Invincible Summer(48)

The sun comes up. It makes no difference to us. It keeps raining. It’s my birthday.

Here we are—it’s sometime around six in the morning.

There’s wreckage from the minibar littering the floor and music from some party downstairs throbbing through the carpet. We’re dirty and sweaty and sticky and fat and sad.

Noah’s sitting against the door like a hero ready to shoot an intruder, or maybe the intruder himself keeping us all hos-tage. Melinda’s hanging over the bed and letting all her blood drain to her head. I’m huddled by the bathroom door in case I need to hide.

Now that we’re all awake, the silence gets to be too much.

We quote Camus until we finally acknowledge the elephant sitting in the room with us. We can’t sleep anymore. Melinda gives up hanging off the bed and curls up inside

Noah’s T-shirt, her whole body tucked deep inside, her arms around herself like she’s cold.

Noah says, “You need to make a choice. I’ll give you a chance like Chase won’t. I like you a lot more.”

“Not hard,” I mumble.

Noah looks at me. “Shh.”

“Sorry.”

Melinda puts her chin on her knees.

He says, “Stop sleeping with my brother. And I’ll give you a chance and we can do this for real. Not just slutty summers.

Real.”

Melinda has her eyes closed, rocking back and forth, and for the first time in a long time I think she looks beautiful.

Not hot and not disgusting. Just beautiful.

I remember that I used to think that a lot. That I used to wonder when Bella would turn into her.

A part of me still does.

She whispers, “I love you, Noah.”

I hate her again. I say, “Then what the hell were you doing with me? What did you want from me?”

She squeezes her eyes into those wrinkly slits.

“What did you want?” I say, and Noah says, “Chase,” and I’m about to scream at him for trying to quiet me down when we’ve been so quiet for so long and I hate it I hate it and then I see he’s gesturing for me to put my hands down.

I was signing.

I hold my hands together and stare at them, letting them know they better not move without my permission.

“I was fifteen,” I say, softly. “What the f*ck were you doing to me?”

She rocks back and forth. I keep expecting Noah to save her. I keep expecting him to be more of a hero and less of a curious twenty-year-old boy.

She says, “I had just been raped, Chase.”

This is nothing new, this is nothing I didn’t know, nothing Noah and I haven’t discussed and dissected. But hearing it from her mouth is such a different word. Boys say “rape”

hard and sharp to prove they’ll never do it. Girls say it soft.

Like it’s spilled milk.

It’s so much less dramatic than when she hints at it, when she hurts us with it that way.

“Loved Noah,” she whispers. “But I wanted someone who

would never hurt me.”

I know the next thing she’s about to say, and I would

sell my soul or my Camus books if it would keep her from saying it.

She whispers, “I needed a child.” She pulls her legs in as they slip out of Noah’s T-shirt. “Someone who would never grow out of me.”

So here it is. I am sitting in this hotel room, and there are no options. I can stay a child and I will always, always, have to come back to her and that smile and those tears and that shirt and everything that shirt means, or I can grow up and never have anything to come back to.

This is where I get off.

For some reason, my response for this is to take my restless hands and pull my shoes off and throw them toward the bed. Then I’m on my feet, feeling the carpet grain with my toes and wishing I was feeling the sand. Digging in with my toes, I won’t get off I won’t get off I won’t move you can’t make me while the ocean wears the sand away.

The bass booms downstairs and I hate it, I hate it. I can’t hear the rain anymore. Maybe it stopped.

“I am not your boy,” I’m saying. “I’m not anybody’s boy.”

Noah doesn’t move.

“Not yours.” My voice is so hoarse, and the next thing I know I’m facing Noah and screaming, “Get off the floor! Get off the floor and take me home!”

Noah looks at me for a second, then turns to Melinda.

“You’re done with him?”

She nods and wipes her eyes. “I’m done.” He crawls onto the bed and holds her shoulders in his hands. “Then let’s try this for real, okay?”

I want to tell him you stupid boy she is crazy and there are so many other girls around but none of them are here and none of them are our summers. And any other girl would expect him to grow up, to be some person he doesn’t want to try to be. Someone who actually follows through with the shit he says is so important. A real family man instead of a convenient one. Someone who can care

about one person, or at least someone whose one person isn’t his little brother.

So I have to just stand there, my arms around myself, pretending I’m cold.

Maybe I am cold. Maybe it’s not summer anymore.

“No more,” I tell her. “None.”

And I know exactly what I’m giving up, and it’s sitting on the bed cuddling in front of me.