Summer in the Invisible City

by Juliana Romano

  That surprises me, but I don’t show it. Instead, I wrinkle my nose and say, “There’s a world outside of New York?”

  Sam looks at me, trying to tell if I’m joking. He doesn’t laugh, but I feel like I can see the smile pressed between his lips.

  “Do you come here a lot?” I ask him after a minute.

  Sam shakes his head. “Never been before. But I’ve only lived in the city for a year.”

  “Really? Where’d you live before?” I ask.

  “New Hampshire,” he says. “We moved here last summer. Moved in with my mom’s boyfriend.”

  “Wow. New Hampshire. That must be so different,” I say softly.

  Something dark crisscrosses Sam’s face. “It’s different.”

  “I’ve never been there,” I say. “I bet it’s pretty.”

  “Pretty. Huh. Yeah, it’s pretty,” he mumbles.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I say.

  “Well, it’s not, but . . .” Sam says. “It’s hard living there.”

  “Hard how?” I ask.

  Sam shrugs. “Everyone is unhappy.”

  And he says it in a way that I know not to ask any more questions.

  —

  When we get to the car, Sam puts the cooler down and I take out Izzy’s key chain. I push one of the buttons on the car remote but nothing happens.

  “Is this right?” I ask, trying again.

  “Lemme see,” Sam says.

  He takes the key chain and flips it around. “This way.”

  He pushes a button and the car double beeps.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I don’t know anything about cars.”

  “I don’t either,” he says. “I just know about remote controls.”

  I laugh. And for some reason, my laughter makes me blush, and my blushing makes me shy, so I try to stop laughing.

  Sam pops the trunk open and I open the cooler and we start loading it up.

  “I saw you taking pictures earlier,” he says, handing me a bottle of water.

  I expect him to follow up, but when he doesn’t, I say, “Yeah, I’m taking a summer photo class.”

  “Pretty sweet-looking camera you have,” he says.

  “Oh, yeah, thank you,” I stammer. “It’s a Leica. It was a gift from my father. It used to belong to him.”

  “Catch,” Sam says, tossing me a water bottle. I grab it and load it into the cooler.

  “What are you into?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” he replies.

  “You know. What do you like to do?” I ask.

  Sam pauses, squints up at the sky, and then looks back at me.

  “I like walking to cars to get bottled water with girls I just met,” he replies.

  “Be serious,” I say, trying not to laugh.

  “I am,” he replies. He picks a bottle of water out of the trunk and throws it up in the air so it spins. He catches it with one hand. “I’m into water bottles.”

  “Impressive,” I say. But I kind of wish he had answered for real.

  We head back toward the beach with the heavy cooler. The wind has stopped and it makes the air feel a lot hotter. A plane coming in for landing at JFK tilts to the side and its wings reflect the sun for a second, flashing a white, blinding light.

  “Do you mind if we stop for a minute? I’m starving,” Sam says. We’re right by an open parking lot where there are food trucks set up and picnic tables scattered around.

  “Sure,” I say. “Sounds good.”

  —

  Sam gets food while I stake out a table. A minute later, he slips into the seat across from me and spreads out his burger and fries.

  “Help yourself,” he says.

  I take a French fry.

  “So are you doing anything this summer?” I ask. “Besides getting water bottles out of cars with girls?”

  Sam smiles a little. “Not much. I went back to New Hampshire last weekend to see people. And I spent a week in Vermont with my dad.”

  “He lives there?” I ask.

  Sam nods. “Yeah. He works on boats on a lake there in the summer. And then in the winter he works at a ski resort.”

  “So he likes outdoorsy things?” I ask.

  Sam thinks and then says, drily, “He likes partying with rich people.”

  His honesty surprises me. I say, “That’s . . . kind of harsh.”

  Sam takes a bite of his burger and shrugs. “He’d be the first to admit it. It’s so weird, his whole business is basically selling nature to city people. It’s this entire industry. Like being outside is this thing that people have to buy.”

