That Summer(47)

“Yeah, but when you knew her she was different,” I said. “God, Sumner, you made her different. You changed her.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It was high school, Haven. It was a long time ago.”

“You made her happy,” I told him. “With you she was nice to me and she laughed; God, she laughed all the time. We all did.”

“It was a long time ago,” he said again. This wasn’t what I wanted from him; I’d expected sympathy, shared anger, something. Understanding and encouragement. I wanted him to rage with me against everything and everyone, but instead he just drove, saying nothing now.

We were getting closer to my neighborhood, and I said, “If you’re planning to take me home you can just drop me off here. I’m not going.”

“Haven, come on.” He turned to look at me. Over his shoulder I suddenly noticed storm clouds, which seemed to have popped up from nowhere. They were long and flat, full of grays and blacks, and hadn’t yet reached the sun blazing above us. “Your mom is probably worried about you and it’s getting late. Just let me take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” I said again, louder. “And it’s only five-fifteen, Sumner. If you’re going to take me home to my mother like I’m still eight years old, just stop the car and I’ll get out here.”

He pulled over to the side of the road, right next to the mall. “Okay, Haven. I won’t take you home. But I’m not dumping you on the side of the road, either. So it’s up to you what we do now.”

We sat there, with cars passing and the sun beating down, while he watched me and I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. My face looked dirty and hot. “You don’t understand.” I wondered if I was going to start crying.

He cut off the engine and sat back in his seat, jiggling the keys in the ignition. “Understand what?” He sounded tired, fed up. This wasn’t going the way I’d thought it would. I wanted to be back on that dance floor with his arm around me, surrounded by all those old, crinkly, smiling faces, safe and perfect.

“Any of this,” I said. “You don’t understand what’s happened since you left.”

“Since I left?”

“Since Ashley sent you away,” I said, still focusing on my own face in the mirror, my own mouth talking. “That Halloween. A lot has changed.”

“Haven ... ,” he said, drawing in a breath as if preparing to say something a parent would say, something sensible that cuts you off with the wave of one hand.

“My father ran off with the weathergirl, Sumner,” I said, and suddenly the words were rushing out crazylike, jumbled and fast, “and Ashley didn’t like me and my mother was so sad, it just broke her heart. And then Lydia moved in with her Town Car and Ashley found Lewis at the Yogurt Paradise and nobody was who they’d been before, not even me. When you left—when she sent you away—it was like that started it all. When you were there, remember, everything was still good. We were all happy, and then Ashley was such a bitch and she sent you away and everything fell apart, just like that. God,” I said, realizing how loud my voice was, and how jagged I sounded, “it was just like that.”

All this time he was staring ahead, Ashley’s first love in a wrinkled red shirt and Buddy Holly glasses. He shook his head, gently, and said to the road ahead, “There’s a lot you don’t understand, Haven. Ashley—”

“I don’t want to hear about Ashley,” I snapped, tired of her name and her face and the way she took over everything, even this moment, controlling it all. “I hate Ashley.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. “You don’t know.” Now he sounded like everyone else, passing judgment, making assumptions. Not listening to me at this moment when it suddenly mattered so much.

“I know plenty,” I said, because this sounded final. I wanted him to agree with me. To believe me. But he only sat there and shook his head, his fingers on his keys, as if the very words I’d said disappointed him.

The storm clouds were moving fast, piling into a dark heap that was spreading across the sky. The wind picked up, a hot breeze blowing across us, and I could smell the dirt and the road and my own sweat.

“It was her fault,” I said quietly, seeing him again on the front lawn that Halloween, watching her window, “it was her fault you left. She sent you away.”

“Haven, I can’t deal with this,” he said, hitting his hands on the steering wheel, suddenly angry. “I don’t know what to say to you—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said, surprised to hear him raise his voice, lose patience with me. This wasn’t how I remembered him.

“Look, Haven,” he said, “what happened with me and Ashley ... well, it wasn’t like you remember it. There was a lot involved.”

There always is, I wanted to tell him. These were the same things my mother said to me after my father left, trying to convince me it wasn’t all the Weather Pet’s fault.

“I’ve got to take you home,” he said. The storm clouds were grouped high above us, black and foreboding with a blue sky peeking out behind. It was still sticky and hot, but the breeze was changing, now cooler and heavy, sending grass clipping swirling by the side of the road.