The Summer Before Boys (10 page)

My heart was pumping and my feet were pounding with the excitement of fear, and by the time we made it outside, far enough away from the hotel, we were laughing and we had run all the way to the base of the sky tower trail, to the hiking trail.

• • •

The last and only other time Eliza and I had taken the hiking trail to the sky tower was at the beginning of the summer, over a month ago. That time we didn't make it very far. At first the trail is easy, like a narrow dirt road. There are thick blue lines painted on the barks of the trees so you can look ahead and see where you are going. You can turn and look behind you to see where you've come from, and how to get back. We were playing Lester and Lynette when we lost the trail.

“I don't see a blue mark anywhere,” Eliza said.

“Right here. We just passed one.” I turned to look at the low shrubbery we had just walked through. The ground was grassy and there was no sign of a trail. I looked ahead and it looked the same.

“Where?” Eliza asked.

“I just saw it,” I said but I couldn't remember how long ago that had been. Before we crossed the little creek or since?

The ground felt dry and hollow; brown leaves were thick with croppings of rock and moss jutting out. This was definitely not the trail and there were no lines of blue paint on any trees anywhere to be seen.

“Maybe we should go back a little bit until we come to the last trail marker we passed,” I said.

“Which way is that?” Eliza was turning in a circle.

“Don't do that. You're confusing me. This way.” I pointed.

“No, we haven't been that way. See that hairy grapevine hanging down. We didn't pass that before. And not that big log either.”

Eliza was right, but it did look like a good place to sit.

“What do we do now?” I don't even know if either one of us said that out loud but I heard it in my head. And my heart started to thump.

“We've got to keep walking,” Eliza said. “We can't be too far from anything or something. C'mon.”

We kept moving, without talking at all. Whereas just a few minutes before we had been escaped slaves scanning the skies for the direction to freedom, now we were plain old kids at a family resort—lost.

“What were they looking for in the sky?” I asked.

“Who?”

“I don't know. Harriet Tubman? What did they see?”

“I don't know.” Eliza sounded nervous.

Stars? Wind? Cloud formations? Birds flying south for winter? I had no idea—except that we didn't know how to get back, and what reason would anyone have to come looking for us until well past dinnertime?

Thinking of dinner made me hungry.

How long had we been out here? The sun was high in the sky, nearly straight above our heads. If we didn't get back in time
lunch would be over, cleaned up and packed away. Then I looked over at Eliza's face and I knew we had much more to worry about. She looked like she was about to cry. We were really lost.

I am not sure how long we wandered around, looking at the floor of the woods, pine needles and leaves, and up at the trees, at which side the moss was growing on—even though neither one of us knew which direction we needed to be heading.

Down felt right. We chose the steps that took us in that direction. The sun grew hotter, our feet hurt. I wondered how long a person can just walk. And walk and walk.

“I hear someone,” Eliza said. “I think.”

We both stopped to listen. It was certainly footsteps, then voices.

“Hikers,” I said.

“We're back on the trail.”

It was a young couple, a man and a woman holding hands, both with backpacks, khaki shorts, and straw hats. We followed them back to the hotel just in time to catch the end of the buffet lunch service.

O
h, no. Mrs. Smith almost saw us,” I said. I could hardly catch my breath, from running, from laughing so hard.

“She must have seen the ice cream by now.” Eliza, too, had her hands on her knees, doubled over laughing.

Starting up the hiking trail this time was more or less a non-decision. When we finally stopped running, we just kept walking, and before we knew it, we were well into the trail that led up to the sky tower where you could see four states at the same time.

“No, six,” Eliza said.

“Six?”

By my calculations we had at least two hours before Michael would be done working for his dad, plenty of time to hike up to the sky tower and head back down on the easy walking trail.
We could pay attention, walk carefully. Maybe this would be the first time we'd make it all the way to the top.

“Yeah, six,” Eliza answered me.

“Which ones?” Sunlight rested on the top leaves and filtered down, dappling the dirt path. It was straight up from here.

“Well, New York,” Eliza said.

“We're in New York.”

“So, that's one. And New Jersey.”

“Maybe Pennsylvania is one. And Connecticut.”

“Maybe Delaware?” Eliza tried.

“Nah.”

We kept walking. It was hot and I was carrying the backpack with our sweatshirts. I worried about sweating. Maybe if I took little steps.

The trees bent their heat-weary heads like puppy dogs lolling their tongues. We were so far from anything modern, nothing to remind us of the real world. The moss on the rocks, the dirt under our feet, the blue, blue sky above our heads could be from any time, any century, any world—when Indians lived, when fairies flew, when friends held hands and made believe.

And for a little while at least, I stopped thinking about Michael, whether I was sweating, or what time it was, or Mrs. Smith, or Iraq, or even my mother. We even stopped trying to figure out the last two states.

Instead I worried the bottom of my long skirt would get caught on the brambles as the trail got steeper and narrower the closer we got to our campsite. The rest of the children would be gathering wood to get us through the coming winter. Cousin Eliza had just reminded me about how we lost little Jack during the coldest months last year. He caught a chill and just never recovered. Everyone was waiting for us to return with the mail. A package had come from the Sears & Roebuck Company.

Olden-Day Eliza could hardly contain her excitement. “I can't wait to find out what's inside,” she said.

“Well, be careful. Don't shake it. It might break.”

“It's too heavy to break.” Eliza frowned and then, from inside my backpack my cell phone buzzed.

Or maybe it was the other way around, but either way it took me a while to register what was going on. It was the same feeling as when I am reading a really good book and I forget I am reading at all. The real world—a voice, the sound of the television—feels like an intrusion. The way you can fall in a dream and wake up in your own bed, wondering which is more real.

Michael.

It must be.