  “That’s a funny way of putting it,” I say. “Maybe because you grew up somewhere rural, you just don’t realize what a luxury it is to be outside on a boat or on a ski slope or whatever.”

  “A luxury,” he repeats, frowning. “That’s exactly what I mean. Nature isn’t a luxury. That’s so backward.”

  Sam finishes his burger, crumples up the paper, and tosses it in the trash can.

  “Are you and your dad close?” I ask.

  “Close?” Sam repeats, laughing a little. “Nah. But he’s all right. He’s fun to hang with. He’s great at just hanging out and drinking.”

  “How can you be good at drinking?” I ask.

  Sam looks at me for a second and his eyes latch onto mine. He smiles, but the sadness doesn’t fade from his eyes. He says, “Easy.”

  And then I say something that I haven’t said aloud to anyone, not even to Willa. I stare into Sam’s eyes and say, “I’m gonna see my dad this summer, too.”

  Chapter 5

  By the time we head back to the sand, the sun has moved directly overhead and it seems to have grown hotter as it moved higher in the sky. After a few minutes, Sam stops walking, puts down the cooler, and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. Sweat makes his hair stick up around his forehead like a little kid. Then, without warning, he pulls his T-shirt off over his head by the collar. I watch the bottom hem as it rises up, revealing his skinny stomach and the faint trail of hair disappearing into the top of his jeans. Without his shirt on, he’s skinnier than I imagined.

  He looks at me and I look away, embarrassed that he caught me staring.

  “That feels much better,” he says, draping his crumpled T-shirt around his neck. “You should try it.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, blushing.

  Sam laughs a little. “Don’t be shy. I mean, it’s not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before.”

  “Oh really?” I tease. “You’ve seen a girl in a bathing suit before?”

  Sam doesn’t say anything, so I look up at him. Now it’s his turn to blush. It looks like Sam’s been outside a lot, because the tops of his shoulders and nose are sunburned and freckled, but he’s still pale.

  “Tell me more about your town,” I say. There are a million things I want to know about him all of a sudden, and I’m just not sure what to ask.

  “It’s not a town. It’s a city. There are forty thousand people.”

  “Forty thousand?” I repeat. “Is that a lot or a little?”

  Sam rolls his eyes. “It’s a city. You know. We have electricity and running water. We even have the Internet.”

  “Shut up.” I laugh. “I just want to know . . . what’s it like?”

  “I can’t explain it,” Sam says. “It’s just, home. You can’t see where you’re from. It’s like looking at something too up close, you know? You can’t see the big picture when you’re in it.”

  “I don’t agree with that,” I object. “I can see New York perfectly.”

  “No way.” Sam laughs and knocks his elbow lightly into mine. I glance up at him, watching his eyes sparkle with laughter. But then, slowly the humor fades, until he is back to how he was before,
some hidden sadness lurking in his expression. And then he smiles a little and says, “Okay. Maybe you can.”

  Sam and I walk past people on bikes and Rollerblades, and old ladies walking under parasols for shade.

  “So when are you going to see your dad?” Sam asks.

  “He’s coming to New York. He lives in California, but he’s having an art show here,” I tell him. “So, I’m gonna go see it. And see him.”

  “An artist. Like a painter?” he asks.

  “He’s more of a conceptual artist,” I say.

  “Conceptual? What does that mean?” he asks.

  “So, he started out doing performance art and doing these weird interventions. Institutional critique. I don’t really get it. But I think it’s basically just a way of saying that you’re questioning the system.”

  “That’s sweet. Questioning the system is good,” Sam says.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “It’s pretty interesting how they go about doing it, like staging weird protests and stuff. He teaches at this really important art school. Which sucks ’cause I never get to see him.”

  “Seems like he taught you a lot about this stuff, though,” Sam says.

