Invincible Summer(3)

so much younger.

We carry the plates into the kitchen, where the lights dazzle us into submission until someone has the sense to dim them. Once all the dishes are cleaned and stacked, the adults convince us to run down to the beach and try to find Noah and Melinda.

He’s up to his waist in the ocean, the Hathaways’ two dogs swirling around him like they’re trying to create a whirl-pool. My brother is the eye of his manufactured hurricane.

“Get in!” he yells, and none of us needs to be told twice.

The six of us splash in after him, screaming at the cold water, screaming at each other, screaming at every single foot of empty where the sky is and we aren’t. Bella’s on my shoulders and I’m twirling her around, Melinda’s holding her breath for as long as she can, everyone’s always yelling, “Where’s Gideon?” and pulling him out from underneath a breaking wave, yelling, “Where’s Noah?” and realizing he’s swum halfway out to sea.

Whenever there’s a split second of silence, we can hear our parents across the street, strumming the old guitar, laughing, clinking their beer bottles together.

Eventually my brother the flight risk comes and holds my head underwater until everything swirls, and, when I come up and sputter and blink, everyone’s skin is shiny and spotted from the stars. Bella and Claudia are running around on the sand, throwing handfuls at each other, shrieking, and Melinda’s squeezing the ocean out of her overprocessed, somehow colorless hair, her legs absolutely sparkling.

I want to be exactly this old forever.

“Y’all right, soldier?” Shannon asks me, his voice raspy from the salt.

I nod and count heads. There’s Claudia, Gideon, Melinda, Bella, Shannon . . . there’s everyone but Noah, who somehow managed to disappear in that split second I wasn’t watching him.

So I look at Shannon and smile, and I try not to care, I try not to worry that my brother will leave me for good, because nothing is as permanent or important as the first summer night. Bella’s voice puts mine to shame, but I sing anyway, until Shannon dunks me underwater. When I come up, I hear everyone’s laugh—Shannon’s and Bella’s, as identical as they aren’t; Claudia’s, trying to be a woman; Gideon— that haunted sound that he doesn’t know he’s making—and Melinda’s. Twinkling into Noah’s ear as he swims back, back to her and not to me. t w o

U p.”I’m sticking to the sheets with sweat, and the smell of Noah’s sandals attacks my face. It is so summer.

At home, we each get our own rooms, but here, Noah and I share, even though there are enough rooms for us each to have our own. Part of the feeling of summer depends on waking up when he wakes up, or putting on a shirt gritty with sand and sunscreen that might not even be mine.

Claude and Gideon used to share too, but yesterday Claudia decided she wants her own room, since she’s a woman now. Dad and I are both sure she’s going to end up crashed on Gid’s floor, listening to the weird noise he makes when he sleeps.

Noah’s already dressed, rubbing sunscreen on his arms.

His muscles wrap around him like extension cords. “Dad’s making waffles,” he says.

I sit up and rub my hair. It’s pretty thin, like a baby’s or something, and right now it feels like I have more sand in my scalp than hair.

Our family’s divided in half between the blonds—Dad,

Claudia, and me—and the brunets—Mom, Noah, and

Gideon. The new baby will break the tie, provided she really is the last of the McGills. Our parents promised no more kids after this one. Which is good. I mean, I love my big family, but this is getting out of hand. I can barely name them all in one breath as it is.

I say, “How was your night?” because Noah didn’t get to our room until late last night.

“Monumental.”

“Yeah?”

“A very important night in the life of Noah, if I do say so myself.”

“Okay, I want details. Graphic ones. Possibly pictures.”

He makes a face. “Breakfast.” “You’re not going to tell me?”

“Right now, I am telling you that it is time for breakfast, you lazy *. Get thee to a waffle.”

Goddamn it. “All right, all right, I’m up.”

Downstairs, Claudia is flipping through TV shows, all her hair combed out down her back. Claudia’s the best blonde of all of us. Her hair’s the color of a banana—the fruit, not the peel.

Gideon’s sitting at the table in his swim trunks and snorkel. Awesome I sign to him.





Thank you.


Noah rubs the top of Gideon’s head on the way to the

cabinet. Noah knows the least sign language of all of us, since he was already twelve when Gideon was born and past that time when your brain’s willing to learn a new language.

Claude, who was five, picked it up just like she picked up English. Mom is great—the motherly instinct outweighed the closed-brain thing—while Dad’s about the same as I am. It’s all a matter of how hard ASL was for us, and has nothing to do, sadly, with how much we want to talk to Gideon, in which case Mom and Dad would both be fluent and Noah

and I would be fine just to smile.

Noah says, “Chase, ask Gid how he’s going to eat waffles with a snorkel in his mouth.” I sign eat how?