My Almost Epic Summer

by Adele Griffin

  “I’d have a hard enough time explaining that you called me at midnight.”

  More silence. I can hear the after-echo of my last words, and I wonder if I sounded mean. Then Drew says, in a rush, “Hey, did you know I was Golden Bookworm the year before you? But I only had to read thirty-four books. My class wasn’t really into it—otherwise I could have read way more, easy. My kid brother drew vampire bats on my Bartlett’s Quotations.”

  “What a brat.”

  “Nah. It’s not like I can’t use it.” But Drew wouldn’t have confessed about the vampire bats unless he thought it was bratty, too. He must love his big, beautiful Bartlett’s the way I love mine.

  “So, you broke my record,” he says.

  “I guess.”

  “By, like, seventeen books,” he adds.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So . . .” His voice is slightly disbelieving. “How’d you do it?”

  “I read plays. That was my librarian’s strategy. She was my coach.”

  “Wanna hear what I read?” he asks, and then starts reeling off his books. As I listen, I can’t help but think how strangely exciting it is to be sitting in my bed on a midnight phone call with Drew Fuller. And not metal-mouth, shark-obsessed Drew, but older, better-looking Drew, who is most likely calling me from his house, but who I keep picturing standing behind the register at Shady Shack.

  Behind his husky voice, though, I can also hear Starla: You nerds are all alike. Thinking you’re better than anyone else. What would she say if she knew I was on the phone right now with her very own personal D?

  And so when Drew has finished his list, I make myself say, “Okay. And I’ll talk to Starla for you tomorrow.”

  “Wait. Tell me your books.”

  “I can’t think of any right now.”

  “C’mon. Sure you can.”

  “Well, okay, I read . . . Monster and . . . The Cherry Orchard—that’s a play. And . . . and . . .” But it’s as if somebody is holding a straw to my ear and sucking out my brain through it. There’s a roar of emptiness inside my head where my book list should be. “It’s so late, I can’t think.” Then I laugh in a way that sounds suspiciously like a giggle.

  Drew laughs, too, as if my impaired conversation is subtly clever.

  “I guess I better go,” I say. “My mom . . .” But just mentioning my mom makes me feel too self-conscious, and I can’t finish.

  “Wait,” he says again. And then we are both just breathing in and out on the phone. The joined sound of our breath stands up the hair on my arms and the back of my neck. It strikes me that the last thing I would ever want to do is hang up this phone. “I’m almost done with this paperback,” Drew says. “It’s called On the Road. I’ll let you have it when I’m through.”

  “Great.” I don’t want to tell him that I’ve already read it. “And I’ll . . . I’ll talk to Starla tomorrow.” I wince. Saying Starla’s name is worse than saying Mom. It effectively shatters the moment.

  “Okay.”

  “Good night.” No, not good night. I could have said anything but good night. Good night means I am ending the call. What is wrong with me?

  “Oh. G’night.”

  I listen to Drew click off. The hand that held the phone is damp. I lie down in my bed, my eyes wide on the ceiling. My mind is all noodly and my whole body is tingling. I don’t know what to think first. As confusing, as complicated as it is, for the first time this summer, I realize that I am not living in the corner of my life. Something Epic is actually happening to me. Right now. And I didn’t even have to move to Los Angeles.

  I Attempt to Explain Myself

  AN HOUR LATER, I am still awake. I go online. There’s one e-mail, from Whitney.

  From: wlamott@starpointtenniscamp.org

  Um, Irene . . .

  Did you send me those bad jokes as a joke? B/c I did not laugh at any. I’ll give ya a tax free charity laugh to the one about what do bald guys put for hair color on their driver’s license. The others were excroosh. Way thumbs down.

  Get this today I find out behind my back Walt told this kid Rich Curie that I looked like an Australian prairie vole. I found one online and it is so so not true but I wonder how many people Rich told. So I broke up with Walt and I’m not speaking to Rich. I will never look at another example of the defect male species. From now on it’s tennis tennis tennis and nothing else which is what I should’ve been concentrating on in the first place . . .

