Jorie grabs the ball. “I knew you weren’t that good.”
I turn, head toward my front door.
“Nice try, though,” Eli calls.
“Hey, Eli,” I hear Jorie say. “What’s your favorite color?”
I stop.
“I don’t know. Blue?” he says.
Sunset that night. I’m sitting on our front step, thinking how much the colors look like Mrs. Chung’s marigolds, which have grown and spread. They look like marigolds on steroids. Must be the magical work of the kumiho.
I’m trying not to think about Jorie and Eli.
The Cantaloni boys are out as usual, playing baseball, but this time, Thomas is with them. “Can you pitch?” Jack asks him. Thomas nods and puts down his sword. Their four outlines are silhouetted against the orange and gold sky.
Jack looks my way. “If the ball goes into the weeds, will you get it, Nina?”
“Sure!”
Matt drives up, parks the Jeep in front of our house. He’s in his bathing suit, a towel around his shoulders. He gets out and shakes his wet hair.
He spots me. “What’re you doing?”
I shrug. “Just sitting.”
He takes off the towel and pretends to snap it at me. “How’s The Alchemist going?”
“Not good.”
“I can give you my old notes. Except”—he laughs—“I got a C in that class.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Okay, I gotta shower.” He walks past me, opens the door. “Hey, you should come to the pool sometime. I could get you in for free.”
Who would I go with? I think about Jorie, Eli, Sariah, and my old group, who are supposed to be back soon. I’m in between everything.
“Maybe.”
Matt goes inside as Jack hits the ball. It flies into the weeds. “Nina!” he shouts. I run over and look but can’t find it. “I think this one’s gone, guys.”
Jack gets another ball from their garage. “You’re like our camp counselor.”
“Yeah!” Thomas grins. “Camp Nina!”
“Can you play the outfield?” Jack asks me.
I smile and back up toward the Millmans’. “I’ll cover left.”
Thirty-six?
We play a while, and when it’s dark, their moms call them inside. I’m walking home, and I see something stuck to the side of our mailbox. I didn’t notice it before—a folded piece of plain white paper. It’s a note, in small, neat printing. It says, Thank you.—Les Dembrowski.
So much for being anonymous.
I tuck the note into my pocket, then climb into the hammock and stretch out. Let me just review here. Mrs. Chung was elated with the marigolds, Mr. Millman and Mrs. Cantaloni are buds, Mrs. Bennett uses the foot pads every day, Mr. Millman enjoys cigars, Thomas is playing with the Cantaloni boys and continues to fight neighborhood crime with his repaired cape. Mr. Dembrowski is well fed, and thankful.
I unfold Mr. D.’s note and read it again, then look around at our Fertile Crescent on a starry summer night.
Mrs. Millman is right about this. Something is going on in this neighborhood.
Because of me.
Sariah must have seen me in the store at the mall. She’s avoiding me in art. I brought her a cup of water for rinsing her paintbrushes when I got one for myself, but she didn’t even look up. I said hi a few times, but she acted like she didn’t hear.
The thing is, I’m not even sure I want to be friends with her. She doesn’t know me like Jorie does … that I’m scared of deep water or I’m “such a mom” or I have a habit of dropping phones.
At the breaks, I’m back to sitting on the edge of Jorie’s group.
Mrs. Cantaloni is now huge. How can skin stretch that much? Being pregnant looks painful. I’d like to give Jack another bottle of lotion, but Mom might notice something is missing. Plus he’d probably make it explode again.
37. I feel bad for Mrs. Bennett, now that Thomas told me about their dad. Those gel shoe pads are good for her feet but don’t help with the big picture. Not that this will either, but I find a ceramic flowerpot in our basement, dig up a few of Mrs. Chung’s marigolds, plant them in the pot, and leave it on Mrs. Bennett’s doorstep.
38. I put a note in Mr. Dembrowski’s mailbox: You’re welcome. I don’t need to sign it.
I have something big planned for number forty. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s something I should have done a long time ago. Actually, something me, Jorie, and Eli should have done, but now that they’re practically a couple, I’ll just do it myself. Which is okay. Sort of.
