Invincible Summer(20)

“Glad to hear it.”

“Ahhh,” Lucy says, and I pick her up so she can see over the railing. For a second, the three of us just stand there, listening to all of them scream—Claudia and Gideon most of all, with a scattered giggle from Melinda.

“God, Gideon’s voice,” Dad says.

I laugh. “I know.”

“It just . . . makes you completely aware of how self-conscious the rest of us sound, doesn’t it?”

“Ha, yeah.”

“We’ve got to do something about his signing, though.”


Dad shakes his head. “Or there’s going to be no way to talk your mom out of a Deaf school for him.” “House would be damn still with both him and Noah living at school.”

“You’d have to play us more songs.”

I say, “I know.”

The flashlight beams crisscross and one finally hits Claudia. “Got you!” Shannon screams.

“Aw, goddamn it.”

I sling my guitar over my shoulder—it’s still on the strap Noah gave me—and hitch Lucy up my hip and squeeze her tight. “I’m going to take her down to the beach,” I say. Lucy, so far, hasn’t liked the sand much, and this is a problem.

A problem only constant exposure is going to fix. She’s a McGill. She’ll like the sand.

“Keep an eye on her,” Dad says.

I turn and look at him. “Of course.”

He smiles a little. “Of course.”

I take Lucy down the stairs and into the sand. I figure I’ll set up camp under the house—that way she won’t mess up the game, and I can see her well enough in the beams from their flashlight—and I run right into Melinda.

I stutter, “Oh, hey.”

I can just barely see her smile. “Oh, hey, Chase.”

She sits down in the sand next to me and we watch Lucy crawl. “Does she walk yet?” Melinda asks. I play a few notes. “Not really. She can stand and pull up and everything, but she’s not really walking. Unless we hold her hands.”

“Does she talk?”

I say, “Luce, what’s my name?”

“Aaaaase.”

I smile. “That’s about it.”

“It’s nice she can hear.”

“Really no reason, logically, that she shouldn’t be able to hear. Gid was kind of, just . . . a random fluke.”

“Probably something got messed up when he was embry—

onic. Your mom drank, right?”

I look at her, not that it makes any difference. We’re just silhouettes. Lucy’s patting noises in the sand are the only way I know she hasn’t disappeared. The boys and Claudia keep swinging beams like searchlights over the beach.

I say, “How can you ask me that?”

“Well, it helped that it was a rhetorical question.”

I reach out and grab Lucy’s ankle, and she shrieks. I smile and let her go, play a few bars of a folk song.

She says, “I was studying child development. You know.

Before I left school.”

“Why’d you leave?”

She pulls her knees up, and I see deeper shadows in the shallow sand where her legs used to be. “Stuff happened.

Stuff that made me not feel like staying.”

I feel like covering Lucy’s ears. Or playing so loud she can’t hear. “Oh.”

We’re quiet, lying in the sand, watching the stars, while Lucy crawls slow circles around us. I drop a few more notes.

I say, “Can I ask you something?”

She exhales. “Of course, Chase.”

“What’s the deal with you and Noah?”

She laughs. “What’s the deal with you and Noah?”

“Uh, he’s my brother. He runs, I watch.”

“Same here. Except for the brother bit. What about you and Bella?”

I exhale. It feels like I haven’t seen Bella in years. I can’t even begin to remember what she tastes like. I’ve kissed girls at home since I’ve kissed her. Bella was a lifetime ago, but I don’t want to feel that way. It was one year. I shouldn’t feel so goddamn disconnected.

I just say, “Um, there’s nothing going on with me and Bella.”

“Not when she’s not here, right?”

I hear Melinda move, but it takes me a second to realize she’s now on her side, facing me. Her mouth is two inches away from my mouth. Her body’s pressed against my guitar. Her fingers are touching someone’s embroidered name, but I can’t see well enough to tell whose.

I choke out, “Lucy, are you close?”

“Co,” she says.

Close.

I whisper, “I should check on Gideon.”

“Gideon’s fine,” she says.

We’re both inching toward each other, millimeter by millimeter, both too afraid I’ll run away if we try for something more final, more dramatic. I want to say out loud that I’m Chase, and I don’t run away, even when I should, but then her mouth is on mine and I can’t talk.

This isn’t like any kiss I’ve ever had. I feel like she’s trying to breathe the air out of my lungs. I’m pushing my hands into her body without meaning to, and I feel like I could fall all the way through her. I’m Alice in Wonderland, and that’s maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought.