The Summer of Impossibilities

by Rachael Allen

  “I know you’re angry, but I really think this is what’s best for all of us,” she says.

  “All of us?” I don’t try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  “Your stepdad could use some time to cool down.”

  That might be true, but it doesn’t make it right.

  “I just—I wish you could try to understand me,” I say.

  “Maybe this trip will do that. Give us time to understand where the other one is coming from.”

  I bite my lip to keep from crying. I will never understand being able to treat your child this way.

  Mom gets out my suitcase and helps me get my clothes together.

  “Where is it we’re going?” The only thing I know for sure is that we can’t afford one of those camps.

  “Your aunt Adeline has a house on Lake Hartwell. She said we could stay there.” Mom shrugs. “And it’ll be free.”

  “Oh. That’s really nice of her, I guess.” It’s not enough to put me at ease. I feel like there’s still some piece of this I’m missing. “Why are you packing so many clothes? That’s, like, every pair of underwear I own.”

  Mom winces. “Well, we’ll be leaving later this morning.” Yes. This is something I already know. “And we’ll come back at the end of July. The week before school starts.”

  July. “But—I’m leading Vacation Bible School. It’ll be my first time as a junior youth minister. All my kids from choir are so excited.”

  This isn’t just for a week or two. This is an entire summer of banishment. The funny thing? Even if I stayed, I don’t know that there would be anything with Carrie. It was just the one kiss, and it came out of nowhere. But honestly, if I stayed, I probably would want to see where it goes with her. Gosh, I hope she’s doing okay.

  Mom doesn’t meet my eyes. “The church doesn’t want you working with kids after what happened last night. People have been complaining that you’re not spiritually fit.”

  “Oh.” Tears prick my eyes, but I’m not going to cry. “How many people?”

  “Well, Mrs. Bellcamp—”

  “Mrs. Bellcamp?” You need to get your life right with God before you come back here. “Mom, she’s terrible. She once made Peyton Reed cry for ‘dancing sinfully’ at a lock-in. Please tell me you didn’t let her get away with whatever bigotry she was—”

  “Everyone agreed that a summer away might be the best thing for you.”

  “What about you? Mom, you know I’m a good person.”

  She puts her arm around me. “Of course I do. And the church said if you go away for the summer, we can revisit the idea of you being a junior youth minister when you come back.”

  “But only if I come back the way they want, right?” I whisper.

  “Amelia Grace—”

  “I can’t talk about this anymore.”

  I turn my back on her. Hope she leaves. I’ve been volunteering at church since I could walk, dreaming of being a junior youth minister since one of the older girls taught me how to use a power drill at a Habitat for Humanity build. But now? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be the person they want me to be.

  I knew there were people like Mrs. Bellcamp and my stepdad at church. Even our pastor has had some sermons that made me curl my hands into fists. But when I came out to Pastor Chris, our youth minister, he was so kind, and I really thought he was on my side. I thought things were changing, and I wanted to be at the front of that change.

  I can feel my mom there, hovering, when the doorbell rings.

  “It’s for you,” she says. “I told Abby we were going, and she wanted to come over and see you before you left.”

  I almost want to hug her for that. Almost.

  “Thanks,” I whisper.

  I go answer the door. And I fall into Abby’s arms.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  I wish my mom had said it. I somehow get out the story of everything that happened last night and this morning. Abby was at church last night, so she seems to know most of it already. We sit on the front porch of my trailer and talk for a while before I work up the courage to break it to her about our summer plans.

  “They’re not going to let me be a youth minister this summer.”

  Abby squeezes my shoulder. “I heard about that. I’m so sorry.”

  I wonder if her mom was one of the people who called about me and that’s how she knows, but I can’t bring myself to ask.

  Abby fidgets with the hem of her shorts. “Do you think—? I mean, what if you just promised you wouldn’t kiss any more girls or go on dates or anything?”

  “I shouldn’t have to change who I am.” I finally get to live this piece of me. I don’t want to give it up.

  “I’m not saying change. I’m just saying . . . make things easier on yourself. You could just try.”

  She wants us to be junior youth ministers together, I know that’s the only reason she’s saying it, but it still doesn’t feel good to hear. “I don’t know,” I say.

  Abby nods. “I better go.”

  “Me too. I gotta go finish packing.”

  She gives me one last hug. “I’m going to pray for you.”

  “Thank you. And thanks for coming over. I’ll pray for you too.”

  She frowns. “No, I mean. I need to pray for you. I think you—I think it’s important.”

  It finally clicks. I’m embarrassed it took so long. Sometimes “I’m going to pray for you” is a blessing, and sometimes it’s a judgment. And now I understand that this is the second kind. A brittle, awkward silence rises up between us. I thought she was cool with it. When I told her I thought I might have a crush on this girl I’m pen pals with, she was like, “Oh, wow,” and then she gave me a hug. But now it’s hitting me—it’s not just people like Mrs. Bellcamp. And my stepdad. It’s Abby. It’s my mom. It’s everyone.

  And when she was trying to get me to hide—

  I stand up, fast. “Um, I need to go put some clothes in the dryer.”

  Abby gets in her car, and I go back inside and finish packing on autopilot.