  Send me a real letter and no nyuck-nyucks.

  W.

  Dear Whit—

  There’s this guy who might like me.

  Delete.

  Dear Whit—

  Do you remember Drew Fuller from a grade ahead of us? Well now he is hot and he called me at midnight.

  Delete.

  Whitty—

  That sucks about Walt. Think of it this way—if you’d married him, you’d be Walt and Whitney Waterman, which sounds like a cartoon and people would be smirky behind your back about it. If you’re feeling the need for revenge, you could always start a rumor that he told you he peed his bed until he was twelve.

  So there’s this guy, but I’m not writing about him right now because I don’t want to jinx it. You’ll be the first to know if anything happens.

  It’s almost three in the morning so I’ll send a longer letter when I’m conscious.

  Your-reen.

  Not great, and too brief for what I owe Whitney. But it’s better than no mail at all.

  It even feels like a jinx to mention Drew at all, but I hit Send.

  My Resolution, and Its Sequel

  THE NEXT DAY, as soon as I see her, I tell Starla about Drew’s call.

  I’ve resolved to tell her because:

  A. It is the Heroine thing to do.

  B. I would be scared if she found out about the call some other way.

  Only Starla gets so angry about it that she can hardly speak, or even look at me. So angry that I wonder if she might take out her key and grate up the paint on Judith’s bike. So angry that it makes me angry.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I protest for the second time. “And I especially didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You never told me you knew him. You lied, basically.”

  “Because I didn’t recognize him. He looked different in sixth grade.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You make it seem like Drew calling me is my own fault.”

  Starla pushes up her bucket hat to scan me from head to foot. Then she rolls her eyes.

  “You know, you shouldn’t roll your eyes at a person. It’s the most critically negative of all facial expressions.”

  “Then take the hint and go away.”

  So I keep away from her. I rally the kids for cannonball contests on the dock. We twirl on the raft. We play Marco Polo and Freeze Tag with Zaps and Annie Waldron, who is, as Lainie testified, icky for no real reason. At lunch, I indulge Lainie in three monstrously dull rounds of Twenty Questions. I am the best babysitter of all time, and the self-appointed guardian of all Larkin’s Pond kids, because I figure if any of them started drowning, Starla’d be too hostile to perform rescues.

  Occasionally, I sneak looks at her. She sits like a bronze-cast, stone-faced goddess on her lifeguard chair. Once she catches my eye, and I half smile over in hopeful truce, but she jerks her head away like I’m some pesky bug not worth more than a second’s irritated notice. Underneath, though, I know that each of our minds is fixated on the other, turning obsessive, mental loops.

  That afternoon, as I’m packing up, Drew appears.

  I try to concentrate on Starla’s anger, but Drew dissolves it. I feel the same as I did last night, helplessly, cringingly self-conscious, trying to prepare myself for the aftershock of whatever dumb thing I might say or do in his presence. Odd, nervous thoughts blow in on a gale. Does my hair look limp and unlustrous? Is my nose still peeling? Has Drew spied the gross bruise halfway up my right thigh?

  “Hi.” I s
mile at him, hoping that I’ve exposed the correct number of teeth.

  “Hey.”

  “You work in Shady Shack,” says Lainie.

  “Yeah. Come in next time, and I’ll give you a Superblo bubble gum,” Drew tells her.

  “And me,” says Evan.

  “Sure.” Drew smiles at me over Lainie’s head. Didn’t he used to wear glasses? I’m pretty sure he did, or how else could I have not noticed those eyes? “You’re their babysitter for the summer?”

  “Yeah.” Starla is watching us too hard for me to relax into the conversation. I get a sense of invisible knives whistling through the air.

  “What a cushy job,” says Drew. “Babysitting’s the easy life, right?”

  Cushy? Easy? Most of the time, what I feel about this job is bitter and resentful. Then I’m struck by the possibility that Drew might be having an even worse summer than I am. I look at him harder. Outside and up close, Drew doesn’t seem quite as rubber-band bodied as when he’s slumped behind a register. His smile is awkward but real.

