Summer and July

by Paul Mosier

  HELP SUMMER LIKE SHE HAS HELPED ME

  I gaze beyond the balcony at the distant lines of breakers moving in to the shore. When I look back at Summer, she’s asleep.

  18

  THE NEXT DAY, Summer’s sadness seems almost forgotten. Like every day she begins brand-new, a sun born that very morning. At least that’s what it looks like.

  She and I are down on Main Street, and Summer is riding Hank’s skateboard while I carry hers. I’ve only been on a skateboard for about five minutes in my whole life, and this sidewalk has too many bumps and people and dogs and benches for me to trust my limited ability. Summer, meanwhile, is riding like she was born with a skateboard attached to her feet.

  Farther down the sidewalk I see the two mean boys. Wade and his sidekick. They’re on their skateboards too, heading our direction.

  Then Summer sees them. She stops suddenly in front of a secondhand store called Driftwood, and kicks her board up into her hands.

  “Let’s check this place out! They always have cool stuff.”

  I follow her inside. It’s one of the many narrow stores lined up shoulder to shoulder on Main Street, and it’s stuffed full of strange things. Lots of vintage clothes, but objects, too. As we enter, a woman looks up from behind the counter and smiles, but otherwise we have the place to ourselves.

  We poke around the clothing racks. “Check it! Vintage.” Summer calls from across the store. She’s holding up an older version of the Beachcombers T-shirt. “I can wear this and look like I’ve been scouring the beach for garbage since before I was born. Dude, this might have belonged to Gladys when she was our age!”

  I smile. My fingers trail over a low shelf of books. Then I bump into a bench, which sits before a piano.

  I lay Summer’s skateboard on the bench and sit beside it, then put my fingers to the keys. It’s been so long since my fingers have been here.

  In my head I hear a song I learned a few years ago. I’ve been hearing it on the Beach Boys channel Mom has been playing constantly at the cottage. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” It’s a cheerful song, even though it’s entirely about things not being the way they should be, and whenever I hear it playing, it’s somehow easier to think about all the things in life I wish were different. Like maybe it isn’t hopeless to dream. Or maybe dreaming is the only possible sweetness when everything in the world isn’t what it should be.

  I close my eyes. My hands find their way to the keys. I visit notes with my fingers, hear them with my ears. It’s been a while since I’ve sat at a piano, so we spend a few seconds getting reacquainted.

  Then I nod one, two, three, four, and begin playing.

  It’s been years since I’ve played the song, but my hands know how to bring the sounds from the keyboard.

  My eyes stay closed, and I listen to myself play. The piano isn’t terribly out of tune. The acoustics in the shop aren’t bad, with the echo of the cement floor muted by the racks of clothing. And my playing isn’t too shabby, though maybe my tempo is a bit slow. Like I’m having a hard time feeling the sunniness written into it.

  I play through just the first stanza, hearing the lyrics, to the part about the world where we belong. Then I open my eyes and see Summer standing beside the bench.

  “Don’t stop!”

  “Were you singing?”

  “No. Yes. A little.”

  My hands withdraw from the keyboard. “Your voice sounded pretty.”

  “Your playing sounded amazing! You didn’t tell me you could do that.”

  I think about saying thank you, and I think about saying you didn’t ask. But instead, and out of nowhere, I dump a truth that has been haunting me for weeks.

  “Piano is kinda my thing. It always has been. The reason my mom made me stop hanging out with Fern is because I missed a big piano recital. I told my mom that Fern had a premonition of something terrible happening at my recital, and that I was afraid to go. I was hiding out at the mall while my mom was trying to find me.”

  Summer looks at me, waiting for more.

  “It was easy for my mom to believe it, because Fern is shy and superstitious. And because she likes to hang out at the mall and think about the end of the world. She loves having séances for dead pets, and talking to spirits with a Ouija board. So she’s kinda dark and creepy. But she didn’t tell me something terrible would happen at my recital.”

  My hands return to the keys.

