Summerlost

by Ally Condie

  “My brother used to like to go on drives,” I said. I’m not sure why. It’s what came out, what I guess I was thinking about. “Sometimes he wanted my mom or dad to take him alone and sometimes he wanted the whole family to come. We’d get in the car and back out of the driveway. He would say left, right, left. You weren’t ever sure where he was going to take you but he wasn’t doing it at random. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. Sometimes past the police station, or his school, stuff that made sense. Sometimes he’d have us drive past places I’d never even noticed, down streets I’d never wondered about, and then we’d come home a new way. He always knew how to get back.”

  “Did the accident happen on one of those drives?” Leo asked.

  “No,” I said. “It was on the freeway. Dad and Ben were going to another town to run some errands. The guy who hit them was drunk, right in the middle of the day. He died too.”

  I waited for Leo to say things. Like I’m sorry or That’s so sad or Drunk drivers are the worst. All of those things were true.

  “I wish I’d known your dad and your brother,” Leo said.

  “Me too,” I said. “I wish that I had.”

  I could tell that Leo didn’t know what I meant.

  “I mean,” I said, “I thought I knew them really well. But it turns out there was a lot more to them.” And I realized I didn’t only mean Ben, who was hard to know, who had his own world. I also meant my dad. I mean, he was my dad. I knew the way his face looked in the morning before he shaved and that he would read you a story almost any time you asked him to, especially on Saturday mornings. I knew that he loved to watch soccer and eat chocolate chips with a spoonful of peanut butter and I knew his favorite Christmas song was one that hardly anyone knew called “Far, Far, Away on Judea’s Plains.” But I didn’t know lots of things. Did he believe in God and how much? When he was a teenager, who was the first girl he kissed? How long did it take him to learn how to read? What music did he listen to when no one else could hear?

  “You don’t have to know someone all the way to miss them,” Leo said. “Or to feel bad that they’re gone.”

  “Like you and Lisette Chamberlain,” I said.

  Leo looked horrified. “That’s not what I meant.” His face was red.

  “I know,” I said, “but it’s true.” I kind of missed Lisette too, now that I’d seen her alive. It was not the same at all as for my dad and Ben. But it was still missing someone. Wondering about them.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Thanks for letting me watch the play. You’re right. She was amazing.”

  We went up the stairs and Leo came outside with me. The turkey vultures were wheeling around in the sky above the neighborhood. “There’s those freaky birds,” Leo said.

  “Did they live in our backyard before we bought the house?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “They came after the Wainwrights left. But before you moved in.”

  That did not make me feel better.

  I wanted them to be Wainwright birds.

  16.

  Back at home I pulled Lisette Chamberlain on over my head and studied my new T-shirt in the mirror. It fit perfectly. I would have to wear another shirt over it in the morning so my mom wouldn’t think it was weird that I was wearing a shirt with a dead lady’s face on it to go running.

  There wasn’t anything on the windowsill, but it wasn’t night yet. Still, it had been a little while. Maybe I was supposed to respond somehow? Like leave something back?

  The things Lisette (if it was Lisette) was leaving for me were things Ben would have loved. Was she trying to help me heal?

  How could I help her?

  Did she need us to help her with something involving Roger? Did she want us to find her ring?

  Maybe I should leave something purple on the windowsill so Lisette would know I was trying. Or maybe I should ask Leo what her favorite food was, and then I could leave that out for her.

  And then I started laughing at how stupid I was.

  Because that was what you did for Santa. Who was also not real. Like the ghost of Lisette Chamberlain was not real. Someone real had to be leaving those things.

  Maybe it was Leo. Was that possible? The gifts hadn’t started arriving on the windowsill until after I met him.

  17.

  Saturday night after work there still wasn’t anything new on the windowsill. But I did have a nightmare. Or maybe a dream.

  Ben and I were driving. I was picking Ben up at school, which I did tons of times but I was always the passenger in real life and never the driver. In the dream I was great at driving. Perfect. I flicked my turn signal. We stopped at all the stop signs. It was like I had been driving all my life.

  And then when we got home Ben stood in front of the door and wouldn’t let me in because he wanted to talk to me. “Blue T-shirt,” he said. “Gray pants. Orange sneakers.”

  And I realized he was wearing the outfit he’d had on when he died.

  I hadn’t remembered until the dream what he’d been wearing that day.

  “It’s okay, Ben,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “Blue T-shirt,” he said again. “Gray pants. Orange sneakers.”

  “Ben,” I said.

  “Blue T-shirt.”

  “Please stop,” I said. “I remember now.”

  And he did stop.

  Because I woke up. Crying.

  18.

  The second stop on the tour, the theater, was always the trickiest one because Summerlost Festival employees were around early, getting ready for the day, and the box office opened for a couple of hours in the morning.

