SummerHill Secrets, Volume 2 (20 page)

“You don’t have to tell me who my own brother is,” I said, which made Skip and everyone smile. “So when’s Christmas?” I asked.

“In three days,” Mom said, glancing away. She took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes. I had an empty feeling. Something was terribly wrong.

That is until Chelsea Davis, my spunky girl friend, showed up and I recognized her, too. “Hey, Mer, whatcha doin’ in the hospital? It’s almost Christmas, for pete’s sake!”

Mom assured me that Chelsea had already heard the details of my skating accident. “But she’s curious to know what happened to the pictures you took of her. She was going to send them to her mother.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering. “Ask Dad…he was supposed to get them printed. I forget the exact day, though.”

My parents and Skip—Chelsea, too—started clapping. “Way to go, Merry,” my redheaded friend declared.

“Come here, you.” I motioned to her. “Is your mom better?”

“About the same.”

“So you’ve heard from her again?”

“Just a few minutes on the phone.”

“But you’ll be able to get the pictures to her, won’t you?” I asked. “In time for Christmas?”

Chelsea nodded, glancing at my dad. He gave us a thumbs-up gesture. “Don’t worry about a thing,” she said. “I’m planning to deliver them to Mom in person. Daddy and I are going for a surprise visit.”

“When?”

Her eyes shone. “Christmas Eve.”

“But I thought—”

“No, Mom won’t be home for Christmas this year,” she interrupted. “It’s not the right time for her, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, Chels.”

“Me too, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?”

We talked awhile longer about the recent snowstorm—one I’d missed while cooped up at Lancaster General—as well as Chelsea’s Christmas list. “Mom’s homecoming is at the top of my list,” she said.

“I don’t blame you. It’s the best wish of all.” I started to cough.

Almost on cue, the therapist came in and massaged my lungs—front and back. When she was gone, I wiggled my finger, indicating that I wanted Chelsea to lean over so I could whisper something. “That guy—the one who pulled me out of the pond—do you think he’s cute?”

She chuckled. “Levi’s a college man,” she whispered back to me, “studying to be a minister.”

“How old?”

“Only seventeen, I think.”

I decided right then and there that this Levi fellow sounded pretty good to me. A real hero, too!

“But,” she added, “the other guy, the one who jumped into the pond after you, now
he’s
the one you always liked best, even though he’s a bit of a bookworm.”

“Jim?”

“Jon, short for Jonathan. Remember?”

“Not really, but what a nice name.”

She shrugged. “Nice enough, I guess.”

Her answer made me curious. Who
was
this Jon fellow, and why did I like him so much?

The college boy, the one studying to be a minister, came for a visit with his sister the next morning. She was wearing a long green dress with a black apron and a white head covering. I wondered where she’d gotten such an unusual outfit, but I was polite enough not to ask.

“Hullo, Merry,” Levi said, hovering near the hospital bed. “Rachel and I have been worried about ya.”

“Worried?” I said.

Rachel spoke up softly. “Because you don’t remember who we are. It’s not like ya at all.” She looked down at me with gentle eyes. “You’re our dear friend, Merry. And our cousin, too.”

I glanced at Levi, feeling suddenly strange about having asked Chelsea if he was cute. “We’re related?”

“Jah, but only distantly,” Rachel said, her dimples showing.

“I’m very sorry that I don’t know you…er, remember you,” I volunteered quickly, “but hopefully, my memory will return soon. For now, though, I want to say thank you, Levi, for saving my life.”

“The way I see it,” he replied, “it was the right and gut thing to do, savin’ ya thataway, Merry.”

I studied his short brown hair and blue eyes. He was tall and lanky—quite handsome, really. And there was such a kindhearted manner about him.

“You see,” he continued, “back when you and I were youngsters, you saved
me
from drownin’ once.”

“I did?”

How very strange that I could’ve saved him
, I thought. He looked so strong.

He nodded, a twinkle in his eye. “Jah, Merry. You did.”

The soft, gentle way he said my name made me want to get well instantly. Maybe then I’d have a chance at getting better acquainted with this soft-spoken boy.

“Well, I really wish I could remember that day,” I said, studying his sister.

Rachel, eyes cast down, went to sit by the window, leaving Levi and me somewhat alone in the room. I was a bit surprised when her brother touched my hand. He held it lightly as he told me about the summer I was eight and he was nine. “We’d all gone swimmin’ in the pond out behind the barn—same one where ya fell through the ice. Anyways, we kept on divin’ into them ‘cellar’ holes out over near the east side of the pond. And wouldn’tcha know it, my big brother, Curly John, pulled himself up a scrap piece of metal deep down.”

“Did you say a cellar…in the pond?” I was thoroughly confused.

Smiling, Levi showed his teeth. “That’s what we always called the deepest part,” he explained.

A flicker of a memory danced in my mind, then faded. “Oh,” I said, catching my breath.

He leaned over, gazing down at me. “Merry, are ya all right?”

“I think so…it was…something I thought I was about to remember.”

With that comment, Rachel rushed over, and Levi let go of my hand. “What was my brother just now sayin’ to ya? Somethin’ about the cellar hole out there in the pond?”

“Jah, that’s right.” Levi nodded. “Do ya remember the summer Curly John found himself a souvenir at the bottom of the pond?”

“Ach, sure do,” she said.

