The Summer I Learned to Fly (11 page)

I rode until I reached parking lot of the Safeway, so filled up with cars you’d have thought the threatened nuclear war was finally upon us.
So this is where all the customers go
, I thought.
This is where they’re buying tonight’s supper
.

I left my bike in the rack and hooked my helmet over the handle. Despite the many safety precautions I took, I never carried a lock. I trusted humanity enough to believe that nobody would steal my bike. Also there was the sad truth that it wasn’t worth very much.

I didn’t see Finn at either entrance, so I stepped inside. I knew I wouldn’t find him busking by the vegetables and waxy fruit, but I wanted to be thorough. I wanted to leave no stone unturned.

I wandered the aisles. When I reached the pasta section I saw varieties even I’d never even heard of, all dried, of course, and I knew the difference between dried and fresh, but still, with so much to choose from and with prices a fraction of ours, no wonder the parking lot was full. No wonder Mom was losing sleep.

I bought myself a packet of string cheese. The irony wasn’t lost on me that of all the foods in the store, I chose the one thing I could get for free at a far superior quality. We didn’t carry string cheese. It was an overprocessed, cheap American invention, one that couldn’t be imported
or purchased from local dairy farms. But it also happened to taste delicious; it reminded me of being a little kid back before I knew about good cheeses, and I devoured all six pieces sitting on the curb at the edge of the parking lot, where I could see both front entrances.

He arrived around one-thirty. I didn’t notice which direction he’d come from because I’d been battling boredom by counting the cars in the parking lot and working out what percentage of them was silver.

By the time I saw Finn he was leaning against the shopping cart rack, tuning his guitar. A knit wool cap lay in front of him to collect spare change.

I wandered over, ready to reintroduce myself, but he said, “Hey, Robin.”

“Hey,” I said as casually as I could.

“What brings you to the Safeway on such a lovely summer’s day?”

“String cheese.” I held up the wrapper.

“Ah, the cheese of the string,” he said as he plucked a few notes on his guitar. He closed his eyes and he began to sing.

“I’ve searched the world over from Galway to Dover And delighted in many a thing, The touch of a lover, the warm breeze of summer, But nothing, no nothing, no nothing …”

He held the note, his voice wavering, before popping his eyes open again, doubling the tempo, and finishing with:

“… delights like the cheese of the string!”

I applauded. He bowed.

“Did you just make that up?” I asked stupidly.

“No, that’s a famous Irish song about string cheese. I learned it from my da. Who learned it from his da.” He smiled, letting me know he wasn’t mocking me. “And so on.”

“Well, it’s a keeper,” I said. “And you should take a cut of whatever business the Safeway does in string cheese sales.”

“Great idea. I’ll talk to my manager.”

An awkward silence followed.

“I was wondering”—I looked down at my feet—“if maybe you’d know where I might be able find Emmett.”

He studied me. Even though I thought I’d done a pretty good job acting as if this question meant little to me, I could see that he understood I hadn’t come here for the string cheese.

“I don’t know where he lives,” I added.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Hmmmm.” He picked again at his guitar strings.

I hoped he wasn’t about to launch into another song. I was no longer in a mood for his silliness.

“Listen, Robin.” He stopped and shifted his guitar to his back, a rainbow strap across his chest. “If Emmett hasn’t told you himself, I’m afraid it’s not my place.”

“Well, I know he lives with his dad and that they’re staying on someone’s couch or something while they look for their own place to live. They’re just getting settled and …”

It wasn’t until I heard myself say this out loud that I understood that not a word of it was true.

“… and that’s what he told me.… He told me they were looking for a bachelor pad.” Finn stared, unblinkingly. “But none of that is true,” I said. He plucked a few more strings.

I knew there was something more to Emmett’s story, even if I hadn’t looked too closely. Something that would lead him to the back alley of the Cheese Shop. I didn’t have a father, and I guessed fathers didn’t send their children out to gather cast-off food, but I’d figured times were really tough for the two of them. That was why they’d come here. Why they were staying with friends on a couch. Times were tough. Tough for everybody.

