by Paul Mosier
“It was great.” I take the lid off one of the containers, then run to the kitchen for a pair of forks.
“What do you think of the town?” Mom sits, and shakes her head when I offer her a fork. She holds up a pair of chopsticks.
“You can use chopsticks?”
She nods. I didn’t know she could use chopsticks.
“Anyway, this neighborhood is really nice. It’s pretty, and cheerful, and fun. Like it was made for adventure.” I’m talking about Ocean Park, but it feels like I’m talking about Summer. Because she’s pretty, cheerful, and fun, like she was made for adventure.
“It sounds like you had a good day! And it looks like it’s giving you a healthy appetite.”
I smile through my giant bite of pad thai.
Later we sit on the front porch in the evening air while Mom types medical notes on her laptop.
“Today at the ER there was a guy who accidentally attached his hand to his thigh with a giant screw. It’s amazing how many people use power tools on their laps. I guess it could have been worse.”
“Mom. Please.”
“Right, right. Sorry, Juillet. No more horror stories.”
Even though she’s working, it feels good to be with her, sharing the same space and the same moment. When she’s done on her laptop I tell her more details about my day—the pretty little houses and the pretty little yards, and the mushy berries and nutty things on the sidewalks, and how I passed a school and found myself thinking it’s strange that people go to school in such a place, that they do the things that we do when we’re home in Lakeshore. But I don’t tell her about the girl who left the postcard in the screen door, who ambushed me on the sidewalk, who seemed so happy to tag along with me.
Then I spot a plant growing beside the porch—a fern—which reminds me of the friend I had to leave behind.
“Tell me again why you hate Fern.”
Crickets chirp in the bushes beside the porch as Mom thinks of her response. “I don’t hate Fern,” she says. “It’s just that your world has gotten smaller and smaller since you started hanging around her.”
“My world is smaller because after Dad left you moved us to a place where I don’t know anyone.”
She doesn’t have an answer for this, so she lets the crickets speak for her.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says finally. “I’m afraid you’re a butterfly who’s gone back into her cocoon.”
Something in her voice makes me sad, and I feel terrible for making her feel sad. She folds her laptop and goes inside.
I sit in the dark with the crickets and think of how happy Mom would be to hear about Summer, how different she is from Fern, how she’s apparently bent on pursuing excitement and adventure. If tomorrow is as good as today was, I might just end up telling Mom about her.
3
THE NEXT MORNING at ten, I’m standing in my swimsuit on the square of sidewalk that says Ignore Alien Orders. I put on my mermaid swimsuit without thinking about it, and only realized I had it on when I looked in the mirror. I’ve been here on the sidewalk for ten minutes, wondering what ignore alien orders really means. It’s hard to be ten minutes early to someplace ten steps from the door—or maybe twenty steps—but here I am, and here I’ve been.
Then I see Summer, half a block ahead, turning onto the sidewalk and running my way, grinning.
“Ignore alien orders!” she shouts.
I watch her for a moment, then look across the street to the house she said was the home of someone called the Big Kahuna. I’m not really interested in the Big Kahuna or his bungalow, or why nobody has stolen the surfboard leaning against the front porch, but it seems weird to be watching Summer all the way up the block, so I don’t. Finally she arrives.
“Hey, Betty!” she says, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes to the top of her head. “Are you ready to hit the beach?”
“Do I look ready?” It sounds sort of sarcastic, but I’m genuinely wondering if I look appropriately dressed and otherwise prepared for this horrifying excursion.
“Well, the black high-tops are cute, but we should probably get you some flip-flops if you don’t have any.”
“Okay.”
“And you know I love the punk-rock corpse-doll look, but your makeup is gonna wash off in the surf.”
“The surf?”
She doesn’t seem to hear me, or notice my worried tone.
“I brought some things for you!” She reaches into a canvas bag. “Stand right where you’re standing and don’t move!”
First she hands me a sunblock stick.
