The Summer of Owen Todd

by Tony Abbott

  The house around me looks so normal in the morning sunlight. The furniture, the wallpaper, the dust standing in the window light. I stop and look out at the driveway where we stood last night. It’s just a driveway. I smell bacon, toast. I hear Ginny gurgling her juice and Mom laughing. I stop and stop and stop.

  There’s nothing to tell. Practically nothing.

  The sentences I practiced in my mind fall apart in the light. Not only is it a gross thing to put words to, and grosser if it turns out to be wrong, I wouldn’t get to hang with Sean anymore if it turns out he’s lying and I repeat his lie. And what will my mom ever think of me, saying the words I’ll have to say? Naked peeing? Nude pictures? Touching boys?

  My chest buzzes just thinking about the expression on her face, in her eyes.

  Then, when I step into the kitchen, Ginny’s there at the table, red nosed and sniffling, my mom’s hand on her forehead, whispering, “Better today, a little.”

  So … no. There’s nothing to tell.

  Better just take the sting of Sean’s joke, accept that he fooled me, forget it, and move on with being normal.

  As I sit down in my seat, Ginny twists a tissue into one nostril and lets it dangle there. “I’m sigg,” she says, meaning “sick,” and lets out a breath from her mouth that puffs the tissue up in front of her face.

  “Don’t breathe on me,” I tell her.

  “But I’m sigg!”

  The laugh I laugh sounds a little stiff coming from my mouth. Hoping it doesn’t show, I wiggle a strip of bacon from my teeth and say, “Oh, wait. I’m sigg, too!”

  Ginny and I laugh together.

  I don’t tell Mom or Dad about Sean. It’s a story only for me. It’s in the past. It’s nothing. A practical joke. A strange one, maybe, but it’s because he’s angry he has to have a sitter. I finish eating, then bounce up from the table, rinse my plate in the sink, see the patio, and think about Sean last night.

  “You know what, I think I’ll go see what Austin’s up to.”

  “Oh?” Dad looks up at me. “What about the side garden? You were going to clean that out and put the wood chips down.”

  “Oh, yeah. I will.”

  “Everything okay?” says Mom. “Isn’t Sean back yet?”

  “Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. I’ve just sort of … Sean’s okay. It’s just we have another game coming up. Austin and I can toss the ball around. I’ll show him a thing or two. We’ll win. For the first time ever.” It’s lame, clunky, but I think it’s enough, and I casually leave the kitchen.

  Ginny trots after me, passes me at the bottom of the stairs, and crawls up on her hands and knees. She lifts her arms jerkily, like a marionette, and groans at each step, “I’m a bubbet. A sigg bubbet!”

  “You’re goofy, I know that much.”

  Ginny makes a face. “I’m going back to sleeb.”

  Then I hear my parents talking low. “… have any problem,” my father says, exaggerating the word as if the idea is silly. “Even friends have glitches, if that’s what you mean.”

  Ginny reaches the top step, lies down on the landing.

  “I mean…” Mom is saying, but I don’t hear what she means because she says it softly and Ginny is still groaning. I step down a few stairs and listen.

  “He’s okay.” My dad squeaks his chair away from the table. The coffeepot clinks. “I would know.”

  Finally, I tiptoe back up the stairs, all coiled around inside. When I pass the bathroom I see Ginny on the pot with her head down, humming. I close the door on her. She keeps humming. I go to my room for nothing, stand in the middle of the floor. I decide to myself that I’ll skip the game tomorrow, so I won’t see Sean. Maybe I’ll do something, pretend I hurt myself pulling a muscle weeding the overgrown garden. Something like that, so I won’t have to play. I need time away from him. I trot back downstairs through the kitchen with a smile.

  “You know what? I’ll do the yard work instead. All of it.” I head to the back door.

  “Wait,” Mom says.

  “Mom, I’m fine—” I start, but that’s not it.

  “I’m thinking of going to the beach after your game tomorrow,” she says, reaching for her cell phone, which is on the table, then unreaching. “Wellfleet.”

  I know the place. It’s an out-of-the-way beach we’ve been to a few times, but not recently. It’s nice. Quiet. But I don’t want to play baseball, don’t want to see Sean. Then, an idea.

