[English] SECOND CHANCE SUMMER

Second Chance Summer
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Truth and Daring

Chapter eighteen

I WAS ALREADY AWAKE AT TWO A.M. WHEN MY PHONE RANG. I HAD no I idea why I hadn’t been able to sleep, and it was enough to make me wonder if my dad had been onto something with his talk about the diner’s coffee. I’d been lying awake for the last few hours, because having no social life meant that you went to bed early, even on nights where there was more excitement than usual.

My mother had been equally upset at Warren, for bringing the dog home fully accessorized without checking with her first, and at the renters, for abandoning him in the first place. She hadn’t been able to reach them at the number she had, but she’d called Henry’s dad and found out that they had had a dog all last summer, a puppy they’d gotten right when the they’d moved in. Henry’s dad remembered because it had gotten into their trash a few times, and the Murphys hadn’t seemed to care very much about it.

Gelsey had gone into paroxysms of delight over the fact that Murphy had come home with us—even though, as my mother kept stressing, this was just a temporary situation. My father hadn’t come down one way or another, but I noticed him slipping the dog bits of his dinner throughout the meal, and when Murphy clambered onto his lap after the plates were cleared, my dad didn’t push him away, instead rubbing his ears until the dog made a sound that I’m pretty sure was the canine equivalent of purring.

Luckily, Murphy seemed to be housebroken—and even better, housebroken for our house. He knew our house with a familiarity that was a little unnerving, as we watched him settle in by the front windows that faced the street, pressing his nose against the glass, head resting on his paws. Even though Gelsey had begged to have him sleep in her room, my mother had refused, and had set up the dog bed just outside the kitchen. When we’d all gone to sleep, I’d been listening for any sounds of whining or whimpering—but the dog was quiet, and presumably sleeping better than I had been able to.

I’d rolled on my side and looked out my window, out into the sky dotted with stars. I was debating simply trying to go back to sleep or turning on my light and trying to read, when my phone rang.

This was surprising enough that I didn’t move for it right away, just stared at it on my dresser, lighting up the corner of the room with an unexpected brightness, beginning to launch into the chorus of my ringtone. By the second ring, though, I had pulled it together and had rolled out of bed and grabbed it before it woke the whole house—or at least my mother, who was a notoriously light sleeper. I didn’t recognize the number—or the area code—but answered it quickly anyway, wondering if it was a wrong number. I couldn’t think who else would be calling me at two a.m.

“Hello,” I said quietly into the phone, taking it back with me to bed and moving to the far corner of it, as if this would reduce noise traveling through the house. There was a long pause on the other end.

“Who is this?” a girl’s voice asked, slurring slightly.

“Taylor,” I said slowly. “Who is this?”

“Oh, ****,” the girl on the other end muttered, and just like that, I knew who it was.

“Lucy?” I asked, and I heard her sigh deeply.

“Yeah?” she asked. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I said, baffled as to why we were even having this conversation. “You called me.”

She sighed again, and there was a rustling sound for a moment before she was back on the line. “Dropped the phone,” she said. “So I need you to come to the beach.”

I sat up straighter. “Why?” I asked, suddenly panicking that I hadn’t closed the concession stand properly or something. Though I had no idea why Lucy would be calling me, apparently tipsy, to tell me about it. “Is everything okay?”

“Would I be calling you if everything was okay?” she asked. “Just come here, and—” I heard the rustling sound again, and then the line went dead.

I held the phone for a moment, thinking. I was going down there—the option of not going there only crossed my mind for a second. Because I knew that if I didn’t, I really wouldn’t be able to get any sleep, as I’d just be lying awake, wondering what was going on down at the beach. But mostly, I was trying to figure out how to get there. I knew that if I took one of the cars, my mother—not to mention my dad or siblings—would wake up. And though we hadn’t discussed curfew hours for this summer, I had a feeling that leaving at two in the morning wouldn’t exactly be cool with her. I let my eyes drift outside, where I could see, at the end of the driveway, the garage. This gave me an idea, and I climbed out of bed quickly, pulling on jean shorts and changing from my giant, much-washed sleeping shirt to a tank top. I tiptoed out into the hallway, listening for any sounds of movement. But the house was peaceful, no light spilling out from under my siblings’ doors, and no sound from my parents’ bedroom upstairs. Even the dog was sacked out, lying on his back in his dog bed, his back leg twitching occasionally, as though in his dream, he was chasing something down or running away from something.

I crossed the open-plan downstairs, not needing to turn on any lights as the moon was streaming in through the front windows, letting in giant rectangles of light across the floor. I passed through one as I walked to the front door, half-expecting it to feel warm, like I was walking though sunlight. I let myself quietly out the front door and locked it behind me, grabbing my flip-flops from the jumble of shoes. Then I walked down the front steps to the garage—where my bike, newly restored for me by my dad, was waiting.

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Chapter nineteen

five summers earlier

“SO I HAVE NEWS,” LUCY TOLD ME OVER THE PHONE. IT WAS ALWAYS her favorite way to introduce a subject, even if it turned out that her news was something trivial, like the new ice-cream flavor of the week at Jane’s, or the fact that she’d mixed two nail polish colors together to create a custom blend.