Everything fell away, the long dresses and high button boots, the package wrapped in brown paper, even the memories of little Jack and long, cold winters. The trail was narrow, and I let my
step fall back behind Eliza. I was able to reach inside my backpack and quietly take out my cell phone.

It was from Michael. I recognized the number. And there was a text message:

CAN YOU MEET ME IN GAZEBO AT THE LILY POND

I knew the lily pond. There two old pictures of it around the hotel. One in the hall to the dining room that showed a group of girls all dressed in sailor suits, all holding insect nets, with a man in a dark suit and straw hat standing behind them. The square brass plaque underneath says it is a nature expedition.

PROFESSOR ARTHUR WHITWORTH; CIRCA
1896.

And the other black-and-white photograph taken at the lily pond shows two people sitting inside the wooden summerhouse, just like the ones Uncle Bruce takes care of all year long. You can't really make out the people in the picture, but it is clearly a man and a woman with their arms wrapped around each other and their lips pressed close together. There is no plaque underneath this photograph, which hangs, out of the way, in a far corner of the tearoom behind the cherrywood and red velvet settee. You'd have to step over the furniture and then stand facing the corner to really see it, but anyone and everyone who has bothered knows that the photograph is called “The First Kiss.”

W
e can't go back now,” Eliza shouted. “We are much more than halfway to the tower.” “No way,” I tried. “We've only been hiking for a few minutes. We can go back from here.” But the truth was, I really had no idea. A hundred years had come and then gone. Lester, Lynette, photographs, and wagon trains, and generations of Villiator families, tease-y groups, and hair color camps disappeared in a second, in the single second it took for a text to buzz.

“Julia, c'mon, why do you want to quit now?”

“I'm not quitting.”

I was already imagining Michael waiting at the lily pond. I needed to get there even though I was terrified at the thought. Nothing else mattered. I stopped walking and looked behind us. Down is easier. Faster.

“No, Eliza. Let's go back. It's late already. And I'm so hot.”

But Eliza hadn't stopped with me. She was way ahead, determined.

“C'mon, Eliza. We can do this another time.”

And that's when she stopped walking. She kept her back to me for such a long moment, I wondered what she was looking at but I was afraid to ask. I didn't want anything to distract me—or now
us
—from our task.

I had no idea how I was going to get to the lily pond alone, but I couldn't worry about that yet. One thing at a time. First, to turn around and go back to the hotel.

“You think I don't know?” Eliza's voice projected deep into the woods ahead.

“What?” I had tried to make sure Eliza hadn't seen it but maybe she heard it buzz. So I said it again with even more disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“Julia!” Eliza shouted.

There are those times you know it's over but you act like it's not. You know you are caught but you try to ignore that for as long as possible. I watched Eliza slowly turn around and face me. Her eyes were shot with red and her lips were so tightly pressed together, white.

“Julia—” When she finally spoke again it was softly. “I know everything. I know why you wanted to go to the outdoor movie.
And all the times you made me walk by the stables. Up the mountain, down the mountain. You think I don't know why, Julia?”

I couldn't think of anything to say. Faking innocence just seemed like a waste of time, and besides, time was still moving forward. I needed to get somewhere. I needed Eliza to just start walking back with me.

“I know, Julia. And I didn't say anything. Ever. But this is different. We were having fun.” Then she tried one last thing. “You can't betray a Villiator.”

There wasn't anything I could say. I couldn't explain it myself. I couldn't lie anymore. But I couldn't include her either. This was about me. Michael was waiting for me. And that made me special.

It made my skin tingle and my mind full. It was like playing Lester and Lynette but it was real. Every girl needs to remember her first kiss and this could be my memory.

If I didn't go now I might miss it. Michael would never talk to me again. No boy would like me again. And if Eliza were really my friend she would understand how worried I was. She would want this for me. She would want to help me. All I had to do was explain this to her, but this is what I said instead:

“Just because a boy doesn't like you, Eliza, doesn't mean no boy should like me.”

I watched her face change, from angry to hurt. Confusion and sadness. Her lips looked pressed together like a plastic mask's. I watched Eliza's body go stiff, like a doll still fastened in her box. Her clothes were fake, no real buttonholes, the material thin and held together with hidden Velcro.

Well, maybe Eliza didn't want to be real.

But I did.

D
uring World War II sixty-seven army nurses and eleven navy nurses were captured by the Japanese and held in a prisoner of war camp in the Philippines called Santo Tomas. The prison had once been a university, so maybe it wasn't so awful. But they didn't get to talk to their children or their husbands, or let anyone at home know they were okay, for three years.

More than two hundred American women serving during that war died—sixteen from enemy actions and the rest from diseases like malaria and influenza.

More numbers.

Some were even buried overseas, far from their families.

How do you know someone is really dead if you don't see their body? You might always wonder if it was a mistake. Dog
tags that got mixed together. A wrong assumption.

A wrong number, after all.

They get the wrong person.

A terrible mistake.

I did. I left Eliza on the hiking trail to the sky tower. She walked one way, I walked the other. I went back, she kept going, following the blue markers. I imagined she would stay on the trail and make her way back, but the truth is, when I got nearer to the lily pond, Eliza was the last thing I was thinking about. It was as if there were a movie camera, filming me. And Michael was watching the movie.

I could picture in my mind just what I looked like walking along the grass path to the lily pond. I had given special thought to what I wore that morning (hoping I would happen to see Michael, never imagining he would want to meet me), my purple shorts and a matching halter top. I brushed my hair and pulled it into a neat ponytail. At the last minute I took it out and let it fall loose. Now I saw it bouncing across my shoulders and my back as I took deliberately slow steps for the camera. Well, maybe not bouncing, exactly. But who knows?