  “Fern isn’t famous for having a lot of friends because she’s so . . . odd. But she makes me laugh. And she’s kind.” I turn back to the keys. “She deserves to have a friend. But I don’t deserve her.”

  I strike the first notes of the Haydn composition I was supposed to play months ago at my recital, then pause, and again find my way into the opening of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” I halt after the intro.

  “Thank you for telling me all of that.” I feel Summer’s hand on my left shoulder. “But what’s the real reason you didn’t go to the recital? Did Ms. Sardinia tell you something bad would happen at the recital?”

  I don’t answer, because I’m not ready, not just yet. But as I stare over the piano, I think about the man who ruined my life. The man who used to read to me at bedtime, who taught me how to play catch, who loved listening to me play the piano, who always sat in the front row at my recitals, who—

  My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of my own hands banging the keys, once, in anger. The mixed notes hang in the air like bad feelings.

  “Sorry,” I call out to the shopkeeper.

  If I had blamed Mistress Scarfia, maybe I could still hang out with Fern.

  If I had told the truth, I could definitely still hang out with Fern.

  Even though I didn’t answer Summer’s simple question, Summer—instead of leaving, instead of walking away from the girl who betrayed Fern—sits beside me on the bench.

  “Play it. Play ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice.’” She leans into me for emphasis. “Play it and I’ll sing. I know all the words. And it’s exactly the song we both need right now.”

  So I play. And Summer sings. And though the keys are blurry through my teary eyes, and though Summer’s voice gets choked up at a couple of points, it is—as Summer said—exactly the song we both need.

  A short while later we’re on the boardwalk. I’m fastening the strap of my helmet, watching skaters and people on bikes and scooters and every kind of wheeled transport rolling by. It really isn’t a boardwalk, but rather a sidewalk that goes for miles along the beach from Venice to Pacific Palisades.

  “Isn’t there, like, a giant empty parking lot we can do this in?”

  “Not in Dogtown,” Summer answers. “Anyway, this is perfect. No hills. No cars.”

  I look down at my ride. It’s Summer’s skateboard. She’s gonna ride Hank’s. Summer said she learned to ride a skateboard before she learned to surf, and she thinks they’re enough alike that it’ll be good to do it this way.

  “Which foot do I put in front again?”

  “Left foot. Unless it feels really weird, in which case you’re goofy-footed, and you can switch to the right foot. But only if it makes you feel mental to have the left foot in front.”

  I’m pretty sure that I’ll be goofy-footed, ’cause it just sounds like me. But I put my left foot, wearing my black Converse, down on the front end of the skateboard. Immediately I fall on my butt, and the board rolls away, veering off the two-lane sidewalk and onto the sand.

  “You did that great,” Summer says, giving me a hand and pulling me up. “But try not to fall on your butt. Keep your weight over the board. You fell off there because you were kinda behind it.”

  I fetch the board and get on again, left foot in front, balanced over the deck, remembering what she said. I push off with my right foot and roll slowly forward.

  “Steer by leaning just a bit to one side or the other,” she says. “This sidewalk is nice and straight with very slow curves.”

  I give a kick with my right foot, then another. Then my righ
t joins my left, behind it on the deck.

  “Very good,” she says. She’s directly behind me. We’re going so slow because I’m going so slow. People on skates and skateboards and bikes move around us to pass.

  “See if you can go a little faster,” Summer says. “And when we hit this curve up here, you can practically steer just by tilting your head.”

  “Got it.” I kick twice and roll faster. Summer keeps up behind me effortlessly. I kick once, twice, three times, and I’m rolling along smoothly.

  “Don’t slow down for the bend,” she says. So I kick three more times. I bend back at the waist just a bit, tilting my head to the left, and the board beneath me does the same. I take the curve perfectly, then straighten up as the sidewalk does.

  “Beautiful!” she shouts. “You’re a natural!” Then she kicks until she’s at my side, grinning. “Hey, Betty!”

  I look at her and immediately swerve to the right. The wheels catch in the sand and I fall into it. Summer stops expertly, then falls intentionally in the sand beside me.