“Me too,” I said, not able to contain a smile from breaking out across my face. I tucked the cordless phone under my ear as I stepped out onto the screened-in porch. I knew exactly how far I could go and still get reception. It was after dinner, and my mother was setting up the Risk board, but I knew that I’d be able to talk to Lucy for a few minutes undisturbed, particularly if Warren insisted on supervising Mom while she did it.

I hadn’t told Lucy about the movie date with Henry the week before—because until the moment that he’d taken my hand, there had been nothing to tell. But he had held my hand through the rest of the movie, and we stayed sitting that way, palm to palm, our fingers laced, until the cre***s rolled and the lights came up and the employees came in with their brooms to sweep up the fallen popcorn. And of course, I’d tried to call Lucy immediately after, but she never seemed to be at the house of the parent I tried to call, and her cell had been suspended while her parents argued over who was going to pay for it. So these days, it seemed like I was waiting for Lucy to call me so that I could talk to her.

“Me first,” she said, and I laughed, feeling in that moment just how much I missed her.

“Taylor!” Warren opened the door and frowned at me, pushing up his glasses, which were constantly slipping down his nose. “We’re getting ready to play.”

I covered up the earpiece. “I’m on the phone,” I hissed at him. “Long-distance.” On the other end, I could hear Lucy giggle.

“New Jersey is not long-distance,” Warren scoffed. “In fact, it’s short-distance. Only one state away.”

“Leave me alone,” I said, trying to push him out of the door.

My brother just shook his head and looked at me with his I’m-so-mature expression. “We’re starting in five minutes, so if you’re not there, you forfeit your armies.” But he finally stepped out of the doorway, and I lifted up the phone again.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Warren’s being Warren.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “You guys are playing Risk? Like, all of you?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to notice the note of wistfulness in Lucy’s voice. “But anyway. I have news, you have news….”

“Right!” Lucy said, immediately excited again. “So I like a boy.”

“Me too!” I said, beyond thrilled that we had reached this at the same time. That was the only thing that had given me pause when I considered telling Lucy about Henry. I hadn’t wanted to move on to something this big without her. But if she liked a boy at the same time I did, everything would work out. Whenever we talked about the future, it was one of the assumptions we always made—that we would experience things at the same time. This included boyfriends, prom dates, and eventually, a double wedding.

“No way,” she said, laughing again. “Okay, I’ll go first. I totally like Henry Crosby.”

I opened my mouth to say something, and finding no words, closed it again. But Lucy didn’t seem to notice, and kept on going.

“Ever since I first saw him this summer—he got so cute last year—I had a crush on him. I wasn’t going to say anything, but since I got home I can’t stop thinking about him. And because you two are friends, I thought maybe you could see if he likes me. But, you know, in a subtle way.”

I opened my mouth again, even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. But I had to tell her—about the date, and the Outpost, and the hand-holding. “Listen, Luce…”

“Taylor?” I turned around, and my dad was standing in the doorway, Gelsey flung over his shoulder in what he always called “the sack of potatoes,” her head hanging down by his side, my dad holding on to her feet. I could hear Gelsey giggling hysterically, upside-down. “We’re about ready to get started, kid. Prepare yourself for swift and bloody devastation.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said. A minute earlier, I would have complained, cajoled, done anything to stay on the phone with Lucy. Now, I was thrilled to have an excuse to end the conversation.

“And one more thing,” my dad said, looking around exaggeratedly. He turned in a half circle from side to side, Gelsey swinging around as he did so. “Have you seen your sister? I can’t seem to find her anywhere.” This caused Gelsey to go into shrieks of laughter, and he flipped her around, tossed her up in the air, and caught her before putting her back on the ground, now laughing along with her as he headed inside.

“I should go,” I said to Lucy, grateful for a reason to get off the phone.

“So you’ll talk to him?” Lucy persisted. “You’ll see if he likes me?” I swallowed hard and tried to see if I was brave enough to just tell her now that I liked Henry. But I was afraid she would accuse me of something she’d been saying since we were little—that I was copying her. That I just liked whatever and whoever she liked, did whatever she did. And as I thought about my wispy bangs, I realized that she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Right,” I said, regretting the word even as I was saying it but somehow not able to take it back. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

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“Definitely. Miss you!”

Lucy hung up, and I walked slowly inside to join my family around the coffee table. Warren was quoting from something called The Art of War, and my dad was going over strategy with Gelsey (they were on a team) while I just stared into space. My mind was spinning with justifications for what I’d done—or, more accurately, hadn’t done. She’d caught me off guard. I didn’t even know what might happen with me and Henry. Lucy might not even be back until the summer was over. There was no point in causing trouble or making anyone feel bad.

“Ha!” Warren said triumphantly, and I looked down at the board to see that, right under my nose, he had just swept away most of the armies that I thought were safe.

Chapter twenty

AS I WOBBLED DOWN OUR STREET ON MY MOM’S OLD BIKE, TRYING to do everything I could not to topple over, I realized that riding a bike was, in fact, something you could forget how to do. In my defense, it was a bike I wasn’t used to, and nothing like my old mountain bike that was now Gelsey’s. It was a beach cruiser, and heavy, with a sloping crossbar and no handbrakes. Though I’d stuck a flashlight into the bike’s white metal basket as kind of a DIY bike light, once I made it to the street, it became obvious it wasn’t going to be necessary. It was an incredibly clear night, and the moon that had been shining through our downstairs windows was lighting up the road.