  I’m still feeling numb two hours later when Mom and I are on the road. I stare out the window at the wildflowers growing in the median. Purple blur. Pink blur. Yellow blur. At one point, I pull out my phone and dash off a quick Are you okay? to Carrie. She doesn’t text back though. I wonder if she still has her phone. Mom’s eyes keep flicking to the passenger seat like she wants to say something. Or maybe she’s just checking on me.

  “Amelia Grace?” she says on the two hundred and sixty-seventh check.

  I grunt noncommittally in response.

  “There’s . . . something else I need to tell you. About Aunt Adeline’s.”

  The needle on my BS-ometer slides to Seriously Effing Fishy. “Yes?”

  “Aunt Adeline just found out her husband is cheating on her.”

  “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry. Is it okay that we’re going up there?” Because we could turn back around. I am totally that selfless.

  “That’s actually a big part of why we’re going up there. She called all the girls last night.” She smiles, but it’s the sad kind. “I think she really needs us.”

  “I understand. That’s really terrible.” I wish she would have framed it for me like that at breakfast. I would have felt a whole lot better about—

  “Your stepdad doesn’t know.”

  And that would be why.

  “I think it might be best if he thinks it’s just us at the house.”

  Because Aunt Adeline thinks my stepdad, and I quote, “isn’t worth the pot he pisses in.” And the feeling is definitely mutual. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why she and my mom haven’t talked so much these past few years. They used to be so close.

  “I won’t tell him,” I say, my voice as unforgiving as the hot stretch of asphalt in front of us.

  “Thanks.” The relief radiates off of her. “And, um, there’s one other thing.”

  I don’t k
now if I can handle another thing. What’s next? Does the lake contain mermaids? Actually, that’d be pretty freaking sweet.

  “We thought it would be fun if we all brought our daughters this time,” Mom says. “I don’t even know how many years it’s been since you’ve seen Skyler or Scarlett or Ellie.”

  Mom said her name. She’ll be there. I whip my head back to the wildflowers because if I don’t, I’m certain Mom will be able to see everything running through my brain right now—namely, one long glittery streamer with the words I’M IN LOVE WITH HER. I’M IN LOVE WITH HER. I’M IN LOVE WITH HER.

  It’s pathetic, but I can’t help it. I check my phone to see if maybe she emailed me back, in light of the fact that we’ll be seeing each other in, oh, a few hours.

  Nothing.

  And then, even more pathetic, I search for this one particular email thread. It’s from three years ago, and I’ve read it at least a hundred times since. Our moms had set us up as pen pals (well, more like email pals) in middle school because “they thought we’d have a lot in common and get to be good friends,” which was actually code for “we were both really lonely and hardly had any friends and people were picking on us at school.” We emailed and texted almost every day. She had kind of a tortured loner thing going. And I, well, I came to school every day in soccer shorts and big giant T-shirts, and the girls at my school . . . didn’t.

  So, she emailed me all upset one day because some stupid cow uninvited her from a sleepover. And I wrote back and said, A) she’s a stupid cow. Because B) you’re amazing. And C) you can’t change how other people act, but you can change how you act. I told her about this article I read about friendship notebooks and how you can take a hurtful thing that someone has done to you and use it to teach yourself about the kind of friend you want to be. You take the hurtful thing (getting disinvited) and turn it into a pledge: I will never disinvite a friend from an event. And you write it down in a notebook, so you’ll never forget the person you’re hoping to be.

  She emailed me back a couple hours later saying she’d tried it, and it’d made her feel so much better. And then she said the thing that has been haunting me ever since. I scroll down until I find the line I’m looking for.

  You are like the most perfect person, do you know that? If you were a boy, I would totally marry you!

  I read it again. And then again. And, okay, fine, maybe half a dozen times after that.

  I realize Mom is watching me. Oops.

  But she smiles. “You seem happy.”

  I shrug. “I guess I am. Kind of. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any of them.”

  Her. Since I’ve seen her.

  Ellie

  Momma eyes me from the driver’s seat. “If you want, you can stay for a long weekend and fly back Monday or Tuesday. You’d only miss a couple practices.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. I try not to look too happy about leaving. “How long are we going for anyway? A week or two?”

  “I’m not completely sure, but at least a few weeks. I brought my laptop, so I can work remotely.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know how disruptive that would be for your tennis, beta. Are you sure you don’t want to stay home with Dad?”

  I try to maintain my composure even though I’m freaking out on the inside. The lake is where it all started. Momma’s journals and photos make that pretty clear. I am on a friendship pilgrimage, and there will be three other girls dying to be friends with me, and maybe, if I’m lucky, I can find the remnants of the SBDC. I don’t actually know what that stands for because Momma’s journals didn’t say, but I gather it’s some kind of Ya-Ya Sisterhood club for female empowerment/shenanigans.

  I hope the other girls will be up for re-creating it with me. I haven’t actually seen any of them since I was five, but I’m sure we’ll be best friends. How could we not? First, though, I have to make sure I get to stay at that lake house.

