Summerlost

by Ally Condie

  7.

  I was changing into my black jeans and black T-shirt early in the morning when I heard Miles hollering out and my mom hurrying down the hall to his room.

  He didn’t usually have nightmares. Not even after the accident.

  I tiptoed down the hall to the room and I heard my mother soothing him and Miles saying something about Harley.

  Uh-oh.

  I pushed open the door. “Everything okay?”

  “Miles had a bad dream,” Mom said, looking shaky. “He dreamed he was buried alive.”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Miles said. And then, before I could stop him, he said, “It’s from a show that Cedar and I have been watching.”

  “What?” Mom asked, turning to look at me. “What kind of a show has people who are buried alive?”

  “It’s not real,” Miles said. He was still sweating but his voice sounded back to normal. “No one is really buried alive on Times of Our Seasons. It’s fake.”

  “You’ve been letting Miles watch Times of Our Seasons?” Mom said, and I could tell she was mad. “You shouldn’t even be watching that. Let alone Miles!”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. We watched it one day and got sucked in.”

  “That show is trashy,” Mom said. “All soap operas are. And this one sounds sick.”

  “Mom,” Miles said, starting to panic now that he was fully awake and knew what he’d done. “You have to let us finish. We need to see what happens to Harley.”

  “Absolutely not,” Mom said.

  “We won’t watch it anymore,” I told my mom. “I promise.”

  “We have to,” Miles said. “We have to see Harley get out!”

  “No, you don’t,” Mom said. “You absolutely do not. Cedar Lee, we need to have a talk.”

  8.

  I was almost late to meet Leo. After my mother grounded me for two weeks from everything except work and running (which basically amounted to my not being grounded since those were the only places I went, but I didn’t point that out), and said that she was canceling our television service this very morning, she did a double take. “Why are you wearing jeans to go running?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I was getting dressed when I heard Miles and I threw on the first thing I found.” It was a pretty good lie. I went over to my drawer and pulled out a pair of old black track pants, the kind that people wear who don’t actually go running.

  “You’re going to be too hot,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I promise. I’ve worn these before. It’s fine.”

  She went back to bed and I wore the track pants out the door in case she was watching from her window.

  “I thought of something else I need from you,” I said when I caught up with Leo.

  “What?” he asked.

  “My brother and I need a place to watch Times of Our Seasons.”

  “What on earth is Times of Our Seasons?”

  “A really trashy soap opera,” I said.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m very serious,” I said. Miles was never going to get over this if he didn’t see Harley get out of that box. And she would. I knew it.

  Wouldn’t she?

  9.

  In the city where I really lived, there are some pretty fancy hotels. They had nice restaurants, and lobbies with chandeliers, and a couple of them even had ballrooms.

  The Iron Creek Hotel, where Lisette Chamberlain died, was not like that.

  According to Leo, it also wasn’t like that back in Lisette Chamberlain’s time.

  “It was better back then,” he told the people when he gave the tour, “but it was never, like, fancy. It was the best hotel in town, but that isn’t saying a lot.”

  Still, the Iron Creek Hotel was the best stop on the tour, and a lot of it was due to Paige, the weekday front-desk clerk.

  She worked from six to eleven every morning during the week and she had a crush on one of Leo’s older brothers, so Leo had talked her into letting us bring the tour inside the hotel.

  “What does she get in return?” I’d asked him.

  “Zach’s phone number,” he said. “At the end of the summer.”

  Paige was really fun. She had long, gorgeous hair that she always wore braided in some cool way and she also had glasses and wore motorcycle boots with her hotel uniform. Her voice was really sweet but most of the things she said were not.

  It was my turn to lead the hotel part of the tour.

  “As you’re aware,” I said, to our clients (this time it was a family, with a mom who was clearly way more into it than her kids and husband, and also an older man, like sixty-five), “Lisette Chamberlain died in the Iron Creek Hotel under mysterious circumstances.”

  Someone walked into the lobby and asked Leo where the continental breakfast was.

  He pointed them in the right direction.

  “What mysterious circumstances?” asked one of the kids. He was about ten and had spiky hair and an attitude. “Like drugs? Suicide?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Murder?” asked his younger brother.

  “Let me show you the room where she died,” I said, “and I’ll finish the rest of the story.”

  The hotel hadn’t wanted to turn the room into a shrine or anything and they needed the space, but for a while no one wanted to stay in that room because they thought it was bad luck. So the management had turned it into a housekeeping closet.

  When you went inside you saw towels folded on white shelves. Bright blue bottles of Windex shining like jewels. Jugs of bleach. You smelled fake lavender, the scent of the soaps and lotions they used to stock the bathrooms. It was a huge closet. You could definitely tell it had once been a room, and the bathroom was still one the hotel staff could use.

  “This is where Lisette Chamberlain died,” I said. “It didn’t look like this, of course. The bed was over there, where the towels are now. But the bathroom is similar. They’ve changed the tile and the fixtures, but the footprint of the room is the same.”