I made slow, wavering process down the street, the bike threatening to fall over every few seconds until I got the pedals going and straightened out a little. But by the time I turned off Dockside, I was feeling better about my progress. The streets were empty, and I had them to myself as I swerved across both lanes and made figure eights. The wind was lifting my hair, and I could feel it stream behind me as I coasted down the small hills. I pedaled faster, picking up speed, until I realized where I was—at the top of Devil’s Dip.

I began to brake, even though I knew from long-ago experience that this was the moment to pedal fastest, gain the momentum I would need to get myself up the other side. But up at the top of it, looking down into the dip without the benefit of being in a car, I could understand why this had seemed so insurmountable when I was eight. Had I really once done it as a matter of course? And even more than that, had this really been a hill I had raced Henry up, both of us red-faced and puffing with exhaustion as we tried to beat each other to the opposite side? I braked a little harder, but the incline had already started pulling me down the hill. I could have just let myself enjoy the ride down, but instead, as the bike slipped out of my control, I felt myself braking, hard. My front wheel hit a patch of gravel, and before I knew what was happening—it only seemed to take a fraction of a second—the wheel was turning, and I was losing control. I felt the whole bike waver, off its axis, and then my foot was getting tangled in the wheel, and then I was on the ground, the bike resting on top of me, front wheel still uselessly spinning.

As I shoved the bike off me and pushed myself to my feet, I was especially grateful that it was very late—or early—and there had been nobody around to see me wipe out like that. I was more humiliated than hurt, but the palms of my hands and both of my knees had gotten scraped. I brushed off the dirt and gravel and pulled the bike up. I walked it the rest of the way down the Dip, then back up the other side. I was embarrassed, but mostly I was mad at myself, that I had chickened out on doing something that I’d conquered when I was still in elementary school. When I made it up to the other side, I got back on the bike, looking forward at the road, riding extra quickly toward the beach, as though this would make up for bailing out on the Dip. It wasn’t until I was nearly at the beach that I realized that I could have given it a second try, rather than walking my bike. I could have picked myself up and tried again. But I hadn’t. I had just left. I tried to push this thought away as I steered my bike toward the beach. But unlike so many other times, it didn’t go easily.

Since Lucy had just told me to come to “the beach,” I had no idea what to expect, or if I’d have trouble finding her. But this didn’t turn out to be a problem, because when I got close to the beach, I saw her standing on the side of the road yelling into a cell phone.

“It is so over,” she said. “And you should know, Stephen, that you just lost the best thing you’re ever going to—” She stopped, and her expression changed from fury to disbelief as she listened. “Oh? Is that so? Then why don’t you have the guts to come out here and explain yourself?”

I slowed the bike, feeling very much like I was intruding, even though this confrontation was going down in the middle of the street. I noticed that the driveway of a nearby house was filled with cars, and I could hear, faintly, the thumping bass of music playing and random party sounds—yells and laughter.

“And I will have you know—” Lucy finally saw me, and she frowned as she lowered her phone and stared at the bike. “What is that?”

“What’s what?” I asked.

“Where’s your car?” she asked. She looked around, swaying slightly, as though it might be hiding behind me.

“I didn’t bring it,” I said.

Lucy stared at me. “Then how are you going to drive me?” Stephen must have weighed in then—I could hear his voice, loud and a little whiny, through her phone. “I’m done here, you asshole,” Lucy snapped, though I noticed she didn’t hang up, but appeared to be listening.

I felt incredibly stupid as I stood in the middle of the road, with my bike, at two thirty in the morning. And I could feel myself getting mad at Lucy for the first time in a long time. Ever since we’d met again, I’d been constantly aware of what I’d done, and why she was mad at me. But she had dragged me out of bed to give her a ride home when she would barely talk to me at work? And hadn’t even been able to specify that I should bring a car?

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Even though Lucy was still on the phone, I felt the need to defend myself. “For the record,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over Lucy’s phone call, “you didn’t tell me you needed a ride—or ask me to give you one, by the way,” I said. “All you said was ‘come to the beach.’ So I biked here.”

“Well, I would have been more specific,” Lucy said, “but I’m in the middle of breaking up with this complete moron—” She yelled these last two words into the phone, and Stephen might have finally had enough, because a moment later, she lowered the phone. “He hung up on me,” she said, incredulous. “Can you believe it?”

Actually, I could, but thought this might not be the moment to tell her this. “Was he in there?” I asked, pointing at the party house.

“Yes,” Lucy said, huffy, as she picked up her purse from the ground, dropped her phone into it, and rummaged through it. She came up with a bag of Skittles, and ripped open the top, tossing a handful back like they were pills and not candy. She kept the bag in her hand as she closed her purse and slung it a little too vigorously over her shoulder. “I storm out of the house and he doesn’t even have the decency to follow me. Just stays where he is and calls. What a loser.” But as she said this last word, her bravado seemed to crumble a little, and she glanced down the driveway, biting her lip. “God,” she muttered, her voice shaky. “And I really liked him too. I thought we’d at least be together through June.” She looked at me, and my bike, and sighed. “I guess I’m walking. Thanks for coming, though, Taylor.” She gave me what I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a smile, then turned and headed up the road, weaving slightly.

