Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories

  Kieth glances at the amphitheater entrance—an unwelcoming wall of concrete speckled with wadded-up gum, a Wish-a-World rite of passage—and then back at me. “See you after the show … please?”

  Man, you should see the way he twinkles. Kieth can turn on the charm like it’s, I don’t know, a faucet. A faucet that’s powered by a geyser.

  “Pretty please?”

  I take A Tale of Two Cities and use it to gently bop his forehead. “Okay.”

  He leans forward and kisses me, something we don’t do in public. It’s against park policy for employees to date each other—but I let him. I have to stand on my tippytoes because he’s taller than me. What if I never meet another guy who is the perfect kissing height, a four-and-a-half-inch difference if I’m in my favorite pair of white Converse (which don’t technically fit me anymore but are the ideal level of smudged)?

  Our first kiss happened beneath a murky moon, with mosquitoes buzzing around me like a halo. Every one of my senses went boing. I could smell Kieth’s sweat-concealing cologne, I could taste his gum, I could see his eyelids flutter. I didn’t close my own eyes, because what if this—the hottest, happiest moment of my life—was a dream? When he came up for air and said, “Holy crap, Matty, you’re a really good kisser,” I still wasn’t sure if I was awake.

  But today, “No crying!” is all Kieth says, after he pulls away from our public kiss and sees my face. He’s always teasing me (in a sweet way, I think?) for being emotional. By now, he’s learned that once I start crying you’d better back away or find a snorkel. “At least save it for the parking lot!”

  That’s where we always say good night. Every night. A tradition.

  “Fine,” I say. “Look—presto—I’m not crying.” But he’s not really listening. He’s getting in his performance zone, which I have to respect. I love a job well done.

  “I’m outtie, cutie,” he shouts back at me, scurrying away with only one minute left till he’s due on stage.

  And as I look at his ridiculously cute butt in those polyester black pants, the thing that dawns on me, weirdly, is that maybe I do miss pizza. Very badly. That maybe, if I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t stopped thinking about pizza since the day I had to stop eating it, when the allergist said I have an oversensitive disposition.

  * * *

  Something is off about Wish-a-World today. No theme park is exactly an epicenter of civic responsibility, but even by our lax standards there is a lawless vibe in the air.

  Adults are hiding behind our overgrown topiary bushes (is that a hippo? a … dragon?) before springing out to soak their friends with water guns. Skateboarders are blazing down the Maine Street sidewalk in coordinated, flock-like V’s. Twice already today I’ve watched the manager of the Candy Shoppe chase after kids who were dashing out of his store with shoplifted sweets, their pockets bulging like chipmunk cheeks.

  Last month, Kieth bought me these humongous candy lips from the Candy Shoppe and wrote “But your kisses are sweeter” on the price tag in purple Magic Marker.

  Across the courtyard in the amphitheater, they’re midway into their thirty-five-minute show, at the top of the all-girl doo-wop section. Kieth’s not on again for another forty-five seconds, so I leisurely open my book again, and—

  Really, who am I kidding? I’m not going to digest a word of this. Not today anyway.

  So I take off my sunglasses and pull out my bookmark, which isn’t a bookmark at all but a handwritten, top secret list that I’ve slowly been compiling. A list of everything about Kieth that drives me crazy. I figure it’ll be easier to put him in the past if I can remember how annoying he makes my present.

  Thing number one: He always looks like he’s waiting for me to stop talking. Like, his eyes kind of fade out when I’m sharing something. Kieth’s like a kid in Kiddie Land, waiting his turn to hop on a ride. But the thing about the kids at Kiddie Land—and I know this because I was a ride operator last summer, and made three dollars less per hour—is that they are terrible about waiting their turn. And so is Kieth.

  I squint against the sun, toward Kieth’s stage. The girls are taking all sorts of bizarre vocal liberties in the medley today, making it sound totally contemporary. They’re acting up, since it’s the last day at the park. “Prank day,” Kieth called it, preparing me for it last night, “because what are they going to do, fire us? None of us want to work at this deadbeat park again, anyway.”

  He said all this, by the way, forgetting that yours truly is back for his second summer in a row. Because Kieth forgets everything.

