Back at home, I change out of my graduation robe and into leggings and a hoodie, scooping my hair into a topknot before thundering back down the stairs into the kitchen. “There’s our girl,” my stepdad says, looking up from the crossword in the daily local paper. He’s sitting at the table next to a pile of Walls family detritus: this week’s Meijer circular and a couple of abandoned water glasses and my financial aid packet from Northwestern, Jackson’s baseball glove balanced on top of a stack of overdue library books. “Here’s one for you. ‘Precollege, for short.’ Four letters, maybe starts with E.”
I pluck a grape from the slightly withered bunch on the counter, considering. “Elhi,” I finally say.
He whispers the word back to himself and writes it in. “Huh.”
“Hey, someone grab this, please.” Mom clambers through the back door, the screen door slamming behind her with a thwack. She drops a kiss on my forehead, then sets two massive, grease-spotted pizza boxes down on the counter. One of the perks of owning a fast-casual Italian restaurant: all the pizza we could ever want.
And also a bunch we don’t.
“I just keep replaying your speech in my head,” she tells me, peeling a plastic grocery bag off her wrist and pulling a package of Congrats, Grad! plates from its crinkly depths along with a matching set of napkins. “Seriously, Ma, have you ever heard a more brilliant graduation speech in your entire life?”
“Never,” Nonna chimes in from her spot on the flowered sofa in the living room, her tone brooking even fewer arguments than usual. “She was stunning.”
“We are so proud of you,” Mom continues, taking my face in both palms. Her hands are rough, with the ragged cuticles of a person who doesn’t have time or patience for things like manicures. Her forearms are speckled with burns from the oven at the restaurant. “I am so proud. So very, very proud.” Tears begin to prick at the corners of my eyes, and Mom’s quivering lip tells me she’s feeling the same.
“Uh-oh,” Nonna says, hauling herself up off the sofa with a quiet groan before encircling both of us in a hug. “Here come the waterworks.” She smells like juniper and talcum, familiar; as she wraps us up in her surprisingly strong arms, I can’t help but think about how, as hard as I’ve been working to get into college and out of here, I am going to be so, so sad to leave.
“All right, enough,” Mom says finally—the first to break away, blotting the corners of her eyes with one businesslike thumb. “Pizza’s getting cold.”
“Pizza’s already cold,” Jackson points out, scampering into the kitchen in his cargo shorts and tube socks, hair somehow sticking up in every direction even though I know for a fact Dad made him gel it down for the ceremony earlier. My brother is twelve, and he really excels at it. “That’s the sad truth of other people’s garbage pizza.”
“Easy, you,” Dad says, peeling the cellophane off the paper plates and dealing them like a deck of cards before lifting the lid on the pizza box, the smell of the garlic butter we brush on all our crusts filling the kitchen. This particular garbage pie is pepperoni, black olives, banana peppers, and…Ugh.
“Is that pineapple?” I can’t help but ask.
Mom shrugs. “Can’t let screwups go to waste, even on graduation day. You can just pick it off.”
False. Unlike some other toppings, pineapple has juice, and you cannot pick that off.
I briefly consider investigating the second box before deciding whatever is in there is probably worse than pineapple and settling on the slice that’s been least violated by hunks of brightly colored tropical fruit. I push a stack of vendor invoices out of the way and take a seat at the table as Nonna gets herself a can of lemon-lime seltzer from the fridge—the store brand, which she insists is her favorite—and sidles up next to me.
“So,” she says, “tell me again why you’re still here?”
I give her a weird look. “College doesn’t actually start until the fall, you realize.”
“Yes, thank you. I haven’t completely lost my faculties.” She thwaps me over the head with the pack of napkins before opening it and handing me one.
“ ‘The terrible and the great,’ ” Dad pipes up from across the table. “Five letters. Third letter is an a.” It’s not a question, but he’s waiting for an answer. The two of us have been doing the crossword together for as long as I can remember; it was one of the things we bonded over when he and my mom got married. When I’m quiet now, he looks up. “What. Don’t tell me you graduated six hours ago and you’ve already forgotten everything you learned.”
