Summer Unplugged

by Amy Sparling

  Tyler asks if I'm eighteen yet.

  "No," I say.

  "My brother just turned eighteen and he got a job at the movies and it's so cool." He says. He yells a profanity into his headset and then murders a dozen virtual soldiers. "He gets to see all the movies for free. You should work there too."

  "My boyfriend works there," I say. Ian's not really my boyfriend but what are technicalities when it comes to conversation with a ten-year-old? Tyler shoots a few more people and says, "I bet they're friends."

  I grew up living next to Tyler and his brother Marc. Marc is one of the biggest stoners in our school; of course he's friends with Ian. I get an incredible idea.

  "Hey Tyler, if I give you a letter can you give it to your brother and tell him to give it to my boyfriend?"

  He shrugs. "Yeah."

  I rummage through my room, the kitchen and finally the study to find a notebook and a pen. In a two-paged note I tell Ian everything that happened with Mom, how she took away my phone and my computer. How much I like him and how I hope he will wait for me to find a way to see him. And then I ramble on about pointless things until my hand hurts from writing. I fold it and seal it inside of an envelope hoping to deter Marc from reading it.

  I write IAN on both sides of it and give it to Tyler. He tosses it by his shoes at the front door and I cringe, hoping my heartfelt words make it from my hands to Tyler's to Marc's to Ian's. It is my only hope.

  Mom comes home from work with a pizza. Bentley and I dig in, eating a lot more than usual to make up for my sub par sandwiches we had for lunch. Something is different about Mom today. She's rigid, cold. When I had taken the pizza from her hands I had tried giving her a hug but she had brushed it off. And now, one and a half slices of pizza later, she is eagerly listening to Bentley's stories and not even acknowledging me.

  "Mom, are you okay?" I ask. It feels so foreign to talk to her now. Like she knows that dirty secret about me photo-texting and now we can't look at each other.

  "Yes, I'm fine," she says. "But we need to talk later."

  "Later? How about now?" God, the last thing I want is to fret about this all night.

  She squeezes Bentley's shoulder; he's shoving pepperonis into his mouth. "I guess it's better for everyone to hear it. Bayleigh, I've been thinking about how to handle your grounding this summer."

  She says it like it's a business proposition. I think she's done a damn fine job of handling my grounding – I have no connection with the outside world thanks to her. What else does she want to do, put me behind bars?

  "What do you mean?" I prepare myself for whatever she's about to say. I bet it sucks.

  She looks at her cuticles. "I can't control you here. You're going to spend the summer with your grandparents. And you're still grounded while you're there."

  Oh my fucking God I am not prepared for that. "When?"

  Mom's lips are straight. She doesn't look me in the eye when she says it. "Tomorrow."

  I freak. Grandma lives in a creepy, presumably haunted house in the middle of nowhere. Even if I had a cell phone I wouldn't get reception. Why oh why is she doing this to me?

  I don't say anything.

  "Please don't try and fight this. I believe it's for your own good," She says. The pizza turns rancid in my stomach.

  Chapter 6

  Since I'm the only family member going and I don't have a car, I'm forced to take the bus all the way into BFE where my grandparents live. The three and a half our drive is a nightmare without my cell phone or laptop. Mom had given me a lousy book to pass the time. Island of the Blue Dolphins, said it was her favorite book as a girl. I refuse to read it out of spite.

  The bus makes a few stops and is nearly always empty, disappointing me each time by having no interesting riders. The seats smell like pee and poor people. My dreams of sitting next to a group of hot college guys definitely won't come true. I don't talk to anyone. I don't do anything but stare out of the window. It's a boring view from start to finish.

  I arrive exactly on schedule, amazing how the bus companies do that. Grandpa waits in the parking lot of a small convenience store that doubles as a bus stop. He's driven the same black Ford F-150 truck since before I was born. It still looks brand new when I crawl inside.

  "Hi, Grandpa," I say, shoving my heavy suitcase he didn't bother to help me with into the backseat. He nods, pulls out of the parking lot.

  "Bayleigh, nice trip?"