  “Did she die in the bathroom?” the older boy asked. The younger one cracked up.

  “No,” I said. I glanced back at Leo and he rolled his eyes. “She died in her bed. They found her there when she didn’t check out on the day she was supposed to leave.”

  “So how did she die?” asked the older boy. “Are you sure it wasn’t drugs?” The old man gave him the evil eye.

  “She died of a heart attack,” I said. “She was all alone.”

  The older boy gave a big sigh of boredom. The dad checked his watch. The mom asked Leo a question about Lisette. The old man’s eyes met mine, and for a second, there was that odd understanding that happens sometimes between perfect strangers.

  It would be terrible to die of a heart attack, and all alone.

  It’s terrible to die.

  Everyone filed out and Leo started telling them about our next stop, the cemetery.

  I was the last one left so I closed the door.

  10.

  “This guy is a really bad actor,” Leo said.

  “We know,” Miles and I said.

  “His hair is so weird,” Leo said.

  “We know,” Miles and I said.

  We sat in Leo’s basement, on his couch. He had turned on Times of Our Seasons for us. We came fifteen minutes before the show started with our sandwiches and our chocolate milk. I’d made a sandwich for Leo too. He peeled off the top piece of bread and looked at the peanut butter and banana and said, “You guys are so weird,” but he ate it anyway.

  It was the first time I’d met some of Leo’s family. His parents were at work but he had two older brothers who were both in high school and who played football. Jeremy and Zach. They were huge. They were sweaty. They paid almost no attention to us or to Leo at all after they said Hi. But they weren’t
mean or anything. They made their own sandwiches and then sat down at the table in the dining room.

  “We’re using the TV downstairs,” Leo called out to them as we left the kitchen.

  “What are you watching?” one of them, I think Jeremy, called back.

  “Times of Our Seasons,” Leo said.

  His brothers started laughing.

  We got the show turned on in time to see the people finish walking on the beach and the clock ticking. Miles leaned forward.

  It didn’t start with Harley’s story. It started with another story, one about a twin who was pretending to be his brother in order to steal his girlfriend and money. His brother was on a business trip, which was really not a business trip, but something involving some kind of super-secret spy activity.

  “You kiss differently,” the girlfriend murmured to the twin.

  “Really?” he said. “Better?”

  Miles buried his face in a pillow in embarrassment and I stared straight ahead. This was mortifying. I hadn’t thought about what this would be like to watch RIGHT NEXT to Leo.

  But Leo didn’t seem uncomfortable. He was cracking up. “This doesn’t even make sense.”

  “We know,” Miles and I said.

  “We only care about the Harley storyline,” I said.

  The bad-twin couple finally finished kissing and then there she was. In the coffin.

  “That’s Harley,” Miles said, pointing to her.

  “I figured,” said Leo.

  “We still don’t know how she goes to the bathroom,” Miles said, and that made Leo laugh again.

  “Shhhh,” I hissed at them both, and they went quiet.

  It was a big day.

  We found out how Celeste had managed to make Harley look dead long enough to fool everyone for the funeral and everything.

  Herbs.

  “Wow,” Miles said, sitting back when the scene had finished. “That was a good one.”

  “It was?” Leo asked.

  “Information-wise,” I said, “yes. We found out something we didn’t know before.”

  “Harley’s not a very good actor either,” Leo said, and when I glared at him he put his hands in the air. “I’m just saying.”

  “Was Lisette Chamberlain a good actor when she was in soap operas?” I asked. “I’ve only seen her in her movies.”

  “Wait,” Leo said. “You mean you’ve never seen footage of her actually onstage at Summerlost?”

  “No,” I said. “Have you? Does that exist?”

  “I have and it does,” Leo said.

  One of Leo’s brothers rumbled down the stairs and we went quiet for a second.

  “You can check out the old plays from the Summerlost film archives,” Leo said. “I have a card. My mom helped me get it.”

  “Is your family really into Lisette Chamberlain or something?”

  “No,” Leo said. “Only me.”

  “But they’re really into the Summerlost Festival, then.”

  “Nope,” Leo said. “Everyone else is really into football. I like football too, but watching it. Not playing it like Zach and Jeremy.”

  Leo didn’t only not fit in with the kids who teased him. He also didn’t seem to fit in with his own family.

  We went back upstairs.

  “Thanks, Leo,” I said when we got to the front door.

  “No problem,” Leo said.

  Zach came up behind Leo. “Are you the Lee kids?” he asked. “The ones who moved in a little while ago?”

  “Yes,” Leo said, sounding annoyed. “We told you that when they first came in.”

  “Everyone in the neighborhood is mad at your mom,” Zach said to Miles and me. “Because she’s going to rent the house to college kids during the year.”

  “It’s zoned for it,” I said. I sounded snotty but I didn’t care. I’d heard Uncle Nick telling my mom that people were bugged that we were going to rent it out since no one else on the street did.