“Somehow, I think I missed Crosswords 101.” I pop a banana pepper into my mouth, thinking. “Tsars,” I announce once I’ve swallowed, grinning at him from across the table. “As in Ivan and Peter.”
Nonna blinks at me in confusion.
“Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great?” I say.
“See? She’s stunning.” Nonna kisses my forehead the same way Mom did a few minutes ago. “Who else needs pizza?” she asks before setting a plate in front of my dad, who’s still lost in his own intricately gridded world. He absently picks up the slice and takes a bite, crust first.
“So?” Nonna prods again, sitting down beside me with her own slice—the second box was sausage and mushroom, I realize now, which I would have figured out if I’d bothered to look for myself. “About that party.”
I shake my head. “You sound like Ruoxi.”
“Ru’s at the party?” Nonna’s eyebrows rise. “And you’re not?”
“There is no party!” I lie.
“Leave her alone,” Mom says, waving her hand in the air. One thing I’ve always appreciated about my mom is that—unlike almost everyone else in my life—she’s never once nagged me about stepping outside my comfort zone! or just taking a chance every once in a while! She of all people totally gets it: how one false move might lead you down a path you can’t turn back from. How one mistake might alter the entire course of your life. After all, it happened to her, though she’s never put it quite so baldly. Still, it’s not a secret that I was born in what would have been her freshman year of college, or that until she met Jim she was a single mom trying to raise me on waitressing tips.
She was impulsive—just once, she didn’t think before she acted.
And she paid for it.
“Even if there was a party, I wouldn’t be going,” I say now, swallowing the rest of my pizza crust before getting up and trashing my paper plate. I grab a seltzer of my own, holding it up in a salute before heading for the staircase. “I’ve got a hot date tonight”—I see the excitement flash across Nonna’s face—“with a book.”
“How completely on brand,” she says. “This she got from your side.” Nonna tsks at Dad, whose nose is still buried in his crossword. She’s chiding him, ostensibly, but the truth is I know they both like the thought that he could pass something on to me, genes be damned.
“ ‘Bois de Boulogne, par example,’ ” Dad calls as I’m heading up the stairs to my bedroom. “Four letters. Ends with a c.”
“Don’t look at me,” Mom says. “I speak Italian, not French.”
“Parc,” I call back into the kitchen. Nonna’s laughter is the last thing I hear before I shut my bedroom door.
* * *
I meant what I said to Nonna—I’m fully intending to spend this summer catching up on all the non-school reading I’ve put aside over the course of the last four years—but I can barely concentrate for sounds of Bethany’s party drifting in through the open window: The thumping bass of a Beyoncé song. A splash as someone cannonballs into the water. A girl laughing as loudly as if she were sitting right here on my bed.
I roll over on the mattress and rest my arms on the windowsill, peering out into the deep blue darkness. It’s that lovely temperature between warm and cool, the last dregs of the heat of the day still lingering in the air. I can smell honeysuck
le mixed in with the brackish scent of the narrow, rocky creek that runs along the property line behind our house. I breathe in, watching as a couple of kids careen down Bethany’s dock before stopping short right at the edge. The two of them collapse with laughter, coming precariously close to ending up in the water anyway. They lie there for a while, looking up at the stars, and I watch as they eventually roll toward each other and start to kiss.
Reckless, I think, knowing even as the word occurs to me that I sound even older—and definitely crustier—than Nonna. To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s the running or the kissing that seems so risky and ill-advised.
I look away just in time to spy another pair standing in the distance, their dark outlines just barely visible through a copse of pine trees on the opposite shore: Clayton and Bethany, I realize immediately, leaning forward in spite of myself.