  I nod. His lips press together in acknowledgement. The wrinkles in his face have gotten deeper and the hair that doesn't fit under his cowboy hat is grayer than I remember. We say nothing for next fifteen minutes but it's not uncomfortable silence. Grandpa doesn't speak to anyone.

  We pass so many farms and ranches with massive wrought iron monogrammed gates that I start to wonder if it's mandatory to grow some kind of crop or raise livestock to live in this town. The house next to Grandpa's has a new lake in front it. An awkwardly shaped, rectangular ellipse hole in the ground that I'm only assuming is a lake. I can't see any water in it from the road. That definitely wasn't there last time I visited and neither were the dozen lumps of dirt that now separate the neighbor's house from my grandparent's.

  "What kind of farm is that?" I get out of the truck and Grandpa grabs my suitcase this time, hauling it up the porch stairs. I follow him.

  "That ain't a farm. It's a kid ruining the damn land."

  I don't understand, but don't ask any more questions.

  Gram knits a blanket and watches soap operas. "Who is this?" she says, smiling when I walk in the living room. I don't know if she's joking or being serious. Gram is sweet but a little batty. Sometimes calls me by my mother's name, sometimes forgets my name altogether. She sometimes tells me the same story multiple times.

  "It's Bayleigh," I say, hugging her carefully to avoid becoming a Cyclopes with one of her knitting needles.

  "It's so good of you to come visit me. Old ladies never get any attention."

  I suspected this, Mom didn't tell her this was my punishment, but made it seem like I wanted to come see her. Right, because no internet and no cell phone is exactly how I want to spend my entire summer.

  At least the food is good. We eat dinner at exactly six. Play cards for an hour after that.

  Watch the eight o'clock news and then go our separate ways for bed. Only it's eight-thirty and I'm not sleepy. The crickets and the howling wolves outside aren't sleepy either. I don't hear a single car honk or loud bumping music like I would at home.

  I keep reaching for my cell phone but it isn't there. I keep thinking of things to post as a Facebook status but there is no Facebook here. I'm only a few hours into this summer and it already feels like I've been dumped on an isolated island and left to starve to death.

  I'm staying in Mom's old bedroom. It still has the same canopy twin bed and writing desk she had as a child. Her stuff is all over the place. I used to think it was fascinating, but now I hate it. All of the memories and heirlooms of my moms just remind me of her and how rude she was to send me here. This isn't a mere punishment – this is hell.

  The only cool thing about this room is that it's upstairs and has a balcony with a view of, well acres and acres of nothing, but still – it's cool. I hang out here for a long time, dragging a beanbag out so I don't have to sit on the wooden balcony. I stargaze for an eternity that is actually only five minutes. I count as many stars as I can see, and get bored after thirty-six. Then I try closing my eyes and daydreaming about Ian. Wish I could pull out my cell phone and text a status update to my Facebook. It'd say: Bored as all hell. So bored in fact, I may just drop dead.

  A voice catches me off guard. "You should learn to take a hint." It's a male voice, coming from the neighbor's backyard.

  I freeze in the beanbag chair, not wanting to move and give myself away. A shadow comes into view just to my right. I turn my head and squint in the dark to see him. He's a younger guy, definitely not a grown man but probably older than high school. He's wearing da
rk jeans and no shirt, holding a cell phone to his ear. I guess some phones can get reception out here. "I don't care what you feel," he says, running a hand through his short hair. It looks green from the reflection of his porch light, but it's probably brown. "You should have thought about that before you fucked that dude."

  I gasp and turn away, feeling guilty for eavesdropping on such a private conversation.

  I'm glad he doesn't know I'm here.

  "Stop calling me," he says, his voice weary. "I don't want to hear from you again, or I swear I'll break this phone in half."

  I let out a deep breath. Break his phone in half? He has no idea what life is like without a phone.

  Chapter 7

  Bright and ridiculously early the next morning, I help Gram dust the obscene amount of pig knick-knacks that stretch from the living room into the kitchen and down the hall. She's been collecting pigs since the invention of time. She doesn't even own any real pigs. As we work, Gram sings oldies – not the oldies that I know, but the old oldies. I pray to stumble upon a time machine so I can go back to last week and not piss off Mom.

