I unlocked the door and trudged out of the bathroom, making sopping-wet footprints the whole way. Dad just stood there, shaking his head slowly side to side. I thought he was going to say something about me being a soaking mess, or getting into trouble, or maybe even being a lunatic, but all he said was “Come on, Moonbeam. Let’s go home.”

  thirteen

  As soon as I opened the front door, Mom called out, “Annie?” from the den, and I knew that meant I had to go in and talk to her. Dad went straight up to his office to work, which I thought was pretty smart of him, because even from two rooms away I could smell the Lemon Pledge fumes. When Mom was upset about something, she cleaned. The week after Jared died, I bet we had the cleanest house on the planet, with vacuum lines running over every inch of the carpet.

  I walked to the den, still wet in my ruined soggy purple Junior Sunbird outfit.

  “Um,” I said from the doorway. I didn’t go all the way inside. Mom was polishing our coffee table so hard, I was surprised there was any of it left. I just knew I was going to get it for the hosing. I was going to be grounded, or lose my TV privileges, or have to be on dish duty for a week. “Hey.”

  Mom put down her polishing rag. “Hey, Annie.” Her voice came out nicer than I expected. “Come here, sweetie.”

  I was surprised by the “sweetie.” I wondered if it was some sort of trap, but I didn’t have much choice but to go on over.

  Mom wrapped me up in a hug, squeezing me so tight, I thought maybe the polishing fumes had been getting to her brain. The big green book had mentioned something about that. But she didn’t look like she was having hallucinations or anything, so I figured she was probably okay. She patted the couch with her hand, and we both sat down, my skirt pressing itchy wet wrinkles into the backs of my legs.

  “So,” she said, looking at me right in the eyeballs. But then she didn’t say anything else. Which after a while made me feel sort of squirmy and wonder about the fumes again.

  “Um, Mom?” I said. “Didn’t you want to yell at me or something?”

  She smiled a tiny little smile. “No,” she said, and she shook her head. “It’s just…I’m worried about you, I guess.”

  “You are?” I thought that was weird. I wasn’t the one acting kooky. “How come?”

  “Well, it’s just this whole thing today was so unlike you, Annie. You’re normally so well-behaved, and then you go and spray down everyone at the car wash. It’s a bit worrisome.”

  I sighed. “I wasn’t being a very good Sunbird, I guess.” I figured if I sounded sorry about it, maybe Mom wouldn’t give me dish duty. But also I was starting to think that maybe I really wasn’t a very good Sunbird. Maybe that’s why I only had three badges. If they had badges for book stealing and making your best friend hate you and soaking half your Sunbird troop, I’d have a whole sash full already. I wondered if Mrs. Harper was going to kick me out. It would probably serve me right.

  “But there are other things I’m worried about, too,” Mom said. “And I just thought…well, I thought it was time for us to talk about them.”

  I watched a drop of water drip slowly off my skirt onto the floor. “Like what?” I asked.

  “Well…” Mom lifted up my left arm and gently tapped each one of my soggy Band-Aids—the ones for the just-in-case poison oak spots, and the two that were covering up places I thought I might have sun poisoning. “And that book you were reading, with all the diseases.”

  “The Everyday Guide to Preventing Illness?” I said.

  She nodded. “That’s the one.” Then she sighed, real big and deep. “And Mrs. Harper tells me you’ve been overly concerned about sunblock, and Mr. Normore saw you walking down the street last night wearing your bike helmet.” She tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Annie, honey, I just think you’re worrying too much. You need to stop.”

  I thought about that, and then I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me?” Mom said, raising up one eyebrow.

  “I don’t think I’ve been worrying too much,” I told her. “I think it’s good to be careful.”

  “But—”

  “You’re the one who said I should wear sunscreen when I’m outside. And you bought that bike helmet for me too, when I first got my bike.”

  “That’s true, Annie, but this is different.”

  “How?”

  Mom started licking her bottom lip then, and I thought for a second I really was going to get dish duty. But in the end all she said was “There’s a line, Annie. There are things you should be worried about, and things you shouldn’t. Besides”—she straightened the magazines on the coffee table—“all you really need to be worried about is being a kid, and being happy. Let your father and me worry about the other stuff, all right?”

  I knew for a fact that wasn’t going to work. Because Mom and Dad didn’t know all the stuff to worry about like I did.

  “Can I have my book back?”

  “Annie,” Mom said, “I want you to tell me one thing that you’re happy about, right at this moment.”

  “Then can I have my book back?”

  “No.” She smoothed out my Junior Sunbird sash. “Go on. One happy thing.”

  I glared at her for a second, but she wasn’t giving in, so finally I closed my eyes and tried to think. Mostly what I thought about was how drippy and itchy I was, and how I really wanted to not be wearing my ugly wet Junior Sunbird outfit anymore so I didn’t get a horrible rash, but that was not a happy thing, and I knew I wasn’t going to get to change clothes until I came up with one. So I thought some more.

  Finally I had it.

  “Ducks,” I said, and I opened my eyes.

  Mom tilted her head to one side. “Ducks?” she asked.

  “Yeah. The ducks at the lake. It’s a happy thing because today we get to go down and feed the
m, just like we used to do with Jared. I’ve been saving up the bread, remember? I’m going to get at least fifty points this year.”

  Mom didn’t say anything, so I thought maybe that wasn’t a happy enough thing and I needed to keep going. So I thought of some more stuff.

  “And fireworks,” I said. “Fireworks are good too.” Actually, now that I was thinking about it, there were lots of happy things today. Ducks, fireworks, hot dogs, watermelon. For being a holiday without any presents in it, the Fourth of July was a pretty good one. “Remember how when Jared was little he used to think the fireworks were for his birthday, because they were right in the same week?” I smiled, thinking about it.

  But Mom wasn’t smiling. She was frowning hard, picking lint off her sweater.

  I watched three more drips fall to the floor from my soggy skirt, waiting for Mom to tell me I’d come up with some good happy things and I could go change, but she didn’t. So finally I said, “Mom? Can I go now?”

  She snapped her head up quick to look at me, like she’d forgotten I was there. “Oh,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

  I stood up. “What time are we leaving, anyway?” I asked.

  “Leaving?”

  “For the lake. What time are we going?”

  Mom went back to picking at her sweater, even though I didn’t see any lint balls there at all, and I had twenty-twenty eyesight, I knew that for a fact.

  “Mom?”

  “I think I’m going to sit out the Fourth of July this year, sweetie,” she said.

  “What?” You couldn’t sit out the Fourth of July. It was a holiday. With hot dogs.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, standing up and giving me a kiss on the forehead. “I’m just not feeling up to it. But if you want to go, I’m sure your father will take you.”

  “But I don’t want to go with just Dad,” I said. “We used to go all together. Me and you and Dad and Jare—”

  “I want you to take off those Band-Aids when you change, all right?” Mom said, picking up her polishing rag. “All of them. From now on you are not allowed to put on a Band-Aid unless you are actually bleeding, you understand me?”