Invincible Summer(13)

“We’re talking right now.” “But we’re not saying anything.”

There’s a particularly loud wave, and I watch them all stay on their feet before I breathe. I wish Noah would get the dogs farther away from the water, so I could relax for a minute, enjoy the smell of Melinda’s perfume.

“What you just said,” I say. “Was that Camus?”

“No, silly.” Her fingernails stroke my cheek, and then her lips press onto their tracks. “That was Hathaway,” she whispers.

After the kids are asleep, I’m making tea for Mom, alone in the kitchen, when Noah comes up behind me and claps his hands on my shoulders. “Want to give you your birthday present,” he tells me, giving each arm a squeeze before he lets go.

“Don’t do that.”

“All right. I can just return it. Free money!”

“It’s not my birthday.”


He scratches his nose and peers at the tea kettle. “Tomorrow.”

“So give it to me tomorrow. Please?” I hate, hate, hate begging Noah. “Please. Please give it to me tomorrow.”

He crosses his arms. “Chase, come on. I just . . . might not be around tomorrow.” “Please. Be around. Can that be my birthday present, Noah, please? Can you be around?”

“Happy birthday to you,” he sings, softly, opening some weird cabinet that we never use underneath the sink.

“Noah.”

“Happy birthday to you.”

“Noah!”

“Happy birthday, dear Chasey,” he whispersings, and hands me a small, horribly wrapped package.

It takes me a second to figure out what it is—some long piece of embroidered canvas—and then it hits me like a brother in a wrestling match. It’s a guitar strap.

“You made this.”

Noah wrings his hands in that way. “Yeah, returning it would have been kind of a bitch.”

I spread the strap out on the counter and look at it. It’s divided into five colors—blue, then yellow, then red, purple, and green, and each is stitched with names. Noah, then Chase, then Claudia, Gideon, and Newbaby.

“She’ll have a real name soon,” I say.

Noah shrugs. “She’ll always be Newbaby.”

I pick my guitar up off the ground and detach the old, ugly strap. “Noah, this is amazing.”

He shrugs. “Thought you’d like it.” “Love it.” Love him. I strum a few chords. “Noah. Please, please be here tomorrow?”

He rolls his eyes. “You stupid boy,” he says, and touches the strap by my shoulder, where his name is. “I’m always here.”

There’s so much I want to say— Don’t give me clichés when I need a brother, don’t act like you can’t hear me when I know you can, give me a hug, give me an answer, give me a song title, but he’s rescuing the whistling teapot and bringing a mug out to Mom. I lean against the counter and play, singing to myself.

I don’t know how I ended up with three, almost four, siblings and no one to sing backup. s i x

S treamers,” Claudia says decisively and starts taping from one corner of the kitchen to the other. “If dinner’s going to be cold, we must at least have streamers.”

Cake, Gideon signs, with a hard nod.

“Do whatever.” I fingerpick. “Claudia, tell him do whatever. I don’t know how to sign that.”

Claudia slaps the backs of her fingers against each other, and Gideon falls down.

It’s almost nine o’clock and we still haven’t eaten, still haven’t sung Happy Birthday, still haven’t cut a slice of cake for Gideon. Because Noah is gone, and Mom and Dad can’t decide if we should start our family party without him.

“He’s our son,” Mom says. They’re arguing upstairs, with their door shut, and we can still hear them.

“He’s never here.”

I feel like every family’s supposed to have a rebel, but right now I care less about what we’re supposed to do and what Noah’s supposed to do and more that my little brother’s wanted cake for two days and it’s sitting melting on the countertop. He can see it. I can see it. Can we give my brother some cake?

“Don’t worry about them,” Claudia says, scissors between her teeth, nodding upstairs toward our parents. “Everything will be fine.”

Gideon’s dancing.

“I wanted Noah to be here.” I put down my guitar and

start picking up the place settings. “I told him. I said, ‘ Noah, can you please be here?’”

“Yeah, and you thought he’d change for you?”

Maybe. “I thought he’d listen to me.”

“Yeah, because listening is really Noah’s forte.” She signs to Gideon, too quickly for me to see, and he runs upstairs.

I say, “I’m the only one he ever listens to. When he listens.

And I don’t appreciate it when you send Gideon into war zones.” “He’s just going to try to hurry them along.”

I flop down in a kitchen chair. “He’s not a tool, Claude.”

“He is, actually. A really good one.” She rolls her eyes.

“I’m just kidding, but, come on. He’ll walk in there and spin around and do that smile, and Mom and Dad will make some final snotty remarks at each other and stop fighting, and we can have your birthday. Isn’t that what you want?”