“Wipe this all over your face. Especially your nose!”
While I’m doing this she moves around me, spraying me with a bottle of Total Eclipse SPF 144 sunscreen until I’m shiny with it.
She takes a gauzy wrap out of the bag and drapes it over my shoulders, and finally a floppy straw hat and dark sunglasses, which she attaches to my head and face. Then she steps back and looks at me. “What’s the matter?” she asks.
My shoulders sag. “It’s like you’re made for the beach, but I look like I’ve never seen the sun. Like I’ve been living underground.”
She doubles over laughing, but stands up quickly with her hand over her mouth.
“You’re so funny!” She picks up her bag. “Anyway, I always use sunscreen. Ready?”
I don’t answer, but as she steps toward Ocean Park Boulevard, I follow.
When we get to the corner, we can see all the way down the boulevard past the houses and shops, between the hotels, to the sea.
“It’s glassy today,” she says.
“Oh.” I’m clueless as to what she means by glassy. She seems to have her own vocabulary.
“I wish we were surfing.” She stops and turns to me. “What day are you staying until?”
“We leave on July thirty-first. That’s my birthday.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was supposed to be born a week later and be named Augustina. But I came early and they named me Juillet.”
“No way! I was named for being born on the summer solstice.”
“Really?”
“Yep! I turned thirteen just a couple weeks ago.” She smiles, then turns again toward our destination. “Anyway, you staying until the end of the month gives us plenty of time for you to learn to surf.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to ruin the beginning of a friendship with a refusal I can make later.
Then I remember that learning to surf is one of the things I wrote on the list of goals.
The sidewalk descends, and my feet slow as we approach the next street. I come to a stop. “Is there another way we can go?”
Summer looks at me, then at the path ahead. “Why?”
I push my sunglasses up my nose. I’m glad they’re hiding my eyes.
“There’s a mystical adviser at the mall that me and my friend Fern like to go to. She gives us a discounted rate on palm readings and debris divinations.”
“Debris divinations?”
“That’s where you show her what’s at the bottom of your pocket or backpack and she tells you your future. And she said that she saw my morbid essence shrouded in the number between two and four.”
Summer looks confused. “I’m sorry, who said this?”
“Mistress Scarfia, Portender of the Obscure. She has a kiosk in front of Softee’s Soft Pretzels at Lakeshore Mall.” I kick at a pebble. It skips down the sidewalk, down the hill. “She said the number between two and four would be my ruin. I know it sounds silly. I don’t really believe it, but ever since she said it I’ve been afraid of that number.”
“The number three?”
I nod and look up at the number on the street sign. Even though Mistress Scarfia may just be a phony in purple scarves and beaded necklaces, Mom and Dad and I were a family of between two and four, and now we are two.
“How did you get through to Main Street before?”
I shrug. “My mom is good at distracting
me. She’s used to me.”
Summer reaches up to put her hands on my shoulders. “Well, I wanna get used to you too.” She looks around again. I know she’s picturing the map in her mind, trying to imagine a way around this street with this number. I’ve seen Mom do it.
Then she turns back to me, smiling. “I could duct-tape you to my skateboard and roll you down the hill?”
I don’t smile, even though it’s kinda funny, because it’s more embarrassing than funny.
“How about,” she begins, “you close your eyes? Then I’ll hold your hand and lead you across.”
I’ve come this far. I close my eyes and extend my arm. Her warm hand closes on mine. It’s smaller than Dad’s, but at least it’s here. Dad’s big hands are in Switzerland with his ridiculous girlfriend, Genevieve, probably feeding her strawberries dipped in chocolate from a silver platter.
“Baby steps,” she says. “A slight downward slope, crossing this street that isn’t Third Street.”
I smile. “Okay.” I hear a car pass slowly by.
“Oh, Betty!” She gets all dramatic, like we’re in a movie. “If only you could see the hummingbirds feeding off the blossoms on the stalks above!”
I laugh.