  I can't seem to shake the habit of slapping my back jeans pocket, reaching for a cell phone that is not there. Not that I have anything of importance to tell anyone, but some random friend's text would help so much right now.

  We finish the pigs and Gram makes us turkey sandwiches and then settles into the living room to catch the beginning of her soaps. She doesn't give me any more chores to do so I assume I'm free for the afternoon and that actually sucks more than cleaning. It is so boring here. There is no cable TV so the only channels are playing soap operas, divorce court, a show about cheating spouses and Spanish soap operas.

  I decide to take a walk outside, hoping I'll trip and fall off the porch, slip into a three-month coma and wake up on the first day of my senior year. A police car turns into the driveway. Dust from the gravel road puffs around the four tires. Grandpa was tending the flowerbed and now walks up to the officer's car door to talk to him. I sit on the porch swing.

  If a cop showed up at my house I would be all sorts of excited, dying to know what the drama was about. But in this small ass hick town, everyone knows everyone and I wouldn't doubt if the cop is here just to invite Grandpa to a rip-roaring fun game of bingo in the town square. And then I hear yelling.

  "You have got to get control of your town, Sherriff." Grandpa is actually yelling, and at a police officer. God, what I would give to be able to tweet about this. I stop swinging to shush the creaky wooden porch swing.

  "I understand Ed, but there's nothing I can do. The boy owns the land now."

  Grandpa gazes at the neighboring piles of dirt and haphazard newly dug lake. He frowns and shakes hands with the officer. "I know Richard is turning over in his grave. He would have never wanted his house to become a motorcycle playground."

  As soon as the cop is gone and the dust settles in the driveway, I run to the flowerbeds to talk to Grandpa. "What was that about?" He hands me a pair of gloves from a bucket of gardening tools.

  He points to a weed. "You remember Richard from when you were a kid?"

  I grab the weed and pull it from the ground. "Yeah."

  "He died 'bout five years ago. Left everything to his ungrateful brat of a grandson. He never did talk to his own son after that big fight they had." I'm blown away at how much Grandpa's talking to me. I'm almost scared to ask another question incase he's used up his word quota for the day.

  "So the grandson made all those dirt piles?"

  He nods.

  "Why?"

  He shrugs, lets his face go back to a grimace. I guess I've made him talk too much. I pull a few more weeds as penance. We work in silence until all of the weeds are gone. Finally he talks, and I've almost forgotten my question. "He rides a motorcycle on it. Every day." He wipes sweat from his brow. "Surprised he ain't out there now."

  I smile. Grandpa's warming up to me.

  After dinner, during which Grandpa didn't say a single word, I retreat to the balcony for another afternoon of stargazing and nothingness. Only it isn't yet dark, so I make do with finding shapes in the clouds.

  The first cloud blob is shaped sort of rectangleish which reminds me of my cell phone. I roll my eyes. My heart aches for it as much as it does for Ian.

  A grasshopper appears out of thin air next to my shoe. I pick it up, cupping it inside my hands like I did as a child. It hops around, tickling my fingers. Catching bugs has become my new past time in this stupid small town. I sigh. I'm pathetic.

  A firecracker-like roar fills the air and revs a few times like a motor. I jump, the grasshopper escapes as I jerk my head around looking for the source of the noise. Puffs of smoke sneak out of the neighbor's backyard shed. The motor revs again, in quick spurts. A man pushes a motorcycle out into the yard. He pulls back on the throttle a few times and the motor screams. Soon, the smoke stops and I can tell that it isn't really a motorcycle, at least not a Harley type motorcycle. It's a dirt bike. The recreational kind my brother wants so badly. Now that I get a better look at the guy, he's closer to my age. He's wearing these funky-looking red and black pants and a white undershirt. Muscles ripple through his arms as he grips the handlebars.

  I grab a hold of the wooden rails of the balcony, pull my face up to the crack between them and watch. He can't see me, but I can see him. For the time being, my cell phone is the last thing on my mind.