  In addition to regular-priced tickets, the festival sold discounted day-of tickets to residents of Iron Creek, and those tickets were first-come, first-served on the day of the performance. The seats were only ten dollars but you had to sit on the very back row of the lower gallery, on a bench, not a theater seat. Leo told me all about it because he usually went to a bunch of the plays with the ten-dollar tickets, but this summer he was saving every bit of his money.

  The idea behind the cheap day-of tickets was that they wanted to make the theater experience accessible to everyone, like the way people in Shakespeare’s time could go to see the show for a penny if they were willing to stand.

  It would be awful to stand for that long.

  Anyway, Leo and I didn’t want to run into a neighbor coming to stand in line or an employee working or, especially, Gary.

  If we ran into Gary, it would be a one-way ticket out of England.

  Because of all that, we didn’t take the tour clients to the actual theater. We took them to the forest nearby.

  It had rained the night before, a high-desert rain that left everything smelling good and the sky clear and enormous. Our feet crunched on the pine needles under the trees and our group murmured quietly to one another. It was a nice group of six older people, three sisters and their spouses, who had been coming to Summerlost for thirty years. Even though it was early, all three sisters were wearing sunglasses that looked so powerful it seemed like you could wear them into space.

  “You can learn about the theater and the way it works on one of the official tours,” I said, when we’d all gathered in one spot under the trees. “But we like to bring you here to see the whole festival below you as we talk about Lisette’s career.”

  “All these years coming here and we’ve never been over to this forest,” said Amy, one of the women. I knew her name because Leo and I had started giving the people on the tour name tags, and wearing them ourselves. It was easier that way for questions.

  “Silly of us,” said her husband, Bill. “It’s nice here.”

  “They’re talking about building an amphitheater over here,” I said, “for festival lectures and things. But it would mean cutting down some of the trees.”

  “Oh, I don’t li
ke that idea,” said another sister, Florence.

  There wasn’t a lot of undergrowth under the pine trees, so you could see between the tree trunks to the theater. In the cool morning light, the banner on top waved at us.

  “Lisette began, of course, in the Greenshow,” I said, and everyone’s gaze shifted to the Greenshow stage, with its half-timbered platform. “She was eleven. She’d been watching the show for years because it was free and her family didn’t have much money. They came every night. Lisette was later quoted in many interviews as saying the Greenshow was better than a movie.”

  Leo grinned at me. We’d been doing the tour for a few weeks now and I sounded like a pro.

  I gave the same information Leo did but I said things in different ways.

  “When she was eleven, the Summerlost Festival decided they wanted to do a Greenshow act with children in it,” I said. This was my favorite part. “Lisette didn’t audition. She didn’t hear about it in time. But she watched the performances all summer long. And one day, when one of the children stayed home sick, she jumped up on the stage. In her shorts and her T-shirt and sneakers. And she did the whole dance, and then said all the missing girl’s lines.”

  Florence clasped her hands and smiled, even though she must have already known this. I smiled back. I understood.

  I loved the story because Lisette went ahead and took her chance. She decided to go for what she wanted.

  And I loved the story because it reminded me of my dad and that day he’d been pulled out of the audience. Even though he and Lisette were totally different onstage. Even though she’d wanted to go up and he’d been embarrassed the whole time.

  “After that,” I said, “the Greenshow director wrote Lisette into the production for the rest of the summer. And that was the beginning.”

  Leo took over the next part because they loved it when he rattled off the dates and names of every single Lisette Chamberlain performance in less than two minutes. He dared them to time him and they always did.

  “Young man!” said Ida, the third of the sisters. “That was amazing!”

  Leo smiled. “What was your favorite performance of Lisette’s?”

  I stood, half listening, and I noticed someone walking across the courtyard stop and look over in our direction. Whoever it was raised a hand to shield their eyes.

  Uh-oh. Had we been sighted? Could they see us through the trees?

  Leo and I had a code in case something like that happened.

  I raised my hand, which I never did otherwise.

  Leo was smooth. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s discuss this more as we move on to our next stop.”

  They followed him out the way we’d come, through the trees toward the parking lot near the college’s science building. Away from the festival. I looked back. People still crisscrossed the courtyard, walking back and forth, but no one watched us anymore.

  19.

  “That was splendid,” Amy said. “Wonderful. We’ll be sure to recommend you to all our friends.”

  She gave us a fifty-dollar bill even though she only owed us thirty dollars and told us to keep the change. It was our biggest tip yet.

  “Wow,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “And we appreciate your recommending us to others,” Leo said. “But if you could let them know to follow the instructions on the flyer exactly, that would be great. We don’t want to get into trouble with the festival. This tour isn’t official.”

  “It may be unofficial, but it’s extremely professional,” Ida said. “You kids are so motivated. Are you saving up for college?”

  “For a trip to London,” Leo said.

  “Perfect!” Florence said. “And you, dear?”

  “School clothes,” I said, because that was the easiest answer.

  “That’s wonderful,” Ida said.

  It didn’t sound wonderful. It sounded like nothing, next to London.

