The Summer Before Boys

  But other than that everything was just perfect.

  “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”

  —Unknown

  fall 2004

  thirty-six

  My dad and I are going into town to buy school supplies. I wanted to wait until my mom got back but my dad said he had the money and there were big sales at Walmart. So we are going. But it’s not the same.

  Besides, my dad told me, when my mom comes home she may not really want to run out and battle the crowds at Walmart. I thought that was a funny choice of words.

  My dad doesn’t like to push the shopping cart. He says it makes him feel silly, so I have two fists on the handle and we are heading into the store. The cart is huge and there’s a big yellowy smiley face staring at me from the plastic seat. There are people everywhere, all gripping other huge metal carts with big yellow smiley faces and racing around the store. There is old-people music coming out of the ceiling speakers. Someone dropped a jar of grape jelly on the floor and I just barely miss stepping in it.

  I look at my dad and he has that let’s-hurry-up expression, right along with the how-much-is-this-going-to-cost? look on his face.

  So my summer is over, but it’s like it never happened. There’s the aftermath of an explosion, you can’t remember much, and all you know is nothing is going to be the same. Last year when I had gone school shopping, my mom took me. We already knew she was leaving for Iraq. I wasn’t sure if I wanted everything in the store or nothing at all—I just knew I didn’t want my mother to leave.

  “Let me see that list again, Julia,” my mother said. She held out her hand.

  “You have it.”

  “No, I don’t,” she answered. She stopped moving the cart down the aisle and planted her feet. “I gave it back to you.”

  This was right at the peak of our pre-deployment fighting. All of us, especially me and my mom. But I was certain she had my school supply list. It had come in the mail along with my teacher assignments. It was my first year that I’d be changing classrooms. A different teacher for math, one for language arts, another for science, and a whole period of Spanish. And each teacher sent a list of things they wanted us to have for the first day of sixth grade.

  I was worried about finding each classroom. I was worried about being late. I was worried about who would help me with my homework. Who would make my lunch every day?

  But I was certain my mother put the list in her pocketbook before we left for Walmart.

  “It’s in your bag, Mom.” We were blocking half the boys’ underwear section and a traffic jam was developing all the way to socks and pajamas.

  “Julia, I know I gave it to you just before we got out of the car. I can’t keep track of everything. Did you lose it?”

  “Not everything is my fault, Mom.” I could hear my voice rising and my lips were beginning to quiver. I started to get that burning feeling deep in my chin like a little electric pulse that seems to activate the crying mechanism. After that there’s no turning back. I didn’t want to cry. The more you fight it the more your chin stings with electricity.

  “Excuse me, ladies, would you mind handing me that package of the blue boxer briefs, extra large?” The man who had come up behind us pointed.

  I don’t even remember if we ever found the list of supplies, and if we did, which one of us had it, but I remember we both started laughing. We walked up and down every aisle and bought everything I could possibly need, pens, mechanical pencils, notebooks, folders. In every color. And even though I had mine from last year, my mom picked out a brand-new backpack for me.

  “No, I don’t need one, Dad,” I say.

  “You sure? They look nice.”

  I shake my head and my dad puts the backpack back on its hook. I know he is trying. A voice comes over the speakers and tells us there will be a markdown in housewares on all coffeemakers and dehumidifiers and suddenly, for no reason related to either of those two things, I can’t wait for my mom to come home. After all these months and months, all through sixth grade and the whole summer I was okay. I worried and I missed my mom but I was okay—and now it’s like I can’t stand it another minute.

  I am going to burst.

  I want my mother, right here. Right now. In Walmart.

  “I want to go look at the auto section for a second. You okay here, alone?” my dad asks me. “I just want to see if they have one thing. You get what you need, okay?”

  “Sure, Dad. I’ll meet you at the checkout.”

  And it is like my dad is feeling the same exact thing I am. He leans over and kisses my forehead. “She’ll be home soon. We did it, Julia. We did it and she’ll be home soon.”

  This time I nod and take a deep breath.

  “I’m fine, Dad.” And I am.

  I don’t see Peter Vos right away. First I hear him.

  thirty-seven

  It is coming from a couple of aisles over but it’s loud enough for me to make out all the words.

  And to recognize who it is.

  “Dad, Dad. Calm down.”

  “I will calm down when I damn well want to calm down, Peter. This is completely ridiculous. There is no order to this. This is ridiculous. Doesn’t anybody work around here?”

  “Dad, shhh. Lower your voice, will ya?” I can hear everything in Peter’s voice, everything no one understands, everything jokes can’t hide. “I’ll get someone,” he says.

  “No, this is not right. This is not how it should be.”

  Then I hear more shouting, a thump, and a big crash, like cardboard boxes tumbling to the floor but still something tells me to stay put. I know Peter doesn’t want to see me right now. He doesn’t want me to see him.

  “Oh my god, Peter. I’m so sorry.” It’s his dad’s voice, softer but panicked. I still think I should freeze and not make a sound. “Are you all right, son? Oh my god—I am so sorry.”

