Invincible Summer(2)

Melinda is his sister in a different way.

“Of course we can,” Mrs. Hathaway says, with a laugh like a string instrument. “You boys want to get your family here?” Noah says, “Chase, run and get everybody.”

I sprint across the street and straight onto the beach. I’m in the sand for the first time this summer. I always forget how cold it feels on your feet. “Claude!”

Claudia’s wearing her first two-piece bathing suit. She bought it around February, when they put the first bathing suits on the racks, and she’s been clamoring to wear it ever since. I pretty much hate that some company thinks her preteen body is capable of being sexualized, and that this—this night, this beach—is the time and place to do it. She screams, “Chase!” and tackles me into the sand, and she’s a child no matter what she’s wearing.

“Melinda and the twins are here,” I say. “Get dressed and we’ll make s’ mores.”

But Claudia’s already running across the street. “Gimme a shirt, Mom!” she yells, and Mom tosses down some old T-shirt of mine. Claudia doesn’t stop running as she catches it and pulls it over her sweaty hair.

“Gid!” I yell. He’s deaf as a board, but he’s still spent all six years of his life getting yelled at. He’s watching me, asking me with his eyes and his hands where Claudia went.

Across street I sign to him. Come here. Don’t fall down.

My ASL sucks, but the light’s so bad right now it doesn’t matter. Gideon runs over to me and I sign hold my hand before we start across the street. Either he sees this or just holds out of habit.

At the Hathaways’, we make s’ mores on the grill, pushing down on them with the spatula until they hiss. I sit with Shannon at the Hathaways’ picnic table and we try to fill each other in on our lives since last August. During the year, I always feel like there are a million things I need to remember to tell him, and now nothing seems important but our siblings and our summer and the smoke from the grill.

Shannon keeps asking about my family—mostly Claudia

and the baby yet to come—and I’m trying to pay attention, but my eyes keep going back to Bella. Was she this tall last summer? Maybe that’s why she was hanging off of Noah. I’m still waiting to hit my growth spurt. But I’m the one who’s her age. I hope she keeps that in mind.

I respond to one of Shannon’s questions about Claudia

with a quick, “I always forget how old she is,” and then clear my throat. “So what’s Bella been up to?”

Shannon looks over at his twin. She dances in circles in the spots of moonlight that break through the Hathaways’

awning. Her bare feet glitter. They’re white and pointed, like something off a fairy.

He smiles. “She got the lead in the Nutcracker this year.”

It’s his turn to ask about someone. “So how’s Gideon?” Gideon’s hugging on to Mom’s leg, watching Claudia, probably wishing she were talking to him because she’s the only of us who signs well. The rest of us really only pretend we can, but, then again, so does Gideon.

“Deaf,” I say. “Melinda?”

“Grumpy. And she dyes her hair a lot. She’s always sighing and mumbling about the universe.”

But right now Melinda’s at the corner of the balcony, talking to the dogs. “Mom?” she says. “I’m taking the dogs out for a run.”

Her mother is by the grill with my parents, where they’re laughing over a few beers, throwing coals down to the sand, touching Mom’s huge stomach.

Shannon says. “Chase? How’s Noah?”

“I’ll come with you,” Noah says, with a glance Melinda’s way, and he has the dogs unclipped from their leashes and free in no time, and he’s gone, chasing them across the street and onto the beach. I listen for the sound of them splashing in the water, but they’re too far away. I am getting a headache, listening this hard.

I try to think about Bella again, and I don’t answer Shannon, but his father asks me the same question when I go over to the grill to collect my s’ more. He claps me on the shoulder and says, “Noah excited for college?” I want to tell him Noah doesn’t really get excited, but I don’t know how to describe my brother to someone who’s known him just as long as I have but doesn’t understand him any better. So I smile. It’s so dark now, but the coals and the stars illuminate my siblings and Shannon’s siblings and our parents and make us all look permanent and important.

I say, “He’s kind of quiet about how he feels.”

“Yeah. Did he run off with Melinda?”

“I guess so.”

My parents exchange looks, like they were expecting Noah and Melinda’s flighty romance to take a hiatus this year, or something.

Noah does not ruin tradition. I could have told them that.

And Melinda is his summer. More and more every single year.

So I just say, “He runs off a lot.”

Mr. Hathaway laughs and says, “Man, your brother’s a flight risk, isn’t he?” He serves me a s’ more and says, “Still playing guitar, Chase?”

I grin and look down.

They drag their old guitar out so I don’t have to run home, and I make up chord progressions while Bella sings along in this ghost voice that makes me hyperaware, like my whole body is made of fingertips. They smile at me in that way adults do when they’re drunk that makes you feel not