I wheeled the bike around and caught up with her. As safe as Lake Phoenix was, I wasn’t about to let a tipsy Lucy wander home on her own. Not to mention the fact that she looked about ready to give up halfway there and take a nap next to a tree. “I’ll walk you home,” I said, as I got off the bike and walked alongside it.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, just as she stumbled over a rock on the side of the road, which sent her veering into my bike. She didn’t protest after that, and we fell into a rhythm, walking next to each other, the bike in between us. We continued on in silence, the only sounds coming from the cicadas around us and the gravel crunching under my tires.

“So,” I said after a second, glancing over at her, “do you want to talk about it?”

Lucy stopped at that and turned to me, and I stopped as well. “Talk,” she repeated. “To you.”

I could feel my face heating up, and shook my head and started wheeling my bike again to cover it. “Never mind,” I said. “Forget it.”

Lucy fell back into step with me, and as we walked on and the silence grew more uncomfortable. I found myself wishing that I had, in fact, brought my car. There were so many more things to distract you in cars. I wouldn’t have been feeling this awkward if I could have turned up the volume on the radio and pretended it wasn’t happening.

“Thanks for offering,” Lucy said finally, sounding half-genuine and half-sarcastic. “But it’s not like we’re friends anymore, Taylor.”

“I know,” I said. I looked down at the bike, concentrating on wheeling it in a perfectly straight line, trying to ignore the lump that was threatening to rise in my throat.

“And whose fault is that?” Lucy asked. Since I knew the answer to this, and suspected she did too, I didn’t say anything, just tightened my grip on the handlebars for a second before letting them go again. “You shouldn’t have just left like you did,” Lucy continued. “Without any explanations or anything. It was a really ****ty thing to do.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” I asked a little sharply, surprising myself. I glanced over at her and saw that she looked taken aback by this as well. “Do you think I don’t feel bad about it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lucy said, sounding annoyed. “It’s not like you’ve, you know, apologized or anything.”

She was right. I had tried, but halfheartedly. Just like I’d done with Henry, and then blamed my lack of courage on circumstances that had swept those potential moments away. I took a breath and stopped walking my bike. I’d been given, and ignored, too many opportunities to change. So I decided to take one, there in the middle of the road, with the moonlight streaming down over us and casting our shadows on the ground. “Lucy,” I said, looking her right in the eye, “I’m really, really sorry.”

She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay,” she said, starting to walk again, weaving a little in the road as she concentrated on shaking another handful of Skittles into her palm.

“Okay?” I asked, half-running alongside the bike to catch up with her. “That’s it?”

“What did you want me to say?” she asked, yawning and covering her mouth with her hand. “I accept your apology.”

“Thank you,” I said, a little stunned it had been that easy. But I realized, as we walked on, that we weren’t going to revert to being friends again. She may have accepted my much-too-late apology, but it wasn’t like she’d forgiven me.

“I’m sorry too,” she added after a moment. I turned to her, confused, and she shrugged. “I’ve been a total bitch to you at work.”

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“Not totally,” I said, but I could hear that I didn’t exactly sound convincing. Lucy looked over at me, we both burst out laughing, and for just a moment, it was like we were twelve again. I nodded at the bag of Skittles. “You don’t eat them by color anymore?”

She blinked at me, then, remembering, smiled. “Nope,” she said. “Not for years now.” She peered at me in the darkness. “Why, do you?”

“No,” I lied, trying to sound nonchalant. “I was just… asking.” Lucy arched an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything. I looked away, as though concentrating on the road, and realized we’d reached the top of the Dip. You either lived on one side of the lake or the other, and the Dip was pretty much the dividing line. This had been the spot we’d always parted ways when we had ridden somewhere together, usually with our extra-long, very complicated hand-claps. But Lucy continued on, heading down the hill, away from her house. “Where are you going?” I called.

Lucy stopped and looked up at me. “Your house,” she said, as though we’d decided this in advance. “I can’t go home like this. My mother would kill me.”

I wasn’t sure my mother’s reaction would be any less extreme if she discovered me sneaking in at three a.m. with an intoxicated Lucy, but at least I would be clearly sober. I began to walk my bike down the hill after her, then stopped, feeling my heart start to beat a little bit faster, my adrenaline pumping in anticipation of what I was about to do. “Meet you on the other side,” I called down to her as I slung one leg over the crossbar.

“What?” Lucy asked, turning to look at me. I pushed off, pedaling full-speed down the hill. I passed her quickly, and made myself pedal even as I could feel gravity pulling me down faster and faster, forcing myself ignore the instincts that told me this was dangerous, that I was going too fast, that I was going to get hurt. I just kept pedaling, and before I knew it, I had reached the bottom of the hill, and my momentum was beginning to carry me up the other side. But I knew it wouldn’t last, and I started pumping my legs harder than ever. Sure enough, the climb began to get very hard very quickly, and I could feel my calves burning with the effort to bring me—and my mother’s ridiculously heavy bike—up the hill. But I didn’t think about giving up this time. Not only did I have Lucy watching me, but I’d already given up on myself once tonight. I could feel my breath coming shallowly, but I forced myself, gasping, to the top of the other side. Once I’d made it, I stepped down off the pedals and let myself collapse over the handlebars, breathing hard.

I looked down and saw Lucy making her way up the hill. But even from far above her, I could see that she was clapping.

“Shh,” I reminded Lucy as I kicked off my flip-flops on the porch and crossed to the door, taking my key out of my pocket.

“I know,” she said, stifling another yawn. “Don’t worry.”