  I shouldn’t be here but I don’t know which way to turn. I can’t tell where the sounds are coming from, down the aisle or up. If I go one way, maybe I should have gone the other. When I hear footsteps coming nearer, I pretend really hard that I am looking at something on the shelf.

  And then Peter is standing there and I turn—I don’t want to, but I do—and see Peter looking right at me. He knows I have heard everything.

  “I hate you,” he says to me. “I hate you.” And he runs away.

  thirty-eight

  If I think about it, my summer before boys was ending a long time before I met Michael. It wasn’t even one event, like leaving Eliza on that trail. It was more like a slow process. I can’t play D’Ville the way I used to. I can set up the dolls and make them go to college and make them drive in their cars, but I can’t see all the details anymore. Their lips don’t move. Their hair comes out of holes in their scalps. It had been that way for a while, hadn’t it?

  The summer before this last one, I didn’t live up at Mohawk the whole time, of course, but we visited a lot. It was just about this time a year ago, just before school began, that we all went up to the hotel for Eliza’s birthday.

  And if I think also about that day, it was the last day of real magic. For both of us. The last time we went away completely, until we had to come in for supper. We were best friends. We were Indian captives. We were pioneers. We were Lester and Lynette.

  The weather was already changing. It was hot, but the sun was lower in the sky and so it was not so hot hot. There was already a dryness in the air that made the leaves sound different when the wind blew. You could tell it was fall. There was a feeling of something ending and something new about to begin. There was stillness in the air like the crossover between two times, between past and present, the real and the unreal.

  “If we die today,” Lynette began. “If this is our last day on this earth I want you to know you are my best friend.”

  “We are not going to die today, Lynette,” Lester told her. He was trying to be
the brave one. Boys do that, I thought. Boys are supposed to be unafraid.

  “But if we do—” We had stopped to make camp on the side of this mountain, beside the great lake that the Native Americans had called Mirror Water (Eliza made that up), to rest on our way back to their camp. Our fate was unknown. We both knew of stories of settlers who had been captured and never heard from again.

  Lynette went on. “I just want you to know I love you.”

  Lester turned to Lynette. Her blonde hair fell in wisps from her sunbonnet and her young eyes filled with tears. Their shoes were worn from days of walking. Their bellies were empty from lack of food.

  It would be hard to say whether Lester and Lynette were brother and sister, or girlfriend and boyfriend. Were they children or teenagers or grown-ups? Cousins or even uncle and niece? It didn’t matter at all because in that moment, in that space out of time, there was no one and nothing else. They would walk on the trails to the Native American longhouse village and be adopted by a loving family who had just lost their own two babies to a terrible disease the white man had brought to this new land, and for which the tribe had no immunity. Lester and Lynette would grow up with new names. Maybe Spirit of Running Bear. Or Girl with Hair Like Corn Silk.

  “Or Jumps Like Grasshopper,” I said. I loved to jump.

  “Sings Like Soaring Sparrow.” Eliza wanted to be a famous singer when she grew up.

  “Or Swims in Rushing Waters.”

  Eliza stopped me there. “You hate to swim.”

  “I do?”

  I didn’t like to swim and Eliza knew me.

  “How about Wades in Rushing Waters, then?”

  “Nice.”

  We could hear Aunt Louisa calling us to eat. My mom had set up the food on the outdoor table. Eliza’s birthday. She was twelve. We had all her favorites: stuffed shells, fresh rolls, salad, and not cake or cupcakes but brownies. Eliza loved double chocolate brownies. And lemonade. I’ve always loved the taste of the sour liquid and the sweet mushy chocolate together in my mouth. I love pretzels and soda. I love apples and peanut butter.

  And so does Eliza.

  We sat at the table, waiting. Me and Eliza. Eliza and I, my mother would correct me. The cloth was laid down. The bowls were set out. The brownies were covered in tinfoil but I could still make out what they were because of the candles poking up. Uncle Bruce and my dad were standing next to each other, but not saying much. My mom and Aunt Louisa were dying laughing. I tried, but we couldn’t hear what was going on.

  How much harder it was that day, to pretend.

  We will be packing the wagon soon anyway, Eliza said, as if I could see her long skirt and apron, her high buttoned shoes and wool stockings peeking out from her petticoat. But at the same time, I could still see Aunt Louisa and my mom and I wondered what was so funny—I wanted to know so badly. I could hear Eliza talking about wagon trains and maize but I couldn’t see it.

  I wanted to play, but it was harder to make happen.

  The world hadn’t yet changed one bit. The same light grew from dark blue to purplish to gray, the same ground made the same gravelly noise under our feet. I imagine the same exact stars dropped one by one into the black sky. But I was changing. Looking back, that day, what was real and what was not real was slowly starting to separate.

  Like a cocoon, splitting right down the center and revealing what’s inside.

  Like a whistle piercing the quiet night.

  Like a parent who leaves one way and comes back another, changed forever.

  thirty-nine

  My dad said Mom will be home by the end of the week. We got an e-mail from the United States Government. Sometimes they just change things in the army and a plane comes in early or a week late. Or not at all. So we were told to be prepared for a change of plans.

  Which meant my mother could be coming home right now, flying over my head, landing on the runway.

