by Paul Mosier
I have been transformed by fresh air and exercise.
I have faced my fears, both real and imaginary.
I have gone outside my comfort zone and into the break zone, where I have learned to surf, and caught a wave beside the best and most complete friend I’ve ever known.
“Regarding ‘get closer to Mom.’” Mom powers off her phone and puts it away. “I’ve been thinking.”
“What?”
She takes a pull on the straw of the iced coffee she brought on the plane. “I don’t know how you’d feel about having me around more, but that’s what I’d like.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Around the house. And around you.” She takes another sip. “Spending less time at the hospital.”
I frown. “Is this because you’re suddenly worried about how I might turn out?”
She gets this look like she’s sad for me for thinking that. But she puts her hand on my arm and smiles.
“No. It’s because I’m excited for how you are turning out.”
I smile back at her. “That’d be epic.” It really would be.
The flight attendants stand in the aisle, demonstrating the safety instructions. But my mind is elsewhere. I fish in my backpack for the postcard I wrote to Fern and never sent—the one where I confessed to blaming her for my missing the piano recital. I take a picture of it with my cell phone while Mom busies herself finding the crossword in the airplane magazine. Then I open a text message to Fern and attach the picture to these words:
I’m on an airplane, about to take off. Coming home. Here is a postcard I wrote and never sent to you.
I pause, thumb poised.
I close my eyes and think of all the difficult things I’ve done in the past month. All the brave things. The daunting list, nearly conquered. Then my poised thumb lowers to the screen. Send.
I wait half a minute before I can see Fern is writing a response. Finally it comes through.
OMG I HATE YOU
I feel my brow furrow, and I turn my phone away from my eyes. I knew that was coming, and I totally deserved it.
Staring out the window at the Hollywood Hills, I see a jet racing down the runway. The little bug on my window is positioning himself, getting ready for his pop-up.
My phone buzzes again. I turn it slowly to face me.
I FORGIVE YOU! YES TO ADVENTURES! CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU!
Tears roll down my cheeks as I text back a blubbering series of happy emojis. Then I switch my phone to airplane mode and wipe my eyes with my arm. I turn to Mom.
“When we get back to Lakeshore, I’d like to be friends with Fern again.”
Mom watches me, waits for more.
“But it’s gonna be different,” I say. “I don’t wanna hang out at the mall consulting with Mistress Scarfia. I wanna have adventures. I wanna paddle in a canoe, and climb trees. I wanna swim in the lake, and skate on the pond in winter. I wanna get mosquito bites and poison ivy. Or at least be somewhere that it’s a possibility.”
Mom smiles. “That sounds . . . epic.”
“It wasn’t Fern’s fault I wasn’t doing all of that before. The woods have been there. The lake has been there. And they’re still there.”
Mom looks like she’s gonna melt.
“There’s something else. Dad FaceTimed me yesterday afternoon.”
“He did?”
“He was getting ready for bed. He had a beauty mask on his face.”
Mom covers her laugh with her hand.
“I told him I was giving up piano and that instead I was gonna surf.”
“You’re giving up piano?”
“No. I just said it to try to hurt him. I also lied and said I had caught tons of waves.”
Mom smiles. “Well, you did catch tons of waves this morning. Maybe it was more of a premonition than a lie.”
“I told him that I wasn’t done needing him to be my dad, and that I was mad at him for ruining our lives. Then I hung up on him.”
Mom looks stunned. But I can tell she feels like I struck a blow for her, too.
“Well,” she says, “I guess the ball is in his court. But I’m proud of you for speaking your mind. I think you were right to scratch that item off your list.”
I smile. The list is the first thing I’ll put into the box I’ll keep all my future treasures in. This list, and the tiny sand dollar Summer found and gave to me.
This realization feels exactly like a wave has crested suddenly, splashing my face. But a happy wave, the kind that greets you as you paddle out for another epic ride.