Art goes extra slowly today. (We’re working on perspective and vanishing points.) Then, finally, Jorie and I are walking to the buses. A silver minivan pulls up, and the door slides open. Eli calls, “Want a ride?” Two guys are in the front seats.
Jorie takes off, running unsteadily in her wedges, tote bag bouncing against her hip. “Absolutely! Nina, come on!” Before I reach the car, she plops herself into the middle seat next to Eli. I climb into the way back like a little kid.
“You know Tyler.” Eli gestures. “And this is his brother, Sam.”
Jorie stands, leans toward the front seat, and turns up the music. She chatters, texts Antarctica, puts on lip gloss, flirts. I can’t get a word in, even if I could think of something funny or cute.
I sit back, let the wind blow my hair, and look at Eli’s hand on the armrest. Which Jorie keeps touching.
At Eli’s house, Tyler and Sam get out; Jorie tumbles out, almost falls. The boys grab a basketball and start shooting. Eli stays in his seat and looks back at me, tips his head toward their front step. “She loved the flowers.”
I smile.
“She thought it was me and Thomas, and we didn’t exactly tell her it wasn’t. She said it felt like Mother’s Day or something.”
I climb into the middle seat next to him. He leans a little closer. “She was mad at me. I forgot to do some stuff, like the laundry. She calmed down when she saw the flowers.” His hair grazes my cheek. “You saved me. It’s like you knew.”
“What are you guys doing in there?” Jorie calls, looking at her phone.
I have this crazy, completely insane feeling that Eli wants to kiss me. But (1) Am I out of my mind? And (2) Jorie is standing at the car door.
“Oh my God,” she says, and giggles. “Dakota got asked to homecoming! You know that boy Dylan? The one with red hair? Anyway, he made a bouquet out of those Dum Dum lollipops with a card that said ‘D and D isn’t dum. Let’s pop over to homecoming together.’ Is that the cutest thing you ever heard?” She holds up the picture on her phone—the lollipop creation.
“Very cute,” Eli says.
“Creative,” I agree.
“Now, me”—Jorie bats her eyes—“I prefer chocolate.”
“She likes chocolate, dude,” Sam teases, passes the ball to Tyler.
“Good to know.” Eli laughs, and my heart drops seventeen miles as we get out. He goes over to the driveway and starts shooting.
Jorie’s practically drooling, staring at the boys.
Thomas flings open the front door. “Eli! Mom needs you!”
“Okay. In a minute,” Eli says, running past Tyler for a layup. Thomas waves to me. “Camp Nina today?”
I laugh. “Maybe!”
The boys say they have to go, and Eli rolls the ball into their garage.
“Wait!” Jorie runs over, pulls him close, and holds her phone out. She takes a picture. “I’m sending this to Dakota right now. It’s so sweet!”
Eli runs up his front steps, and Jorie starts walking backward toward her house. “You think he got the hint?” She grins. “About the chocolate?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I’m so excited! It’s almost a done deal.”
“Seems like it.”
“And, Neens, I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m working on it.” Her phone rings. “Oh my God,” she shouts into it. “Let me tell you what just happened.”
She reaches he
r house. Her voice sails through the sticky summer air.
“Jorie,” I whisper, watching her. I miss the girl who couldn’t glue, brought me the towel after we jumped into the water, made sure I was okay. The girl I knew.
The next day, Mrs. Millman and Mrs. Chung are standing on the sidewalk. Mrs. M. reports that Beanie is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Although the vet wasn’t sure exactly what kind of animal bit her, she had to get some shots, and that put her over the edge. So says the dog psychologist.
Mrs. Millman is counting Beanie’s symptoms off on her fingers. With each one, Mrs. Chung nods, as if that’s exactly what she would expect after an encounter with a kumiho.
“Whimpering. Cowering under furniture. Trembling at the slightest noise. Loss of appetite. Lethargic. Won’t come outside. And worst of all, my beloved Beanie will no longer cuddle with me and watch Dancing with the Stars. It was her favorite show. I don’t know if she’ll ever return to her old self.”