  “Well, maybe I can find a coach in South Carolina,” I say slowly, like I’m just now thinking of it. “We’d be driving all over the southeast for my tourneys anyway. We can do that from the lake house. That way I could stay with you and pick back up at the academy later.”

  Momma brakes hard at a stop sign and turns to face me. “You have been begging to go to a tennis academy for years.”

  “I know.” I try to keep my face neutral. Why does she have to be so good at seeing me? Don’t most kids have parents who don’t see them at all? I’m pretty sure that’s a thing.

  She squints. “Did something happen?” (Told you.) “What? No. I just really want to meet your friends and their daughters. You’ve talked about them for so long.”

  And if all of you are such good friends, then all of us will be good friends too because it’s like hardwired into our DNA, right? It won’t be like tennis academy. I won’t be such a dork this time. I will make this summer of friendship happen if it’s the last thing I do.

  “We’ll see,” says Momma.

  I imagine her saying no. Spending the rest of the summer at the academy. I start to go into one of those spirals where you think about all the ways everyone hates you. Focus, Ellie. That’s not helping. I pull out my Things to Pack for the Lake House list. Lists always help. I know it’s technically too late to add anything, but just looking over it soothes me. I wonder if I really needed to bring a curling iron AND a straightener or if I could have gotten by with one or the other. Maybe a curling iron plus hair dryer? This may seem like a lot of contingency planning dedicated to hair, but it’s kind of my signature thing about my look on Instagram. I have long brown hair with golden highlights that goes most of the way down my back. I get it from my dad—he’s white, and he still has super-light-blond hair even as a grown-up. Did I remember to tell Momma to pack the cooler? I think she put it in the trunk somewhere. My brother, Zakir, and I are like his and hers kids. When I was little, like if it was just the two of us at the park or something, people used to ask Momma if she was the nanny. I remember it would always make her eyes go sad. Now I understand why. I wonder if I have enough conditioner for two weeks of swimming in lake water. I also wonder how hard it is to be a travel writer. Like, as a career.

  As I’m in the middle of pondering these important life decisions, my brother FaceTimes me.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Just got to camp,” says Zakir. He’s working at a camp for kids with juvenile diabetes over the summer. “What are you doing?”

  “Double-checking my pack list, obviously.”

  “I can’t believe you make those.”

  “And I can’t believe how many times you’re going to wish you took me up on my offer to make you one. Bet you forgot shampoo AND deodorant. Those poor children.”

  “Hey, Ellie, wanna be stressed out? I woke up fifteen minutes before we left. And I threw all my stuff in a duffel bag. And I didn’t even put my shower stuff in one of those plastic bag things you and Momma use. It’s probably oozing all over my—”

  “Okay, stop!” I cannot believe he shares 50 percent of my DNA. “Oh! We’re crossing the South Carolina border!”

  I pick my feet up off the floor of the car like I do every time we cross a state line. Zakir makes a redneck joke, and I make one back, and then we go into a full-on joke battle. Momma even lets us go for a while before she gives me a whack and says something about classism. I feel like the fact that she didn’t stop us sooner means something. See, Momma and Daddy met at college in Atlanta, and that was all cool, but then they got married and moved to some dinky Deep South college town where Daddy got a job and Momma could go to law school. And they almost never talk about what it was like, living there, but it’s what they don’t say that gets me.

  You guys are so lucky we live where we live in DC.

  The people here are so wonderful.

  Things got so much better after we moved here.

  There’s always an unspoken comparison that makes me wonder exactly what “there” was like and exactly how bad it w
as.

  Momma ruffles my hair. “You want to stop for a snack soon?”

  Zakir snorts. “Dare you to Instagram your hair like that.”

  I roll my eyes, but it doesn’t stop me from fixing my hair in the mirror. Or Zakir from teasing me about said fixing.

  “BYE, Zakir.”

  My brother has been teasing me for as long as I can remember. He’s also the reason people call me Ellie. He had a really hard time saying Jameelah as a kid, so he called me Ellie, and then everyone else started calling me Ellie too, and it just stuck. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it—like it’s one more way for me to pass and him to not. But mostly it just feels like me.

  I lean against the window in a way I hope looks both bored and cute at the same time and snap a selfie. At least I got in a run before this car ride. I hate sitting still for so long, I type before posting.

  The worst part of road trips: having to sit still for hours on end (no joke, sitting is the new smoking) and not being able to drink adequate water. I mean, I guess I could drink as much water as I usually do, but then I’d have to pee every twenty minutes, and I don’t think that’d go over very well with Momma.

  She pulls off at the next exit. I’m not used to seeing so much land with so few buildings and people. Barns with rusted tin roofs and fields full of cows and stuff. The gas station’s paint is peeling, and the bunny on the sign has seen better days, but they appear to have gas and food. A car pulls up next to us, a convertible bug, and four girls pile out, looking for all the world like they’re starring in their own teen movie. I stare at them wistfully.

  And then we get out of the car.

  Everyone else at the gas station is white. And it’s not like I’ve never been in a situation like that before, but sometimes you feel it more than others, and this, this is a lot. The way people are looking at us makes me wonder if they’ve ever seen a brown person before. Their eyes stick like flypaper as Momma pumps gas, her black hair rippling in the wind.