Invincible Summer(47)

He says, “Let’s just go down to Dewey and get a motel for the night, okay? There’s good shopping down there, and . . .”

He sighs. “And Chase has to be back by tomorrow.”

“You have to be back by tomorrow too,” I say.

“Chase. I’m here. With you. I’ll be with you tomorrow, it’ll be your birthday. What other reason do I have to go back?”

“Lucy?”

He groans. “She won’t know if I miss it.”


I remember every frickin birthday that Noah has ever missed—eighth, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth—but I don’t say anything. I’m still afraid that he’s going to kick me out of his little journey, which is really stupid now that I know my presence is the only thing giving him permission to run away.

It’s starting to rain. It’s always weird when it rains here; the sand gets these imprints like big fingerprints.

In the front seat, Noah is explaining everything to Melinda. The sign-language major. What my parents said.

What Gideon said.

Noah says, “The huge part of the world that Gideon will never get? There’s about that much that I won’t get about Gideon.”

Before this year, before reading Camus with him, I never would have thought that there was that much about Gideon

to understand. I had no idea Noah went through the same change of heart I did. I had no idea he knew the ability to speak with Gideon was worth any real sacrifice. I sort of thought I was the only one of us who knew that.

And until today, I thought Noah still thought talking was worthless.

Melinda’s saying something along these same lines now, and I remember that she’s the one who planted that concept in our heads in the first place. Just like all the other things she’s planted in mine. Camus, sex, the idea of Noah as a white knight, the idea of night as something more frustrating than dangerous. She planted a lot of stuff, flowers and weeds, and all of it’s growing now in the rain.

She might be awful, but at least she made me think.

What’s that quote? Right— Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

I guess when you’re having sex with someone six years

younger than you, you have to undermine him anyway you can.

This kind of perspective is making me feel old.

But Noah, up in the front seat . . . my brother is making her think, and older woman Melinda has never looked so small. And I realize that I can love Noah to pieces, but I really don’t want to be him when I grow up.

“Come on,” he says. “That pizza was shitty. Let’s get some food.”

We stop at this diner where we used to get breakfast as kids. Noah stirs his coffee with his pinkie finger. Melinda and I both order strawberry French toast; Noah doesn’t order anything, but he picks strawberries off of her plate and never mine. Melinda builds a tower out of nondairy creamers.

In the other booths, people are talking quietly, loudly, but all of them are talking. I scratch my wrist; restaurants still give me hives.

To nobody, I say, “I’m sorry the only things I can think to say are Camus quotes.”

Noah smiles.

Melinda, her hair dripping onto the table and her eyes dripping shut, whispers, “Noah, you start.”

He thinks for just a moment. “‘Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory.’”

I say, “‘In Paris it is possible to be homesick for space and a beating of wings.’”

And I know by the look on Melinda’s face that she has

us both beat. She clears her throat. “‘Everything related to death is either ridiculous or hateful here. The populace without religion and without idols dies alone after having lived in a crowd.’”

Noah and I are, of course, quiet.

Noah’s takes his pinkie finger out and licks it. He says, to nobody—not to me because it’s not true, not to Claudia and Lucy because they never needed him, not to Gideon because it wouldn’t matter and he wouldn’t hear—“I’m sorry for being a shitty older brother.”

Melinda has the decency to stay off his shoulder, and I swallow it all with my strawberries.

We get two motel rooms—one for me, one for Noah and

Melinda, though it’d be cheaper and more logical just to get one huge bed for all of us. Of course, none of us says this out loud, though I know we’re all thinking it. Especially when Noah and I both retreat to my room to change, as

if either of us has anything to hide from Melinda. It’s like we’re playing ourselves in a play, but we forgot to read the character notes that say we all have sex and make each other uncomfortable, and that is our motivation for every single thing we do.

It’s also stupid to have two rooms because we spend all our time in Noah and Melinda’s. And we sleep. All of us on the floor, none of in the bed, we sleep. Curled into distinct little balls. We forget whether we’re conscious or not. At any given time, one of us is probably awake. But no more than one.

My time alone is just after two in the morning. I should check my cell phone.

Melinda is drooling on her arm, eyes twitching underneath their lids. Noah looks like he’s in pain, but then again he always does when he sleeps.

I think I’ll never fall asleep again, then I do.