  And then I tell him another thing I never tell anyone. I say, “I barely know him. Everything I just told you, I know from the Internet.”

  The words are out and I can’t believe it. They are so true and so private that I feel tears swelling up behind my eyes. I put down the cooler and wipe them away before they streak through my sunscreen.

  Sam waits. He doesn’t seem shocked by my confession or weirded out that I’m crying in front of him. He just reaches into the cooler, grabs a water, and hands it to me.

  “I’ve never told anyone that,” I say, after I take a sip of water. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone. So that we’re even.”

  “I already have,” Sam says, not missing a beat.

  “What part?” I ask, looking back up at him.

  “All of it,” he says.

  I take a drink of the water bottle and steady my breath. When I’m certain I’m not going to cry again, I say, “Let’s go. I’m ready.”

  But Sam doesn’t move. He’s only a foot away from me, and he’s looking at me very seriously. His lips are parted, and I can see the uneven bottom edge of his teeth.

  He’s looking at me as if he’s inside my mind, and I’m suddenly sure he’s about to kiss me. I can imagine exactly how it would feel. It’s so clear to me, it’s as if it’s already happened, like this is a play we’ve rehearsed a million times.

  But then he says, “We should get back.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I can’t believe I thought he was about to kiss me. Maybe I’m going insane in the heat.

  “If we take too long,” Sam adds with a crooked smile, “your friend Izzy is going to give you a real institutional critique.”

  And that makes me laugh for real.

  —

  When we arrive at our setup, Phaedra and Izzy are both dripping wet from having been in the ocean. I lie on the blanket and let the sun melt away all my thoughts, the afternoon growing gooey and vague. Eventually, one of the girls who I don’t know hands out cupcakes and we sing “Happy half birthday to Izzy” while Izzy buries her face in the sand and moans in fake embarrassment.

  After cupcakes, Phaedra stands up, brushes sand off her body, and buttons up her sundress.

  “Are you ready to go soon? I should get home,” she says to Izzy.

  I’ve noticed that Phaedra doesn’t talk a lot, and when she does, she doesn’t raise her voice. She must be used to people listening to everything she says.

  “I’m ready,” Izzy says, hoisting up the bag of towels. “Sadie? You good to go?”

  I look around. Sam is playing Frisbee with Justin on the smooth, damp sand by the water. Light smashes on the breaking waves behind him. I want to say something to him but I’m not sure what.

  “Come on, I’m dying,” Izzy says. “This bag is so heavy and I’m so hot. Let’s go.”

  So I leave without saying good-bye.

  —

  We stop for gas on the way back to Manhattan and I go inside to use the bathroom. There’s a display of touristy key chains and postcards next to the cash register. I buy a postcard that shows a 1950s-style girl lying on a striped towel and that reads “Greetings from Rockaway Beach” across the top.

  “You bought a postcard?” Izzy says, when I climb back into the backseat. “That’s random.”

  “I collect them,” I reply. And then, trying to sound as casual as possible, I say, “So, who’s that guy Sam?”

  “That guy?” Phaedra asks, from the front seat. “He’s a friend of Justin’s. He’s from Maine.”

  “No, he’s from Vermont,” Izzy corrects.

  “Same difference,” Phaedra says, with a laugh. And then she adds, “He’s from somewhere.”

  Then, Phaedra and Izzy start gossiping about Justin and some other boys who were there today. But I don’t listen. I stare out the window and watch the buildings thicken as we get closer to Manhattan.

  Sam-from-somewhere, I think. But he isn’t just from somewhere. He’s from a real place and there are real people there, and schools and old friends and disappointing dads. I wonder if I will see Sam again. The city is so big it has a way of sucking people in and making them impossible to find, like a grain of sand hidden on the beach.

