Invincible Summer(35)

f o u r t e e n


A day comes when, thanks to rigidity, nothing causes wonder any more, everything is known, and life is spent in beginning over again. These are the days of exile, of desiccated life, of dead souls. To come alive again, one needs a special grace, self-forgetfulness, or a homeland.”

T his is the quote playing in my head. I know a lot of the longer ones by heart now. Ones that aren’t even in The Stranger.

Camus has kept me sane through the winter.

I’m driving. Dad and Claudia are both asleep. Claudia’s just plain worn-out—being thirteen is apparently some kind of hard work that I’ve forgotten—but Dad’s sleep is all passive-aggressive protest. He and Mom still don’t appreciate us kids “going behind their backs” and planning our beach trip together.

Claudia was pretty dumbfounded the first time she heard this. “You heard us on the phone to Noah,” she said. “You heard us all year on the phone to Noah promising we’d go together.”

“You kids.” Dad made that expression he’s made a lot since the divorce. Like we’re stabbing him with knives, but we’re too cute for him to fight off.

I said, “Come on, Dad. It’s our place.”

“Yeah, and all seven of us in the house together? That doesn’t sound hopelessly awkward?”

Claudia, always the sensitive one, said, “No, it sounds hopelessly awkward for two of you. The rest of us still love each other, despite the separate houses. Asshole.”

Dad had sighed, gathered her under his arm, kissed the top of her head. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Come to the beach with us,” she’d said, in her newly honed you’re-an-idiot voice. He agreed. Since Mom did, as well, I assume a similar conversation happened over there.

Without the snotty teenage girl.

Despite what a raging hormonal bitch she’s been lately, I really do love Claudia and I’m incredibly glad she’s around. I still don’t have a girlfriend, so she’s the only female influence in my life, and I guess it says something that she hasn’t made me dread the sight of anything with boobs. All I see of Mom and Lucy are Christmas card pictures and the odd weekend here and there. I babysit and bring Lucy to the park sometimes. I only ever see Noah and Gid when they’re out of school, first of all—Noah doesn’t commute from home anymore—and then out of Mom’s grip.

I’m also glad Claudia’s around to have conversations like that one with Dad. She says all the shit I’m still too nervous to say. In spite of her bloodline, Claudia’s managed to hold on to the part of her that says things. I know Noah’s proud.

“She knows this trip is something we need to do,” he said during our last phone call. The reception is shitty in his dorm, and it always sounds like he’s a million miles away.

“It is like spitting in Dad’s face, though.”

Noah said, “‘Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.””

I turn onto our street and note the Hathaways’ empty driveway. Maybe they’re not coming this year, or maybe they came and left early. I’m sort of hoping. I mean, I’ll miss Shannon, but it’s probably for the best. The hellos are harder than the good-byes. Every year it gets more and more awkward.

Harder to pretend we’re still the same kids who ran on the beach together.

I’m trying to pretend Melinda has nothing to do with these thoughts, because I’ve spent the whole year pretending Melinda has nothing to do with me. It’s tradition now.

I see Mom’s van in the driveway, and my chest feels full at the thought of seeing my family, and then I notice the beach and it all comes crashing into my stomach.

I knew they put the dune in, but I heard it from Dad, so I’d thought about it, like he did, in terms of property values and sightlines. I didn’t think about the fact that this place no longer looks like my beach.

There’s what looks like miles and miles of sand between the house and the ocean. We used to be able to run from our front door to the water without running out of breath. Now it’s a genuine hike. Now you’d have to bring a cooler if you wanted to keep your drinks cold.

“Guys,” I say.

They have the same light-sleeping gene as Gideon, except they respond to noise. They crack their eyes open. Dad says, “Shitdamn, look at this.”

Claudia lights up and bounces. “That’s the van! They’re here!” “Yeah, Claude, but look at the beach.” I pull into the driveway.

Claudia’s quiet for a minute. “Ah, well. Still the same beach.”

I love that Claudia, the one who always scoffs at our Camus habit, is the first one to reach this revelation. Maybe she really lives through the philosophy as much as the rest of us do. She just doesn’t know it. Noah would think of some clever analogy relating existentialism and deafness, but I can’t shake out the wording. Something about whether it’s better to know or to not know that you have no idea what you’re doing.

Camus keeps me sane.

I don’t even stop at the house; I head straight out to the sand. My goal is to see how long it takes to get to the ocean, but two minutes in I see Noah and stop keeping track.

I run up to him and he hugs me, that big warm hug with two arms and slaps on the back. “Hey,” he says. “Welcome home.”