A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (2 page)

While his dad struggled in the garage, Aiden's mom managed a boutique off Main Street that sold handmade handbags to the rich dot-commers that drove hybrids and hosted fundraisers for endangered bark beetles. "Feel-good idiots," his grandfather always called them. "Wonder how good they'll feel when all those electric cars start plugging in to a coal-powered grid." But the feel-good idiots paid the bills, allowing Aiden's dad to tinker well into the night while Brian's mom and Freddie's family cheered from the sidelines of their soccer games.

Then in December two things happened almost simultaneously: his parents filed for divorce, and his dad sold his patents and his software company to Google. The newspaper had said it had been for just under fifty million, but his dad laughed it off. "It's a little more complicated than that," he had said.

By the end of April his parents had separated and his father moved out and across town. From the two-bedroom one-bathroom cottage by the train tracks that had been home for a decade, to a six-bedroom-two floor ranch-style mansion set on a dozen acres in the hills overlooking Alder Glen. Aiden had protested, almost cried. Then his dad showed him the treehouse that came with the property.

"Pretty stellar," his dad said, pointing up at it. "Built it right onto the Redwood. Even has a rope ladder so you can retract it to keep out the monsters. See?"

"Cool," Aiden said, gripping the rope ladder and giving it a tug. Sturdy. Very sturdy. “It’s really high.”

“Thirty feet. Kid that built it fell out and broke his neck. That’s why I got the property for cheap.”

Aiden studied his dad, shocked. “Serious?”

“No, not at all.” His dad chuckled. His jokes were usually somewhere between macabre and downright absurd. “Off like a herd of turtles,” he had always said at the beginning of countless road trips they had taken when he was younger. Back when the laughter between his parents had been frequent. Before the old car that hardly made it south of the peninsula had been replaced by an Audi.

"So whattya think? You want to live here?"

Aiden shrugged and studied the landscape. It was remote. Very. The hills were home to the preserves, a golf course, old sections of university open space sparsely populated with biotech firms searching for answers in DNA and radio telescopes aimed at the heavens. A few distant buildings, part of the linear accelerator perhaps. Aiden had toured the area with his science class last fall. He still had the prism he'd gotten as a souvenir. It sat on his desk, back in his bedroom. Back in Alder Glen.

Back at home. His real home.

"You'll still go to the same school," his dad said, perhaps sensing his trepidation. "You could spend the week days with your mom, come here on the weekends. Sound fair?"

"Yeah, I guess," Aiden answered. "Is Julie moving as well?"

"Yeah, buddy. She's coming along too."

Julie.

Aiden didn't like Julie, not at all. She was young, much younger than his mom. She looked like one of the college counselors at his sports camp, and she always smelled of Lush or some sickeningly sweet candy fragrance. Whenever he visited his dad she hung around, always trying to make small talk and using slang in weird ways.

"Those shoes are tight," she had said over breakfast, pointing to his Five Finger shoes.

"Huh?"

"Like, really cool. Tight. The swagger."

"Oh," he said, and rolled his eyes. "Thanks. I guess."

Later, when he was playing Nintendo, his dad came in and sat beside him. "You need to be nicer to Julie. She's really trying to be your friend."

He didn't want a friend, he thought. He wanted Julie gone. He wanted his dad back at 1710 Astor Lane, in the bedroom at the end of the hall in the house he called home. He didn't want to live in this new, big house, even if it was only for the weekends. He would trade all of it, the treehouse and the six bedrooms and the TVs, all for that stupid cottage they'd lived in for the first decade of his life. He’d trade the Audi, its GPS and entertainment system for the junker with the tape deck that never worked. They had never needed GPS and entertainment systems, not on their summer trips to Half Moon Bay or to see the Elephant Seals at San Simeon. They had only needed each other.

Most of all, he’d do anything to trade Julie for his mom. He wanted a do-over, on all of it.

"Can you do that, buddy?" his dad asked. "Can you try to be nicer to her?"

"Okay," Aiden said, and went back to his video game.

"Good." His dad gave him a pat on the back. "Maybe next weekend we'll do something fun. You can have your friends over. Sound cool?"

"Sure, that'd be cool," Aiden answered.

The thing his dad didn't understand was that every day of the summer was a weekend to his friends. Every day was the same as Saturday; the only difference was the name.

Why spend his summer weekends with his dad and that dumb girl on the ranch at the edge of town when he could spend the days with his friends?

Why deal with Julie and her weird words?

Bounce. Chillax. Tight.

The only thing tight was the tension that twenty-five-year-old made when she tried to be his friend.

Or worse, his mother.

And so he made excuses, told his mom he didn't want to go to his dad’s house, and told his dad he couldn't come because he was sleeping over at Brian's or Freddie's or anywhere. The summer went on, July became August, and every time Saturday rolled around Aiden found another reason to avoid that ranch at the edge of the woods in the foothills.