I turned the knob slowly, and pushed open the door an inch at a time, hoping it wouldn’t squeak. I glanced at the clock on the microwave as we stepped inside and saw that it was 3:05 a.m.—not a time I wanted to be waking up either of my parents.

“Wow,” Lucy said, not as quietly as I would have liked, looking around, “it looks just the same.”

I eased the door shut behind us. “I know,” I whispered as I crept past her, motioning her down the hall to my room. “Come on.”

“No, I mean it looks exactly the same,” she repeated, even a little louder. In his basket by the window, one of Murphy’s ears twitched, and I realized the last thing I needed was the dog waking up and starting to bark. “It’s weird.” Her eyes fell to the ground, and the sleeping dog. “When did you guys get a dog?” she asked, now not even whispering at all, but just talking in a normal volume.

“Today,” I murmured. “It’s a long story.” I took another step toward my bedroom, hoping that she would follow me. But Lucy was still looking around, her mouth hanging slightly open. I realized as I watched her that she must have been feeling the same thing I had when I’d come back—like entering an odd sort of time machine, where nothing had changed in the last five years. If we’d been coming up here all this time, undoubtedly the house would have changed with us. But instead, it was perfectly preserved from the last time she’d been in it—when we’d been very young, and best friends. “Lucy,” I said again, a little louder, and this seemed to snap her out of whatever reverie she’d been in.

She nodded and followed me down the hall, but stopped short halfway to my room. “You’re kidding me,” she murmured. She pointed at one of the framed pictures hung along the hall, where Lucy and I, at ten, smiled out at the camera, our mouths stained red and purple, respectively, from the popsicles we’d no doubt just consumed.

“I know,” I said quietly, standing next to her. “It was a long time ago.”

“It was,” she replied. “God. Wow.”

I looked at the two of us in the picture, standing so close, our arms so casually thrown over each other’s shoulders. And in the glass of the frame, I could see us reflected as we were now, seven years older, standing several feet apart. After looking at it for another minute, Lucy continued walking down the hall again. And not until she opened my door did I realize that of course she didn’t need me to show her the way—that at one point, she’d known my house as well as her own.

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Lucy changed into the T-shirt and shorts I found for her, and I made the trundle bed with the extra sheets from our linen closet. When she came back from the bathroom, I had changed for bed as well and was experiencing a very strong sense of déjà vu. I had spent years in this same spot, with Lucy in the trundle bed looking up at me, as we talked for hours, long after we were supposed to have gone to sleep. And now here she was again, exactly the same, except for the fact that everything had changed. “This is weird,” I whispered as she climbed into the trundle bed, pulling the covers up around her.

She rolled on her side to face me, hugging her pillow the same way she’d done when she was twelve. “I know,” she said.

I stared up at the ceiling, feeling strangely uncomfortable in my own room, all too aware of every movement I made.

“Thanks for tonight, Taylor,” Lucy said around a huge yawn. I peered over the edge of my bed to see that her eyes were drifting closed, her dark hair fanned out across the white pillowcase. “You saved my butt.”

“Sure,” I said. I waited a second longer, to see if she wanted to talk—about the disappointing Stephen, or the circumstances of the night. But then I heard her breathing grow slow and even, and I remembered that Lucy had usually fallen asleep before me. I’d always envied the way she could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, while it sometimes took me what felt like hours to drift off. I lay back down on my pillow and closed my eyes, even though I had a suspicion that I wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon.

But the next thing I knew, light was streaming in through my windows, and when I sat up, I saw that the clothes I’d lent Lucy were neatly folded on the trundle bed. On top of them was the bag of Skittles, the top rolled over. And when I opened it, I saw that it contained only the flavors that had always been mine.

Chapter twenty-one

Five summers earlier

I WOKE UP WITH MY ARMS AROUND THE STUFFED PENGUIN, WHO still smelled slightly of funnel cakes and cotton candy. I smoothed his scarf down, running the soft felt across my fingers, feeling myself smile as I opened my eyes, replaying the scenes from last night in my head. It had been a perfect night, and I didn’t want to forget a single moment of it.

I’d been going to the Lake Phoenix carnival since I could remember. It lasted the entire weekend, and Henry and I had gone to the first night of it. That was the night I’d always liked best. Before the grass became muddy and trampled, before you got queasy at the sight of the Slurpee booths, before you saw how few people actually won at the carnival games. When everything was still shiny and magical, the way it had been last night.

Since our movie date, Henry and I had continued to spend our days together, but things had definitely changed from the easy, race-you-to-the-snack-bar friendship we’d had before. Things were more complicated now, but also infinitely more exciting, and I’d return home every night, barely even paying attention to my dinner, instead turning over in my mind a thousand little moments with Henry—the dimple in his cheek when he smiled, the way he’d brushed my hand when he handed me my ice-cream sandwich. He hadn’t made any move to kiss me yet, but the possibility seemed to infuse every day, and I found myself wondering when it would be—when he took my hand to pull me up to the raft, and I yanked him into the water instead, and we surfaced at the same time, so close that I could see the water droplets on his eyelashes? When he biked me home, and then paused, clearing his throat and looking at the ground, like he was trying to gather the courage? Neither of these had been the moment, but that didn’t stop them from being that much more exciting, and making me feel like after spending my whole life reading about things happening to people in Seventeen, things were finally happening to me.