I have to turn away from Mom because I’m feeling too much at once. I’ve cried so much this month, tears that were overdue. But some of them have been the best kind of tears. Because I’ve felt so much. Grown so much, like Mom said.
I look again at the bright window, at the little bug, and the little bug looks back. I give him a shaka. I’m sure he’d shaka back if he could, but he’s hanging on for dear life at this point. And I know how that feels.
The airplane does a U-turn, moving my view away from the Hollywood sign on the distant green hills.
The engines get noisy. We speed down the runway, picking up speed. The little bug trembles on the window.
“Bluebird,” I whisper.
The little bug pops up and soars from the window. He’s left behind, shredding the current, but I’m sure it’s the ride of his life. Maybe he’ll fall in love with the feeling, and hop back up on another ride so he can do it again.
Faster and faster the jet roars down the runway, then tilts and lifts, until we can no longer feel the pavement beneath us.
Good-bye, California.
Almost immediately we’re over the ocean, and my view is to the south. Through the broken clouds rising from the dissipated morning marine layer, I see pleasure boats, and an oil tanker down by the refineries. I look straight out to sea at the deep blue, and wonder at all the life it holds.
Seaweed. Men in gray suits. Sand dollars that are sometimes more like sand dimes.
Then we do another U-turn, this one in the sky, angling to the left. Soon we’re back over the continent. Past my shoulder I can see the coast, the pier at Santa Monica, and just before it the beach at Ocean Park.
Somewhere below, Summer is probably getting dressed in something other than a swimsuit, to spend the day with family who are in town for Hank’s funeral in a couple of days. Maybe I’m wrong about Summer changing out of her swimsuit. Maybe they’ll have Hank’s funeral in beach attire. They really should. Maybe Hank will be buried with his surfboard. Or maybe Summer will continue riding it.
Suddenly I realize I never told Mom about Hank, or about Hank dying. I glance at her, smiling at the inflight magazine. This moment, up in the sky, doesn’t seem like the right moment to tell her.
What if Mom would let me go to Hank’s funeral, if Summer invited me? This airplane isn’t gonna turn around and go back. But what if Mom let me fly back whenever the funeral is?
I sigh, and look back through the window. Also down there is Pinkie Promise, where Otis will soon begin his shift, scooping pistachio and cherries jubilee, and flirting with Betties.
In his bungalow on Fourth Street, the Big Kahuna is probably resting after his long morning surf. The Big Kahuna I leave behind isn’t the one I saw buying toilet paper at the little market on Fourth Street. Instead it’s the Big Kahuna who made the best guacamole I ever tasted, who carried Hank over his shoulder, bringing him to the shore for the very last time. This Big Kahuna is probably taking a nap, or maybe waxing his boards or meditating, or hitting a punching bag to be ready for sharks, or whatever mysterious and mythical things he does when he’s not emerging from the mists at dawn patrol.
Someone else, some other family, will be arriving in town and checking into the cottage that was our home for the month of July. Maybe Summer will meet whoever it is. Maybe there’ll be a girl my age, and maybe Summer will insist that they be summer friends, with what’s left of the seaso
n. Like she did with me.
I turn away from the window, and stare at the back of the seat in front of me. Then I open my carry-on bag and remove the gift Mom found at our front doorstep while Summer and I were surfing. Surfing.
I can feel in my hands that it’s obviously a book, wrapped in newspaper. There are words on the wrapping in black marker, written in the same hand that invited me on a postcard to ignore alien orders twenty-nine days ago. It says Do not open before takeoff!
That’s been taken care of, so I tear the paper away. The book is revealed.
The Perfect Wave. Summer gave me her very own dog-eared and tattered copy of what she said is her favorite book. My hand goes to my heart, though Summer isn’t here to see it.
On the front is a painted image of a girl riding a surfboard beneath a gigantic wave. She looks a little like Summer, but there’s only one Summer.
I read the blurb on the back cover: When the perfect wave comes, you’ve got to be ready to catch it.