  I accidentally bite my tongue and take the hot frustration as a cue to continue reviewing my list.

  Thing number two: Kieth isn’t always sensitive about my feelings. He’s got that actor thing where his eyebrows are permanently lifted, judging every last everything that passes by. It can be intoxicatingly fun to hang with Kieth—nobody is funnier, nobody is faster. But as my mom always says, “There’s a fine line between charming and manipulative.”

  Oh, my mom: a nurse, a real bleeding heart. Like, she had a COEXIST bumper sticker on her car before it was trendy, et cetera. The only nicer person is my dad, who my friends have anointed “the strangely buff vegetarian.” My parents are so nice that when I brought Kieth home for dinner a couple weeks ago my dad tried three different neutral topics—the weather, the wonky mass transportation system in Pittsburgh, and “What about your folks, Kieth? What do they do?”—before giving up, since Kieth likes to be in total control of conversation topics. (Kieth wanted to talk about religion, since he’s proud to have recently left the Catholic church. My mom got up three times during dinner—to get the salt, to get the pepper, and then to get a different kind of salt.)

  Thing number three: Kieth won’t say the word “love.”

  But I will. My grandparents were all hippies. Love is my family’s currency. We spend love like it’s money, like we’re the richest people in the world.

  Thing number four: He never asks about my job! Maybe he thinks my job isn’t interesting, but I think it is. Now look, I am paid to sell T-shirts and squeeze bottles—and I’ve personally outsold every other booth in the park, thank you, for five weeks running—but I’ve decided my bosses are really funding my future as a social scientist. A people researcher. A Pittsburgh primatologist.

  See, for an amateur studier of strangers, Wish-a-World offers four distinct categories of patrons: (1) older couples who are over each other; (2) high school couples who are all over each other; (3) large groups wearing matching neon-colored shirts, making their way through the park with an air of accomplishment that Columbus probably reserved for discovering America; and (4) punks.

  A classic number four is approaching my booth now, which gets me tense. Kieth is almost back on, and I love the way he, like, bops around in his spacesuit costume for the “Future and Beyond” medley. I don’t want to miss it. I never miss it, even though I have to kind of crane my neck to even halfway see the platform stage.

  “Hey there, Matthew,” this kid says. Total punk. He’s reading my name tag, saying “Matthew” to make his friends laugh. (Please make a note that any employee you come across who’s got a name tag on—at a grocery store, at an amusement park—hates it when you actually formally address them by their name. Free tip.) “How much are the firecrackers?”

  I pretend to scratch my shoulder. “We don’t sell firecrackers. Want a T-shirt?” As if this guy could afford a twenty-dollar T-shirt.

  One quick check of the amphitheater stage—at Kieth, doing this incredible jump-split move I could no more describe than actually pull off myself—and every one of my bookmark bulletin points is rendered obsolete.

  I mean, the way his little face lights up when he does that move … My boyfriend is cute, and that means something about me, right? That I can attract such a certifiably cute boyfriend—even with my unpredictable skin and strangely large feet, even if I put off summer reading until the last week of summer—must mean something good about
me.

  “Really, Matthew?” the number four at my counter says. “’cause I could’ve sworn I saw some firecrackers back there.”

  I am in what you might call a Kieth haze, so when this punk kid’s punk friend lurches forward and shouts “Boom!” in my face, I shriek. (Shrieking is one of my specialties, right after: developing rashes for no medical reason.)

  The firecracker gang saunters away, high-fiving each other as they disappear into a thicket of ropes left over from the entrance of an ancient, dangerous pirate ride.

  “Punks,” I say, like I’m ninety. I wish I had a cane to wave at them.

  At least there’s still time to catch my favorite/least favorite part of the show. At the end of Kieth’s spacesuit solo, he jumps down into the crowd, pulls a stranger with him up on stage, and asks them their name. And he makes this big-ass deal out of it. Nine times out of ten, the stranger is semi-mortified and yet also semitickled, standing exposed on a stage in the sun, being forced to boogie around with Kieth.

  Sometimes, I don’t know, I think he picks out the most awkward-looking person, just to make himself look better.