The only thing that dimmed the perfection of it was Lucy, who was insistent on knowing if I’d asked Henry about her. I was vague whenever she asked me about this, and found myself trying to get off the phone with her as soon as possible, once she brought it up.

But I tried to push Lucy out of my thoughts as I sat up in bed and propped the penguin on my knees. Henry and I had spent the carnival together, just the two of us. This hadn’t been easy to arrange, especially with Gelsey trying to follow me wherever I went, but I was able to bribe Warren into looking after her for the night with five dollars of the ride money my dad had given me, as well as promising to buy him ice cream the next time we went to Jane’s.

After finishing the protracted negotiations with Warren, I’d headed across the carnival in search of Henry, feeling my heart pound hard with excitement. It was early yet—the sun hadn’t totally set, and the neon on the rides and along the sides of the booths was just starting to glow. The clank of the machinery mixed with the shrieks from the people on the rides, and the yells of the workers in the booths, calling for people to step right up, test their luck, take a chance.

The funnel cake stand was almost at the opposite end from the entrance, and as soon as you got close, you could smell the scent of fried dough and powdered sugar, a combination that always made my mouth water. The sign that advertised FUNNEL CAKES/SOFT DRINKS/LEMONADE was in spelled out in pink and yellow neon, and standing under it, the glow from the sign reflecting on his dark hair, was Henry.

“You look really nice,” he said when I finally reached him.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling wide at him. Even without Lucy’s help in the getting-ready department, I felt like I had been able to do an okay job with my hair and was wearing my new T-shirt. “You too.” I noticed that his normally shaggy hair had somehow gotten much neater, and I could see the comb tracks through it.

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The air all around us smelled sweet, and Henry reached over and took my hand, threading his fingers through mine, and smiled at me. “Where do you want to start?” he asked.

We started with the Scrambler, then went to the Round-Up, then the Ferris wheel (we rocked the car as much as we could before the attendant yelled at us to settle down up there). Then, after we’d gotten most of the stomach-churning out of the way, we split funnel cakes and popcorn, and then shared a bright-blue cotton candy that stained our teeth and made our fingers sticky.

I’d gotten the penguin when we passed one of the game booths, and the attendant of the watergun-horse-race game had yelled out, “Hey, kid! Win a prize for your girlfriend!”

He’d said this last word with a smirk, and had probably intended to embarrass us, but Henry had just walked over to the booth, plunked down a dollar, and won (not the top prize level, but the one just underneath it) on his first try.

By the end of the evening, the neon was glowing brightly against the dark. My mom had arranged to meet me and my siblings at the entrance at nine thirty—my dad, who usually never missed coming to the carnival with us, had been working the whole weekend on some case. Henry was meeting his mom around the same time, and so we walked over together to the entrance. Just before we left, however, he took my hand and pulled me a few steps away, separate from the crowds, into the shadow of the ticket booth. And as I realized what was happening, Henry tilted his head and closed his eyes, and I closed mine just in time, and then he kissed me.

After all the articles I’d read that detailed how to kiss, I’d been worried that I wouldn’t know what to do. But the second his lips touched mine, I realized I hadn’t needed those articles. It had been easy.

I hugged the penguin tight, remembering. I’d been kissed. I was now a person who had been kissed. I rolled out of bed and practically danced out to the kitchen, though I quieted down when I saw my dad at the dining room table, on the phone, frowning at his laptop, piles of paper in front of him.

Feeling like I was full of more joy than the house could contain, I slipped out through the screened-in porch and ran down to the dock. I just wanted to lie in the sun and turn it all over in my mind, every moment of the night before. When I reached the end of the dock, though, I stopped short.

Across the water, I could see a pink bandanna tied to the leg of the dock opposite ours. Lucy was back.

Chapter twenty-two

“AND DID YOU KNOW THAT THEY THINK THE FIRST VETERINARY records they can find date back to 9000 B.C.? And that the first veterinary school was founded in France in 1761?” I looked over at my brother and wished that I’d had the foresight to bring my iPod out to the dock with me. “Did you?” Warren persisted.

I just shook my head. I’d given up asking him not to tell me facts about vets twenty minutes before. “I know!” Warren enthused, looking down at the book on his lap. “It’s fascinating!”

It was my day off again, and I’d finally made it down to the dock, where I’d had plans *****nbathe the afternoon away. I hadn’t planned on the company of my brother, who had shown up not long after I’d arrived with my towel and cracked open my magazine. Now he was sitting on the edge of the dock with his feet dangling in the water, while I stretched out on my towel in my bikini, hoping I could pull a Lucy and just drop off to sleep. Ever since we’d gone into Doggone It!—four days ago—my brother hadn’t been able to stop talking about veterinarians, and what a fascinating field veterinary medicine was.

It became clear after only a day or two—despite my mother’s attempts to track down last year’s feckless, dog-abandoning renters—that we now had a dog. Murphy had settled in, to the delight of my sister. Surprisingly, though, it was my father that the dog really seemed to connect with. When I left for work—always biking now, unless it looked like rain—he was usually on my dad’s lap, looking at his computer screen as though he understood what was happening, and he usually reclaimed his spot after dinner as well. I’d even caught my mother patting Murphy’s head the other day when she thought that nobody was watching. And to an outside observer, Warren would appear to be the dog’s biggest fan—nearly every day he bought Murphy more treats, another squeaky toy, extra rawhide bones. But I knew that this, like his sudden love for the veterinary sciences, had nothing to do with affection for the dog and everything to do with Wendy, the girl who worked at Doggone It!.

