Summer of Brave

by Amy Noelle Parks

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Getting interrupted, being called ‘intuitive’ instead of ‘brilliant,’ having men who study beetles explain wasps to me.”

  Thinking about this morning, I ask, “Are there rules about what you wear?”

  “Like a dress code?” She laughs. “No. Although I think about it. You have to.”

  I guess this is the way it is. For me and Mom and Vivi anyway. I don’t think Dad worries about his clothes. Or Knox.

  “And it’s not just about what you wear,” Mom says.

  “What else is it?” Vivi asks.

  “Learning to move in a space like you belong there. Being willing to stand up for yourself.”

  “I can do that,” Vivi says.

  Mom smiles. “I know you can. It’s this one I’m worried about.” She squeezes my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. B,” Vivi says. “We’re working on it.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Confessions

  Later in my room, Vivi flips through the pages of my sketchbook. I’m not sure how she’ll rate my drawings about lies against Knox’s song, but whatever she decides, she’ll be sure it’s the right decision. I wish I had that certainty. About anything.

  “Wow,” she says, looking at the drawings of Mom’s and Dad’s faces, surrounded by my words. “You wrote down more than I thought.”

  “It’s not like I’m making up huge stories,” I say, wanting to defend myself. “But my life is a lot right now.”

  Between keeping my parents happy and the pressure around the magnet school and juggling plans for the summer, I’m keeping a few things to myself, but I’m not a master criminal.

  Vivi flips to the page where I tracked all the lies I told Dad and lets out a breath in a quiet laugh.

  “What?”

  “Really? You couldn’t tell your dad you didn’t like his artichokes?”

  “He knows I like Mom’s cooking better, even though food is so much more important to him. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  “But now you have to eat artichokes,” she says with a shudder. Vivi’s a more adventurous eater than I am, but she’s not a huge fan of cooked vegetables.

  “I’ve done harder things.” Although artichokes do turn out to be squashier than you’d think. Maybe I went a little overboard telling Dad how good they were with lemon juice. They were fun to draw though.

  She stops on the pages from the Summer Wish. On the left is Vivi, about to blow her dandelion. “The Summer of Brave” written over her head. On the right is Knox, eyes closed, thick lashes on his cheeks, and the words I have got to get more guy friends.

  Vivi and Knox are the people I draw best in the world. I can’t even draw myself that well. “There aren’t any lies on that page,” I say. Something about the way she’s looking at the drawing makes me edgy. If anything, their pictures are maybe a little too true.

  “How’d you do this?” she asks. “Your eyes were closed.”

  I shrug. “I know you both. I didn’t have to see.”

  Vivi’s fingers trace the drawing of her own face. “No lies to me and Knox? None at all?”

  “No,” I say. Too quickly.

  “Then what’s going on with the showcase? You were weird with your mom.”

  Vivi has this sixth sense about me. Somehow, she knows there’s more here than me not wanting to choose between art and science (and my mom and dad). My heart beats hard in my chest. Why is it so much worse to think about lying to Vivi than to my parents?

  Maybe because they lied so many times in the months leading up to the divorce. “Everything’s fine,” they’d say. And after. “Nothing’s going to change.”

  But Vivi tells the truth. She’s going to be hurt and think it’s about her. But how I feel about the Grover Academy isn’t about her, or at least not very much. Maybe I would—a little bit—like to get out of her shadow.

  “Lilla,” she says, wanting me to talk. It’s too late. She’ll see right through anything I make up. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  If I can’t say this to her, I will never, ever be able to do it with my parents. With a big breath, I take my journal back, unclip the pages I was hiding, and find the self-portrait with my confession underneath: I don’t want to go to the magnet school. I turn it around to show it to her.

  Vivi gasps. Which is a little bit satisfying.

  “Why not?” she says.

  My heart beats in rhythm with her wish. Be brave. Be brave. Be brave.

  “I hate the idea of picking a side—giving up art or science. And I’m so tired of all the competition and the tests and the rankings. I just want that to stop. And—”

  Vivi waits. When I don’t speak, she prompts, “And?”

  “And I sort of wonder what it would be like…to do school without you and Knox.”

  Vivi turns away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, reaching for her. “I don’t really mean it.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I don’t know if I do or if I don’t. It’s so hard for me to know my own feelings when I’m drowning in everyone else’s.

  “It’s just something that crossed my mind,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter because I can’t tell my parents I’m not going, and I want to be with you both. You know that.”

  This is so hard. Until my parents got divorced, I thought they would be there. Together. Always. And then they weren’t, and I had to put my life together without that.

  The divorce taught me it’s a mistake to count on anything or anyone. And so, what does it mean that I can’t imagine walking into a cafeteria and finding somewhere to sit without Vivi or Knox? Or how to pick classes without thinking about what they’re going to do first? I don’t want to do high school without Vivi and Knox, but I’m starting to wonder if I need to.

  “You and Knox are so…big. And you’ve made everything easy for me. But someday—even if it’s not now—I’m going to have to figure out how to live without you two leading the way.”

  “I’m sorry if we’re too pushy,” Vivi says.

