Summer and July

by Paul Mosier

  It’s only nine o’clock here in California. It’d be noon back home in Michigan.

  Mom went to the hospital before the sun came up. She won’t be back here until the sun goes down. In the kitchen I see that she made coffee, which has turned to sludge. I pour a bowl of sugar-laminated flakes and sit in the front room eating them.

  Mom has the Beach Boys playing surf music on internet radio. She’s obviously trying to make me excited about a whole month where I’m within reach of sharks and tsunamis.

  The summer morning passes through the open windows of the front room. The breezy white curtains make me feel like I’m in a commercial for laundry detergent.

  Over the Beach Boys and the chirping of birds outside I hear the sound of a skateboard coming my way, the wheels hiccuping at every new section of sidewalk. Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh.

  Then it stops. I hear a scratching noise, faintly, in the quiet between a song about a girl and a song about a wave. Then the skateboard noise again. Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh, back the direction it came from.

  Then just the crunch of sugar-laminated breakfast flakes, the Beach Boys, my footsteps on the hardwood floors, the clink of my bowl set in the kitchen sink.

  There’s a note from Mom on the counter that I missed while pouring my cereal and milk.

  Juillet—

  Good morning! Happy first full day of your summer holiday! Here is a list of goals for your month in Ocean Park:

  More exercise and fresh air.

  Confront your fears.

  Go outside your comfort zone!

  I’ve left space for you to add to the list!

  Also, please go to the grocery today and get the following:

  Blueberries

  Bread

  Butter

  Ground coffee, dark

  Maybe a healthier choice of cereal?

  Anything else that sounds good to you!

  There’s a healthy grocery store nearby, called Conscious Consumption. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Reusable grocery bags are under the sink.

  See map below, and attached cash. Keep the change for fun.

  You’re a smart, capable young woman. You can navigate this neighborhood and stay safe during the month we are here. It’s time for me to be brave enough to let you prove it.

  That said, please don’t cross Lincoln, and stay between Rose Avenue and Colorado Avenue, which is where the pier is. The library is just a couple blocks away, and there is plenty to see on Main Street. And of course the beach!

  Thank you, and enjoy!

  Love, Mom

  PS. Keep your phone with you so I can track where you are!

  Attached with a paper clip is a hundred-dollar bill, which eases my dread only slightly. My hope was to not leave this house the entire month, but it looks like that’s not going to last the first full day. Mom’s crazy idea is that being in a strange place without my only friend for thirty-one days will somehow be fun and adventurous.

  I tear off the top part of the note—the part with Mom’s goals for me—and crumple it up and throw it in the wastebasket beneath the sink. She should make some goals for herself instead, like possibly spending time with her daughter every now and then.

  In my room I pull on my jeans, my big toes getting caught in the rips in the legs once on the left and twice on the right. Next I deck myself out with my black Monkey Experiment T-shirt, and my skull-and-crossbones high-tops. Then I do my face with pale foundation, ivory powder, black eye shadow, black eyeliner above and below, black lipstick, and three passes of mascara. I put my copper-colored hair into two ponies just to keep it out of my face.

  I don’t really make myself up this much when I’m with Mom. She’s not a big fan of this look. She says she feels like she’s attending my funeral every time she sees me in this makeup. But we hardly see each other anyway.

  I grab one of the grocery bags from under the sink, open the front door, and am greeted by something paperish stuck in the screen door.

  It’s a postcard. On one side is a photo of a Ferris wheel and the words Greetings From Santa Monica! I flip it over and see words handwritten in blue ballpoint pen.

  Hey, Betty! Meet me at 10. Ignore Alien Orders. Ciao!

  I feel something crawling up my spine, but crawling quickly. It’s not an iguana or anything like that. It’s a feeling.

  How does Otis know where I’m staying? Mom would kill me if I hung down with a surfer boy who’s practically a surfer man. And it’s kinda creepy that he’d want to. But it’s kinda incredibly exciting, too, not unlike an iguana crawling quickly up my spine. I don’t know why iguana comes to mind, other than that it seems strange and terrifying.