  Leo and I walked over to the bank again to get the money split up. “Twenty-five dollars each,” I said as we took the bills and the lollipops out of the bank tube and waved at the teller through the window. “Not a bad morning.”

  “We have eight people signed up for tomorrow already,” Leo said. “Hopefully they’ll tip too.”

  “Eight!” I said. “That’s a record.”

  Leo nodded but he had wrinkled his nose up in that way he did when he was worried. “So someone saw us back in the forest?”

  “I think so. But it was one person looking in our direction. It wasn’t like they called out to us or came over or got mad or anything.”

  “Male or female?” he asked. “Tourist or worker? Gary?”

  “Too far away to tell,” I said. “But if it was Gary, he definitely didn’t recognize us, or he would have done something.”

  Leo still looked worried.

  “How close are you?” I asked Leo. “To having all the money?”

  “Not close enough,” Leo said. “My dad and I counted it out last night and looked into buying tickets. They’re already more expensive than I thought they’d be.”

  “Are you sure your dad won’t cover it for you? Or can’t you pay him back once you get the rest of the money?”

  “That’s not the deal we made,” Leo said, and his jaw was set. “I’m not going to ask for that.”

  We walked a few steps in silence. I put the lollipop in my pocket. Root beer.

  “My dad’s nice,” Leo said. “But he doesn’t really get me. He’s into football and his job and watching sports on TV and fishing. I like all that stuff fine. Especially fishing. But he’s way more into it than me.”

  “He’s going to the play with you in London,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “And it was a big deal for him to agree so I want to live up to my part of the bargain. Not ask for help.”

  And then I got it. Leo wanted to go so badly because he wanted not only to be in the presence of greatness, but because he wanted to share something he thought was amazing with his dad.

  “I feel like if my dad sees Barnaby Chesterfield, he’ll understand,” Leo said. “I mean, he will. Right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking of my own dad, of the way we’d yell at everyone else to be quiet while we watched Barnaby Chesterfield in Darwin. I remembered how my dad would lean in to hear Barnaby talk, how everything he said sounded both sonorous and snipped. But most of all how it felt to be with my dad and to love the same thing so much. “He will.”

  That night I put the root beer lollipop on the windowsill. It was gone the next morning.

  20.

  My next job in the costume shop was sorting buttons. Days and days of sifting through buttons to see which ones might work for repairs and which ones belonged to costumes we weren’t using this season but would use again another year.

  It was kind of the worst.

  And also the best.

  Because the buttons were super annoying, but everyone kept forgetting I was in the corner working. So sometimes I heard and saw interesting things.

  Everyone went quiet when Caitlin Morrow came in, looking portrait-faced and beautiful even without a trace of makeup. Caitlin played Juliet in one of the plays and Rosalind in another. She was the biggest star of the festival this summer.

  “Well,” she said. “I guess you all heard what happened last night.”

  I hadn’t. But it looked like the others had. Their faces changed from serious to trying-not-to-laugh.

  “Romeo’s breeches split,” Caitlin went on. “Right down the back.”

  No way.

  “I had to grab a blanket off the bed on the stage and put it around him and pull him close to me during the scene so that he didn’t moon the entire audience,” Caitlin said.

  “You saved the show,” Meg said. “And the innocence of that senior citizens’ group sitting in the front r
ows.”

  Caitlin snorted. “Can you give me a guarantee,” she said, “that I am never going to have to see Brad Murray’s butt again?”

  “I’ve been on the phone with the fabric company this morning giving them an earful,” Meg said, “and I’m using our strongest material right now to make him a new pair of breeches for the next performance. They will not rip.”

  “Thank you,” Caitlin said. “With all my heart.” Then she paused. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can keep the Juliet costume at the end of the season?”

  “No,” Meg said. “Not a chance. Festival property.”

  Caitlin sighed. “I know,” she said. “But I had to try.”

  “She seems nice,” I said after she left.

  Everyone turned to look at me and I flushed. “I haven’t ever been around her before.”

  “She’s one of the good ones,” Meg said. “You should have seen Brad Murray down here earlier. He was yelling at me right and left.”

  “He’s a jerk,” said Emily.

  Privately, I agreed. Sometimes Brad Murray came over before the show to get some food from concessions and he liked to walk away without paying the bill. Gary always swore under his breath when we told him what had happened but he never made Brad come back and pay.

  “What’s that look on your face?” Meg said to me, so I told her what I was thinking about.

  “That little snot,” she said. “Is he ever wearing his costume when he’s pilfering food?”

  “Um,” I said, because one time he had been and even the fancy actors were not supposed to eat while in costume.

  “Little snot,” she said again. “He thinks now that he’s been cast as a lead he owns the place. But I remember him when he was a bratty kid running around at the Greenshow. Trying to steal food then too. He hasn’t changed.”

  “I didn’t know he was from here,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” said Emily. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard. Everyone’s been making a big deal about it. He’s the first local cast as a lead since Lisette Chamberlain.”