  “You’re not,” I say. “But I think I rely on you too much. I don’t even know if I could go to school without you. I probably wouldn’t have even said anything if you hadn’t asked me what I was hiding from Mom.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” Vivi says. “Would you really have hidden this from me?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do anything. My sketchbook is just…thoughts.”

  “Because your plan is to compete to get into this school you don’t even want to go to so you can make your mom and your dad and Knox and me happy. This is how you’re going to live your life?”

  “Yes.”

  Vivi gives me a disappointed look.

  I don’t know why she’s surprised. This is how I’ve always lived my life. “It’s not like it would be terrible to go to Grover,” I say. “I’d be selfish not to want that.”

  Saying any of this to Mom would send her right back to all those Nightmare on Divorce Street stories on the Internet. I don’t want her to blame herself because I’m not good enough. Or be embarrassed to tell her friends about me. I’d rather go to the magnet school.

  And Dad. He wouldn’t understand one bit of this. For him, it would be me throwing away this chance he never had growing up in his little farm town. Entitled. Unwilling to work. Without ever raising his voice, he’d guilt me into going.

  “I can’t tell them any of this. They wouldn’t understand.”

  “You can. If this is really what you want, you have to tell your parents. And Knox.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” I say, trying to make her smile.

  “But I am.” Before she would have said this proudly, but now she seems a little embarrassed. “The Summer Wish says so. If you’d blown on your dandelion a little harder, maybe we’d be having the Summer of Tea Parties, and you’d be judging our ability to put together cute cucumber sandwiches—I woul
d win, obviously—but you didn’t, so you’re stuck. Unless…unless you don’t want to do the Summer Wish anymore? You don’t have to. I know I take over sometimes.”

  “Vivi, of course I want to do the Summer Wish,” I tell her.

  She looks unsure. It’s scary seeing that expression on her face. I’m so, so sorry I said anything. If this is what comes from being honest, I don’t want any part of it.

  Vivi sighs. “Well, the good news is you beat Knox in round one. His song was cool and all, but his lies are nothing compared to what you’ve got going on here.”

  This does not make me feel better.

  Vivi picks up my journal and thumbs the pages, as if she’s looking for something in particular. “You’re sure you’re not hiding anything else? No other reason you want to go to Morningside?”

  “What else could there be?”

  “Anything, apparently.”

  She says this softly, but still, the words feel like a slap.

  CHAPTER 9

  Paintball Magnet

  When Vivi and I meet later for Knox’s paintball party, I ask how her museum interview went. She says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She’s not over our fight earlier, but even with our Summer Wish, I’m not brave enough to call her on her silence.

  Every single person is at the park. Knox, with his teams and his clubs and his bands, has tons of friends, and they’re all here. When Knox sees us, he waves from the center of the crowd. High school without Knox and Vivi would definitely set the difficulty level higher. The idea of walking into a lunchroom without them almost makes me dizzy.

  “How’d it go?” I ask Knox after the three of us move off some.

  “Good. I brought my guitar and made instruments, and Kate and I did a sing-along.” I’m not surprised. Knox could charm someone a lot less perky than Kate.

  “How ’bout you?” he asks Vivi.

  “I don’t think she liked me,” she says. “She said my project would be too hard for the kids. But why does all that art stuff matter for the science camp anyway?”

  So I guess Vivi does wants to talk about this, just with Knox.

  “And she definitely didn’t offer me a job right away.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. The last thing I need is for Vivi to be mad about this too.

  “No one’s blaming you,” she answers. But it sounds like she is.

  After looking back and forth between us, Knox says, “Luckily, we have the perfect distraction.” He holds out a paper bag. “Four colors. Close your eyes, and pick a team. The rest are in buckets I hid across the creek.”

  I plunge my hand into the bag of squishy little globules. They feel like eyeballs. I pull my hand back.

  “Don’t be such a girl,” Knox says.

  “Hey!” Vivi says. She’s got a blue paintball in her hand.

  “Sorry,” Knox says to her. And to me, “Don’t be so Lilla-like.”

  “Fine,” I say. This time I pinch one on top and pull it out. Green. “What does this mean?”

  Knox grins. “That you’re going down.” He opens his hand to show another blue paintball. “Since me and Vivi are both blue, you can’t hide behind us.”

  Knox passes the bag around to everyone else so they can pick their colors and climbs onto a rock to explain the rules. Then he plays a charging-trumpets sound on his phone, and everyone races for the creek. Vivi’s out in front, but I hang back.

  When I was seven, my family had a picnic here, and I was playing in this creek. I don’t know what happened, because it’s not like it’s a regular thing, but all these leeches attached to my leg. They were bright pink and blubbery like that cranberry sauce that comes out of the can on Thanksgiving. When I brushed them off, they broke apart in my hands. It was so, so gross.

  And so it doesn’t matter how many kids I’ve seen come in and out of the creek leech-free, I am never, ever going in again, but it’ll take me ten minutes to walk up over the bridge.

  Knox bumps my shoulder. “Come on, Lil.”

  “You’re not going to catch up with everyone?”

  “Not without you.”

  “I’m going to take the bridge.”