  Not that I’m going to meet him at ten, but where does he want to meet? And what does he mean by ignore alien orders? Maybe that’s some kind of surferspeak. Like cowabunga.

  Doesn’t matter. Isn’t gonna happen. I fold the postcard and put it in my back pocket, so I can throw it away later. Then I come around the hedge and out onto the sunlit sidewalk.

  I put the list with Mom’s hand-drawn map into my other back pocket, and pull out my phone.

  “Siri, find Conscious Consumption.”

  Siri tells me I need to go several blocks down Fourth Street, then left on Rose. But as I walk, looking down at the route on my screen, before I get to the next block I come upon a section of sidewalk with words that were etched into the cement when it was wet.

  IGNORE ALIEN ORDERS.

  At the edge of the letters is a pair of bare, suntanned feet, facing my black high-tops. I look up and see the obnoxiously beautiful girl from the ice cream shop, grinning at me.

  “Hey, Betty!”

  I frown. “My name isn’t Betty.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s Betty.”

  I scowl. Then it hits me. I’m not sure if it’s relief or disappointment. “Did you leave that postcard in the screen door?”

  “Well, I’m the one standing at Ignore Alien Orders at ten o’clock. Actually you’re a little bit late.”

  She’s still smiling. She’s the kind of pretty that makes you feel like she’s making fun of you, just by looking at you and smiling. I’ve seen girls like her before, at every school I’ve been to. But never quite so much as this girl.

  “I was just going to the grocery store,” I say.

  “You didn’t come out to meet me?”

  “No. I didn’t even know these words were here in the sidewalk.”

  She frowns. “I was sure you’d have seen the words. You seem like the shoe-gazer type.”

  “I’ve only been here for one day.”

  “Oh. That explains why I didn’t meet you earlier.”

  I look down at the words. “What does it mean?”

  “It means ignore alien orders! Don’t listen to what the little green men say. Bossy little devils.”

  “Did you write it?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s been here since forever. According to the Big Kahuna. He lives right over there.” She points to a bungalow across the street. It’s aqua blue with a surfboard leaning against the wall on the front porch.

  “Well, excuse me,” I say. “I have to get groceries.” I begin walking.

  “I have to get groceries too!” She follows alongside. “But we should ride our skateboards.”

  I stop, and turn to her. “Why are you doing this?”

  Her smile disappears, and she looks maybe a little hurt. Like maybe there’s more to her than just being impossibly happy all the time.

  “I thought we could be summer friends,” she says. “That’s how it’s supposed to work with visitors. You come to Ocean Park and get to see the sights, and I get to see you.”

  I feel something strange, light. Like my stomach is smiling. But I furrow my brow. “I don’t have a skateboard.”

  She smiles. “Then we’ll walk.”

  I frown. “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because we’re going to the grocery store! And because you look so cool made up
like a punk-rock corpse doll.”

  I’m almost certain she’s making fun of me, so I don’t say thank you. But maybe I smile a very little bit, just in case she meant it.

  I start again down the sidewalk, and she walks beside me.

  It’s strange having her next to me. Except for Fern I haven’t walked beside someone my age in forever. And Mom put an end to that. So I focus on the screen in my hand, looking at the line between here and there, looking up every few seconds at what we pass.

  “You don’t need the map app,” the girl says. “This neighborhood is home for me. I know where everything is.”

  I look her up and down, like I’ve just noticed she’s wearing a bikini bottom and a strange swimsuit top that has short sleeves. And nothing else.

  “Are they gonna let you in the store like that?”

  She makes a screwy face, like my question is absurd. “Of course,” she says. “This is Dogtown.”

  I have no idea what this means, as I studied the map carefully before we came, looking for potential hazards, and never saw Dogtown anywhere. And I’m pretty sure it’s not a good idea for me to be accompanying a girl who doesn’t even have a pocket to hold a key or a hundred-dollar bill.