But still. Something about his story wasn’t right.

Emotions whipped through me, pinball style. Stupid:
ding
. Angry:
ding
. Confused:
ding
. Sad and sorry:
ding, ding, ding
.

I sat down on the sidewalk. Right there in front of the Safeway. Finn sat next to me and folded his legs beneath him.

“If you hang around here long enough,” Finn said, “he’ll probably turn up. He usually pops by in the afternoon.”

“I don’t know.… Maybe I should just go.”

“I wouldn’t mind the company.”

I looked up from the sidewalk, where I was scratching at a patch of dirt. He meant it. He wouldn’t mind my company. That was worth something.

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“What’s your story?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“I don’t have a story. I’m just a normal kid who does what
she’s told and never gets in too much trouble. I don’t go anywhere or do much of anything, and maybe the worst part is that it’s never really bothered me.”

“Ah. I bet there’s more to you than that.”

“Maybe. I
would
like to go to Hawaii.”

“For the beaches?”

“And the candy bars.”

He gave me a puzzled look, but then shrugged it off. “I’m on my way to Alaska,” he said.

“For real?”

“For real.”

“Wow.”

I didn’t know anyone who’d been to Alaska, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever want to go. Snow everywhere you looked. Ice houses. Frozen earth. A distant and vanishing sun. So bleak.

“What’s in Alaska?” I knew it had to be some shining light in all that darkness. Something
vital
.

“What else?” he said. “A girl.” Again, the sound of random strings plucked while lost in thought. “The girl.”

We sat by the shopping carts as he told me the story of Lorelai, how they’d met back in Dublin while she was on a school trip, and though they’d only known each other a few days, he loved her, he loved her so completely that the only thing that mattered to him was reaching her again.

Someone threw a few coins into Finn’s hat, still resting in front of us. We must have looked like ordinary beggars.

He told me he swore he’d find her. Those were his parting words to Lorelai. He promised he’d find her again.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You haven’t spoken to her since?”

“Nary a whisper.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Last summer.”

“That’s a year ago.”

“Aye. Alaska is a far way from Dublin. It’s a very, very long trip.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“Juneau. Lovely word, isn’t it?”

There were questions I wanted to ask. Why hadn’t he called her? What if she’d moved on? What if she loved somebody else? What if she
remembered
him, the way you do someone who’s gone, but didn’t
imagine
him, the way you do when the whole world is still full of possibility?

Soon we were joined by some of the others from the beach. Molly and Christian and Jasper with their dangling cigarettes.

Just as they approached, Finn leaned in close. He whispered, “When there’s something, or someone, when there’s anything that makes you happy, you don’t let a continent or an ocean or an empty pocket keep you apart.”

He returned to his busking and we all hung around and listened. A few times Molly joined in and harmonized. It was no wonder that his hat filled quickly. Finn had amazing talent. His voice was a golden ticket. A pass to wherever he wanted or needed to go.

Eventually my backpack started to jump around in quick fits and starts. Hum, up from a power nap, was
hungry. I felt a surge of guilt for not saving him a cheese stick, so I ducked back into the Safeway to buy a bag of macadamia nuts.

The day had turned into a scorcher, so I went to the dairy aisle to cool off. I looked at the pathetic selection of cheeses. Business just had to get better at the Cheese Shop. Sure, nothing beats a cheese stick, but who doesn’t want a quality imported goat cheddar now and then?

The woman next to me reached for a carton of milk and changed her mind. She returned it to the shelf backward so the carton showed the face of a girl, the words
Have You Seen Me?
below her picture.

I stared at her. I grabbed another carton and looked at its other side. A different girl. Older. Missing since November. I grabbed another: a boy with blond hair and a gap between his teeth. I turned the cartons around, one after another. I felt feverish, on a wild hunt. I dug my arms into the depths of the case. I searched every single one.

Searching for Emmett.

I knew, with a strange, unfamiliar certainty, that Emmett was missing. He was a runaway. It all made sudden, perfect sense.

