Invincible Summer(57)

It gave me summers and childhood and it took the childhood away, but there were summers before I was born, and there will be summers after I die, and after he died, and that’s what I believe in. I believe in these summers.

They did happen. I was there. They will always have happened.

There is no going back, so f*ck you, universe. There is nothing you can do to take back the fact that you gave me everything I need to get by.

So f*ck you.

And thank you.

Things might be very different next year.

Some things will not ever change. My childhood is pre—

served in photo albums, in sand castles in The Stranger, and in every single f*cking one of my siblings. Every single one.

To nobody, because Gideon cannot hear me, I say, “I’m

sorry I wasn’t watching.”

I love you I sign. Not same. Never same. I love you. There is no past tense in sign language, not really. It’s all about positioning. About where you are right now.

Eighteen of these summers behind me give me the energy to run home.

I run straight to Noah and give him the biggest hug of my life.

We don’t talk.

We still don’t know what to say. Maybe we never will.

Maybe it isn’t in us. Neither of us is going to grow up to be a motivational speaker.

But we can grow up to be brothers.

I feel my hands on his shoulders and his hands on mine, and it’s okay. There’s a tiny part of this that’s okay. The smallest glimmer of fine is trapped somewhere between our bodies.

“You’re not a bad brother,” we say together.

Then I go outside and flop down in the sand beside Claudia.

My chest is heaving, and my shirt is stuck down with sweat.

I’m disgusting. Good thing this is my shirt and not Noah’s.

She looks at me and wisely makes no comment that I’m

on the beach, that I’m facing the ocean, that I’m not running away. She does give me a sly smile, though. “Want to go swimming?” I laugh. “Maybe not quite yet.”

Lucy’s wandering around in the sand in front of us. I say, “Where’s Noah?” I suspect he went for a run after our not-talk. That was pretty draining, and he probably needed to get away.

But she points over to the house. “There.” And there he is, perched on the steps between the house and the sand, watching the ocean too. I wonder when he was first able to look at it, and realize I haven’t been watching him very closely. I should. Noah needs our help.

“It’s been a shitty year,” Claudia says.

“That it has.”

“Are you okay?”

I lean onto my knees. “‘His joys have been sudden and merciless, as has been his life. One realizes that he is born of this country where everything is given to be taken away. In that plenty and profusion life follows the sweep of great passions, sudden, exacting, and generous. It is not to be built up, but to be burned up. Stopping to think and becoming better are out of the question.’”

She looks at me for a minute.

“I’m getting there,” I say. “Or I’m burning up.”

I guess that in the end it’s true. Innocence needs sand and stones. And it doesn’t matter how that makes me feel. Besides, right now, all I feel is a little cold in the sunset.

The ocean crashes with the noise of a bowling alley as another wave hits the sand. Lucy is toddling toward the water.

Before I can get up, before I can open my mouth—either to tell her to stay or tell her to swim as far and as fast as she can before she can’t—Noah sprints from behind us and grabs her, his arms around her little body. Keeping her still. Keeping her from running away. TEASER TK

Hannah grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, but mostly in Chase’s beach house in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Her first novel, Break, was a 2010 ALA Popular Paperback for Teens. She loves your e-mails. She’s a student at the University of Maryland. Visit her at www.untilhannah.com or http://hannahmosk.blogspot.com.