  In spite of this, we continue down Fourth Street, in and out of the shade of overhead trees.

  “That’s where I live,” she says, pointing to a blue house with meticulous landscaping. “In that two-story thing that used to be the garage in back.”

  We pass a school. It seems strange that there are schools here, that this place holds real lives and not just vacation lives.

  The sidewalk is narrow and covered in places by mushy berries and strange nutty things that have fallen from the trees above. I’m glad that I’m the one wearing shoes and she’s the one who’s barefoot.

  Birds chirp and sing, but no dogs bark. The houses are old and pretty, and very near the sidewalk. The yards are small.

  “So, where do you come from?” she asks.

  I preferred the sound of her bare feet on the sidewalk. “Just . . . back in the Midwest.” It’s probably not smart to tell barefoot, strangely cheerful girls your home address.

  “What it’s like there?” she asks.

  I sigh, at least inwardly. Small talk kills me. I’m not very big on big talk, either.

  “Gross in summer. Cold in winter. Jack-o’-lanterns in fall. Bees in spring.”

  “That’s like a poem,” she says.

  I shiver. I think I might possibly have metrophobia. That’s the fear of poems.

  “Left here on Rose,” she says. We turn down the street, which has less shade, and small businesses like a yoga studio and a Mexican restaurant. “Anyway,” she continues, “it’s pretty nice here all the time. It rains some in winter. There’s May Gray and June Gloom. It’s warmest in September and October when the Santa Ana winds come from the desert, like summer is draining into the ocean.”

  I shiver again, ’cause that sounded even more like a poem.

  “July might be the perfect month. The days are long and the sun is warm, so you can always dry off after surfing or boogie boarding. The temperatures stay in the sixties and seventies all month long.”

  Next she’ll probably give me a surf report.

  “You don’t have many glassy days in July, but the waves can be pretty consistently good. There won’t be much more than the occasional nug south of Santa Barbara for the next few days. If you want epic waves, you gotta get up early for dawn patrol.”

  She stops and looks me up and down. “You surf?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No waves on the Great Lakes?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Well. Then I’ll teach you.”

  Now I smile, because that’s definitely not going to happen.

  “What are the boys like in the Midwest?”

  I shrug. “They’re okay. Probably not as cute as the surfer boys here.”

  “The surfer boys are nice to look at,” she says. “And to talk shredding with.” She quickly bends to pick up a big, shiny leaf, which she hands to me. “But I kinda have a weakness for the nerdy boys who hang out at the library.”

  I hold the stem of the leaf, twirling it as we walk.

  We come upon a section of sidewalk covered in broken green glass.

  “Litterbugs!” she exclaims. “Usually the sidewalks are all tidy except for the fruit that keeps falling. Which explains my bare feet.”

  Cars roll by on Rose. The girl looks around.

  “I’ve got an idea!” she says. “I’ll hitch a ride on your kicks!”

  Again I have no idea what she’s saying. But she steps her right foot onto my left shoe, and her left foot onto my right. Then she puts her arms around me.

  “Now hold on to me and walk over the glass.” Her beautiful face is inches from mine. Her expression suggests she’s about to have the time of her life. “Just walk like Frankenstein so my feet don’t come off your shoes.”

  I can’t believe this is about to happen, but I need it to happen fast, because my feet are starting to hurt. I put my arms around her and lift my right foot high like I’m climbing stairs, then move it forward and set it down. Then the same with the left, again and again, until the crunching of glass under my shoes has ceased.

  “We did it, Betty!” She steps off my shoes and pushes her Goldilocks hair behind her ears. “Did you tell me your actual name yet? ’Cause I’m gonna be saying it at least some of the time.”

  She’s so goofy. I can’t help but smile.

  “Juillet.”

  “Joooey Ay?”

  “It’s like Juliet but the ls are silent, and the e-t is pronounced like a-y. It’s French for ‘July.’”