  “It’s not about how many times you fall down,” she says. “It’s about getting back up over and over until you begin to feel like you were born with wheels for feet.”

  I stand. She stands beside me.

  “I have wheels for feet,” I say.

  Summer looks down at them, squinting. “I think you’re right. I can see them sprouting.”

  I put the board back on the sidewalk and step my feet onto it. I kick, kick, kick, tilt left briefly to center myself in the lane. People pass us less frequently, then not at all. The people coming the other direction down the sidewalk no longer look at me like I’m a hazard.

  By the time we get to the pier, Summer can ride at my side without me freaking out and falling down. We ride all the way to Pacific Palisades and back, and by then I truly do have wheels for feet.

  Later we’re sitting at a table on the sidewalk at Smoothie Tsunami, a cute place on Main Street with fresh flowers in glass jars on all the tables. I would have probably been afraid to hang out at a place with tsunami in its name three weeks ago. But here I am.

  “Here we go.” Summer takes an assortment of postcards from her little mesh purse, which she’s carrying instead of her big beach bag. Summer says we’re writing therapy postcards. I don’t know exactly what she means by that, but I’m about to find out. “Okay, I’ll start. I write the first line and then you write the next, then me, and so forth.”

  “Okay.”

  She leans back in her chair and bites the pen she holds.

  I watch a guy roll by on his skateboard with his hands held together in the namaste position. This town is filled with people doing the namaste thing with their hands.

  Summer leans forward and writes on the postcard, then turns it over and slides it across the table to me.

  “Special delivery.” She scoots the pen my way.

  The postcard shows a dolphin wearing sunglasses, with white sunscreen on its nose. I turn it over.

  Dear Fern,

  I look to Summer. “Why?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. We’ll find out. That’s the point.”

  I look back at the card with all its empty space. I pick up the pen, and put the tip to the card.

  I am spending July in a place called Ocean Park.

  I turn it over and send it back to Summer, along with the pen. She looks at it, smiles. She writes quickly and slides it back.

  There are no malls.

  Now I smile. I put my words down.

  Instead there are sidewalks to skateboard on.

  I push it back to Summer. She responds quickly.

  And waves to ride.

  I think hard about how to word my next line.

  And a girl named Summer who makes me feel brave instead of afraid. Who makes me feel like a butterfly instead of a caterpillar stuck in her cocoon.

  I slide it back to Summer. She stares at the words, then puts her hand on her heart. She takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out. Her eyes return to mine.

  “I think this one is done.” She slides it back to me, along with a blank postcard. “Now you start.”

  “Wait,” I say. “I need to write a little more to Fern.”

  Summer gives me a curious look, and one corner of her mouth turns up. “Okay. Feel it.”

  There’s no more room on the first postcard, so I start fresh on the next one, which shows a surfer-girl emoji on the front. I begin writing in tiny letters, because I’ve got a feeling it’ll take quite a few words to say what I need to say.

  Dear Fern—

  I’m so sorry. I lied to my mom, telling her that you made me afraid to go to my piano recital, that you had a premonition that something bad would happen there. The truth is I was afraid of feeling heartbroken that my dad wouldn’t be there, sitting in the front row, that I’d be too sad to play, thinking of him being far away with some woman who isn’t my mom. But my mom is right in saying I shouldn’t spend so much time at the mall. I want to have adventures, and I want to have adventures with you. Can we do that? Talk to you in August? Please forgive me.

  Juillet

  I turn it over, print-side down. “Sorry I didn’t leave you any room. I think I need to put a stamp on this one.”

  I slide it to Summer, who reads it, then shakes her head.

  “I wish I could say the things I need to say like you do. Definitely put a stamp on this one.”

  There’s someone else I need to write to, so I take a fresh postcard from the short stack. This one shows an old lady buried in sand up to her head. Sand dollars cover her eyes. I half smile and turn it over. Then I feel my face get serious, and I write one word.