  Chapter 6

  Here’s what’s supposed to happen: In fifth or sixth grade, you slow dance with a boy at someone’s older brother’s Bar Mitzvah or at a school dance. You never go out with him, but two years later, you kiss him at a game of spin the bottle and analyze it for months with your friends. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, you get a nice, clingy boyfriend. This boy should be sweet and maybe a little nerdy. With him, you get to practice making out. But after a couple months, you get bored and dump him. Then, junior year of high school you meet someone perfect. He’s smart and nice and you become friends. And then, senior year, you realize you’re in love with each other and you lose your virginities to each other. You’re convinced you’ll stay together forever.

  Here’s what happened to me: This guy Dwight was my first kiss on the last day of seventh grade. Our teacher told the two of us to go to the office and get more cups during a pizza party, and when we stepped into the hallway, Dwight kissed me. In the middle of the school in the middle of the day, with the hall monitor only a few feet away. It never happened again. I don’t know if he kissed me because we were alone together, or if it was something he’d been planning for a while. Either way, it was more surprising than pleasurable. His tongue lurched into my mouth for a second and then it was over. Afterward, when we looked at each other, I felt embarrassed, as if I’d done something wrong—even though I knew I hadn’t.

  In ninth grade, I started at NYSA, the New York School of the Arts. Noah was a junior then. He had first period in the same room I had second period, so every morning we’d pass each other as I went in and he came out. We never spoke. But I liked how tall he was. I liked his dark hair. I liked the way he wore beat-up black boots and his eyes sparkled all the time like he’d just heard a joke, even when no one was talking.

  Before the rooftop party, I thought Noah was cute, but I would never say I had a crush on him. But that New Year’s Eve, as soon as he spoke to me, a crush blossomed in my heart. Or maybe that’s not the way to put it. As soon as he paid attention to me, something crushed my insides. It felt more like a crushing than a blossoming.

  I would have done anything to keep his attention.

  Sitting in the backseat, listening to Izzy and Phaedra casually talk about hooking up with boys and who-dated-who, fear rises up around me, familiar and menacing. It’s the fear I’ve lived with ever since that night with Noah a year and a half ago: I lost my virginity to someone I barely knew and then I basically never talked to
him again. I messed up my order and now I might never get anything I want.

  Chapter 7

  Back in my room, I pin up my new Rockaway Beach postcard, and then I sit back and admire my collection. I’ve been collecting postcards of New York City since I was eleven. I have over a hundred. A lot of the tourist stands sell the same ones, so I’m always excited when I find something new. I love the super-fake-looking postcards, where all the most famous buildings are inexplicably jammed together, or where the sunset has too many colors in it. My favorite is one I’ve had for years: it’s a bird’s-eye view of Manhattan so you can see all the buildings and Central Park, and even the edges of the island. But in the postcard, everything is organized and shiny, as if the world itself is a jewel that can be polished.

  The sound of my mom closing the front door snaps me out of my daze. I get up to greet her.

  “Hi, honey,” she says, letting her purse slide down one of her ivory arms and drop onto the floor. “I’m so happy to see you. And to be home.”

  “Me too,” I say. “Can we get Indian food? I’m so hungry.”

  “Perfect,” she says. “Let’s go. I’m starving, too.”

  She unpins her hair and it tumbles down over her shoulders. My mom is fifty-seven, but she’s young looking enough to pass for someone in their forties. She was a professional ballet dancer when she was young, and now she’s a Yoga teacher. Even though she hasn’t danced for years, no amount of time can wring the dancer’s body out of her.

  —

  We walk down the narrow plastic-smelling staircase of our small East Village apartment building. On our way out, we pass the newest tenant in the downstairs apartment, and he’s exactly like the last one: a single graphic-designer type with graying hair and plastic glasses. This building is okay. My favorite building was the last one we lived in. It was in Morningside Heights, and it had wobbly floors and big windows that made light rush in like waterfalls, bleaching out all the colors of our furniture. Plus, there was a big family that lived downstairs and they had three dogs and a rabbit, and they let me come over and hold it whenever I wanted.