  Her jaw drops. “No way!” She extends her hand to me. “Summer. That’s Ocean Park for me.”

  I give her my hand, which looks pale in hers. “Nice to meet you, Summer.”

  Another block and we’re at Conscious Consumption, a giant grocery store that makes you feel like the more you spend, the more you’ll save the planet. Summer starts skipping when we enter, and I have to trot alongside her. She wants to go up and down every aisle looking for samples, and we do, feasting on slices of local black plums and little cubes of local Muenster cheese, and locally roasted cold-brew coffee in tiny paper cups, which the woman who pours thinks is funny we want to try. Then we make the rounds again wearing hats made of hemp that the store sells, pretending to be a new pair of girls who haven’t already hit the samples, so we can feast all over again.

  We spend almost an hour in the store, smelling food and eating samples and observing the customers. I watch for movie stars. But practically everyone here looks like a movie star.

  I feel exhausted by the time we get back to Fourth Street, even though it’s barely noon. I’m sore from the walk to and from, and the short distance carrying her weight on my feet, and then cavorting up and down the aisles. But mainly I’m exhausted because my social muscles are weak from not being used, from talking and answering questions, and the odd realization that this girl wants to be spending time with me.

  Finally we arrive at the rental cottage.

  “So, what’s next?” Summer asks. “Wanna hit the waves?”

  I pull the key from the coin pocket of my jeans. “Actually, my mom will be here any second. I’m supposed to be doing something with her.” I don’t know why I’m lying, other than maybe being worn out by Summer’s happiness.

  “That’s so sweet! I hardly ever get to see my mom. She does makeup on movie sets. My dad is a cinematographer for a show on cable, so they’re both illusionists. Anyway, she has to take pretty much all the work she can get right now. So we rarely get to spend time together.”

  I know how that feels, but I don’t tell her I know how that feels. Mom doesn’t need the money so much, but she seems to work as often as she can, ever since Dad left, just so she can stay away from home. I hang out at the mall as much as I can for the same reason. Even though we moved to a n
ew condo to escape the sadness of the house we all lived in together, the furniture is the same, and it feels like we brought the sadness with us.

  I put on a smile. “Well, thanks for the tour.”

  “Ignore Alien Orders at ten o’clock tomorrow?” Her eyebrows arch. She looks so hopeful.

  “Okay.”

  Summer moves in quickly for a hug that’s all her. It’s not that I don’t want to return the hug, but she backs away before I can will myself to raise my arms. “Really you should ignore alien orders at all times, but I’ll see you there at ten. Wear your swimsuit!”

  I smile, because I don’t want to tell her at this moment that there’s no way I’m going in the water, and there’s no way I’m putting on that mermaid swimsuit again. “See you tomorrow.”

  Then I go through the screen door and the wooden door to the breezy front room and realize I was so distracted by Summer, I’ve forgotten to get any groceries whatsoever.

  I stand and stare across the living area. The breeze moves through the white curtains, the Beach Boys play from some unseen speaker.

  I turn and walk into the kitchen. From the wastebasket beneath the sink I fetch the crumpled list of Mom’s goals for me. I smooth it on the counter, find a pen in a drawer, and add two items to the list.

  MAKE A NEW FRIEND

  LEARN TO SURF?

  I look at what I’ve written, then crumple it up and throw it back into the wastebasket. Then I take it back out, smooth it once again, and bring it to my room, where I put it in the desk drawer, where it will remain—for my eyes only.

  All afternoon I think of the morning with the strange girl, while trying to distract myself with the Cartoon Network. Mom doesn’t believe in TV, which is pointless to argue with her about, so we don’t have it back home in Lakeshore. But instead of getting lost in the programs here in Ocean Park, I’m thinking of Summer and worrying what she might have planned for tomorrow. I’m worried, but also excited.

  Mom brings pad thai home for dinner. I can smell the spicy food as soon as she comes through the door, and it makes me realize how hungry I am.

  “How was your day?” She puts the paper takeout bags on the big table.