The Summer Before Boys (9 page)

“I wonder if they had popcorn in the olden days.” Eliza was talking. “They had the corn. I wonder if they just popped it one day, like by accident or something, and then someone ate it and
said, umm yummy. But I guess the Iroquois wouldn't have butter, right? I wonder if they had salt.”

My eyes were scanning the people in the seats, soaking in all the remaining light, trying to make out the figures, the groups of kids and teenagers, parents. He wasn't next to that old man in the front row with the jacket, was he?

“Julia, are you listening? Do you want to sit here or not?” Eliza was pointing to the empty last row. “No one will notice us here and we can leave early.”

“Fine,” I said.

“I'll get us some popcorn,” Eliza said. She slipped off and I plopped down in the folding chair, my heart sinking.

“Thought you might be here.”

I turned around and it was Michael. It was him. Right next to me. His whole body, his face. Everything looked sort of muted in the dusk, with the light from the screen, like a movie in a movie. I struggled to keep my brain working. My body had already betrayed me; my breathing was too fast, and I could feel an odd sensation rise to the surface of my skin. I shivered.

“You cold?” Michael asked me. “It gets colder up here at night than down in town. The mountains, I think.”

“No,” I said but as soon as the words came out of my mouth I wondered if I should have answered differently. Had that
sounded unfriendly? Did it sound like I wanted to be left alone?

I didn't.

I had planned this exactly. It was an imaginary story and it had come true and now I didn't know what to do.

“I mean, I'm fine. Are you cold?” I said. I looked at his face and then looked away.

“Me? I'm never cold.”

The sounds of the movie, the chill starting to replace the heat in the air, the grays of light and shadow. The grass under my feet was damp with wetness seeping into my sandals. I could feel that he was next to me as if some power in the universe had made this happen.

But Eliza would be back any minute. And all this would be over.

“I have a cell phone,” I said suddenly.

Did that sound like I was bragging? Did that sound like I wanted him to call me? Did he even hear me?

“Yeah, so? I have one too,” Michael answered, reaching into his back pocket.

I didn't know what to say now.

Then Michael asked, “So what's the number? I'll call you and you'll have my number too.”

It was like my heart squeezed into a little ball, exploded, and flooded my body. Michael plugged in the number as I gave it to
him. My cell phone vibrated almost instantaneously. He flipped his phone shut and it stopped but his number appeared on my screen.

“Maybe I can call you then sometime?” he asked me.

I nodded.

“Or text you?”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

I thought I was surely getting better at this by the minute. By the time Eliza returned, Michael had left. I could barely let the popcorn touch my mouth. I wasn't hungry at all. I stared at the big screen and the flickering images but I don't remember what the movie was about. When Eliza said we should probably start heading back, I agreed. There were no cars on the road and it was completely dark. We couldn't see the hotel behind us anymore and I could barely see the road ahead of us. We started to run.

I
saw Peter later that same day, the same day he told Mrs. Jaffe and me that his dad had come home, come home different. I saw him on the playground with his friends. I recognized one of the other boys that Peter was throwing a ball around with. He lived on the same street as I did but I didn't really
know
any of Peter's friends. He was in the sporty group, all boys who played Pop Warner football in the fall and did Little League in the spring. Alexandra Joyce was the only girl in that group and only because she could pitch and they had to let her on the team.

But even Alexandra Joyce didn't get to play ball during recess.

Peter looked up when Eliza and I walked by the patch of grass next to where the boys were playing. He didn't talk much to me outside of Mrs. Jaffe's room and I knew after today he probably
wanted to forget everything he had said. I knew I would. But I waved my fingers at him and he waved back. Then when I was almost out of earshot I heard Peter shouting out to one of his friends. I could hear the grunt in his voice so I knew he was the one throwing the ball. Far, as hard as he could. He called out loudly, “What do Baghdad and Hiroshima have in common?”

I stopped and looked back.

“I don't know.” The boy caught the ball, lifted his arm, and threw.

“Nothing,” Peter paused, ball in hand, and then shouted, “Yet.”