  “Irene loves babysitting us,” Lainie declares. “She says we’re the best kids she ever took care of.”

  “I believe it.” Drew nods.

  “She just takes care of Lainie,” Evan adds. “I don’t need her.”

  There’s something funny about both kids trying to show off for Drew. I picture him in their estimation, an older guy, as tall as their dad, with his own job and car.

  “Hey!” Starla’s voice, lilting and sweet, snaps everyone’s head around. She is beckoning Drew over.

  “The lifeguard wants you,” says Evan, his voice loaded with meaning.

  “Right, okay,” Drew half twists in Starla’s direction. “Talk to ya later.”

  “Bye.” I want to say more, only not under Starla’s inspection. I open my book and allow myself only the smallest, slyest glances at the two of them. Whatever they’re talking about, I console myself that it doesn’t seem intimate, though at one point Starla laughs, a pealing bell of a laugh that I’m sure is at least halfway for my benefit. Still, it feels like hours have dragged past before Drew detaches, heading back to Shady Shack, with a quick chin lift to acknowledge us as he passes by.

  “So was that guy your boyfriend or something?” asks Evan later, as we’re pedaling home.

  “No.”

  “Maybe he wants to be,” says Lainie.

  “Did he used to go out with the lifeguard?”

  “You mean your girlfriend?” I tease.

  “Shut up, Irene, she’s not my girlfriend,” says Evan. “And she’s outrageous. If he for-real went out with the lifeguard, there’s probably no chance that he likes you.”

  It’s the truth, but it still hits like a sledgehammer.

  “Irene would be the number-one girlfriend of anyone, because she makes up so many fun games,” says Lainie with such absolute confidence, I could have jumped off my bike and hugged her.

  “I’d take hotness over games,” Evan answers, equally sincere.

  “You’re a teenager and Starla is a teenager,” muses Lainie, “and that guy from Shady Shack is a teenager, too.”

  “Yep.”

  “I can’t wait to be a teenager,” Lainie bursts out in a fit of passion.

  “I’ll be thirteen in one year, nineteen weeks, and two days,” says Evan. “But you won’t be a teenager for a long, long time, crybaby Lainie.”

  Lainie presses her lips together in a colossal effort not to weep from the unfairness of it all. It makes me feel sorry for her, especially since I remember the Teenager Countdown like it was yesterday.

  “C’mon, Lainie,” I say. “Race ya to the stop sign.”

  Intrigue

  THAT AFTERNOON, I ask Judith to let me off in town at Organic Fields.

  “You sure you want to walk home from here?” she asks. “It’s kind of a trek. Longer than from the library.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ve done it a thousand times,” I lie.

  “I’ll wait in the parking lot and take you home if you want,” she persists. “Door-to-door service. Can’t beat that.”

  But I shake my head. I’m already embarrassed that Judith is dropping me here, since I’m sure it will open up another Prior family debate about how Roy’s departure has caused Mom to unravel to the heartbreaking point where I’m now in charge of feeding us.

  Because Mom isn’t unraveling. She’s just sad. That’s why I want to make her a special dinner.

  At Organic Fields, I get half a pound of Gruyère cheese plus fresh bakery bread for gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. I poke around for the greenest, firmest bunch of asparagus, and I ask for a close-up on three different apple tarts, Mom’s favorite dessert. This is a noble gesture on my part since I am more of a chocolate person. I pay with my Food Chicken money. Guilt money, as I’ve come to think of it. Best to spend it on a good cause.

  At home, I set the table with the blue willow plates that we rarely use, and I write out two little menus, using my calligraphy kit to make the presentation look more restaurantish. Then I yank up a healthy bunch of dandelions growing outside by the stoop and I set them in a pewter beer stein. It doesn’t look too elegant, but “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not been discovered,” I remind myself with one of my favorite Bartlett’s.

  The phone rings just as I’m forklifting the asparagus out of the steamer.

  “Bella and Marianne and some of the other girls all want to do a ladies’ poker night.” Mom’s voice is more cheerful than I’ve heard in days. “So I’m gonna tag along with them. Can you handle your own dinner?”