  Dad—

  I pause, then put it print-side down and slide it to Summer. She turns it over, looks at me like I’ve punched her in the stomach.

  She looks down again, and her hair falls across her eyes, but she doesn’t brush it away. She writes briefly, slides it back.

  I’m so mad at you for leaving.

  She’s right. I elaborate.

  You ruined life for me and Mom.

  Back to Summer. She looks at me, writes, returns it.

  And even if Hank can’t see or hear, I know it hurts him too.

  My jaw drops. I look at Summer. “Whose dad are we talking about?”

  She raises her eyebrows, points to herself, pokes her own rib cage.

  “He left?”

  She nods.

  “After Hank got hurt?”

  She nods again. “He’s a cinematographer for a cable series being shot in Hungary. There’s a million jobs like that in LA, but he’s acting like the only one for him is in a place halfway across the world where he doesn’t have to see Hank wither away. He’s only here like two days every month.”

  I reach across the table to her. She puts her hand in mine, but tips her chin down and shakes her long golden hair into her face.

  We stay this way for some time. I look at the deeply tanned skin of the hand holding mine, the tiny blond hairs on her arm. I watch people walk past on the sidewalk, as they look at us and wonder what they are seeing. And I am wondering what they are seeing.

  Finally she tilts her head up and shakes her hair out of her face. She’s trying to look invincible.

  “You wouldn’t have left,” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “I didn’t know you when all that happened,” she says, “but if I did know you, you wouldn’t have left.”

  I shake my head again. I hope I wouldn’t have left.

  “Because you’re the strongest, bravest person I know,” she says.

  I smile at the strangeness of what she says. Part of me is starting to believe that she may be right, and part of me thinks that maybe I would have stayed not because I’m brave but because I’m the opposite of brave.

  19

  AFTER A MORNING spent riding the sidewalks, we ditch our skateboards at our homes up on the hill. It’s really starting to feel like home afte
r three weeks, like I actually live here, and more and more of me wishes I did. I tell this to Summer as we again ignore alien orders. I’ve changed into my shorty, and so has Summer. She’s got a pink surfboard under one arm, sea-foam green under the other.

  “You’re almost ready.” She grins. “You’ve got gills. Your hands are becoming fins.”

  I look at them, left and right. The black polish on my fingernails has nearly worn away, but there’s more to my transformation than that. It’s also how I feel. This hill has gotten smaller. The dark green sea, shining in the distance, is the fragrance of my skin and hair.

  “But first we need to get you comfortable on a stick. You can use my board.” Summer turns so the pink one is facing me. “And I’ll use Hank’s.”

  I take the pink board from her. She says it’s made of fiberglass, and it’s considerably heavier than the boogie boards we’ve been riding the last couple of weeks. Standing, it’s a little taller than I am. I arrange it under my arm and we begin walking down the sidewalk.

  “A lot of surf schools use longer boards, like nine feet,” Summer says. “And that length is easier to stand on. But they’re brutal when you’re trying to go out in the break zone again and again, plowing through the rakers.” She makes the turn onto Ocean Park Boulevard, and I follow. “It’s like wrestling a crocodile.”

  “Can we not talk about crocodiles?”

  “These short boards are a bit trickier to stay on, but they’re more fun, and they’re light, so you get lots more chances to stay on a wave before you get exhausted. If we were carrying nine-foot boards, you’d be done by the time we got to the water. Anyway, today we’ll just practice on the sand. And take pictures.” She indicates the little mesh bag on her shoulder.

  Down the hill we go. We pass beneath the hummingbird buffet in the high blossoms atop the Dr. Seuss stalks. As we cross Third Street, being afraid of the number three seems like a distant memory. Like a bad dream I’ve woken from.

  My arms and legs are stronger than when Mom and I arrived in Ocean Park, from all this walking and carrying and skating and swimming. So the beach seems nearer than it once did, and the surfboard being heavier than the boogie board ends up not being a big deal. I only change arms three times before we arrive at the water’s edge.