I knew what Hiroshima was. It was the Japanese city that was bombed and completely destroyed by the Americans in 1945. Almost every website about the end of World War II had the same photo of a woman whose shirt was burned right into her body and it left a geometric tattoo on her skin.

It took me a second to get it. Peter was telling a joke.

“That's a funny one, Pete.” The other boy laughed but I don't think he even understood what it meant.

Eliza pulled me away, but not before I saw Peter look at me, to see if I had heard.

W
e had practically run the whole way home. Eliza lifted her arms like wings and let the wind carry her up into the air but I had already forgotten what we used to see. If Eliza really had feathers, I would have seen them falling off, one by one and being carried into the night sky. But of course, she didn't. She didn't really have wings, did she?

I ran right beside her with my hands out too. It felt good. I let the excitement of the night flood through me.

“We're flying.” Eliza laughed.

“We can look down on the whole world,” I said even though I couldn't. “I can see our school.”

“I can see the playground.”

“I can see Tomasello Pool.”

And Eliza was happy.

We were both lying in bed but not nearly asleep when we heard Uncle Bruce and Aunt Louisa come back.

“They could have called when we weren't here,” Eliza suddenly whispered to me. “What if my mom called the house and we didn't pick up?”

It seized the inside of my chest. What if she had?

How could I not have thought of that?

“There's nothing we can do about it now,” I said. I kept my eyes on the wall but when Aunt Louisa pulled open the screen, I shut them as quickly as I could.

“Are you sleeping, girls?” Aunt Louisa said quietly. I could tell she was leaning over the bed. She said it again. Eliza rustled and groaned and shifted onto her side.

I felt terrible. Aunt Louisa would be so angry at Eliza if she thought we had left the house. She might punish Eliza for the rest of the summer. But she wouldn't be able to do anything to me. She never did.

Eliza always got the blame when I was here. It was like Aunt Louisa was afraid of upsetting me. I could hear Eliza breathing steadily as if she were fast asleep.

How did she do that?

I squeezed my eyes shut. At least I was facing the wall but I couldn't hold my breath much longer.

Finally, Aunt Louisa pulled the covers over our shoulders
and left the room. I heard the screen slide across the floor and click into place. The TV sounds came on, the gray light moved across the ceiling, from light to dark, and dark to light, like a moth was batting against a bare bulb.

“She would have said something if she knew,” Eliza said. “She would have asked.”

I let out my breath. Aunt Louisa wasn't the secretive type. If we were in trouble we would know by now. The heat pressed down on the sheet, on my legs. I inched my feet out the bottom and let out my breath.

We had gotten away with it.

I had gotten away with it.

So why did I feel so guilty?

M
arion Crandell was the first American woman to be killed in World War I and she wasn't even a soldier. Or a nurse. She was a French teacher from Iowa and she was working in a YMCA kitchen giving out food to French soldiers. The place where she was working—dishing out beans, maybe cole slaw, maybe pork?—was hit by a German artillery shell only two months after she got there.

And she was killed.

On March 29, 1918, there was a small mention from the Associated Press from Paris. The headline read:
AMERICAN WOMAN KILLED
.

Pam always kept a bench piled with newspapers by the door to her gift shop. Sometimes guests requested a particular paper be
delivered for the week of their stay. But she always had
The New York Times
and
The Wall Street Journal
and I always avoided looking at them.

“Hi, girls,” Pam greeted us. “Hot enough for you?” She was fanning herself with a magazine. It was early. Monday morning, the hotel was still quiet and mostly empty. Voices were low. Eliza and I had gotten a ride with Uncle Bruce. After a whole Sunday of doing nothing, even Eliza was anxious to get out of the house.

“Yup,” Eliza answered. “It's hot enough.”

“Maybe you two could take a paddle boat out. Before the guests get up,” Pam suggested.

“Yeah, let's do that,” I said, poking around the gifts and souvenirs.

Eliza looked at me. “But just a second ago you said you didn't feel like it.”