  “Ginny, too?” I ask. “Just us?”

  “She has ballet,” my dad says. “Or she might need to stay home with her cold. Either way, Uncle Jimmy will handle the track. I already asked him.”

  Then Mom spins around, her phone in her hand. “I thought we’d invite Sean.”

  “What? Mom, I don’t—”

  “Just you and Shay,” she says, and before I know it she’s tapped Mrs. Huff’s number and is waiting for her to pick up. “He needs a break from his sitter. You, me, Sean, the beach. It’ll be good.”

  I’m spinning. Not really, no. It won’t be good. I don’t want to see Sean.

  ELEVEN

  So that day, Friday, I stick around to do the yard like I promised. It turns out to be a beautiful morning. Seventy-three degrees, sunny, big-skied. My dad leaves for the track. Ginny finally goes back to bed. Later, while I’m dragging some bags of wood chips from the shed to the back border, Sean phones.

  Mom answers, leans halfway out the screen door to the patio. “Owen, it’s Sean about tomorrow!”

  “I’ll call him back. My hands are all dirty.” I figure if he hears me yell this, he’ll know I’m busy.

  I don’t call him back. He calls again in the afternoon. Mom shouts upstairs, but I make it obvious I’m getting in the shower and can’t take the call. While I’m letting hot water drip over me, I decide it’s lame to do something to get out of the game, like I’m the one playing tricks now, so I don’t. But I don’t call him back and don’t see him all day. It’s my way of getting even.

  * * *

  Dad drops me at the field Saturday morning. I delay as much as possible before we leave the house so it’s practically game time when we get there.

  “I wish I could stay,” Dad says. “But I see Sean’s already here. Mom’ll come before the end of the game. I’m popping over to the track for a bit, then Ginny’s staying home with me. Have fun at the beach.”

  “No problem.” I watch him drive away. I see there’s a beach bag tucked next to Sean’s cooler under the first base bench. Coach is finishing a pep talk, but I can tell from his face he’s really hoping Kyle will just miraculously float down from the treetops, swinging a bat and smiling like he always does.

  But no. Kyle’s not floating in, and we’re going to lose worse than ever.

  I apologize to Coach for being late, hustle out to center field, and the game begins. Good. No bench time with Sean.

  The game, however, this game I wanted so much to miss, is finally a surprise.

  * * *

  The team from Orleans is smart and together and they score a run in each of the first three innings, once with a man on base. It’s 4–0. In the fourth, John Pelosic hits a lone double for us and then incredibly steals it into a run. Who knew John could sprint that fast? 4–1. I’m waiting in center, but all the Orleans hits are going right. Without Kyle, our own hitting is nonexistent. Back and forth, on the field or waiting to bat, I don’t say a word to Sean, though every time I catch a glimpse of him, he’s staring at me like he wants to talk. I look away and mingle with the other players.

  Despite his small size, the Orleans catcher is a power hitter, and the big excitement of the fifth inning is when he blasts a line drive past both Austin, who’s pitching, and Adam, our second baseman. As soon as I hear the crack of the bat, I run in a little. The ball shoots past second, and I’m prepared to go either right or left if it bounces. The runner’s nearly at first. The ball comes to ground just outside the dirt and bounces left. I turn, glove it in the air, sweep it into my fingers
, and shoot it to second, where Adam is waiting. The runner is between the bags. He slows when the ball slaps Adam’s glove. Adam chases him back to first, tosses the ball to Eric Cimino who has a foot on the bag, but Eric chops at the toss and bungles it. It drops into the dirt. Now the runner spins back and slides into second before Eric can snatch up the ball. We all scream. Adam and I did our parts, but another run is set up to score.

  That happens two batters later with an into-the-trees home run, so both the hitter and the guy on second trot home easily. Score: 6–1.

  Then, in the sixth inning, with the score 7–1, something big happens.

  The sun has dried the morning dew, and in center the freshly mowed grass is just soaking up the heat. I glance over at Sean. He’s looking small in his shallow spot in left, and I want to feel angry, but I’m not really mad. I don’t know why. Maybe it comes to me that after everything, he’s been my friend too long to keep this dark thing going. The anger’s been grinding at me, and it’s not worth it. I glance up, the sun is beaming overhead like God looking down, and I find my bad feeling drying up like dew and vanishing into air.