“Really, though,” she adds, “there’s a ton of them. Ocean Park is like pollinator heaven. Like a hummingbird buffet.”
I feel the breeze come up the hill, against my face, lifting the brim of my hat. It smells like pollinator heaven, with blossoms whose fragrances are new to my nose.
“Almost there,” she says. “Now a slight incline onto the sidewalk. Shall we go past the dreaded sign?”
“Please.”
“Okay. This way a little. Now here comes the miracle. Open your eyes!”
I do.
She’s standing before me, smiling brightly. “We did it!”
“We did it.” One corner of my mouth turns up. “Thank you.”
I feel like a weight has been lifted from me. More because I’ve told her about one of my fears than the fact that we’ve gone past the number on the sign. Fear of revealing my fears has been standing between us in my mind ever since the first time at Ignore Alien Orders. Fern is the only other person I talk about them with. But Fern keeps me away from the things I’m afraid of instead of walking me through them.
As for Summer, it’s like she’s completely forgotten it as we continue down the hill. She’s pointing out the things we see.
“That’s the little local library branch up there on the right. It’s so cute. We can go there and you can check out books with my card.” She turns to me. “You like to read, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew it. Down on Main Street to the right there’s a good breakfast place. Waffles to die for. Do you like waffles?”
“Of course.”
She keeps talking, keeps giving me the tour of everything we pass, until we’ve made it through the little park before the beach, where bikes and skaters roll past on an endless, winding sidewalk, and on to the edge of the sand.
“Here we are! Take off your high-tops.”
I’m not really excited about taking my shoes off. When I look at my feet I feel like they belong on somebody else. Somebody dead. But Summer makes no remark of them as she pulls the sunscreen from her bag and douses them with spray.
“Let’s go!”
The sand is warm but not hot. As we walk, getting closer to the water’s edge, the sound of the surf gets louder and louder.
Seagulls cry. The wind tells us to go back, but we don’t.
“Also,” I say, as Summer drops the canvas bag where the dry sand becomes damp, “I’m afraid of the ocean. I’m afraid of the waves, and the undertow, and rip currents. And tsunamis. Which I realize are not likely.”
“Is this also because of Miss Snarfle?”
“Mistress Scarfia. No. I’m just afraid of all those things because they can kill you. Even if it isn’t likely.”
She beams. “It’s so brave of you to come here!”
“Unless of course there’s an earthquake. In which case tsunamis are a real possibility.”
She steps to me and drapes her arms over my shoulders. Again my arms stay stiff at my sides.
“We don’t have to do it,” she says. “But if you’d like to try it, we could just get our ankles wet. I’ll stay by your side.”
I think of the list of goals in the drawer at the cottage. Get outside your comfort zone. Learn to surf.
“I want to do this.” I raise my left hand like a dog ready to shake. She takes it.
I walk beside her, taking little steps. I’m wondering whether she’s done this before today, walked beside someone so filled with fear.
“I’m also afraid of sharks,” I add.
The sand turns from damp to wet. It feels strange under my feet, different from the shore of the lake back home. Like it’s alive.
We keep walking, slowly.
Then the remnants of a small wave roll in. I stop, and hold my breath. My jaw clenches, I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.
The wave keeps coming. My right foot picks up, takes a half step back. But I hold my ground, and it comes, the ocean, and it washes over my left foot, then my right, just enough to cover them.
The wave retreats, and the sand beneath my feet crumbles away. Air bubbles appear on the beach where the water has withdrawn. Another wave comes to die at our feet, this one a little bigger, but I stand firm, watching it.
Again and again they come, in rhythm, and I look out to the swimmers and splashers, and watch the waves forming, being born, and coming to us. I watch one march all the way from where the boogie boarders wait for their rides, watch it fight against waves that are on their way back out to sea to be reborn, and watch it all the way up to my toes, my shins, and I laugh.
I look to Summer, and she’s watching me. She’s been watching me—smiling. She squeezes my hand.