Mrs. Chung shakes her head. “Such a shame.”
Mrs. Millman turns and looks at the Dixon house. “Since the authorities won’t help, it is my duty to deal with whatever’s lurking in those weeds.”
“Not easy. The fox is smart. Full of surprises.”
“I read that animals don’t like the scent of certain strong spices,” Mrs. Millman says.
“On the Internet?”
“Yes.”
“Ha!”
Mrs. Millman crosses her arms. “I have a plan.”
Mrs. Chung raises her eyebrows.
“Paprika.”
“Hmm.”
“Tabasco?”
“Won’t work.”
“What about mothballs?”
Mrs. Chung holds her nose.
“Well!” Mrs. Millman straightens her shoulders. “I’m going to give it a try. It’s all I can do. Perhaps if I can drive away the animal in there, Beanie will be able to live without fear.”
“You waste some good spices.” The ever doubtful Mrs. Chung starts making her way back to her house. She waves at me. Just as she reaches her driveway, a car pulls up and a young man and woman get out. Her kids. I haven’t seen them in a long time. I’m so happy they’re visiting; she needs company. And a distraction.
Later, I spot Mrs. Millman in her buttoned-up cardigan and loafers, holding a big jar of reddish powder and sprinkling it into the weeds. Then she walks around with two bottles of Tabasco, pouring out some sauce every few feet. She tosses in a few mothballs and shouts, “Let’s see how you like that!”
She goes inside to watch from the window, as if she’s expecting the cause of Beanie’s distress to come running out of the weeds immediately. Doesn’t happen.
Matt drives up, windows open, music blasting, and parks right over the oil spot.
“Hi,” I call.
He gets out. “What’s that smell?”
“Paprika. Tabasco sauce. Mothballs.”
“Huh?”
I walk toward him, my bare toes deep in the grass. “Long story. It’s pretty funny, actually, although there’s a sad part about a dog.”
“I just came home to change. I have to get to work.”
I follow him inside. He goes upstairs, then comes down a minute later in a new shirt, grins, and tosses me the dirty one.
I catch it, then let it drop. “Yuck!” Guy sweat.
“Can you throw that into the laundry for me? I gotta go.”
“To the pool?”
“Yeah … that’s where I work, last I checked.”
My friends who went on the adventure trip are back in town, and they invited me to the pool today.
“Wait!” I head toward the stairs. “Can I go with you?”
“Sure. C’mon.”
I change fast, grab a towel and sunglasses, and then hop into the front seat of the Jeep, shoving aside a mess of candy wrappers, pop cans, another smelly T-shirt.
Matt parks at the pool, then ducks behind the cashier desk and waves me in. “She’s my sister,” he tells a guy in a red lifeguard jacket.
The girls—Leah, Sadie, Cass, and Rachel—are already there. They’ve saved a spot for my towel. They hug me and say, “How’s your summer?” and “We missed you,” and “What’s been going on?” Then Sadie tells what must be an inside joke from their trip, and Cass brings up a story about Leah getting stuck in her sleeping bag. They’re laughing and calling each other nicknames, like Scout and Chico. They’re all wearing black bikini bottoms with tops in different colors. My bikini is matching. Nobody told me to mix. After a while, they’re still talking about the trip, so I stretch out on my stomach. Close my eyes. Zone out.
When I look up, they’re in the pool, splashing each other. I’m getting burnt anyway, so I visit Matt.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Oh, well, they went on a trip. I didn’t. Awkward.”
Matt hands me a candy bar. “Have a Kit Kat.”
“Shouldn’t I pay?”
“Don’t worry about it. Listen, going into freshman year is such a messed-up time. Everything changes.”
“I know! It feels so—” A big crowd lines up behind me, and he starts ringing them up. The chocolate is melting. I finish the candy bar and lick my fingers.
“Slob,” Matt says, and grins.
The girls come out with my towel, and Rachel says, “My mom can drive you home.”
We don’t have a lot to say on the ride. I get out. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Sure. We’ll make plans.”
