Summer Days and Summer Nights (17 page)

Words will be the answer. They always were.

I will write a story about A for you. Maybe it will make you feel better. Or at least feel. Something. And the story will be for A, too. Maybe he'll read it.

 

Marigold hated this time of year. July was hotter—and maybe even
wetter
—than the rest of summer, for one thing. The air swelled thick with humidity. Sweat trickled down the hollows of her body. And the rain showers, so frequent in the afternoons, caused more inconveniences than relief. Dark clouds became a weary sight.

She hated the sunscreen and the gluey white paths it left behind when smeared across her skin. She hated the bloodsuckers—the hidden ticks with their threat of Lyme disease and the inexhaustible mosquitoes, buzzing inside her eardrums and always preferring her above other people. She hated the texture of her hair, fattened and frizzed, unrecognizable as her own. And she especially hated the boiling hot parking lots.

Parking lots like this one.

Marigold Moon Ling's relationship with North Drummond had been bookended by parking lots. They'd met in an Ingles grocery store parking lot last winter, and he'd broken up with her in a Bed Bath & Beyond parking lot last spring. At the time, she'd been holding a small microwave purchased with one of those big, blue twenty-percent-off postcard coupons. It was her first appliance for her first apartment. She'd been leaving the laid-back mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, for a job in the gridlocked urban sprawl of Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta was a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. Three and a half hours seemed manageable to Marigold. They did not to her boyfriend.

Ex
-boyfriend.

God. That prefix still stung, even in her head.

But it was this specific sting—this steadily intensifying sorrow, this oppressive sense of guilt—that was the reason Marigold was standing in the parking lot of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, about to make what might be the most humiliating mistake of her newly adultish, nineteen-year-old life.

Marigold was here to save her ex-boyfriend.

Not save in the Southern, religious sense. Less dramatically and more specifically, Marigold was here to convince her ex-boyfriend to follow her back to her apartment in Atlanta, split her rent, and enroll in college.

It was still a tall order. She was aware. But the mission was platonic. It was about helping out a friend who had helped her, about repaying a massive cosmic debt. It felt both intolerable and unjust that Marigold got to leave while North believed that he had to stay.

What Marigold didn't understand was what North was doing
here
. She'd returned to North Carolina under the guise of visiting her mother, but, before even dropping off her weekend bag, she'd driven the extra thirty-two miles past Asheville to his family's Christmas tree farm near Spruce Pine. His mother had shocked her with the news that he no longer worked there. He'd been adamant about staying at home so he could manage the property for his ailing father, but now he was working another full hour's drive away—down endless winding roads, past countless overgrown campgrounds and churchyards—even deeper into the mountains at Mount Mitchell State Park.

As Marigold stared at her destination, her wariness about the task at hand sank to a new and distressing level. She was exhausted from the long drive, but, worse, she'd spent the last hour in increasing anger and bitterness. If Marigold could admit it to herself—Marigold wasn't quite ready to admit it to herself—she might recognize these feelings as betrayal. She'd told North everything there was to tell, but he'd either lied or withheld. She couldn't recall him once, not
once
, mentioning a plan that didn't involve working on his parents' farm (their ambition) or going to college (his).

So what in the hell was this?

When turned into a hard number, their four months together sounded more like a brief encounter than an actual relationship. But their connection had always been about more than romance or hormones or sex. Almost instantly, he'd become her best friend. They'd texted each other throughout the day, every day, even after she moved away. Until his texts grew sparse in May. Until he'd stopped texting her altogether in June.

Marigold had imagined many reasons for his textual disappearance: jealousy over her evolving life, shame for staying behind, a possessive new girlfriend, losing his phone in the river, losing his memory in a car accident, losing his thumbs to a tractor blade. But she'd never imagined that he'd gotten another job. That he
had
moved on with his life, and that it didn't involve her.

What am I doing here?

The heat, rising up from the parking lot.

What. Am I doing here?

The heat. It was suffocating. She couldn't breathe. Marigold backpedaled into her Kia and slammed the door shut. She turned the key in the ignition for a blast of cold air, and her phone blared on through the stereo. She'd been listening to
Mystery Show
, one of North's favorite podcasts. She'd never listened to podcasts before North. Now she listened to them more than music.

Fuck you, North. Fuck you for ignoring my messages. Fuck you for making me worry, for making me feel guilty, for making me drive into the middle of fucking nowhere, for fucking ruining fucking podcasts!

Fuck!

She grabbed her phone, hit the music app, and her speakers exploded with a soul-belting roar from Beyoncé, but it wasn't enough—not even a teensy spark of enough—because her entire world had been tainted by North. He used to pretend that he hated Beyoncé, but once, after they'd gotten into an argument about something that didn't even matter, he'd stopped mid-debate and deadpan-recited every single word of “Halo.” She'd laughed so hard that she'd cried, that it actually made her abdomen sore. North could say anything and make her laugh. He had one of those voices.

Marigold pounded her fists against the steering wheel, pounded and pounded and pounded and pounded, until one of her flailing hands hit the horn. Startled, she jumped back in her seat. The family of six getting out of the minivan beside her also jumped. Marigold waved in an embarrassed apology.

Fuck you for that, too, North.

But she didn't feel it so strongly.

Marigold lowered the volume on her playlist and kept her gaze downward, pretending to mess with her phone until the family left. She concentrated on her breath like her hippie mother had always instructed her to do. In. And out. In. And out. Their voices grew faint and then vanished completely. She raised her head.

