Invincible Summer(37)

Shannon has it in his head that he has to go to Dartmouth or his life will just explode. Applications aren’t due for another six months and he’s already freaking out about essay topics and whether he should appear focused or open-minded in his list of after-school activites.

“Where are you applying?” he asks me. We’re in his room.

He used to have all these posters in here of models in tiny bikinis. Now he has posters for cars and bands I’ve never heard of. The lead singers are all skinny with stringy hair.

“I have no idea.”

“You should start thinking about it. Your whole life is where you went to college.”

Except my life is the part of the year when you’re not in school, but I couldn’t stand it if he rolled his eyes to this. So I don’t say anything. I say, “What about Melinda?”

Shannon looks down. “She’ll go back to college someday.

Whatever. She will.”

Bella comes by Shannon’s room to ask if a shirt is hers or his. She gives me a polite smile. “Hey, Chase. How’ve you been?”

“Fine. You?”

She nods.

Shannon says, “I have a college book you can borrow, if you want. And I can show you around the common application, let you see how it’s done.”

Down the hall, I hear Melinda and Noah, laughing.

“I should get going,” I say.

We figure restaurants are just a bad idea, and Noah and I convince Mom and Dad that we really, really don’t want to spend our first night here with the Hathaways, so it’s a family dinner at home tonight. I can’t say I’m surprised that Noah needs a break from Melinda. He was there for three hours, and that was longer than I was ever able to go without feeling a little suicidal.

We order in a few pizzas and sit around our big dining room table, letting the kids keep stuff from getting too awkward. It’s noisy and rowdy and reminds me of when I was a little kid and our cousins used to come over. And you remember which cousins you like the best, and which ones they like the best. And you know you’re not supposed to be awkward with them, that they’re family, but sometimes the comfort is forced. Blood can only stretch so far, I guess.

But right now, Gideon’s drawing us together, because we’re all pretty fascinated with the signs he’s learned since he went to school. Sign favorite show I say.

He pauses for a second, then makes a fist with one hand and snatches at it with the other.

We all sign what, Gideon?

He signs, game good fight good, then he shrugs and fingerspells w-i-n.

Noah can’t quit smiling at him. For the first time, we’re all making real efforts to sign every time we talk, to do our best to translate every bit of the conversation for him. Because he cares now. He’s got this air about him now, like he deserves to understand conversations. Like he thinks the things we talk about are important.

Noah looks at me for a second and mouths, Oh, he’ll learn.

I smile. Gideon signs what what, thinking we actually spoke.

“What we really need,” Dad says, looking out the window toward the ocean way, way out there. “Is an extension on the balcony. Just build it a few more feet out toward the water.

We don’t even need new supports for a few extra feet.”

Mom takes a bite of her pizza. She and Dad are sitting across from each other, a few seats down the table from the rest of us, letting the kids—and me and Noah—handle the signing and the yelling and the pushing and the shoving.

They’re acting like civilized, friendly people, just like they did on Thanksgiving and Christmas and whenever we all had to be together, and I love them. I really do. They could have made this so much worse.

Mom says, “I can get someone out here to look at it.”

“Aw, what fun is that? Chase and I could do it, right?”

I glance at Noah, then my father. It’s not that he hates you, I want to tell my brother. It’s not that anymore. It’s that he’s used to me being his oldest—his only—son.

It does sound kind of fun. “Yeah, Dad, sure. We’ll do that.”

He smiles.

Noah looks at me. “So. I’ve been reading Camus—”

Everyone groans but me and Gideon. Even Lucy joins in, with a big smile on her face, echoing Mom’s tone as closely as she can.

“Camus?” I make my eyes wide. “No way!”

“In French,” Noah says.

Claudia says, “You know French?” “I took, like, all language classes this year. I am going to be a man of the world someday. But French is my worst. I’m only getting like every other sentence.”

“You’re just not very smart,” Claudia says seriously. Dad smacks her on the back of the head.

Noah ignores all this and talks right to me. “It’s brutal. It’s . . . you hear about Camus being so much better in French, and—”

“And I know. We’re never going to get it.” I’ve thought about this before, and it kills me. That one of the most beautiful parts of my life isn’t nearly as beautiful as it’s supposed to be.

I think of Melinda, for some reason, and I wonder if she still wears the same perfume. She always smelled like candy canes. . . .

Read Camus Gideon says, then points to himself.

We all turn on him, our mouths saying, “Shit, Gideon, what?” but our hands just saying really?