Second Chance Summer (23 page)

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, shit,” 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.

chapter nineteen

five summers earlier

“S
O
I
HAVE NEWS
,” L
UCY TOLD ME OVER THE PHONE
. I
T 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 credits 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.”

“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

A
S
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.