Invincible Summer(9)

I don’t hear anything, but I’m used to not understanding a thing Noah says.

We’re quiet for a minute, staring at the dark. Half my brain is asking the other half why I’m awake, and I can’t think of a good answer.

Noah’s cooling himself down. He walks in tight circles, takes small sips from his water bottle, pauses to mutter something to himself. He’s gotten better at self-regulating lately, according to Mom. Eventually, he gives one last head shake and turns off the lights. I hear him crawling between his sheets and I crawl between mine.

We’re quiet. When we were younger, these used to be the only times we really talked—here, with the lights off, alleg-edly falling asleep. We’d never know when a conversation was really over. We’d say, “Okay, that’s enough, I’m so tired,” but then one of us would burst out laughing thinking of something that happened earlier that day, and then we’d both be cracking up and sharing inside jokes and confessing things we never would in daytime and never sleeping. We don’t do it as much anymore, but I think it’s because we talk more in our everyday life now than we used to. We don’t need to pretend that we only notice each other in the dark.

But I don’t think we’re done talking tonight.

He takes a slow breath and says, “Man, Mom’s about to

pop, isn’t she?”

“Then you’ll have two girls and two boys. How do you

feel about that, Noah?”

He laughs, and I swear I hear him rolling his eyes. “I’ll start building my ark. Chase?”

“Yeah?”

“Listen, I’m really not going anywhere interesting. Ever.

But . . . you can come, okay?”


“I don’t want to come.” I roll onto my back. “I want you to be here. Sometimes. When we need you.”

Quiet, then Noah laughs. “They should have named you

Stay.”

“That’s an ugly-ass name.”

He kicks his feet through the sheets. “Yeah, you’re right.” f o u r

S he’s eleven!” Noah and I protest the entire time Melinda’s patting our sister’s face with powder and dab-bing lip gloss on her baby mouth. “Too young for makeup,”

I whine, and Noah drops his head onto Bella’s pillow so he can’t watch. But I can’t look away. Bella and I are riveted— Bella by how old Claudia looks, me by the length of Melinda’s fingers.

“I’m only giving her a little, Chasey.” Melinda traces powder over the tops of Claudia’s eyes. “Making her feel just as beautiful as she is.”

Claudia’s positively beaming.

“She’s going to be swarmed,” Noah says, his voice muf—

fled. “Do you want her swarmed by men?”

Claudia laughs, all grown-up in the back of her throat.

Ha ha ha.

“Maybe someone will fall in love with her,” Bella says, and bites her lip and looks at me.

Noah looks at me, telling me it’s my turn to object. “Too young to be someone’s lust object,” I say, then turn to Bella and mouth, Eleven, to clarify. Bella had her makeup done before we got here, and now she’s studying herself in the mirror, pinching her cheekbones and pressing the skin between her eyebrows.

“You’re all too young to be talking about this love and lust shit,” Noah says.

Melinda is calm, blowing extra eyeshadow off her fingers.

“The point is not to be loved. The point is to love.” She puts on some kind of accent. “‘ For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. ’”

Noah picks up his head. “What’s that?”

“Camus, darling.” Claudia takes a book from the foot of her bunk and tosses it down to Noah. “Only the most summer-oriented philosopher in the book.”

“What book?” says Bella. Melinda examines her eyeliner pencil. “The book of life,

my dear.”

“Man,” Claudia says. “That’s one big book.”

“Small font, too.” Noah sits up and cracks open the paperback. “He’s French?”

“Oui, but that’s supposed to be the best translation.”

Melinda gathers her curly hair back in one hand and leans forward, examining Claudia’s eyebrows. “You guys would like him.”

Noah reads, “‘Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus’s motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening’s slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon.”

We’re quiet.

“Well.” Claudia flinches at the mascara wand. “That was happy.”

“Shut up,” Noah says. “I’d almost believe he grew up here.”

I look at him, and I know by the way he’s smiling that I’m making the same face I always make when we agree. The one that looks really shocked. “I think it’s beautiful,” Bella says, quietly.

“‘No love without a little innocence,’” Melinda recites, putting on that silly accent again.