It’s probably creepy that I’d know Clayton’s stance anywhere, the shape of his body obvious to me from a hundred yards away, though I like to think it’s simply a testament to my keen powers of observation and commitment to best research practices. Still, the cold fact remains that until today, Clayton and I had had exactly three substantial interactions over the course of our high school careers, none of which were exactly what you’d call romantically promising. Behold, Rachel and Clayton’s Greatest Hits:
Freshman year, we had geometry with Mr. Rosen, a sadist who wore an army-green pair of TOMS shoes every day even in winter and liked to make us race proofs against each other up at the front of the room. I was up against Victoria Ahmed, thought I’d won, and was fully preparing to take my victory lap when I realized that what I’d actually done was write “Clayton property of multiplication” instead of “Commutative property of multiplication” in eight-inch letters on the whiteboard.
Sophomore year, I was picking up a fresh-packed pint of ice cream for my mom at Moxie’s in town and ran into him getting sundaes with his family—including his Tory Burch–clad mother, who leaned close to my ear and politely informed me that my skirt was tucked into my underwear. Clayton had no comment at that time.
Senior year I swung by the chemistry lab during my free period to return an AP study guide I’d borrowed from Mrs. Lee—and walked in on Bethany and Clayton in full-on makeout mode. Three months later and the image is still burned into my retinas: Bethany boosted up onto the edge of one of the counter-height benches with Clayton standing snugly between her legs, his elegant hands creeping up her denim-covered thighs. They were going at it so enthusiastically that I probably could have escaped without either one of them noticing, except for the part where I was so surprised I knocked over an entire cart of beakers, which shattered all over the linoleum floor with a sound like the explosion at freaking Chernobyl.
Tonight the two of them stand facing each other by the water’s edge, not getting closer but not apart, either. Bethany leans in for a second—a kiss, maybe?—but it’s hard to tell. I shift up onto my knees on the mattress, squinting through the screen for a closer look and wishing idly for a pair of binoculars, although to be fair that would be over the line even for me. Whatever happens, it only lasts the briefest of moments before she steps back again, moving farther away from him than where she started. Holy crap, are they having a fight? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve caught them melting down from my perch in the crow’s nest of my bedroom. One time last summer she pushed him right into the creek.
After a moment Bethany shakes her head and turns back in the direction of the house, hands shoved into the pockets of her perfectly shredded cutoffs. I’m expecting Clayton to follow, but instead he dawdles by the creek, reaching down and trailing his fingers along the ground for a moment before coming up with a couple of stones and tossing them into the water with audible plunks. Just then, his head moves as though he’s glancing up toward my window. Toward me.
My breath catches in my throat, a flare of panic before I remember that at least he can’t see me.
Wait. Can he see me?
That’s when Clayton raises a hand and waves.
Oh my God. He can see me.
I face-plant into my pillows, letting out a muffled, horrified wail. I might actually be dying. Yep, I’m dead.
I slither out of bed and army-crawl over to the light switch, reaching up and standing for a split second before I turn it off. When I get up the courage to sneak a glance outside again, this time under the cover of darkness, Bethany’s side of the creek is empty and deserted.
The party behind it rages on.
Ruoxi forbade me from going over to say goodbye because she’s heading out so early, which doesn’t stop me from hauling myself out of bed in the blue summer dawn and showing up at her front door with a London Fog—her favorite drink from Ground Up, which opens at six every morning to catch the beach jogger crowd.
I hand her the cup and take note of her smudgy eye makeup, bedhead, and the slight green pallor to her normally dewy cheeks. “So I take it you had a good time?” I tease.
Ruoxi sinks down on the front steps of her parents’ house instead of answering, easing the lid off her London Fog and taking a tentative sip. “Oh my God,” she moans, setting it down on the concrete beside her and burying her face in her knees. “Why is it so bright out?”