Of course it’s incredibly cheesy, but it’s also absolutely true. It’s truer than anything in the books I’ve been reading the past year, before I met Summer. Truer than stories of zombies wanting to slurp my eyeballs, and more important than figuring out how to survive the apocalypse, which after all still hasn’t happened.
I look back out the window, over my shoulder toward the sea, and suddenly I feel sure that it doesn’t matter who moves into the cottage for the month of August.
The book falls open to a place held by a greeting card, on which is a painted picture of two sets of bare feet in sand. When I open the card a photo falls out, but my eyes go first to Summer’s words, written in her hand.
Juillet—
My July, my Betty.
My Bluebird.
The enclosed photo shows me in my favorite place in the universe.
Thank you for being there.
Happy Birthday—
Always, Your Summer
I pick up the photo. It’s the Polaroid we had taken for five bucks. It shows Summer and me standing in front of the fountain on the promenade. It’s exactly the spot where Hank got hurt.
She said that for a long time she couldn’t even walk past that fountain, that it made her too sad. So why did she insist the Polaroid guy take our picture in front of it? Why would she now say it was her favorite place in the universe?
I study the picture closely. Summer is wearing her adorable blue hoodie that says Um okay. I’m wearing my black T-shirt with the word DEATH. Putting it together in my head, I realize that it was long before I even knew about Hank. It was before she told me anything about his accident at the fountain.
I look at our faces, my uncomfortable expression. I remember the feeling I held inside, that I didn’t deserve to be her friend, or to even be seen with her. Summer is looking down in the photo, and I follow her eyes, lower, to where her open hand reaches for mine.
Then it hits me.
She brought me there to help her overcome her fear of the place.
It’s just like she did for me, all over town.
Crossing Third Street. On the beach, into the shark-infested water. With practically every step.
By my side as I walked back into life.
And me, by her side.
My favorite place in the universe.
I slip the photo back into the card, and tuck it away in the book.
I put my hair to my nose and smell the sea.
Then I reach into my bag for a postcard and pen, and begin composing my response.
Summer—
My wildest, happiest Summer—
Acknowledgments
Thanks—
as always, to the Mighty Central Phoenix Writer’s Workshop, without whom this could not have happened.
To the Beach Boys for their album Pet Sounds, which I listened to endlessly in the summer of its fiftieth anniversary, when this novel was born.
To the decades-old surf culture, which is impossible not to admire as an outsider. I hope I have done it justice.
To my agent, Wendy Schmalz, for everything.
To Karen Chaplin—my editor at Harper Collins—for making this book the best it could be. And to Rosemary Brosnan and everyone else at Harper—thanks for bringing three books into the world with me. We made the world a more beautiful place, no?
To my family, friends, and neighbors, for their love and support.
And to you, reader—thank you for giving me my purpose.
Dude.
About the Author
Photo credit Kim Blake
PAUL MOSIER began writing novels in 2011 but has written in some fashion his entire life. He is married and the father to two daughters, one of whom has passed to the next dimension. He lives near his place of birth in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. He loves listening to baseball on the radio, eating vegetarian food, drinking coffee, and talking nonstop. He has written two other books for middle grade readers, the critically acclaimed Train I Ride and Echo’s Sister. Visit him on his blog, novelistpaulmosier.wordpress.com.
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Books by Paul Mosier
Train I Ride
Echo’s Sister
Copyright
SUMMER AND JULY. Copyright © 2020 by Paul Mosier. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2020 by Celia Krampien
Cover design by David DeWitt
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mosier, Paul, author.
Title: Summer and July / Paul Mosier.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8-12. | Audience: Grades 4-6. |
Summary: When twelve-year-old goth girl Juillet and thirteen-year-old surfer girl Summer meet, they set aside their painful pasts and begin to transform into the people they would like to be. Identifiers: LCCN 2019028464 | ISBN 9780062849366 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. | Surfing—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Goth culture (Subculture)—Fiction. | Santa Monica (Calif.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M6773 Sum 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028464
* * *
Digital Edition JUNE 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-284938-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284936-6
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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