  Even so, you gotta admit. Today he looks especially amazing.

  * * *

  You want one good reason? One thing about Kieth that keeps me coming back for more, in spite of the fact that he never asks about my job and seems physically incapable of saying the word love?

  Because he laughs at my categorically terrible jokes is why.

  Oh, another thing: because there was a night back in June when it was weirdly chilly out, and he gave me his jean jacket to wear in the parking lot, and the collar smelled like his Aveda hair pomade stuff, so I took it home and haven’t given it back yet. (Up until that night, I had always hated jean jackets on guys.)

  And also: because the third time we kissed in my car, I forgot I had my retainer in and he didn’t pull away and say, “Eww.” He pulled away and said, “That’s hilarious.” And when I said, “No, that’s so friggin me,” he cut me off and said, “I still think you’re a really good kisser.”

  Kieth himself had just gotten out of a relationship, at the beginning of the summer, and planned on staying “purposefully single” for his entire time at the park. But on day one he reportedly walked by me in my booth, on his way into rehearsal, and said to this girl in his cast, “However, if that boy is gay, I’m in trouble.”

  Nobody had ever considered me “trouble” before. Who am I kidding? Nobody had ever considered me “that boy,” either.

  But the number one reason why I dated Kieth this summer is: He doesn’t let me talk down about myself. Ever.

  Even with my supposed friends at school, I am their easiest target—the donkey in a game where nobody has blindfolds and everyone has tails, except for me. But when I’m with Kieth, and I slip into my old “Ugh, I look so weird in this photo” act, or my “Yeah, my sense of direction is the worst” shenanigans, he always stops me and asks, “Why don’t you give yourself credit for all the things you’re amazing at, Matty?”

  He’s never quite told me what all those things are, but it’s nice to know he’s keeping his own list. You know?

  “Let’s give a bi-i-ig round of applause to our ‘Music: Through the Ages!’ singers and dancers!”

  Oh, man. The show is over and the crowds are exiting. That means lunch. That means this cast party nonsense.

  I slide A Tale of Two Cities into my cubby behind the booth, and I stare at Kieth’s stage door across the squiggly-with-humidity courtyard, and I say a little prayer. But the thing is, I suck at praying.

  My parents raised me to be Buddhist.

  * * *

  So, it’s the best of parties, it’s the worst of parties.

  It has my favorite flavor of diet pop and a respectable assortment of cookies, true. But it also has all-new people who I’m expected to chat with.

  Aha, you might say. You’re a T-shirt salesman. You make small talk all day. Not so, I’d counter. I attempt to make sales, a purpose that I can hide behind. Here, I feel as if I have to sell myself. (I still don’t know the product well enough to really sell it.)

  Also, the air smells like fast food and feet. Cinderblock bricks give the space an overall vibe of a low-security, highly theatrical prison. Also, why is everything painted black, when this is a “green room”? I don’t know any of the rules.

  “You want another soda?” Kieth asks. I’m slurping mine down double time, in lieu of that small talk thing I hate.

  “I don’t know what a soda is,” I say, “but another pop, sure.” I’m obsessed with regional dialect differences. Kieth is from Delaware. He calls gum bands “rubber bands.” He calls pop “soda.”

  And he calls me Matt—not Matty, like he always does—when he tells me I’m “doing great, Matt,” as if I’ve never been to a party. But the longer I stand here—the only introvert, bopping terribly to this music (I cannot dance; people always think I’m kidding when they see me try)—the more I realize he’s not going to introduce me to anyone. And it bugs me.

  All summer long, we’ve kept our relationship secret—a Romeo and Romeo situation, so we wouldn’t get in trouble with our bosses. At first it seems clandestine, sexy even, the way we’d meet in the last bathroom stall, beneath the Monster Maze, to fumble around. To laugh when we couldn’t undo our button fly jean shorts fast enough. But now—the way I’m hanging out here like a ghost who nobody’s noticing … the way it’s hitting me that Kieth and I barely got together, ever, outside of work—I am struck by the fact that Romeo and Juliet ends pretty tragically.

  (It was on my summer reading list last year.)