“Okay.”
Rachel’s pushing buttons on the radio. “See ya.”
Matt’s sweaty shirt is lying on the floor where I dropped it.
I pick it up and remember doing the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle with him one winter break when we had twenty inches of snow, and how we ate ice cream for dinner when Mom and Dad weren’t home, and watched the first Harry Potter so many times we could recite every single line in the movie.
Curled-up leaves swirl where the Jeep was parked.
I go to the laundry room and put his shirt into a basket. Thirty-nine.
And I stand there. I could cry, but I don’t.
My grandma died one year ago tomorrow. I might be the only one who remembers the date. Or if Mom, Dad, and Matt remember, they haven’t said anything.
She was eighty, and something had been wrong with her heart for a while. Last spring, she decided not to have another surgery. Her body had had enough.
Mom fought her. Because Mom fights for everything. But Grandma had made up her mind. She was tired of taking pills and going to doctors and having surgeries and treatments. She was all right with it. She started saying her goodbyes. She held me close and said she would miss me terribly.
Not as much as I miss her.
She came to live with us in March, until right before the end. She was always there when I got home from school. She told me lots of STs, like she wanted to share as many as she could before she was gone.
The second time she told me I was an old soul, she said she was one too. We were sitting on the love seat on the patio. “They don’t come around that often,” she said. “They’re an endangered species. You’re very lucky. And special.”
The funeral home gave us packets of forget-me-not seeds to plant in her memory. They handed them out to everyone, but people put them down when they came to our house after the funeral. Then no one remembered to take them when they left.
I collected every packet (eleven) from counters and tables and one next to a pillow on the sofa.
This is on the back of each packet:
The forget-me-not is a delicate, beautiful flower that evokes the power and memory of love. Plant them in a place that is dear to you. As they grow and bloom, your love—and your loved one—will live on.
Time for number forty.
After dinner, as dusk starts to come over the cul-de-sac, I pull a chair next to my bedroom window, hold the packets of seeds, and wait. I feel a little like Mrs. Mill
man, the spy of the neighborhood.
The sky deepens from blue to navy. My parents knock on my door and come in to say good night. I hear them go into their bedroom. Brush their teeth. Creaking of the floor. Their low voices as they talk. Then quiet.
Black sky now, and I wish on the first star. My clock turns 11:11, and I wish on that too.
At 11:42, I see what I’ve been waiting for. Mr. Dembrowski’s garage door slides open. A car starts to back out. A regular four-door brown car, with an ordinary man in the driver’s seat. He backs onto the street, turns, then drives away slowly.
Thomas was right.
I tiptoe down the stairs, into the garage, and grab the digging tool I used to plant the marigolds. I let myself out the front door and close it with a soft click.
It’s a different place at night. The dark, silent houses are as still as mountains. A light wind circles the trees. Intoxicating, heavy summer air. The moon high and white in the sky. I walk across the grass, moist under my bare feet, then go around the side of Mr. Dembrowski’s.
We should have made up for the shoe trampling. We should have done something right then.
After we ruined his garden that night, Mr. Dembrowski seemed to lose his passion for flowers. I don’t think he ever planted a garden like that again. I’d see a few daisies, maybe, or some black-eyed Susans, but nothing like it was. And in the last few years, no flowers at all.
There’s a light on in the back of Mr. D.’s house. I stand and look at the garden first—a small rectangle of dirt. Then I kneel and dig a narrow trench across one side. I pull one of the forget-me-not packets out of my shorts pocket. It’s close enough to midnight that this is tomorrow.
I slowly sprinkle the seeds in, then cover them with dirt. “Hi, Grandma.”
As I’m starting the second trench, I sense movement. A shadow. Footsteps. Animal or human? I hold up the digging tool, like it could protect me.
I jump when I hear, “Neen? What’re you doing?”
And I look up at Eli.
He grins at me. “Lower your weapon. I come in peace.”
I stand. My heart slows down. “Ha ha. You didn’t have to sneak up.”
The Summer I Saved the World ... in 65 Days Page 7