  Or she could be redeployed and have to spend another nine months, or ten months, or another full year, and there was nothing we could do about it.

  Or she could take a taxi from the airfield and show up in the hallway of the middle school right now. She might see me coming out of my first day of class, and I might see her in her army fatigues and combat boots, but her hat is in her hand, and she doesn’t even recognize me.

  What if I’ve changed so much my mother doesn’t know who I am?

  What if my own mother doesn’t recognize me?

  “Julia, are you all right?”

  It’s my new teacher, Mr. Henry, and when I look up everyone else has piled out of homeroom and into the hall.

  “Oh, yeah, sure. I was just getting all my stuff together.” But I glance down and I have only a pencil to gather from my desk. Oh, brother. I think I need to shake the thoughts from yesterday out of my head.

  “I’m sorry, Julia,” Aunt Louisa told me over the phone, the night before our first day of school. “She just needs a little time, sweetie. You guys were so close, too close—maybe you need to give it a little space.”

  I don’t understand.

  There is no such thing as too close. Best friends cannot be too close. We didn’t even talk about what we are going to wear the first day of school. What if we are wearing the same thing? What if we’re not?

  Last year we made a plan to wear the exact same thing, just complete opposite. I wore jeans, a red shirt, and a white sweater and Eliza had on a white shirt, a red sweater, and jeans. Nobody noticed but every time we passed each other in the hall we laughed and said, “Nice outfit.”

  Today, I don’t even care what I am wearing. I hope I don’t even see Eliza all day.

  But it’s not that easy to avoid someone in New Hope Middle School. The seventh grade takes up only one hall, the upper ramp of the new part of the building. You’d almost have to poke your head out of the classroom to make sure the person you were trying to avoid wasn’t in the hall, and then dart really fast to your next class. Assuming you knew exactly where that was.

  Even then, there’s the cafeteria.

  Maybe because Eliza and I were our own group of two, I am not sure where to sit. And because my dad sent me to school this morning, I only have enough money for a sandwich and milk. So no tray. Still I feel ridiculous standing here.

  I feel lost without Eliza.

  I am beginning to wonder if she even came to school this morning. Then I see Eliza sitting at a table with Sophie Cutler and Tamara Williams, our mirror couple. According to the story, Sophie and Tamara got into a big fight in kindergarten over whose turn it was at the easel and when it was over, red paint and all, they were best friends. They are wearing the same outfit today, matching jean vests, white shirt, and jeans. I wonder if they have a whole village of dolls, or Legos, or Playmobile, or Beanie Babies.

  Eliza is chatting with them like they’ve been in our group forever. Or like she’s in theirs. Has she told them about the tease-y group? The hair color camp?

  If I take two steps backward and a little to the right, Eliza won’t see me at all. So this is exactly what I do. Of course, it means I won’t get to eat lunch today but suddenly I am not sure what to do. I don’t know if Eliza will ask me to sit with her or look right at me and keep talking to Sophie and Tamara like she doesn’t know me at all. And I’d rather not find that out.

  By the time school ends and the buses are lining up, my stomach is growling so loudly I have to pretend to cough so the kid next to me in eighth period math stops looking over at me and making faces.

  Eliza takes one of the little buses that leaves from the front of the school. There are only a couple of kids that live that far up the mountain, so I know there is no chance of seeing her at the back bus loop. But I don’t expect to see Peter either and here he is.

  “Julia, wait up,” he says. He rushes across the pavement so I have to stop.

  “What?”

  Peter starts breathing really hard like he’s just run the mile, but I think it’s more like he’s buying time to fig
ure out what to say. He puts his hand on his knee and bends over a little. I can tell he’s just faking it. Then he finally lifts his head.

  “I’m sorry about Walmart, you know. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Thanks.” I actually feel better hearing it.

  “Wanna go to one of my soccer games?” Peter asks me.

  “When?”

  “After school.”

  “Today?” Well, that explains the shorts and funny socks. “Maybe another time,” I say. “There’s something I’ve got to take care of today.”

  “There’s another one next week too, if you want to come to that one,” Peter says and he hurries off.

  I think he likes me.

  forty

  My dad says he’ll drive me up to Eliza’s. He always tries to be home when I get home from school, or close to it. Today we get home about the same time.

  Sure, he says when I ask him.

  “Hi, Dad.” Aunt Louisa’s door is wide open but she gets up when she hears us. “What are you guys doing up here?”

  “Julia wants to apologize to Eliza,” my dad tells her.

  “And you drove her all the way up here, Dad? That’s real nice of you,” Aunt Louisa says to Dad but she winks at me. “They’re at the hotel, sweetie.”

  Uncle Bruce had to check on one of the gazebos. Loose railing post, Aunt Louisa told us. He needed some special tool or some such thing and he went back up with it. Eliza went with him since it was such a beautiful afternoon.

  “I bet you can find them, though. Eliza will probably be hanging out with Pam at the gift shop. Go on. In fact, I’ll go with you.”

  Aunt Louisa reaches for her sweater by the door and steps outside without waiting for an answer. We all get into my dad’s car and head up to the hotel. I have to sit in the back, but I don’t mind.