“And—” Warren started, as I pushed myself up on my elbows and shook my head at him.

“No,” I said firmly, pushing my sunglasses up on top of my head. “No more vet facts. I’ve reached my limit. Go torment Gelsey.”

Warren looked offended for a second, but then just sighed and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, kicking at the water’s surface. “She’s off with her other half.”

I smiled as I lay back down on my towel. Gelsey and Nora had become a unit quickly, which seemed to make her parents very happy. They’d explained, one night as they came over to say hello and collect her, that they’d been working toward a script deadline and hadn’t been able to spend much time entertaining her. But this was no longer an issue. Gelsey and Nora had become pretty much inseparable after that first day. They’d arranged to be in the same tennis group, and when they weren’t tormenting their tennis instructors, they were riding their bikes in tandem, heading out in the morning, to the pool or the beach. Every night, Gelsey was burbling over with things that Nora had said, facts about Nora’s life in Los Angeles, reports of their adventures. As I listened at dinner, I realized that Gelsey finally had her first best friend. “Then go tell Mom or Dad,” I said to Warren, as I turned my head to the side and closed my eyes. “Because I’m done.”

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The beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up sounded, and I sat up straight and looked back toward the driveway, even though not much of it could be seen through the screened-in porch. “FedEx?” I asked, as Warren turned and squinted.

“UPS,” he said, shaking his head. “FedEx was here this morning.”

In ad***ion to his work packages, my father had started ordering things like crazy, and was getting a lot of deliveries. It seemed like every day, multiple packages arrived—books, DVDs, chocolates from Belgium, steaks from Omaha packed in dry ice. He’d continued to get up early, and we’d had two more diner breakfasts, complete with our question quiz. (I’d learned that he had dreamed of being an astronaut when he was little, that the food he hated most in the world was lima beans, and that he’d gone to a ballet every night for a month after meeting my mother, to catch up.) Every night after dinner, we all gathered in the family room and watched a movie, and he was usually still up by the time I went to bed, reading a book, surrounded by an ever-growing stack of them.

I’d been unable to fall asleep a few nights before, and had gone out to the kitchen to get a drink of water, more because I was bored than thirsty, and had found my dad stretched out on one of the couches, the embers of a dying fire still crackling a little in the fireplace. The dog was sleeping on his feet, and he had his reading glasses on and a thick book propped up against his chest.

“Hi,” I whispered, and my dad turned his head and smiled when he saw me, pulling his glasses off.

“Hi, kid,” he said quietly. “Can’t sleep?”

I shook my head and crossed to sit on the couch across from his, leaning forward to try to see his book. “What are you reading?” I asked.

“T.S. Eliot,” he said, holding it up for me. The cover showed a black-and-white photo of a mournful-looking man. “Ever read it?” I shook my head. He settled the book on his chest again. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” he said. “I remember it was my favorite in college.” He settled his glasses on the bridge of his nose again and squinted at the text. “I can no longer remember why, exactly, it was my favorite in college.”

I smiled at that and curled up on the couch, resting my head on the decorative pillow that was scratchy against my cheek. It was so peaceful out here—the intermittent crackle of the dying fire, the dog’s breathing, interrupted by an occasional snort, the presence of my dad—that I had absolutely no desire to go back to my own room.

“Want to hear some of it?” my dad asked as he looked over the book at me. I nodded, trying to remember how many years it had been since someone had read to me. I’d always wanted my father to do it when I was little, even though most nights he wasn’t home until long past my bedtime. But when he was there, he was the only one I wanted to hear stories from—he added in details my mother didn’t, like the fact that Hansel and Gretel were guilty of trespassing and willful destruction of property, and that the Three Little Pigs could have pursued a harassment charge against the Big Bad Wolf. “Okay, here we go.” He cleared his throat and started to read in a voice that seemed somehow weaker than the big, booming baritone I’d always associated with him. I told myself it was just because he was trying to be quiet, and not wake the whole house. And I closed my eyes and let the words wash over me—about women talking of Michelangelo, and yellow fog, but mostly, a refrain about how there will be time, time for you and time for me. And these last words were echoing in my head as my eyes got heavier, and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep was my dad placing a blanket over me and turning out the light.

“I’m not sure what he got this time,” Warren said now as he looked back toward the driveway and the UPS truck. “Personally, I wouldn’t mind more steaks.”

“I hope it’s something as good as those chocolates,” I said, hearing my voice go up a little higher than normal, into the range of forced cheerfulness. “They were amazing.”

“They really were,” Warren said, and I noticed he had the same bright, high tone to his voice. He met my eye briefly before looking back at the water. We weren’t talking about the reason why our dad had suddenly turned slightly manic—or about the fact that he wasn’t eating many of the gourmet treats he was having flown to the Poconos from all over the world, and had started to get noticeably thinner.

I flipped a through a couple more pages of the magazine, but it no longer seemed particularly interesting, and I tossed it aside after a few minutes—but carefully, since it was one I’d borrowed from Lucy. Things had been better with us since our impromptu sleepover. We weren’t good friends again by any stretch of the imagination, but the atmosphere at work had gotten a lot more cordial. Elliot, upon hearing about Lucy’s breakup, had started dropping a lot more things when we were all working together, confirming what I’d begun *****spect—that he had a crush on her. But as far as I could tell, he hadn’t done anything about this except exponentially increase the amount of cologne he wore to work. I was worried that if he kept it up, customers might start to complain.

