Invincible Summer(18)

We’re going out.”

“Oh.” Mom turns around, doing that plastic smile. “Oh, wait! We need a family photo first!”

I raise an eyebrow at Dad while Mom rushes through the bags, looking for the camera. “What?” I say.

Dad drains the rest of his beer. “I don’t know. Let’s just do it.”

I say, “But—”

“I guess she thinks this is important or something. I don’t know, Chase. It’s easier just to do it than ask questions.”

Melinda offers to take the picture, so the eight of us traipse out to the sand outside the beach house. To be out here in my real clothes always feels a bit like sacrilege—like I’m not showing the beach the respect it deserves.

“All riiiight,” Melinda says. “Mr. and Mrs. McGill sit in the back, okay?” When my parents have to sit in the sand without a towel,

they always look like they think they’re going to get a disease.

Mom, of course, has the worried face, while my father looks like a disease might be a nice change of pace.

“Then Noah right in front, Claudia and Chase on either side of them, then Gideon and Lucy—Chase, grab Gideon, he’s running off.”

I snatch Gideon up and set him on my lap.

“And Claudia, you hold Lucy—”

“I don’t want to hold Lucy.”

“Claudia,” Dad says. “Hold your sister.”

Noah shakes his head and takes the baby.

“And here we go.” Melinda says. “One, two, three—” She lowers the camera and fake-applauds. “Very nice. Gorgeous family.”

Claudia stretches over Noah and Lucy and kisses my cheek. I watch Melinda, who’s studying the picture on the camera’s screen with that look of longing that makes me wish we’d given up and argued in front of her.

Don’t look at us like we’re a picture.

We’re really not.

By the time we finally escape downtown, Claudia’s leapfrogging empty benches and full benches and dancing in the gutters, she’s so happy to be free. I’m trying to catch Shannon up on my life, and realizing, like always, that there’s not much to say. Nothing’s happened to me that can’t be attributed to these summers.

Shannon, on the other hand, has been actually living. He has a girlfriend, much to Claudia’s dismay, and a first-choice college and a job at an art supply store back at home. He has all these things I figured were for people who didn’t have the McGills and the Hathaways and the beach house.

“You should get a job,” Shannon says. “Seriously, it’s awesome.”

“What do I need a job for?”

“Money, soldier.” Shannon rubs his fingers together.

“Chicks.”

I don’t know what that gesture has to do with girls, but okay.

I say, “What’s Bella doing at camp?”

“Preparing for some recital or something.” Shannon chews on a fingernail. “She’s hoping to get a scholarship somewhere, so she has to start working toward it now.”

“Jesus.”

“She’s a good dancer, you know that.”

I say, “Yeah.”

“She told me to tell you hi.” “Cool.” I shrug and stuff my hands in my pockets. “So, yeah. It’s not going to happen. The career thing.”

“A summer job is not exactly a commitment,” Shannon

says.

“I don’t want to work all summer. That’s so . . . grown-up.”

Melinda laughs and slips her arm around Noah’s waist.

“Chase Everboy McGill.”

I say, “I still don’t get what that means.”

She grins. “Forever young, forever nervous, forever sixteen.”

“‘Evening’s slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old heart,’” Noah mumbles to her.

Melinda turns to him in mock horror. “‘Consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon!’”

I say, “Oh, shut up, I’m not even sixteen yet.”

“You only have to be fifteen to work down here,” Shannon says, completely misunderstanding what we’re talking about; he never got into Camus. He says, “How can I make this more kid-friendly for you?” He points. “Look, Candy Kitchen’s hir-ing. Fill out an app, okay? Gideon will love the free candy, and we’ll waste every cent you earn at the arcade, I promise.

Zero accountability required.”

I look at Noah and Melinda and Claudia. “What do you

guys think?” “Do it,” Noah says, kissing Melinda’s cheek. “It’ll keep you out of our hair for a little while.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Claudia’s distracted, but I can’t figure out what she’s looking at. I guess a job is better than trying to keep track of her all summer, trailing behind like I’m the younger sibling, or watching Noah and Melinda get too handsy whenever they think I’m not looking. And it doesn’t seem like I’m ever going to get to see Shannon unless I’m punching the clock. Damn it. Whatever happened to building sandcastles?

Maybe coming downtown today was a mistake.

It takes forever to get an application and get it filled out; I have to call Mom and Dad to get my social security number, then explain to them why I’m applying for a job, which requires Shannon to explain to me, again, why I’m applying for a job. By the time Shannon and I get out of there, Melinda, Noah, and Claude are nowhere to be seen, and we’re frickin’ starving.