Have You Seen Me?

Yes, I’ve seen you. You are missing
.

I grabbed the last carton in the case. A boy. Curly dark hair. Kind eyes. Sweet smile. Not Emmett Crane.

I paid for my nuts and stumbled back into the sunlight. I sat down with the group and let Hum eat out of my hand.
I tried to make some sense of what I’d discovered. I hadn’t found him, and yet … I knew. The carefully avoided answers. The sudden disappearing acts. The food retrieved from the alley. The misfit band of friends.

Emmett Crane. A runaway.

Why? From what?

I didn’t see Mom arrive, but suddenly she was there, arms folded, glaring at me, and for some reason the first thing I did was shove Hum back into my bag. That’s what I thought contorted her face—that she’d caught me out of the house with my rat, connected the dots, and realized I took him everywhere, even to the Cheese Shop.

Of course now I can see things as she did. I can imagine what it was like for Mom to approach the grocery store to find her daughter loitering out front with a group of chain-smoking tattooed teenagers scrounging for money.

“Drew?” she said as if she didn’t know me. Or hadn’t seen me in years. As if she needed to check her senses—make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

“Drew?” said Jasper. “Who’s Drew?”

“Hey, Mom,” I said, starting to scramble up, trying to get out of there as quickly as possible.

“Robin?” Molly looked at me.

Mom looked at Molly. Confusion settled on everyone’s face but mine, which was turning red. I was caught in a lie that felt much larger than it actually was.

“Let’s just go,” I said. “Okay, Mom?”

She turned and started walking quickly toward the car. I trailed after her. I waved over my shoulder at Finn and the
others and I could see what looked like pity in the way they waved back.

We snaked our way through the parking lot and all those cars. When we reached ours Mom put her hand on the door handle.

“I meant to buy some steaks,” she said in a shaky voice. “For dinner.”

“Just open the car. Please.”

“I need to go buy steaks.”

“I don’t need meat, Mom. Pasta is fine. Please. Let’s just get out of here.”

We climbed into our seats and she started the engine. It wasn’t until we were driving past the hospital that she spoke again.

“Who are
those people
?”

I looked up in another attempt at spying Nick, like he was a presence in the sky, a benevolent god, rather than an amputee trapped in a hospital bed.
Nick
. He’d know what to do. He’d know how to find Emmett. He’d know why I cared so much. He’d be able to explain those milk cartons to me. He’d know what to say to Mom, how to talk to her about everything that had launched a sneak attack on what was to be my perfect summer.

Nick. He could fix anything.

“Those people,” I said, “are my friends.” This wasn’t entirely true. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t true at all, but it felt good to say it. It felt important.
I
felt important.

“They smoke cigarettes.”

“So does Swoozie.”

“You’re thirteen.”

“Why are you always reminding me of my age? Like I could ever possibly forget how old I am? I mean, how could I ever forget when you remind me every minute of every day?”

She gripped the wheel tighter. “Why do those people,
your friends
, call you Robin?”

“Because. That’s my name.”

“Your name is Drew.”

“No, Mom.
His
name was Drew. And now he’s dead.”

Right then I wanted to cry. I wanted to, but I didn’t, because the inside of that car no longer felt like a safe place to do so. I’d cried more times in Mom’s car than I could possibly count—after school when I felt like my teacher had been picking on me, when there was a birthday party I’d been excluded from, when the sad ending of the movie we’d seen had taken its time creeping up on me. But now I just sat and endured her silence.

I didn’t dare look at her. I’d denounced my name. And I’d said the word
dead
.

We pulled into the driveway and she turned off the ignition. She stared straight ahead.

“I guess,” she said, “that there are some things we need to talk about.”

“There’s nothing I want to talk about.” As if that weren’t harsh enough, I added, “At least, there’s nothing I want to talk about
with you.
”

I got out of the car and slammed the door. I started walking toward the house.

She unrolled her window.

“Is this all because I’ve been seeing someone?”