  “I know,” Zach said, walking over to the sink and dumping his dishes into it. “And there’s always the chance you’ll rent to girls. Hot college girls. I have no problem with it.”

  “We are going to rent to girls,” Miles said. “Mom says they take better care of things than guys do.”

  “We want to come back every summer,” I said, “and renting the house is the only way we can afford to keep it.”

  “We’ll stand up for you,” Leo said. “We’ll try to sway the neighbors.”

  “For sure,” said Zach. Then he rumpled Leo’s hair and Leo shoved him away. But they were both grinning.

  I don’t know what Miles thought about while we walked home but I thought about Leo. I guess I was wrong about him fitting in with his family. And I should have realized that he would fit in because that’s one thing I do know for sure. That it is possible to be different and still belong to your family. For them to love you like crazy.

  Ever since the accident I’ve worried that Ben didn’t know that. Or feel that.

  I think he did.

  He had to, right?

  I mean, we set up our whole lives around him. All the therapy. All the going to restaurants during the not-busy hours so that he wouldn’t freak out in a crowd. All the humoring him when he wanted to wear his Halloween costume for months at a time. We listened to him say the same things over and over when he got stressed out. We glared at strangers when they gave Ben dirty looks. It was hard sometimes but we all did it, for years.

  It’s not only the hard stuff I remember about Ben. I remember his ruffly hair, how he screamed but sometimes laughed. I remember his eyes wild and also very, very deep. I remember him when he was a baby and a toddler and he was cute and funny and none of us, including Ben, had any idea how things were going to turn out. And how he started to talk more again that last year and liked me to hold his hand when we watched scary parts in movies. He’d let go right when the scary part was over but when it was happening he held on tight.

  I loved him. I finally loved him again, and then he was gone.

  11.

  When I went downstairs to the costume shop before work, Meg wasn’t at the table where she’d been before.

  “She’s in the back,” said a woman who was ironing a long piece of fabric. “I’ll go get her.”

  The one working at the computer didn’t turn around.

  The room was hot. They had a fan on, and every time it rotated past me it made the garbage bag I’d used to protect the special costume crinkle and strands of my hair blow into my eyes.

  Meg brought my costume out on a hanger. “It’s good to go,” she said, and I handed her the other dress back. The fan blew her bangs to one side. The safety pins she had stuck to the top of her apron glittered like a necklace. She had a serious face with lines around her mouth that looked like she frowned a lot but also lines around her eyes that made it seem like she laughed a lot too.

  Talk, Cedar, I told myself. But it was hard.

  Did I honestly want to do this? Try to find out more about tunnels and Lisette? Did I really think a ghost was leaving things on my windowsill? Did I want to spend my time in a costume shop where I didn’t know anyone?

  “I came in early because I thought maybe I could volunteer after all,” I said.

  “Perfect,” Meg said. “We can use you to take over relabeling the boxes for now. That will free Emily up for other things I need her to do.”

  “Hallelujah,” said the person at the computer. Emily.

  “Okay,” I said.

  12.

  And so that’s how I ended up typing a list that had things on it like this:

  APRONS: WHITE AND OFF-WHITE

  ASSES HEADS: ALL TYPES

  BUM ROLLS: NO FARTHINGALES, BUSTLE PADS, OR RUFFLES

  CROWNS: GOOD MEDIEVAL CROWNS

  CRO
WNS: PLAIN MEDIEVAL CROWNS

  FARTHINGALES

  HATS: STRAW

  HATS: BICORN

  HATS: TRICORN

  HORNS

  MIDSUMMER ACCESSORIES

  STOMACHERS

  CODPIECES: SMALL

  CODPIECES: LARGE

  I couldn’t help it. When I got to “codpieces,” I snickered.

  “Is something funny?” Meg asked. I glanced at her. Her face was serious but her voice sounded dry, like she knew exactly why I was laughing.

  “Um,” I said. “I’ve finished typing the list.”

  “Good,” Meg said. “Print them out, one label to each page. Then take them to that row of boxes and replace the old labels with the new ones.”

  And so I did.

  I took the old labels off.

  I taped the new labels on.

  I laughed to myself when I got to CODPIECES.

  And then it was time to go.

  13.

  “So you didn’t get to ask Meg about the tunnels,” Leo said after work. We walked through the Portrait Hall on our way out and stopped in front of a painting of an old man with wiry white hair and a dull gold crown. The man held up his hands in front of him, making a dramatic gesture, and his blue veins seemed to course with blood. RICHARD SNOW AS KING LEAR, the plaque under the painting said.

  Whoever had painted this portrait had done a good job. I looked at the signature. Arlene Stecki. The same person who did Lisette Chamberlain’s portrait.

  “No,” I said. “Not really. I didn’t talk to anyone, actually.”

  “Was it boring?”

  “It was fine,” I said. “It’s sort of interesting to see all the costumes and all the work that goes into them.”

  “Can you come over to my house sometime?” Leo asked. “I have a show I want you to see. Something with real acting in it. Not that crap you and Miles have been watching.”