Wrong Way Summer

by Heidi Lang

  “Did he marry her?” Mike asked.

  “Now, that is an interesting story. I’d love to tell you all about it, but unfortunately I’ve got to get back to work on this here behemoth.” He stood and stretched. “It’ll be tough, an old back like mine. As you’ve pointed out, it’s a real herculean task I’ve taken on here. I’m just glad I can count on my son to help me.”

  From inside the van, Patrick gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Do you . . . did you want more help?” Mike asked.

  Claire watched her dad rub his chin, as if he were thinking deeply about that question. “I mean,” he said slowly, like the idea had just occurred to him, “if I had another set of strong arms, well, that van would be as good as done. But I’d never dream of asking . . .”

  And there it was. The hook, the line . . .

  “I’ll help! What do you need me to do first?”

  And the sucker taking it.

  “Mike!” Ronnie snapped, but her brother ignored her. Claire knew it was all over. Whatever plans Mike had made to help her stay had been steamrolled, another victim of her dad’s persuasive enthusiasm. Claire knew she shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t feel betrayed.

  Obviously, Mike didn’t have such a crush on her after all.

  Disappointment lined Claire’s stomach, which was silly, really. She didn’t like Mike anyhow. She didn’t care if he liked her dad more than he liked her. Most people liked her dad more.

  “Let’s go, Claire.” Ronnie took her arm and led her away. “He’s lost to us.”

  They put Ronnie’s bike in the backyard and headed inside. Claire’s dad hadn’t started using the air conditioner yet—he claimed Jacobuses thrived in the heat—which meant that sometimes entering their house felt like crawling inside a creature’s sweaty mouth. Today was one of those times. Luckily the basement was always a good ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house.

  Claire sank gratefully onto her bedroom floor, digging her fingers into her worn beige carpet. Ronnie settled next to her. “My own brother,” she muttered. “For someone so smart, sometimes that boy just doesn’t have a clue.”

  “Well, we don’t need him,” Claire said.

  “Right.” Ronnie smiled. “We can come up with a plan on our own.” And the way she said it, in her deep, slow voice, made Claire feel like maybe they really could stop this thing. “I brought my laptop so we could research the enemy.”

  “The enemy?”

  Ronnie smirked. “Hashtag vanlife.”

  Claire groaned.

  “What? We need to know what we’re up against.” Ronnie pulled her laptop out of her backpack, still all sleek and shiny, even though it was over a year old. Claire tried not to be jealous as her friend booted it up and attached her pocket Wi-Fi, since the Jacobuses did not have reliable internet. They settled in, clicking through Instagram pictures of happy couples wearing bathing suits and posing on their fancy van beds, the ocean in the background. Usually there was at least one dog.

  “Maybe this will be your chance to get a pet,” Ronnie said, clicking through a few more.

  “Don’t mention that to Patrick. He’s been dying for a dog forever.”

  “You mean, furever?” Ronnie grinned.

  Claire groaned. “Why do I even hang out with you?”

  “You like a little irritation in your life.”

  “I do have my dad, you know.”

  “Point. I should go easier on you.” Ronnie’s grin slid away, her eyes gleaming as she went back to the pictures. She paused on one of a woman holding a surfboard and shielding her eyes from the sun. Behind her, a large bumper sticker on her van proclaimed, “Not all who wander are lost.”

  Claire reached over and gently closed the laptop.

  “What?” Ronnie asked.

  “You’re getting caught up in it, aren’t you? All this hashtag vanlife silliness.”

  Ronnie hesitated. “It does look a little . . . I don’t know. Exciting.”

  Claire scowled. “It also looks fake. Do you see how ‘happy’ these people are? Barf. No one is that happy living in a vehicle.”

  “Just imagine it, though. You can pack up and leave and go anywhere you want. Just go.”