“So what’s going on with the Crosbys?” Warren asked, making me jump.

“What do you mean?” I asked, wondering why this simple question was making me so nervous. I hadn’t seen Henry since I so thoroughly embarrassed myself at Movies Under the Stars, but I’d been thinking about him—Henry now, and the Henry I’d known before—much more than I ever would have admitted.

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“I mean that tent by their house,” Warren said, looking through the gap in the trees, where you could see a flash of Day-Glo orange vinyl. “It looks like they’re harboring vagrants.”

I shook my head and lay back down. “I seriously don’t think they are.”

“Well, I know that’s what you think, but statistically…” I let Warren drone on about the legal definition of squatting, which somehow turned into him telling me that “hobo” actually stood for “homeward bound,” and I was just beginning to be able to tune him out when I heard a familiar-sounding voice right above me.

“Hey there.” I opened my eyes and saw Henry standing on the dock, wearing a faded Borrowed Thyme T-shirt and surfer-style swim trunks, carrying a towel.

“Hi,” I stammered, sitting up and trying to fluff up my hair, which I had a feeling had gone limp with the heat.

Warren pushed himself up to standing and tilted his head to the side, then asked, “Henry?”

Henry nodded. “Hey, Warren,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

“I’ll say,” Warren said. “It’s nice to see you again.” He crossed to the end of the dock and held out his hand. After a tiny pause, Henry shifted his towel to the other arm and they shook. “I heard that you guys were next door to us now. How’ve you been?”

“Pretty good,” Henry said. He glanced over at me and met my eye for only a second, but it was enough to set my pulse racing. “How about you?”

“Oh, fine,” Warren said. “Good, really. Heading to Penn in the fall, spending the summer doing some reading.” Henry nodded politely, not seeming to realize that Warren was just getting started. “Like, right now I’ve been reading up on the history of veterinary sciences. And it’s really fascinating stuff. For instance, did you know that—”

“Warren,” I interrupted. He looked over at me and I smiled at him, all the while trying to convey with my thoughts that he should really stop talking, or better yet, leave.

“Yes?” he asked, apparently not understanding any of these mental messages.

“Didn’t you, um, have to help Dad? Inside?” Warren just frowned at me for a moment, causing me to question, not for the first time that summer, if my brother really was as brilliant as everyone seemed to think.

“Oh,” he said, after a too-long pause. “Right. Sure.” He waggled his eyebrows at me in what was a very un-Warren, but incredibly annoying, way before he turned to go. He’d only taken about two steps when he pivoted back around to face Henry. “Actually, about that tent on your lawn—” he started.

“Warren,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Right,” he said quickly. He gave Henry a quick wave, then turned and headed up the grassy slope toward the house.

“Sorry to bother you,” Henry said as he walked up to where I was sitting on the dock, dropping his towel next to mine. “I didn’t realize you guys were out here.”

“Oh, no,” I said, and could hear how high my voice sounded. It was as if I’d suddenly become part Muppet. I was suddenly very aware that, in my bikini, I wasn’t really wearing all that much. “It’s fine. Totally, totally… fine.”

Henry spread out his towel and sat on it, stretching his long legs out in front of him. I was conscious that there was not a lot of space between us, and couldn’t help thinking back to that moment in the woods, his hands on my back, the only thing separating his skin from mine the thin fabric of my T-shirt.

“Your brother doesn’t like the tent?” he asked, bringing me back to the present moment.

“It’s not that,” I said. “He just… wondered what was going on with it. He was worried that you were taking in hobos or something.”

Henry smiled at that, a smile that crinkled the corners of his green eyes and made me smile back, almost like a reflex. “Not hobos,” he said. “But close. Davy’s living in it.”

“Oh,” I said, then paused, waiting for more of an explanation. When Henry just leaned back on his elbows, and looked out at the water, I asked, “And why is Davy living in it?”

“He’s been on this whole wilderness kick for a few years now. He’d sleep in the woods if my dad would let him. This was their compromise. And he’s only allowed to sleep in it in the summers.”

Thinking of the occasional weekends we once used to spend up here in the winters, and how frigid cold they could be, I nodded. “Did he get it from you?”

“Get what from me?” Henry turned to face me, eyebrows raised.

“The whole in-the-woods thing,” I said. Henry continued to look at me, and the directness of his gaze was enough to make me look away and concentrate on smoothing out the wrinkles in my towel. “You were always trying to get me to come with you and look at different bugs. You used to love that stuff.”

He smiled at that. “I guess I still do. I just like that there’s a system in the woods, an order to things, if you know how to see it. I always find myself in the woods when I need to think something out.”

Silence fell between us, and I realized that this was the first time, since our initial meeting on this dock, that it had been just the two of us—no little brothers or customers or blond girlfriends. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence—it was companionable, like the silences we used to have when we’d spend rainy days in the tree-house, or hours lying out on the raft. I looked over at him and saw that he was already looking at me, which surprised me, but I didn’t let myself look away. I took a breath to say something—I had no idea what; in my head I hadn’t gotten any further than his name—when he stood abruptly.