She was right. I had nixed every idea Eliza had come up with if I didn't think it would somehow increase our chances of running into Michael. But now it seemed like a good idea. Besides, it would use up time until lunch, I thought—until Michael was done working in the stables. He told me he helped his dad every morning before lunch and then the rest of the day was his. He was free. He always went swimming in the afternoons. That I knew already. I made sure Eliza and I had our bathing suits on under our shorts.

“Well, now I do. Do you feel like it?” I asked Eliza. I put down the glass globe with the miniature version of the hotel inside and turned back to the counter.

I didn't want to glance at the newspapers. But there it was.

US MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ WAR AT
1,486

At first it didn't even make sense. The number was so big, so huge. I couldn't imagine one thousand people. I couldn't imagine five hundred. It was hard to see a hundred people in my mind at once. There were twenty-three kids in my class last year. Eighty in the grade. Two hundred and fifty in the whole school.

What did one thousand, four hundred and eighty-six feel like? Sound like? One thousand, four hundred and eighty-six pine coffins? One thousand, four hundred and eighty-six American flags? More than a thousand empty spaces at the dinner table. Tens of thousands of books left unread? Millions of pieces of clothing, shoes, and gloves left in closets. What happened to all that stuff?

It was too much.

No brain could hold that all. No one could see all those faces, and shoes, and dinner plates, bedtime stories, and kisses.

So I didn't.

It was just a huge, ridiculous number and so it meant nothing to me at all. Was I still staring at the newspaper?

US
MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ WAR AT
1,486

No, it didn't even register.

Eliza looked at Pam and Pam looked at me. But I had gotten used to not seeing things that were right in front of my face.

I was fine.

“So is it too early for ice cream?” Pam said, maybe a little more loudly than she needed to.

I picked a Fudgesicle from the freezer because it felt most like breakfast since we hadn't eaten anything yet. Eliza was about to take the same thing until I reminded her not to be a copycat and she took a vanilla Drumstick, which looked like the better choice after all but I couldn't change my mind now. I'd look like a baby.

“Thanks, Pam,” Eliza said.

“Thanks,” I echoed and I held the door for Eliza to go first.

The gift shop was air-conditioned but the hotel itself was not. And it had been cool outside early this morning when Uncle Bruce was ready to leave—we both wore sweatshirts—but already the air in the hallway was still and warm. Our ice creams seemed to feel the heat first and instantly soften.

“It's going to be a scorcher,” Eliza said as she peeled the paper from her cone and stuffed it into her pocket.

“I'll say.” I balled my wrapper up at the bottom of my Fudgesicle to catch the dripping.

You could smell the olden days coming from the wallpaper and the wooden floors, holding on to the years like memories.

We walked and licked and talked and licked.

Then as we headed through the main hall, past the check-in counter, Eliza tried to take her sweatshirt off over her head while holding her cone in one hand at a time. She almost had it, but the phone rang at the desk, and when I stopped suddenly—because phone ringing always startles me—Eliza banged into me and the top of her cone landed right on the floor between the two of us. It started melting into the carpet immediately.

So if I look back now I see all the little events that, if they had just gone another way, or occurred a second or two later, or a second or two earlier, would have made all the difference. If I hadn't made that comment about being a copycat—Fudgsicles are much more stable than ice-cream cones. Or if the phone hadn't rung at right that moment. Or if we hadn't gotten a ride with Uncle Bruce that morning. If Mrs. Smith hadn't happened down the hall at the very same moment. If we had run left down to the lake, instead of right toward the sky tower trail—

I might still be friends with Eliza right now.

S
o yeah, we ran when we heard Mrs. Smith coming. We weren't allowed to be eating in the lobby, or the hallway, or anywhere but the dining room, the tearoom, or outside. Technically, we weren't supposed to be inside the hotel at all. And as Eliza and I stared at the odd form of vanilla ice cream melting into the green and amber swirls of the carpet, we heard the sound of Mrs. Smith's high heels clicking on the tile floor just around the corner. So we ran.