“Well, I wasn’t gonna be outdone, so I dove in headfirst,” Levi continued. “As far down as I could go with one breath, I went, searchin’ for something to bring back up.”

“And ‘pride goeth before a fall’—ain’t it so?” Rachel teased. “You went and got yer foot caught in that willow root and near drowned.”

“Sure would’ve, if it hadn’t been for Merry here.” He looked at me with dancing eyes. And for one silly minute, I thought I might be falling in love.

Chelsea came for a visit about an hour after Rachel and Levi left. She brought the pictures I’d taken of her posing in my room. “I wanted you to see how the prints turned out,” she said. “They’re really good. Even better than they looked to me on your camera.”

I’d always been very critical of my work, so I studied each of the photos carefully. Though Chelsea thought they were good, only four of the shots were tops in my opinion.

She handed me two five-dollar bills. “This’ll pay for the prints.”

“Oh, keep your money, really.”

“But I want to give you something.” Chelsea plopped the money down on the table beside my bed. “You can’t imagine how glad my mom’ll be to get these.”

“She’ll probably be happier to see
you
in person,” I quipped. “How long has it been?”

“She left on October third, over two and a half months ago.”

I was wheezing heavily now and propped myself up with more pillows. “I’ll keep praying for you and your dad. For your mom, too.”

“Thanks.” She pulled up a chair. “Hey, has Jon Klein come to see you again?”

“I’m not really sure,” I said. “You could ask my mom, though. There were several visitors here when I was out of it.”

“You were zonked, all right. But you’re doing better, aren’t you, Mer?”

I smiled back at her. “The docs are saying I might get to go home for Christmas Eve. That is if I promise to take my antibiotics and let Mom give me my lung massages.”

“Hey, cool. That’s tomorrow.”

We chitchatted some more, but Chelsea seemed most interested in discussing Jon—the boy who’d so bravely jumped into the icy pond water, attempting to save me. Or so my father had told me.

“Mind if I give you a little background on this guy?” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a folded paper. “I found this in your desk drawer…at your house. But don’t freak out, your mom gave me permission, okay?”

I leaned forward to see. “What is it?”

“It’s a note from Jon. But since you’re in a fog zone right now, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that you like him, Mer. Anyway, he passed this to you in math class. You told me yourself.” She handed the note to me. “Take a look.”

I began to read it—very unusual the way most words in a sentence began with the same letter of the alphabet. “This is some weird writing.”

She agreed. “That’s what I thought last week when I first read it. But the thing I can’t let you overlook is that you…
you
are crazy about this guy. Before you nearly drowned, you and he would always meet every day at school at—”

A faint image sprang up. “At our lockers?”

“Hey, that’s right! What else?”

I sank back onto my pillows. The impression had fizzled. “I don’t know now. It’s gone.”

“Tell me…what did you remember?”

I stared at the many get-well baskets and vases of flowers lining the shelf along the windowsill, thinking back to the past few seconds. I tried squeezing the recollection out of my brain, forcing it into my consciousness. “Something about lockers at school. I could almost see my combination lock dangling.”

Chelsea was hopping happy. “This is truly terrific.”

“Hey, isn’t ‘truly’
my
word?” I said, laughing now. Laughing so hard, I began to cough.

For some reason, she ran out of the room, bringing my mom back with her. “I think it’s happening,” Chelsea exclaimed. “I think her memory’s kicking in!”

Jon Klein was my very last visitor of the day. “Finally,” he said, “I timed things to a tee.”

“Was I sleeping when you came before?”

He nodded. “Snoozing so soundly, very still, silent…such sleep.”

“Oh…” Another image shot past. “What’s that you’re doing? All the
s
’s?”

He grinned, standing tall next to my hospital bed. “It’s our word game, Merry, Mistress of Mirth. Can you still talk alliteration-eze?”

I shrugged. “Whatever
that
is.”

He began to explain, stopping to run his hand through his hair. He seemed a bit frustrated. “C’mon, Mistress Merry. Think through it.”

I shook my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about—a word game? And what’s with the nickname?”

His face drooped at my response.

“Look, I’m real sorry,” I said, “but I don’t know what to say about the strange language you speak.”

“Hey, you’re doing it.” His face brightened. “You’re starting to alliterate!”

“I am? What do you mean, Jim?”

He looked hurt just then, and I wondered if I’d forgotten something. Like maybe calling him the wrong name.

Again.

I was thrilled when the doctor said I’d be going home for sure. Being stuck in the hospital at Christmastime was anything but fun!

Our one-hundred-year-old farmhouse had never looked so good as it did when I first spied it from a quarter-mile away. The idyllic words from Longfellow’s “Song” boosted my spirits.

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
To stay at home is best.

My white figure skates were lying on the floor near the radiator in my room when I arrived. They felt like soaked cardboard—coerced to dry out. There they were, greeting me home, ugly as all get out. I decided I never wanted to wear them again. In fact, I didn’t even want to look at them. So when Mom came upstairs to serve some sort of soup, I decided to ask her to throw them away.

“Something bothering you, honey?” She eyed me curiously.

“It’s the skates. I don’t like looking at them. They remind me of…” I didn’t know for sure.

She didn’t argue, just put them in an old shoe box and closed my closet door. “How’s that? Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Much better.”

She came over and felt my forehead. “I’m so glad to have you back home. We all are.”