Invincible Summer(28)

So I tell her, I loved it, I loved it, I loved all of it, and she smiles with that mouth and says, “Me too, Chase. Me too.”

Sometimes she reaches out and touches the inside of my wrist, and it feels like electricity.

“Have you told Noah?” she asks me one morning.

I say, “Told Noah what?”

She grins. “Right.”

Exactly what is she worried—or hoping—that I’ll tell him? That she kissed me? That I pulled away? That it took me a second to pull away?

So I say, “No.”

“Huh. And I thought you two were close.”

Later, Noah says, “You’ve been so quiet lately.”

“I’m doing a lot of reading.”

“I hear that’s dangerous. Want a hug or something?”

I shake my head.

I’ll be sixteen soon, and I feel like this summer has slipped by, in a lot of ways, despite its excruciating longevity. Dad’s all anxious because the town hall is talking about building a dune in front of our house to stop all the sand from eroding away, and that means there’ll be a long beach between our house and the water. None of us are excited about toting Lucy down there every day, every year, until she’s big enough to make the walk on her own. I can smell the Coppertone Kids now.

“Oh, well,” Dad says, whenever he gets too depressed about it. “You can’t predict how anything will turn out, really.

Stuff could be totally different next year.” He smiles like a fisherman after a year of no fish.

Time passes so slowly. I work, I get paid, I have nothing to do with my money. Shannon buries himself in college books whenever he’s not at work. This is ridiculous.

It’s one of these nights that I can’t sleep. I’m wandering around the upstairs, trying to convince Claudia to go to bed.

“It’s past midnight,” I tell her. “Go to sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I hate sleeping in the empty room,” I explain. “I just need to wait until he comes back.”

It’s been two days.

Claudia sits in the hallway, knees tucked up to her chest.

Mom and Dad and Gideon and Lucy are all asleep. Wherever Noah is, he might be asleep too. Melinda might be asleep. It might just be us. Alone in the whole world.

I lean my head back until I hit the wall. My cheek rests against one of the knots in the wood. I can smell the cedar— actually, I have no idea what kind of wood this is, but my mind for some reason jumps to cedar.

The ocean sounds like a stomach growling. I wonder if

we’ll even be able to hear it when—if—they put in the dune.

She says, “What if he’s not coming back?”

Melinda asked me this same thing this morning, when she came by to whisper in my ear, “‘Many, in fact, feign love of life to avoid love itself.’”

“Leave me alone,” I’d said. “I don’t even know what that means.”

But, come on, it’s Camus, and I know what it means, especially now that it’s two in the morning and I have no one but my little sister, and it’s getting really, really hard to pretend that this is the life I’m in love with.

“He’ll come back,” I say.

And I’ll just wait. Forever. I’ll wait, and wait, and wait.

And no one will care because they never expected me to do anything else.

Claudia says, “Yeah. I guess.”

“Go to sleep. You’re a growing girl or something.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll sleep if you promise you will soon too, okay?”

“I will. I just need a little time.”

“Going to read?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

But I don’t read. Camus only makes me think of Melinda.

He only makes me want to look across the street and see the light on in Melinda’s room, see her sitting on her bed with that book in her lap and is she reading Camus? Does she love it love it love it? Does her house smell like cedar, and can she hear the ocean, and does she feel this . . .

. . . uselessness?

I walk downstairs for a glass of water, but I forget to be quiet. As soon as I’ve walked past his door, Gideon starts screaming.

No one in the world can scream like Gideon.

“Shit, shut up!” I rush into his room and say Quiet quiet Lucy wake up.

He’s crying so hard. His breath is coming in these strangled little gasps like his chest is packed in ice. I go to his bed and hold him, pushing his face into my T-shirt. Noah’s old T-shirt.

He grips me so tight, but I know, I know that he wants to talk, and one of the things I hate most about Gideon’s f*cked-up ears is that he can’t hug me and talk at the same time. He has to let me comfort him before he can really tell me what’s wrong. I feel his need to tell me, even though I know exactly what I’ve done wrong. I moved from where he thought I was. And he woke up to the vibrations that told him one of us was not where he’d trusted us to be.

Eventually he lets go, shaking while he does, and signs, Late you sleep know no sleep you sick.

Sick no sick no I sign, and squeeze him.





You here need you.


And my heart just breaks all over Gideon’s bed.

Always. Always always. I spin my finger in so many circles. I here you need me.