It wasn’t home, he told himself. It would never be. The only thing that was nice was that treehouse, and even that was just okay. In Alder Glen they could walk to the Game Stop or bike to the Baylands and beyond. They knew the way to the old water tower, and they could always go toss rocks at the ducks by Shoreline Park. That was how he wanted to spend his summer, biking through the suburbs with his buddies, not up in the foothills looking down on them.

3.

THE HIGHER THE SUN climbed the longer the days seemed.

It was only as the days in August neared September that the responsibility of the school year reared its head. The dream of summer, of endless bicycle trips and camp-outs, was beginning to fade. There were books to read, reports to write, subjects to review. The school had sent every student off with an envelope an inch thick. An envelope that had sat for two months on Aiden's desk, unopened. Only now, with his mom threatening to ground him if he didn't begin his summer reading, were the days and nights beginning to recede. Only now had responsibility woken him.

He saw that final Sunday at the end of the two weeks, the chasm that lay between the days of warmth and the beginning of fifth grade. The sun was setting on summer. The future was no longer horizonless.

"I hear Mrs. Miller's a real bitch," Freddie said as they sat in Aiden's bedroom and played Xbox. "Like, she made Danny Krugmen cry ’cause he flunked his social studies test."

"Danny cries at dodgeball. The kid's a spu-puh-puh—" Brian swallowed, tried to force the word out. "The kid's a spu-spu-pu—"

"Spu-pu-pit it out, you spaz," Freddie said, scooting out of Brian's reach.

Instead Brian simply pointed and said: "Spaz. That's the word."

"My mom says I can't have anyone sleep over anymore," Aiden said, passing the controller to Freddie. "Your turn."

"Why not?"

"’Cause of the book reports. I haven't started."

"Me nu-neither.”

“Yeah, but you read books like you eat donuts," Freddie quipped. "Two at a time.”

“Not boring ones, and that’s all we’ve got. I tried to read Anne Fuh-Frank and I fuh-fell asleep. Pass me the controller, loser.”

“You always choose Raiden. Can’t you play any other character?” Freddie whined.

“I would if your hands didn’t sweat all over the controller,” Brian said, choosing Raiden from the character select screen. "Seriously, this thing’s as wet as a ma-ma-monkey's ass."

"How do you know what a monkey's ass feels like?”

“Ask your mom.”

“Fatty made another mom joke. That’s deep.”

“Funny,” Brian said. “That’s what she said.”

“Burn,” Aiden laughed, and for once Freddie laughed with them.

“What about your dad?” Freddie asked.

“What do you mean?” Aiden replied.

“Like, couldn’t we have a sleepover at your dad’s new house?”

“Yeah, I thought we were...” Brian gulped, took a breath. “You were gonna show us the tree fort.”

“Right, and you said it’s really big. Why don’t we go there?”

“I don’t know,” Aiden said, focusing on the screen and the battle between his character and Brian’s. It was no contest really. Brian was ten times as clumsy with Mortal Kombat as he was in real life. Aiden toyed with the big goof just to give him some semblance of hope. “I don’t like Julie. She’ll just bother us.”

“She’s pretty,” Freddie said.

“That’s his mu-mom you’re talking about—”

“She’s not my mom,” Aiden snapped. “She’s just his girlfriend and she’s an idiot. If you guys want to sleep over, fine. But I don’t want to talk to her, because everything she says is dumber than the crap you say.”

“That’s fine,” Brian said, dropping the controller as Aiden’s character delivered the coup de grace to Brian’s character, tearing a still-beating heart out of his chest. “But she’s still pretty.”

4.

HIS MOM'S SILVER SEDAN settled on the gravel driveway as the gate closed behind them.

“So he bought an old house and a new girlfriend,” his mother said, studying the property. “Hope he’s happy.”

“Mom, please,” Aiden said.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I love your dad, you know that, right?”

He nodded. He did. Nothing new here; just another jab at the man who left her. There had been a lot of those this summer.

“Call if you need anything, okay?

“Okay.”

A light turned on in the entryway and, seconds later, the red front door opened. Julie stepped onto the porch dressed in form-fitting terrycloth yoga clothes. “Hi, Susan! Hi, Aiden,” she said, bouncing across the gravel driveway to meet them.

Aiden noticed his mom’s eyes studying the young girl’s form. “Wish I had all day free to do nothing but Pilates.”

“Mom...”

“Hi, Julie,” his mom said with precise courtesy as she neared. “Well, he’s yours for the weekend. Is Michael in?”

“He’s on a conference call upstairs. Shanghai, I think. Or maybe China."

"That's..." She bit her tongue as Aiden gave her an amused look. “Still working on Friday night I see.”

“And Saturday and Sunday. Was he always this busy?"

The question seemed to amuse his mom. She fought off a grin. "Well, we didn't separate because he was lazy, that's for sure. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

“I doubt it," Julie laughed and turned her attention to Aiden. "How you doing, buddy? Ready to have a fun weekend?"

"I guess." He yawned, wondering when Brian and Freddie were going to arrive. This was to be the last weekend, the sunset on their summer. It would be fun if they didn't see Julie at all. That's what he was ready for.