The sun is just barely peeking up over the edge of the lake, actually, but this doesn’t feel like the right moment to state the obvious. After a moment, Ruoxi hauls herself upright again, then immediately lets out a loud, wet-sounding belch. “Oh my God,” she says again, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I’m a monster. I am so sorry.” She offers me a sleepy smile. “Anyway, it was fun. There were like a hundred people there—including, as predicted, your boyfriend.”
I shake my head, leaving out the part where after last night he’s probably out filing a restraining order against me at this very moment. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I remind her. “He’s not my anything, actually.”
“Uh-huh.” Her eyes dart to me. “Carrie was there too.”
I’m quiet for a minute, the mention of Carrie’s name hitting me with the same weird pang of loneliness and regret it always does. “Oh,” I say finally. All through middle school, Carrie was the third leg of our tidy little equilateral triangle, the three of us completely inseparable until we got to ninth grade and everything changed. Or, more accurately: Carrie changed. “I mean, that makes sense, right? She and Bethany are, like, obsessed with each other.”
“Are they still?” Ruoxi asks, running her thumb over the lid of her coffee cup. “They weren’t really hanging out last night at all. Carrie was kind of keeping to herself, actually.”
“Huh.” I file that piece of information away for later. “Did you guys talk?” I ask. I don’t know if I’m hoping they did or they didn’t.
“Not really,” Ruoxi said. “Just hi and bye and stuff, although I will say she didn’t seem as overtly bitchy as I remember her being. Maybe we’re all mellowing with age.” She shrugs. “You totally should’ve come.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I tease, rattling the ice in my cup. “I kind of feel like I got the full experience here.”
“And none of the regret,” Ruoxi admits, letting out another quiet burp.
I help her pack the rest of her things and bring them out to the car, waving to her parents before hugging her goodbye. Cell phones aren’t really allowed at Interlochen, but we make a pact to text each other as often as we can. Except for a few days after she gets back from camp, this is the last time we’ll really be together before college starts, and I can tell we’re both feeling wobbly. “Seriously, though,” she says, even as her dad points impatiently to his watch from the driver’s seat, “try to have some fun this summer, okay?”
“Sorting silverware and waiting tables count?” I ask.
“It does not, in fact.” She frowns. “When I get back, I expect to be fully regaled with all the tales of your ad
ventures.”
“Swashbuckling and sword fighting, then,” I tease. “Got it.”
Ruoxi doesn’t laugh. “I’m serious, Rach,” she says. “You deserve it. If not now, then when, right?”
“Right,” I echo, though the truth is my skin is prickling unpleasantly. I can’t get over the sneaking sense that she got drunk at one party and now she thinks she’s some kind of authority on living a wild and carefree life. After all, this is Ruoxi, who skipped the prom not three weeks ago so that she could practice Chopin’s Etude in G# Minor for the seven hundredth time. Is she really about to tell me I need to loosen up?
And—ugh, why is this becoming the theme of my life all of a sudden—is it possible she’s right?
“Be good,” I tell her finally, hugging her tightly in the early-morning sunshine. She waves out the window of the car as she goes.
* * *
“Two Gondolas,” my dad calls over his shoulder into the kitchen at the restaurant that afternoon, soft rock piping in over the stereo and a huge pot of red sauce bubbling away on the industrial range. “One pig, one chicken. And can somebody check on that order of mozzarella sticks?”
I glance at the clock on the wall above the register. Seventy-seven days, eighteen hours, and twenty-two—twenty-one—minutes.
That’s all the time I have left before.
Before I leave for Northwestern. Before my life can really start.
It’s all so close I can feel it.
For now, though, I get started on the sandwiches, listening with one ear as Lionel Richie croons in the background. Gondolas are basically glorified subs stuffed with cold cuts, provolone cheese, a couple mealy hydroponic tomato slices, and a handful of lettuce; really the only thing Italian about them is the fact that they’re made on loaves of Nonna’s freshly baked bread, which doesn’t change the fact that they’ve given our humble family restaurant a kind of cult following. It’s a lot of food for five bucks, I guess.
Say Yes Summer Page 2