  I look at the table. “I was going to make us special grilled cheeses. And I bought an apple tart.”

  “Oh, honey.” Then, silence. She wants me to let her off the hook.

  “I guess you can have the tart for breakfast, though.”

  Her relief is audible in her exhale. “That sounds great. And we might go to Smokes after. I’ll be late, so please don’t call the police to find out about road accidents.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour. Hey, and honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for thinking of me, okay?”

  “Sure.” After I hang up, I skip the grilled cheese and eat an all-asparagus dinner as I read my book. Even inside her insane asylum madness, Nicole Diver’s beautiful hair makes my fingers itch. Where-where-where is that notebook? It has to be in my room.

  Has to be.

  I jump up from the table, full of renewed searching vigor.

  In my room, I paw though boxes, toss things from my closet, yank the folders out of my hanging file. I look in ridiculous places, too—my Paul Pelicano envelope and in my underwear drawer and behind my shoe tree. Every second that I can’t find it, it’s harder for me to stay calm.

  When I’m all out of places, I stand there in the middle of my ransacked room, my hands gripping my head, my face and armpits sweaty and angry.

  Then a sudden, prickly apprehension hits me with such force that I can’t move.

  Somebody is outside.

  My feet are glued to my rug. Without moving my head, I switch my gaze to my window, into the purplish twilight darkness that soon will be black. Now I can just make out the yew hedge that divides our house from the Binkley property. I stare, paralyzed and unblinking. My eyes adjust to pick out the boxy edge of the Binkleys’ station wagon and their rooster weather vane with the broken-off rooster beak.

  There, a car is parked out at the edge of our lawn.

  Slowly, I sink to all fours and crawl, inch by inch, to the wall light switch. I reach up and snap off my bedroom light. In the dark, I squat on my haunches. My nose itches but I don’t dare to scratch. There’s no sound except for the steady chirrup of crickets.

  Then, from the kitchen door, a knock. My heart leaps. But burglars wouldn’t knock first, would they? In a plunge of reckless bravery, I race to the kitchen, and through the window I see the shadowy outline of Drew Fuller. H
e is standing on the steps outside the kitchen door. He knocks again. I duck again. Oh my God. How can I let him see me like this, so damp and flustered?

  “One second!” I yell. Quickly, I scurry to the bathroom, where I click on Mom’s makeup mirror. I splash cold water on my cheeks, then find a tube of crusty mascara and apply a coat. I work some Vaseline over my lips, and I fluff out my hopelessly non-heroine hair.

  Then I stroll to the kitchen door, breezily snapping on lights. When he sees me through the window, Drew smiles and mouths, “Hi.”

  I open the door. “Hey, what’s up?”

  He holds up a copy of On the Road. “You’ll blast through this,” he says. “One of those ‘seize the day’ kinda books? Makes you feel like you can do anything. Me, anyway.” He’s wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt. His tan looks extra dark, his hair extra shiny in the kitchen light. I hope my blasé expression is working as I take the book.

  “Thanks.”

  “Since I was driving through the neighborhood already and the book was already in the car, I thought I’d see if I remembered where you live, and then, if I passed the test and got the house right, I’d say hey and give it to you. To keep. Actually, I’ve got to go pick up my brother Jake at work. He’s older, we share the car so that I’m Tuesday and Thursday, he’s the other days, and I only have a junior license anyhow, so he gets to drive more, and I’m kinda running late as it is.” Drew is speaking fast and slightly out of breath. “It was an impulse thing,” he finishes.

  “Oh.” I step aside to let him in. “Do you want anything? Like, water or—I have apple tart. Gourmet.” I regret the offer immediately, it seems desperate, like I’m trying to seduce Drew Fuller with my private stash of high-end food.

  “No, thanks. Jake’s not so chill about waiting.” Drew frowns as he stares at me. “There’s all these black crumbs on your eyelashes.”

  “Oh, that.” My cheeks re-blush. “My mom was trying out makeup products on me. She owns a beauty parlor.”