Mount Mitchell loomed before her.

Marigold's heart sank. The peak didn't look particularly steep or foreboding—it actually looked pretty mild—but it did seem … somber. Amid the spruces and firs were a startling number of dead trees. It was like the mountainside had been scattered with broken toothpicks. Their skeletons were so white and empty beside the bushy evergreens that they were almost a negative space, despite their physical presence. They were a question. Something missing.

“What are you doing here?” Marigold asked aloud. But this time she wasn't talking to herself or to the dead trees.

She'd driven all this way. She might as well go ask him.

*   *   *

The funicular was at the end of the parking lot. It was an incline railway consisting of two slow-moving cable cars—one ascending, one descending—and it was for people who didn't want to hike their way to the summit. Judging by the sizable number of tourists waiting on the benches beside her, that meant it was for most people.

Marigold hadn't been here since an elementary school field trip. Her memories were of a rickety green car, shaking its way up the track, daring her not to become at least a
little
afraid of heights. Marigold wasn't afraid of heights. But as she listened for the descending car's approach, she crossed and uncrossed her arms. She glanced nervously at her reflection in the window of the park office—where she'd paid the exorbitant twelve-dollar ticket price—and then, alarmed, she ripped off her sunglasses for a closer inspection.

Her face was flushed, her T-zone glistened with grease, and her black hair was frizzing out from its braid. Every day, she wore her hair with a thick braid across the top of her head like a headband. The rest of her hair was pinned up in the back. Usually, this signature look made her feel spunky somewhat Heidi-ish and cute.

Right now, she did not feel so cute.

Vibrations.
Behind her. The rolling hum of the pulleys grew louder, into whirs and clanks. The descending car was approaching. According to his mother, North was operating one of the cars. There was a fifty-fifty chance that he was almost here.

Marigold's stomach lurched. She was here to help out a friend, sure, but that didn't mean she wanted to look like a human garbagemonster. This was still a person who had seen her naked. In a burst of panic she yanked out the bobby pins, unbraided her hair, finger-smoothed it down, and then hurriedly redid the whole thing.

The clanking grew louder. As parents and children and couples all shuffled to their feet—she was the only person here without some type of partner—Marigold stayed planted, grabbing a compact from her purse. It took three oil-blotting sheets (
three
, for God's sake) and a layer of powder to hide the shine. It didn't cover her freckles, but nothing ever did. They were more prominent this time of year, and, to her, they seemed jarring with her Chinese American features. She used to hate them, but North had told her they were sweet. Once, he'd even connected the dots on her right cheek with a Sharpie to make a lopsided heart.

The car's shadow fell across her back. Some of the kids cheered, and she sensed the twenty or so assembled people surging toward it.

Fifty-fifty. Her real heart felt lopsided.

The gears locked into a complete stop, and there was a whoosh of accompanying wind. The flags beside the park office—US and NC—momentarily flapped harder as her nose was assaulted by the scent of fir. She closed her eyes and inhaled.
Christmas in July.
Rationally, she knew it was the mountain. Irrationally, she knew it was him.

Marigold shoved her sunglasses back on, grateful for any protection, however minimal, from the elements. In her short jean shorts and tight tank top, she suddenly felt vulnerable.

You're just here to talk. That's it. Whatever happens, it'll be fine.

Sometimes it was hard to believe the truth.

Marigold's knees quivered as she stood and turned around. A forest-green car was parked beside the platform. Above its large front window was a name:
MARIA
. It was written in gold lettering. She couldn't see the driver.

But then—
then
—

A single voice rose above the crowd, through a tinny, old-fashioned speaker. Her spine shivered in recognition. With North, you always noticed his voice first. It was deep and confident. Sardonic and dismissive. But the timbre also held an unexpected underpinning of amusement and warmth that let him get away with saying all sorts of outrageous things. People just liked hearing him talk. He was only a few months older than she was, but he sounded like a grown man. Except … even that wasn't quite true. No one sounded like North. It's what had attracted her in the first place.

“Please watch your step as you exit,” he said through the intercom. “I'd feel terrible if you tripped and wrecked your face. Not you, sir,” he added. “Your face is a disaster. No one would notice.”

The crowd—on board and off—laughed jovially.

Marigold raised her eyebrows.

A door popped open and North Drummond stepped into view. Her heart hammered against her rib cage. He swiftly jumped down from a platform on the back of the car to the main platform and then held out a hand to help an elderly woman disembark. “Goodbye,” he said. He wasn't using the intercom anymore, but Marigold could still hear every word. “Please tell your friends. We're trapped in the boonies, and we're desperately lonely. We could use the company.”

The woman chuckled and patted his hand.

Marigold wasn't sure why she felt so startled. Maybe it was because she hadn't seen him since April, but it was as if North's expression had been frozen in time. Despite his droll smile, his eyes held the same heavy weariness. The same edge of exasperation. Or maybe it was his uniform, which made him look like a junior park ranger. He was dressed entirely in pale blue.
Powder
blue. A powder-blue, short-sleeved, button-up shirt, powder-blue shorts that hit just above his knees, and a powder-blue hat that looked sort of like a baseball cap, only taller. And more awkward. In tidy white letters, two words had been stitched onto the front of it: FUNICULAR OPERATOR.

When the last passenger exited, he hopped back onto the car's short platform, using its guardrail to help swing himself up as if he'd done it a hundred times before. Marigold realized, disconcertingly, that perhaps he had.