  Knox knows the leech story. He pulls on my hand. “I’ll protect you.”

  Following him down to the bank, I look suspiciously into the water. “How?”

  The screams across the way die down as teams find their buckets.

  Knox holds out his arms. “I can carry you.”

  “Are you sure?” I’m going to be upset if I end up in that water.

  “It’s not like you’re person-sized.”

  “If you drop me, I will never speak to you again, Knox Donohue.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  I put my arms around his neck, and he scoops me up. When I lay my head against his chest, his heart beats in my ear.

  How Knox smells is not a surprise—like detergent, a different brand from ours, and some kind of deodorant that probably has pine trees on the package, and chocolate. And I noticed before today he’s gotten taller. And that his arms have these muscles you can see.

  Until right now, these were facts about Knox. Like the way he eats entire cakes and plays the guitar and would rather read a book than solve a math problem.

  But breathing in his particular Knox-scent while being held in his arms is doing something new. Odd little pulses leap in my chest. Like iron filings flying up to a magnet.

  When Knox sets me down on the other side of the creek, I look for some sign of what I’m feeling in his face.

  But he just gives me his usual smile—only not so usual, all of a sudden—and says, “You okay?”

  Oh, no.

  No, no, no.

  I can’t stop the thought: Knox is cute. His eyes and his freckles. And the way he tilts his head when he’s confused.

  “Lilla? Are you having leech PTSD?”

  I shake my head, pressing my lips together because I’m afraid of what I might say.

  He watches me for another couple of seconds and gives a puzzled smile. “Better run then. We’re on opposite sides now.” He takes off toward Vivi, who’s waiting at the tree line.

  She meets my eyes, but she’s too far away for me to see what she’s thinking. Hopefully that means she can’t read my face either. Except that I’m sure my flushed cheeks can be seen from the space station. Cosmonauts are probably trying to scope out what’s going on down here.

  Colby shouts my name, and I follow his voice to the green bucket. I grab a couple of paintballs and hide in a little cave behind a bush. My best chance at winning is to stay hidden until everyone else gets picked off, and besides, I need a minute.

  Crush doesn’t come close to describing this feeling. Whirl or flicker maybe?

  Do I like Knox? Like, like-like him?

  I shake my head, embarrassed at the thought. I’ve read enough stories to have words for this, even if they aren’t very good. But I can’t believe I’m feeling it in real life. About Knox.

  His laugh carries across the clearing. Easy to recognize. At least for me. Maybe his team won? With him and Vivi together, no one else has a chance.

  I edge out of my hiding place and look around. Almost everyone is down by the riverbank, clearly already out.

  I look toward where I heard Knox’s laugh. He’s peeking around a tree, brown hair in his eyes. The urge to brush it out of his face surprises me, but not as much as the wet smack that hits my cheek a moment later. When I turn to see who hit me, I get nailed again on the shoulder. Then the stomach. Another ball flies past me and hits Vivek.

  “Stop! I thought I only had to get hit once before I was out.”

  “Sorry!” Vivek says. “I was throwing before Vivi hit you.”

  “Me too,” Sadie says. “But she got me too.” Sadie has one little blue splatter on her hand. I’m pretty sure this is not what I look like. I turn back the other way.

  Vivi lifts her shoulders apologetically. “Why were you just standing there with that
goofy look on your face?”

  I look toward Knox, who has bounded up. “I was wondering the same thing,” he says. “You understood the point was not to get hit, right?”

  I feel my cheeks heat. He saw me watching him. “I was trying to figure out what was going on.”

  “I was winning. That’s what was going on,” Vivi says.

  “We were winning.” Knox corrects. “It’s a team sport, Vivian Tanaka.” Somehow, the way he says her whole name makes them seem more connected than if he just called her Vivi.

  I used his whole name before he carried me across the creek. Is this some kind of sign? When you like someone, do you start calling them by their first and last names? It makes a weird kind of sense because you get to hold their name in your mouth for longer.

  But then he turns toward me. His smile gets bigger. My heart thumps.

  “Lydia Edith Baxter-Willoughby, you are a mess. There ought to be a special award for getting hit by all the colors.”

  He said I was a mess. But he also called me all four of my names. I am a little bit thrilled by this. Also embarrassed. I’ve got a lot going on.

  “There’s no green,” Vivi says, studying me.

  “Look at the way the blue and yellow are running together on her neck. There’s your green.”

  “Fair,” Vivi says. She shakes her head. “Lilla, the paintball magnet.”

  When Knox goes off to say goodbye to everyone, Prisha comes over to offer me a packet of wet wipes.

  “Wow, you were really prepared,” I say. Prisha takes drawing with me, and I like her, but we don’t spend a ton of time together—mostly because I’m usually with Knox and Vivi, and Vivi and Prisha don’t get each other.

  I had them both over once, but Vivi kept making little comments about the rom-coms Prisha wanted to watch and all the stuff she brought to do makeovers. Later, when I asked Vivi what her problem was, she said, “I’m just not into the whole Cotton Candy Princess thing she’s got going on.” But the thing is, I sort of am. I’m just not sure how to tell Vivi.

  “Not my first rodeo,” Prisha says.