The Summer Before Boys (13 page)

“Then it was starting to get dark,” she went on. “And I decided to make you worried. I just wanted to see if you'd get worried and come back for me. I never thought everyone would start looking for me.”

I could hear the tears coming into Eliza's voice.

She was crying. “I didn't know what to do. So I came here.”

“To the elephant tree,” Michael filled in.

“Yeah. We used to hide here when we were kids. We had a clubhouse for a while.”

“Who's ‘we'?” I asked because I knew it wasn't me. I didn't even know about this hiding place. And I couldn't believe Eliza had friends I didn't know about.

“Me, Michael, and those kids whose parents both worked here and then they moved away. Remember them, Michael? We all used to come here.”

I guess you don't really know someone until you almost lose them.

I could see Eliza's foot and then one of her bare legs. She was still in shorts. She must have been freezing.

“When I saw the police cars coming, then I got really scared. I had no idea so much time had gone by,” Eliza said.

“C'mon,” I said. “We have to go back or else they are going to start looking for all of us.”

She dropped to the ground. “Okay, but I'm still really mad at you.”

“Well, I'm still mad at you,” I said.

“Well, we're not going to tell them the truth, are we?” Michael complained.

I still wasn't sure what the truth really was, but somehow I still had the feeling that once Eliza was found safe, the focus was going to turn to me. The state troopers. Aunt Louisa. Uncle Bruce. Even Mrs. Smith knew I was the last one with Eliza, so even if she wasn't lost I was still the one who walked away and left her.

And after everyone stopped being worried about Eliza they were going to get real mad. At me.

And boy, was I right.

T
here was another joke going around last spring. It went like this:

What's the five-day forecast for Baghdad?

Answer: Two days.

I didn't hear that one from Peter, though. I heard it on TV, on a stand-up comedy show, and I was the one who came to school and told it to him.

“That's not funny,” Peter said.

Mrs. Jaffe had just walked out of the room for a minute. We were supposed to be writing in our journals.

“You just don't get it,” I said.

“I get it. It's just not funny.”

I guess I knew that already. The five-day forecast? Like
a weather report, only no one in Baghdad is going to live long enough for it to matter. That's not funny. I felt terrible.

When Michael, Eliza, and I got back to the hotel, we walked straight into the tearoom, which had become some kind of a operations headquarters, and we stood waiting for someone to notice us.

I don't know how long we actually stood there, but it was Uncle Bruce who finally shouted out, “Eliza!”

And then it got real quiet. For a long moment all you could hear was the empty static of the two-way radios—until one of the dogs resting on the floor lifted his nose into the air and took a giant sniff. The dog jumped up and started barking, followed by the other two, then all of them came running toward us. The dogs went crazy circling around Eliza, whining and howling, trying with everything they had not to jump right on top of her.

I can hardly remember anything after that.

Except the barrage of questions.

And Eliza crying.

She started crying so hard that no one was ever going to be mad at her. She cried so hard her face got puffy and red and her voice was warbly with mucus. I could only make out a couple of words, like “sorry” and “scared” and that was enough. At almost the same time Michael was talking, really fast like he was trying to outrun the wrong question.

“Remember? That's when the Miller twins lived up here too. Remember their dad was an electrician and their mom was a sous-chef? We all used to play together. We made a club in this tree—”

I don't know who he was talking to really, but he was on a roll. Eliza was down to an involuntary but loud, sniffling inhale of breath that made everyone turn to look at her.

“Then I remember that guest's kid—remember? Last fall or something,” Michael went on. “When we all thought she was lost but it turned out she was hiding under the bed. The cleaning crew didn't even see her—remember? Remember that? So that's when I thought—”

He would have kept going and going, trying to make everyone think he was a hero, forgetting all about including me, but Mrs. Smith put up her hand and stopped him. She stopped everyone, even the dogs.

“It's over,” she said. “Everyone back to work.”

I think my problem was I didn't cry.

My mother was supposed to be coming home soon. Summer was just about over. I started seventh grade in two weeks. It all worked out, any way you cut it.