  I’m still planted on the grass, legs apart, but somehow lighter. I look over at Sean again. Maybe sensing me, he turns and mouths something. I don’t make it out because suddenly there’s a sharp crack.

  It’s a power drive just inside the third-base bag, a low fast arc to Sean. This is actually pretty rare. As Coach has told us a hundred times, Little League batters hit mostly to right field and even if they hit to left, the hits are low and weak, so the fielder usually just chases down the ball and tosses it to second or third, a short throw.

  Well, Sean’s not ready. The ball smacks the grass about ten feet in front of him. I run toward it for back-up, but he’s way closer and he finally hustles to grab it, except it bounces askew and he skids on the grass into a sitting position, with the ball having bobbled up off the ground and into his glove. I think he’s surprised he actually has it, because he looks around first before seeing it in his glove.

  “Sean! Sean!” Adam screams at second, grasping at the air for the ball that Sean hasn’t thrown yet. But with the runner chugging toward Adam, it’s already too late to throw to him.

  “Sean, to third!” I yell. He could stop the runner there, but he doesn’t. He takes the ball from his glove and lobs a slow one somewhere beyond second, almost to me. It comes down halfway between second and third like a brick out of heaven. Plop. No one is there.

  You understand that all this takes no more than a few seconds.

  “Sean, you ass!” someone yells.

  I run to the ball along with everyone else now. Adam from second, Austin from the mound, Danny Zabin at third, everyone.

  Suddenly, I hear my mom’s voice out of the stands—“Go, Sean!” she’s cheering, “Go, Sean!”—and he’s the only one who isn’t doing anything, I guess because he’s thinking it would be dumb if he actually fielded the ball he threw.

  With everyone converging on that tiny spot between second and third, the runner jerks sideways, stupefied, as if a rope tying him to second has suddenly grown taut. Then he resets and powers toward third, jumping over the rolling ball and weaving through the traffic jam.

  “Hey, idiot! You idiot!” people shout. At Sean? At me? I don’t know, but I find I’m running at a crouch, sliding my glove along the ground, and—thwip!—I feel the ball’s weight. I whip it into my fingers, reaching back to throw.

  Then something tells me to wait. Just wait. Wait long enough for the runner to tag third and roar to the plate. He does. I bullet the ball home, hoping the catcher will just do his job and get the guy out. The ball seems to hang in space for an hour or two before—slap—it’s in the catcher’s mitt, and the runner’s out.

  Coach’s head, arms, legs explode. He screams at the top of his lungs like a lunatic. “You kids! I knew it! I knew it!” Half the team is standing in the red dirt between second and third, even Sean’s there now, checking his upper arm under his sleeve. There’s a moment when we’re all jumping as if we won the game.

  We don’t, of course. Our moment of glory is all reversed in the top of the last inning. There are two outs. I’m at bat, and Sean’s on deck.

  “I want to hit,” he says to me. “Don’t you dare strike out.”

  I can’t tell whether he’s serious or joking until he says, “Please? Please, please!”

  I snort. “Oh, dude, I got this.” I even point my bat out to right field as if that’s where I’m going to hit to. “I got this.”

  “You better.”

  “I do.”

  “You better do.”

  The pitches come startlingly fast. Before I know it, it’s one ball, two strikes. I wait for a good one. No pressure swings, I say to myself, just wait for the right pitch. The first is outside. Ball two. The next pitch overcompensates and nearly smacks my hip. Ball three. I back away, look up at the blue sky. It’s all so perfect. I take three, four practice swings.

  “Come on,” the catcher snarls under his breath. “Strike out, already.”

  I step back into the batter’s box.

  I crouch for the pitch.

  I strike out.

  I hear Sean groan for a half second before the Orleans team sends up a huge shout, and the game is over, 8–1. I blow it, but that magical play is still in my head. My rocket ball to home plate is classic. Sean trots to the bench, stops, waits for me.

  “We did it,” he says. “Some play. I throw to you, you throw to home? Out!”