“Welcome to Ocean Park,” she says. “Welcome to my world.”
I’m asleep on the couch when Mom comes home. The opening door wakes me.
“This is a bit early for you to be asleep,” she says. “Did you have a big day?”
“Yes.” I bite a fingernail. “I’ve met a new friend.”
“Really? That’s great!”
“Yeah. Her name is Summer.”
“Appropriately enough.”
“She lives down the block. She was behind us in line at Pinkie Promise on our first day here.”
Mom sets a brown takeout bag on the big table. “What did you guys do?”
“Just ran around. Looked in stores.”
I think the whole reason I’ve told her about Summer is that I feel like I need to reveal something, but I don’t want to tell her about stepping into the ocean, or the street I knowingly crossed to get there. I don’t want her to have any more reason to dismiss my fears, to act like they aren’t real, because I’m not sure getting my feet wet and crossing that street are experiments I can duplicate. I don’t know if I ever want to step into the ocean again, with Mom or Summer or anyone. Mom has been saying that this new me—the girl with the dark makeup, filled with fears—is just a costume I’ve been putting on every day. I don’t want her to think that she’s right.
“Well, I’m glad.” Mom takes a humongous burrito wrapped in foil from the takeout bag, then cuts it in half. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
She asks me questions as we share the gigantic burrito, and she tells me about her day. I try to listen, and to answer her questions, but I’m momentarily distracted by wondering what Fern would say about what I did today. She might say Summer was trying to get me killed, that I should find some safe mall to hang around instead. And maybe she’d be right to say it, but right now I’m too tired and hungry from a day of adventure to listen to those thoughts.
4
INDEPENDENCE DAY. SUMMER said she would be busy today but didn’t say why. Since I don’t have any other plans or any kind of idea how to enterta
in myself in this town without her, I hang around the house and the little table outside behind the tall hedge, listening for her skateboard, watching for a flash of her golden hair, even though she said she wouldn’t be around. She never appears.
Finally I decide to take a walk.
I’m dressed in jeans and my black Graveside Lobotomy T-shirt. Graveside Lobotomy is one of my favorite bands. Their song “Let’s Switch Brains” kills me. I’ve gone light on the Goth makeup, maybe just because the black gets hot and kinda melty in the sun here. That doesn’t really happen when you’re hanging out in the mall like I do back home, but it does here in Ocean Park on the bright sidewalks and at the beach.
I walk down the hill, staying under the shade of trees on Ocean Park Boulevard as much as I can. I stop at the next block down and consider the street sign with the number that should not be spoken.
It doesn’t jump at me, the street itself doesn’t crack open and swallow me up. Above, a swarm of hummingbirds dart among the blossoms in a strange plant that has towering stalks with flowers two stories high, like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. It’s exactly the scene Summer described yesterday when I went through it with my eyes closed, coming and going.
Instead of crossing the street, I turn around and go back up the hill. I only wanted to see the hummingbirds anyway. I play the idea in my mind until I practically believe it. But I remember the list in the drawer in the cottage, and I turn around from the top of the hill.
“I’m not afraid of you!” I shout down the hill to the sign. “Number three. Say it three times. Three three three.”
A guy on a bike rides by and smiles. I feel my embarrassment glowing in my face. I turn down Fourth Street and think of Mistress Scarfia. She’s really just a sad old woman with warts on her nose who eats pretzels from Softee’s every day for lunch.
There’s not as much to do on Fourth Street as there is at the bottom of the hill on Main Street and beyond. But I stop at the little market and get an Orange Sunshine soda—not my usual flavor—then take it to the park on the top of the hill, which has a big expanse of grass and tall, shady trees, and a view of the ocean in the distance. If there were a tsunami, this park would be a good place to be, high above sea level. From here I could see it all, see the destruction unfold from a safe distance. I think of this and wonder what you do after you witness the destruction of everything but aren’t a part of it.