  Just go. And suddenly all Claire could picture was the photo of her mother she and Ronnie had found online last summer. Claire had given up asking her dad for answers by then, but she hadn’t been ready to dig for them on her own just yet. Part of her had felt like her mom was more a character in a story than a real person, since all Claire had of her were a few hazy memories, a couple of old toys, and one or two photographs. But then one morning, she’d gone looking through a drawer for her favorite sketchbook and found a note from her mother. And beneath it, those papers . . . divorce papers.

  The reality of her mother had slammed into her, and with it, the realization that her dad must have known the real reason her mom had left this whole time. He knew why, and he knew where she was, and even though Claire had asked a hundred times, he hadn’t told her the truth, not once. And when he’d caught her hunched over those papers, crying, he hadn’t said a word about them. She’d stopped caring about all his stupid stories after that, and the next weekend, she’d asked Ronnie if they could look up someone on Ronnie’s brand-new laptop.

  It didn’t take Ronnie long to locate Claire’s mother, living way out in northern California. Far, far away.

  Claire closed her eyes, the photo they’d found burning beneath her lids. Her mom’s hair had been cut much shorter than in her dad’s wedding picture, the reddish blond dyed a warm chocolate, her face soft and full of laughter. Behind her, the walls gleamed white and the counters gleamed dark and everything looked new and expensive. A different person with a different life. The kind of person who went and never looked back.

  Who would Claire become when she left here?

  Claire wiped her face, her hand coming away damp.

  “Oh, Claire.” Ronnie put an arm around Claire’s shoulder and hugged her awkwardly. Ronnie wasn’t much of a hugger, but she tried, for Claire, and that just made Claire cry harder. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be back at the end of the summer.”

  “No, I won’t,” Claire sobbed. “I told you, Dad’s planning on selling the house.”

  “He can try,” Ronnie said dubiously. “Mom says all the houses here are going for pennies, practically. No one’s buying. And once your dad gets tired of living in a van, he’ll bring you back.”

  Claire hiccupped. “You think?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Ronnie said in her slow, confident voice. “After all, no one is that happy living in a vehicle, right?” She grinned. “He’ll want to come home. Probably just in time for school.”

  Claire wanted to relax, but Ronnie didn’t know her dad the way she did. His stories and Grand Adventures were always built in layers, like a fancy dessert. You had to dig your spoon in deeper to understand what was really buried there at the bottom of the glass.

  Which meant this hashtag vanlife her dad had thrown himself into was probably about something else entirely.

  Claire remembered that text message on her dad’s phone and shivered. Maybe her mom wasn’t the only one who wanted to leave them all behind.

  CHAPTER 5

  Every day for the next two weeks it was “van this” and “van that” while Claire’s dad and brother and Mike all worked on the conversion. Sometimes a random neighbor would stop by and get roped into helping for a few hours, or one of Claire’s dad’s old friends might make the mistake of visiting and find themselves cutting wood and hammering nails, and whatever else they were up to out there. Once Claire had even caught Ronnie helping, but Claire had given her The Look and Ronnie had put down her paintbrush so fast it was like it had burned her. “Just trying to make it pretty for you,” Ronnie had muttered. But after that, she stayed away from the van.

  Even if Ronnie was convinced this would just be a long road trip, Claire was taking no chances. She knew how her dad’s enthusiasm could spread like a
disease. The only cure was to have limited contact and lots of scorn.

  “It’s called being homeless, Dad,” she’d snapped the other day. She’d been rewarded by a flinch in his eyes, but then he’d brought out that ever-present smile, and the next day he’d hung up a sign over their kitchen table that read: I GO TO SLEEP IN MY VEHICLE AND I WAKE UP IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF MY CHOICE.

  Clearly, he was doubling down. There’d be no stopping him. So Claire had reluctantly spent the next few days sorting and packing, and now she was theoretically ready to go.

  She lay back on her bed and stared up at her painted sky, tracing the patterns of her glow-in-the-dark stars with her eyes. It had taken her and her dad forever to put them up, trying to keep those constellations as accurate as possible, her fingers still sore from digging in the yard the day before. They’d worked on her ceiling the morning after the great sewer-digging incident—she’d almost forgotten that.