Except that my dad took away my cell phone, forever.

Eliza hadn't said two words to me since she got grounded for her part in the whole mess.

Mrs. Smith said she was going to reevaluate the privileges of the workers' children on the grounds.

And I hadn't seen Michael since the day he kissed me, and the night we all got in big trouble.

But other than that everything was just perfect.

 

 

fall
2004

 

M
y dad and I are going into town to buy school supplies. I wanted to wait until my mom got back but my dad said he had the money and there were big sales at Walmart. So we are going. But it's not the same.

Besides, my dad told me, when my mom comes home she may not really want to run out and battle the crowds at Walmart. I thought that was a funny choice of words.

My dad doesn't like to push the shopping cart. He says it makes him feel silly, so I have two fists on the handle and we are heading into the store. The cart is huge and there's a big yellowy smiley face staring at me from the plastic seat. There are people everywhere, all gripping other huge metal carts with big yellow smiley faces and racing around the store. There is old-people
music coming out of the ceiling speakers. Someone dropped a jar of grape jelly on the floor and I just barely miss stepping in it.

I look at my dad and he has that let's-hurry-up expression, right along with the how-much-is-this-going-to-cost? look on his face.

So my summer is over, but it's like it never happened. There's the aftermath of an explosion, you can't remember much, and all you know is nothing is going to be the same. Last year when I had gone school shopping, my mom took me. We already knew she was leaving for Iraq. I wasn't sure if I wanted everything in the store or nothing at all—I just knew I didn't want my mother to leave.

“Let me see that list again, Julia,” my mother said. She held out her hand.

“You have it.”

“No, I don't,” she answered. She stopped moving the cart down the aisle and planted her feet. “I gave it back to you.”

This was right at the peak of our pre-deployment fighting. All of us, especially me and my mom. But I was certain she had my school supply list. It had come in the mail along with my teacher assignments. It was my first year that I'd be changing classrooms. A different teacher for math, one for language arts, another for science, and a whole period of Spanish. And each
teacher sent a list of things they wanted us to have for the first day of sixth grade.

I was worried about finding each classroom. I was worried about being late. I was worried about who would help me with my homework. Who would make my lunch every day?

But I was certain my mother put the list in her pocketbook before we left for Walmart.

“It's in your bag, Mom.” We were blocking half the boys' underwear section and a traffic jam was developing all the way to socks and pajamas.

“Julia, I know I gave it to you just before we got out of the car. I can't keep track of everything. Did you lose it?”

“Not everything is my fault, Mom.” I could hear my voice rising and my lips were beginning to quiver. I started to get that burning feeling deep in my chin like a little electric pulse that seems to activate the crying mechanism. After that there's no turning back. I didn't want to cry. The more you fight it the more your chin stings with electricity.

“Excuse me, ladies, would you mind handing me that package of the blue boxer briefs, extra large?” The man who had come up behind us pointed.

I don't even remember if we ever found the list of supplies, and if we did, which one of us had it, but I remember we
both started laughing. We walked up and down every aisle and bought everything I could possibly need, pens, mechanical pencils, notebooks, folders. In every color. And even though I had mine from last year, my mom picked out a brand-new backpack for me.

“No, I don't need one, Dad,” I say.

“You sure? They look nice.”

I shake my head and my dad puts the backpack back on its hook. I know he is trying. A voice comes over the speakers and tells us there will be a markdown in housewares on all coffeemakers and dehumidifiers and suddenly, for no reason related to either of those two things, I can't wait for my mom to come home. After all these months and months, all through sixth grade and the whole summer I was okay. I worried and I missed my mom but I was okay—and now it's like I can't stand it another minute.

I am going to burst.

I want my mother, right here. Right now. In Walmart.

“I want to go look at the auto section for a second. You okay here, alone?” my dad asks me. “I just want to see if they have one thing. You get what you need, okay?”

“Sure, Dad. I'll meet you at the checkout.”

And it is like my dad is feeling the same exact thing I am. He
leans over and kisses my forehead. “She'll be home soon. We did it, Julia. We did it and she'll be home soon.”