Invincible Summer(49)

“Come on,” he says, and he gets to his feet. He shakes off before he touches me, like he’s trying to get rid of any traces of Melinda. Like he knows I’ve made a switch, and if he touches me, he’ll contaminate me. He’ll make me a kid again. And I can’t go back. I can’t.

He says, “I’ll take you home.”

When I walk through the front door of our house, they mob me. Both parents and every single sibling, throwing arms around my waist, signing and speaking how happy they are that I’m home.

All except Noah, who’s pulling out of the driveway, pulling back into Melinda. e i g h t e e n

O ur birthday party is on the Hathaways’ porch this year. It’s both awkward and completely comfortable without either family’s oldest child here. We grill hamburgers and throw the ones we burn to the dogs. We are wasteful and extravagant and there is wrapping paper everywhere. We laugh a lot. The ocean’s especially rough tonight and rumbles right along with us.

I have my guitar back out and I’m strumming along to

whatever Bella feels like singing. I don’t complain when she switches songs mid-line. I don’t think I have the right to complain about Bella switching in the middle of something.

Looking at the guitar strap—with all their names from Noah down to Newbaby—makes me feel very small and not quite as old as I’ve let myself become. Which is seventeen today.

Shannon and Claudia sit with me, laughing and telling jokes, slipping marshmallows into each others’ mouths. Claudia is perched on Shannon’s lap. They look perfect together, like Shannon always imagined they would. It’s almost insane that something, even if it’s just one thing, worked out the way we thought it would.

Gideon and Lucy are both feeling way better and are going kind of stir-crazy from being restrained to the porch.

Lucy me beach go?

Lucy birthday I sign. Stay.

Down at the end of the beach, someone is setting off fireworks. They send silver sparks through the dark. We only know the ocean’s there because we can hear it. The whole beach looks like more sky.

Everything’s smoky from the grill, the parents are all drunk, and all of us over twelve have had a few beers ourselves. It’s the kind of atmosphere where nothing is perfect, but it feels okay regardless—where anything could happen, but that doesn’t mean you expect it to. The last thing I expect is for Noah to roll up in the driveway with Melinda, a smile, and a gigantic raft in the shape of a seahorse.

Gideon and I grab hands and run down to greet them.

Noah’s standing by the car with his arms crossed, that mouth-wash-commercial smile in his mouth. “Happy motherf*cking birthday!” he yells.

I throw myself on him. He hugs me and laughs. He’s wearing the denim jacket I gave him for Christmas.

“You came back,” I say.

“Course.” His eye roll gives me the feeling this is less an abbreviation of “of course” and more one of “par for the course.”

“I got your message,” he says softly. “Thanks.”

I don’t care if I’m too old to say this or think this or whatever, I love him so much. I hug him again.

Melinda’s clinging to the car, like this isn’t her house. Like she honestly doesn’t think she’s welcome here.

Whatever, Melinda. My brother is here.

Gideon’s still pissed off at Noah—we can see it in his baby face—but he’s also totally entranced by this raft. It could fit about five of him, and he’s running his hands down it, feeling the spikes.

Tomorrow I tell him. No after cake.





Ocean rough tomorrow better.


He pouts and tugs the float out of the car regardless.

Melinda helps. Lucy show? he signs as soon as he has two free hands.





Fine.


I watch him drag it up the stairs. “So was that a present for me or for Gid?”

He shrugs. “Gid, I guess.”

“So what’s my present?”

“Me!” He holds his arm out. “Aaaand, this girl.” He pulls Melinda toward him. “Hanging on me. And not you.”

She waves at me a little, gripping Noah’s arm.

It is sort of an awesome present.

“Come on,” he says, slipping his arm around Melinda.

“Let’s go up there and pretend.”

But it doesn’t feel pretend. We sit on the patio and make s’ mores, and it feels just like any night from a year when things were simpler: Bella’s showing off her ballet. Shannon and I are hitting each other with paper plates. Nothing feels weird or abnormal or off, so, in short, it doesn’t really feel like my birthday.

But we haven’t had the cake yet. And something dramatic always happens before cake. So my guard isn’t completely down . . . but it’s pretty damn close, with Noah beside me, playing with the strap on my guitar, talking to everyone about how he and Melinda are now in a serious relationship, with Claudia smiling at Shannon in the starlight, with my parents smiling at each other. I watch.

My stomach’s full of hamburgers and brothers and sisters and Hathaways. Gideon is driving me crazy, though, every second tugging my hand, telling me wants to go down to the beach.

Raft no I tell him. Dark.





Raft no beach only.