  A sudden memory hit her: her dad helping her press in the final star, then turning off the light so they could admire their work. How magical it had seemed to have the night sky trapped inside her room. “I’m sorry we didn’t find a spaceship in the yard yesterday,” her dad had whispered. “But maybe we’ll find one tomorrow.” Claire had spun slowly, illuminated by the glow of her new constellations, and she’d felt like maybe they would. Like anything might be possible.

  The constellations blurred now in Claire’s vision, and she ran a hand over her face quickly. It was stupid to cry. Just because that feeling of anything was possible was as fake as the stars on her ceiling. The ceiling she might never see again, once they left here . . .

  “Claire-bear!”

  Claire jerked upright just as her bedroom door flew open.

  “Dad, jeez, a little privacy!”

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  “Sorry people don’t smile,” Claire said. At least she didn’t feel sad anymore, just irritated.

  Patrick stuck his head in. “Party in Claire’s room!”

  “No!” Claire crossed her arms. “No party. Get out.” Patrick liked to skulk around her room and go through her stuff. She’d caught him rifling through her desk drawers enough times that he was now permanently banished from her room.

  “Why? It’s not like you’ll get privacy in Van-Helsing,” Patrick pointed out.

  Ugh. That was a good, and yet terrible, point. “Then you should let me enjoy it while I still can. And we are not calling the van that,” she added.

  “I thought you didn’t care what we called it. Right, Dad? Claire said she didn’t care.”

  “You did say that, Claire-bear.”

  Claire squeezed her hands into fists as tightly as possible and counted to five. When she let go, her fingers stayed curled in place, slowly releasing like claws. It was a trick Ronnie had taught her back in kindergarten, back when Claire used to throw screaming tantrums. “By the time your fingers straighten, you’ll feel better,” Ronnie had said. Sometimes it worked.

  “What’s up with your claw hands?” Patrick asked.

  Clearly this wouldn’t be one of those times. Claire shook out her hands, her fingers unfurling. “Nothing,” she sighed. “Why are you here?”

  “Van’s ready,” her dad said. “Thought you might like to take the grand tour.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, excitement radiating through every inch of him. Claire, on the other hand, felt as if her feet were nailed to the ground, and then stuffed full of lead. Still, she dragged herself out of her room and followed her dad outside. Might as well get it over with.

  He pulled open the back doors and the side door and threw his arms wide. “Ta-da!”

  It looked . . . sparse. There was the mattress, a twin, built into a wooden stand that could fold in half and become a couch.

  “Look, the table pulls out from this wall,” he said, rapping the wood on the opposite wall proudly. “Your brother sanded it, so make sure you compliment him when we use it.” He showed her the hammocks, both a painfully bright red. “Cheery, right?” He’d nailed planks of wood lengthwise across the van walls, and then added a small block of wood to the top of those planks to hold the hammocks in place. Claire would get a five-inch corridor of space between her hammock and Patrick’s.

  “Not a lot of space between us.” Claire frowned.

  “When you consider how much space total we have, five inches is really more like fifteen inches.”

  “Which would still not be a lot of space. When you consider that is the only space between me and my irritating brother.”

  “Well, honey, space is all relative.”

  “Tell that to Ronnie.”

  Her dad grinned, then continued with the tour, undeterred. “The hammocks also slide out, so when my bed is folded up into a couch, we can lounge.” He demonstrated. “See? Comfy cozy.”

  “Comfy cozy,” Claire repeated flatly.

  Next, he showed off the LED lights spaced around the sides, the cabinets up above, made from recycled wood pallets that had been sanded and stained and painted, the fan he’d installed himself in the roof. It looked more like a vent, like the fan in their bathroom. “Most expensive piece of equipment,” he said, tapping it proudly. “But worth it. Every video I’ve seen says you’ve got to have this fan. See here? It can suck the air out of the van, or pull cooler air into it. Neat-o, right?”