  “Yo, everyone!” shouts a girl in hoop earrings and fake eyelashes. She motions to cut the playlist, and then she holds her fist against her lips and attempts a weak doot-do-do-doooo trumpet call.

  Kieth shushes his cast.

  “It’s time for the summer-end awards!” the girl announces, producing a thick stack of colorful papers from behind her back.

  There are cheers.

  Oh, gosh. I hunt for more ice to add to my drink, to give myself something to do.

  “So, we all voted,” she continues from on top of this ratty brown sofa. “And the very first award, and some would argue most important—for Most Likely to Get to Broadway First, obvi—goes to…”

  “Wait!” hollers the one straight guy (according to Kieth). “Let’s do a drumroll!” And so they do, this entire team of performers smacking their thighs in unison, a thundering sound that makes a lightbulb flicker.

  I stand, dumbstruck, trying to think of this as free social research. As if I’ve discovered an Inca tribe whose chief form of communication is being louder than necessary.

  “In a unanimous vote, Most Likely to Get to Broadway First goes to … Erica!”

  Erica, I guess, launches into what can only be described as a dance routine, twirling across the scuffed-up floor, nearly knocking over a strange, out-of-place vacuum cleaner, and grasping her printed out MOST LIKELY sign as if it’s a scholarship to Juilliard.

  I and I alone clap, not realizing that a speech from Erica is implied, and thus I should shut up and trust my introvert instincts to never get involved, ever.

  “When I first arrived at the park this summer…” Erica begins—and, within moments, she is crying. In fact, everyone sort of is, except for me and Kieth. Instead, he puts his hand on my nonexistent butt and leans over. “You’re being a good sport,” he says, and I reply, “I am.” And when he squeezes my nonexistent butt cheek, presto: If I had to choose a superpower right now it would be to stop time forever.

  Screw invisibility.

  Erica yammers on for approximately a thousand years (at one point, without irony, she thanks both “God and freedom”), and then we’re on to goofier awards, the lunch hour disappearing in front of me, my stomach rumbling at the smell and sight of a stack of forbidden pizzas that nobody seems to be touching.

  And I bet none of them are even lactose intolerant.

>   Somehow a walkie-talkie-wielding girl in a ripped black T-shirt appears among us. She’s the only person wearing less makeup than either me or Kieth. “Ten minutes till the next show, gang,” she announces, “so let’s wrap this sobfest up.”

  On cue, Kieth presents her with the Best Snarky Stage Manager award, pulled from his book bag. I guess he’s part of the … awards committee? It’s like, how much about Kieth do I still not know?

  When this walkie-talkie chick is asked to give remarks, she says, “They don’t pay me enough to babysit you all, but I love yinz, and you better keep in touch with me or I’ll kill you.” She gets a little weepy herself, and then the metal stage door slams shut behind her, and we’re already down to the last two awards as the spotty air conditioner putters itself back on with a clank.

  And really, should I be surprised? Kieth is voted Flirtiest Guy. When it’s his turn to give a speech, he says, “Okay, okay, sue me. I like to make eyes,” and he unzips his book bag and fishes for something inside. “But only one guy this summer stole my heart…”

  He looks right at me. I debate if this is the moment to step forward and make myself known or to step backward and give Kieth the spotlight. And so I do nothing at all.

  Have I mentioned I dropped out of the debate club at school because I’m such a slow debater?

  “But, uh, names,” Kieth says, stammering and dropping his bookbag to the floor, “will be withheld to protect the guilty.”

  Everyone kind of awws, but then we’re right on to The Flirtiest Girl award—another category that Erica sweeps.

  I’d look outside to scan for those storm clouds, but the green room doesn’t have windows.

  The thing is, Kieth knows I hate being the center of attention—but he could have said my name, you know? I am aware that my feelings are contradictory, but sue me. Historically, I am always the final person named for stuff. I mean, my last name starts with a friggin’ V. I am neither short nor tall. I am remarkably unremarkable at sports, at the arts, at academics. I am a Matt-of-all-trades, a walking 3.2 GPA. But today, during this stupid backstage celebration, I had one last chance at being declared. This summer, anyway.