  I didn’t see it that way, of course. It wasn’t that way. Sean totally bobbled the ball. But I let it go. Coach is still in heaven, grinning ear to ear, animated. Mom is dancing down from the stands, smiling, hugging me, jangling her keys. Sean grabs his cooler and beach bag. I’m swept into it.

  TWELVE

  So, Wellfleet.

  It’s halfway up the forearm, nearing the skinny wrist below P-town. I’ve been a handful of times, not lately, and Sean, never. The east side of the highway going up the Cape is mostly the National Seashore, so to get to the town beach, you take a left, drive up and down and into the center of town, which isn’t big, and is sort of laid back, a little frayed, “shabby, even,” Mom says, “but Wellfleet is where the famous oysters come from.”

  “What famous oysters?” Shay asks.

  “Wellfleet oysters,” I say.

  He snorts. “That makes sense.”

  We wind through the streets, cross a couple of skinny roads through marshes, and head up a hill and then over to the beach, which Mom tells us is called “the Gut.”

  “It’s where those famous oysters end up,” Sean says.

  “Ha.” Mom slows the car. “Here we are.”

  She parks at the top of a road leading to the beach. We grab our stuff and work down to the bottom of the road, which ends in sand. Even with arms loaded, I scramble up an overgrown sandy path between a pair of narrow-slatted fences.

  From the crest you can see the giant bowl of Cape Cod Bay. The shore below stretches wide and long beneath high cliffs of sand and goes deep out into the blue water. The surface is clean and calm. Straight west across the bay is Plymouth, where the Pilgrims landed. There’s a stiff breeze coming over the crest. I lean into it. A second later my back tingles. I feel Sean move up behind me and linger there. I don’t turn to him, just look at the bay.

  * * *

  I want to say the ride out here was normal. It wasn’t. I talked. Mom did. Sean talked. He told us about his mother’s job, her rough first few weeks there, the summer movies he wanted to see, how his mother had to order a new batch of pods, because the last bunch had some that didn’t work, and now he’s wearing his second-to-last one, and maybe we didn’t see but he fell on it during the game, though it’s working fine.

  It all seemed regular, but despite not being angry anymore, I’m keeping a part of myself back. I’m not completely me, not like you’re yourself and you know you are and it’s just you. No. I’m a little off. Words are colle
cting in my throat but they won’t come out. I don’t think my mom noticed while we were in the car. She was busy driving, but maybe she did.

  One thing.

  When we drove left off Route 6 at the Wellfleet sign, Sean shifted next to me to get into his beach bag—we’re side by side in the back seat—and his elbow slid across my forearm. Without thinking, I flinched as if I’d been stuck by a pin or shocked by static.

  “What the heck?” he said. “You could move.”

  And it’s suddenly different. As if even my arm knows that something’s not right, something has changed. His touch tingled on my skin and my stomach felt it, and I remembered Paul in his room when he was changing. I felt bad to think that way, to act like that, but there you are.

  Mom asked about his fall on the field.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  After that, we mostly just looked out our open windows.

  * * *

  Right now, as I’m standing on the crest of the dune, him behind me, I still feel what it felt like when his arm brushed mine. At any minute, Sean could blow it all with another story—real or not, it doesn’t matter. I can’t seem to move. I hold my breath. I actually feel my blood running in my veins.

  I try to shake off the feeling, and scan the beach.

  To our left is a curving taper of sandbar in the shape of Mexico. There are a couple of families there, maybe more, with little kids scouring the wet sand for shells.

  Sean looks out over it too. “Nice.” I turn finally. He rests a beach chair against his leg. His hair flips up in the breeze, then settles. He runs a hand through it.

  “It’s pretty quiet here,” I say. “That’s probably the best thing about it. You forget everything going on back there.” I tilt my head to mean Brewster. I realize I did that for myself. I want to get away from what’s going on there as much as he does.

  “Smell that?” I ask.

  “Perfumey.”

  “Beach roses,” I tell him.

  “Oh. Right.”

  All along the crest of the dune among the long grasses are thickets of prickly stemmed wild roses—my mother calls them “beach roses,” though not everyone does, and I’m not sure if there are actually two different kinds of roses, beach and wild. Most of the blooms near us are pink, with white ones here and there.