  “Please don’t say neat-o.”

  “As a courtesy to my eldest daughter,” he inclined his head, “I’ve stopped saying ‘awesome possum,’ because I hear that’s ‘uncool.’”

  “So are air quotes, Dad.”

  “You’re killin’ me, Claire-bear. I’m running out of ways to express myself.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Claire shook her head. “So, where’s the rest? The sink, the bathroom, the kitchen?”

  “Ah. Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat. “There’s a panel that pulls out in the back. I installed legs that’ll fold down, so when it’s nice out, we can cook on that with our good ole camp stove.”

  “You mean the one that’s a hundred years old and smells like gas?” Claire wrinkled her nose.

  “That’s the one!” He beamed. “I got us a good cooler. Here, see? With this cushion on it, so it doubles as a seat. And a seatbelt, so whoever isn’t riding copilot is nice and safe back here.” He touched the seatbelt proudly. “And this here.” He tapped a narrow wooden bookshelf that had been nailed into the side of the van next to his bed. “The table will lay flat over this when I unfold it, but it can hold our water jugs, and there’s this bucket here to drain the water into. I’ll build us a sink later. Maybe. But this’ll do for now. And look at all these pots and dishes stored nicely down here.”

  Claire looked around, her stomach sinking. It was less an RV and more just a van with a few additions. Nothing like the glossy vanlife photographs she and Ronnie had looked up. This would be one long, long summer. “And . . . the bathroom?” she prompted, hoping there was another compartment hidden away in there, somewhere, someway.

  “Oh yeah. That. Well, I decided there was no point in putting in a toilet or shower. One, because this is the shorter version of the Sprinter, and honestly, space is a real issue. And—”

  “Whoa, hold up,” Claire said. “There’s no bathroom?”

  “Well . . . technically, no.”

  “It’s better,” Patrick said, hopping up into the van with them. “King Mossofras uses pipes to travel. This will make it harder for his snipes to catch us.”

  Claire rubbed her temple. “Patrick. Seriously. What’s up with this sudden snipe obsession? And Dad, I am not living somewhere that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. Period. I refuse.”

  “Hmm. That’s gonna be tricky, Claire-bear, ’cause we’re leaving in the morning, and this is all we’ve got.”

  Leaving in the morning.

  The moment between one heartbeat and the next stretched for an eternity, stretched as if it might never end. Claire put a hand to her chest, took a breath. She’d known this was coming. S
till. “Then I’ll just have to stay here,” she said.

  “Can’t. House is transferring to the new owners this week.”

  Claire gaped. “Wait, what?” She turned to look at their small house, with its striped green-and-white window awnings, the peeling yellow paint, the surprisingly large backyard. She’d been four when they’d moved in here, just before her mom had Patrick. And even if Claire could only barely remember when her mom disappeared, she still felt a twinge at the thought of leaving the last place they’d all been together, the place she’d had so many adventures. Pretending to be knights and dragons, climbing the fort her dad had built for her—and then torn down again, after she fell from the top and broke her wrist—painting that little fence in the corner with Patrick, the tiny sandpit they’d played in. All of it, gone.

  And the stories. Her dad’s stories of trolls and fairies and hidden kingdoms. Places where heroes dwelled, where little girls could defeat monsters as long as they followed the rule of threes, where magic made anything possible, and even missing mothers could be explained away, or forgotten. “You really sold the house?” she whispered. “Already?”

  “I know this will be a big change.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “But it’ll be a good change.”

  Claire blinked back tears. So much for Ronnie’s confidence that the house wouldn’t sell for a long time. They really were leaving, and even if her dad changed his mind on the road, they wouldn’t have a house to come back to.

  Patrick came over to her other side and slipped his small hand into hers, like he used to do when he was littler. He must be sad, too. This was the only home he’d ever known. He tugged on her hand. She leaned down, and he whispered in her ear, “If you wanted a toilet so much, maybe you should have helped with the van.”