  Chapter 8

  Like some kind of creepy stalker, I watch him for the next hour. He rides laps around his yard using the piles of dirt as jumps. Once he landed on the front wheel first and almost flew over the front of the handlebars. I thought I would scream in horror for a second. He put on a helmet after that and my secret presence got to remain a secret.

  When the sun shuffles behind the trees enough to make it harder to see, he shuts off the bike and props it up on a metal stand. My feet tap against the railing. I want to talk to him, learn his name, get to know him. Yelling from the balcony hardly seems like the way to make a good first impression. It's almost dark so I have no reason to be casually walking around outside so I could "bump" into him. Leaning into my beanbag, I think. And then I cough. It's accidental at first, a piece of dust caught in my throat, but then it gives me an idea.

  I suck in a deep breath and force myself to cough again. It sounds unconvincingly fake and worse, he doesn't notice it. He keeps working on his bike, the back tire is off now and he's holding the chain in his hand. He takes off his shirt and uses it to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Oh my god, oh my god. Ian doesn't look like that with no shirt. I walk back into my room, pace in front of the mirrored dresser. What can I do to get his attention?

  Mom's childhood bookshelf displays her collection of snow globes, each more cheesy than the one before it.

  "Oh my god, no!" My mouth stays open. My hand grasps my chest. I lean over the railing, seeing all of the broken pieces. Pretend to actually give a damn about them. "This sucks," I say, louder than a normal person would talk. I run my hand through my hair, try to look dejected and sneak a glance in his direction. He's watching me from the overturned plastic bucket he's using as a chair. Bingo.

  I run through the house, down the stairs and through the yard. Dropping to my knees, I pick up the pieces of the snow globe and turn them over in my hand. The ground crunches behind me. I whip around, faking surprise.

  "Hi," he says. He does a little hand wave.

  "Hello." I stand up and shake his outstretched hand. "I'm Bayleigh." It's warm and kind of sweaty.

  "I'm Jace. What happened?"

  "I dropped it, and it rolled off." I let the pieces fall back onto the grass. "It's definitely not repairable."

  "That blows," he says. "Do you collect snow globes?"

  "It was my mom's. That room was hers and it still has all of her stuff in it."

  He looks up at the open balcony doors, then back at me. His eyes are green. "So this is your grandparent's house?" I nod. "I don't think I've seen you
around here."

  "I'm just visiting for the summer," I say. "The whole summer," I add with a groan.

  "The whole summer in this hick town? Welcome to my nightmare." We laugh, and he has no idea how much his presence is going to make my summer a whole lot better.

  "There's really nothing to do here," I say. "What are your plans for tonight?"

  "I'm just going to watch HBO."

  "I love HBO, my grandparents don't have cable," I say. I've never actually watched HBO, but I bet I would like it. Especially with Jace.

  He chews on his lip, deciding I guess, if he should take my bait or not. He takes it. "Want to come watch it?" Instead of showing how excited I am, I shrug. "Sure."

  His house looks just like my grandparent's house on the inside. Oldish and full of knick-knacks. A stuffed deer head mounted on top of the fireplace. He catches me looking around the living room, probably notices the cringe on my face.

  "Yeah, umm I didn't decorate the place," he says, motioning to the stuffed quail on the mantle. He opens the fridge, takes out a Coke. "You want a drink? I've got Coke, Mountain Dew, sweet tea…"

  "Coke is cool, thanks." He tosses a cold can to me. I wait a second to open it so it won't explode. "So if you didn't decorate the place, who did?"

  "My grandfather." He plops into the recliner and I sit on the black leather couch closest to him.

  "Do you live with him?" Judging from the Grandpa/Cop talk earlier, Jace's grandfather is dead. But I'm not about to act like I already know that. He shakes his head, looks uncomfortable when he says, "He died last year, cancer. Left me the whole house and everything he owned." He opens his arms wide gesturing to the house around us.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," I say.

  He shrugs. "Eh, I never really knew him that well. Him and my dad had a falling out and they never spoke, so I dunno."