The Summer of Owen Todd

by Tony Abbott

  “All right.”

  “All right what?” He steps closer to me, breathes his sweet bad breath on my face. “Owen, all right what?”

  “All right. I promise.”

  “Say it. The whole thing.”

  “I promise not to tell.”

  “You promise not to tell anyone ever.”

  “I promise not to tell anyone ever.”

  THIRTEEN

  The rest of the afternoon, my mind is a tangled mess. After Sean gets to the umbrella, he peels off his old pod and switches to the new one in his bag. He says it doesn’t hurt, but he winces when he clicks the inserter under his skin.

  “Good for another three days,” he says, then lies about how he loves the water, the sun, all that, and finally sits there like a lump. Mom soon falls asleep over her book, so it doesn’t matter that we turn dead silent.

  I feel as heavy as stone. After a while, I leave him there and walk and walk and walk along the shore, kicking at the incoming waves. The Frisbee girls are at it again. I avoid them and everybody else. A couple of teenagers are snuggled near the cliff, making out and all over each other. It takes me a minute to realize they’re two boys.

  I turn away, go back, turn again and keep going. The tide is starting to go out. How long have I been walking?

  When I get back, my mother’s awake. Most of our things are stowed.

  “We’re going?”

  “Sean’s not feeling well,” she says. “But he didn’t want me to call you back to the blanket.”

  I’ll bet he didn’t.

  “It’s okay,” I say, still not looking at Sean, but trying to smile for my mother. “We can go.”

  As we collect the last bits, Mom asks Sean if we need to call his mother, and when he shrugs, she calls anyway. “She’ll meet us at your house.”

  In the car, I barely look at him, terrified that if I say anything at all, or my mother says something, he’ll bring on his I-want-to-die face again. We aren’t talking. The words in my throat have turned to lead.

  When we get back on Route 6, my mother looks in the rearview. “So, great beach, isn’t it? What a day.” Mumbled responses from Sean and me. “Again, I’m sorry you don’t feel well, Sean. You guys all right? Did something happen?”

  “No. It was awesome,” Sean says. He sounds normal. He’s a good faker. “I get a headache every once in a while. Mom gets them, too.”

  “I’m sorry, I know she does,” Mom says, and I realize that Mrs. Huff is often frowning, like she’s in pain. Maybe that part of Sean’s problem is real. “We can come back sometime when you’re feeling better. If you guys are up for it. You had fun, right?”

  Sean nods at her in the rearview. “Sure. That’d be great.”

  I’m not so sure. But I don’t say that or anything else, and just let it pass.

  An hour later, we’re back in Brewster. We drive to Sean’s house. I hold my breath from the corner on, hoping I’ll see Mrs. Huff’s car in the drive. It isn’t there. We pull up at the curb.

  “Let me call your mom again.” My mom slips her cell phone out of her bag.

  His house isn’t all that old and looks like a lot of the houses here. Wooden shingles that the rain and sun have beaten to a rough gray. It’s small, but neat. Bright white window trim. Crushed shells in the short driveway. The house has a main section, an upstairs with dormers in front and back, and one room coming off the side of the downstairs that makes an L into the backyard. There are two rooms there, a bathroom and Sean’s room. In the backyard there’s a patio and a small in-ground pool that is empty and fenced off because it needs fixing.

  “Your mom’s stuck at the store until tonight,” my mother says. “I told her we’ll bring you home with us, but she’s sure it’ll be hours and already called Paul. I don’t know why she does that. Not let us help. Anyway, he should be here soon.” She turns off the engine. “She said just a few minutes.”

  Sean bites his lip. “Okay. Thanks.”

  I begin to realize that it’s little things like this—snarled traffic, a phone call, rain, some new job, whatever it is—that make all the difference about whether things go good or bad. You tiptoe around stuff or you kick it away or you crush it, but whatever is going to happen happens anyway because of stuff you can’t control.

  “Thanks for the trip. I’ll wait in the backyard.” Sean tears across the lawn and around the back.

  Mom turns to me. “Something’s bothering Sean. Did you have a fight?”

  “No, Mom. Of course not. He’s just tired. He has a headache. It’s okay.” It looks bad for me to just sit in the car. I don’t want to talk to Sean any more than I have to, but I can’t talk to my mom like this, either. I remember the empty pool, I don’t know why. “I guess I’ll wait with him in the backyard.”

  Sean’s yard is as trim as his house, with short flowers edging around a barrier of low, pointy evergreens. The neighbor who mows the lawn must have just been there. The smell of fresh-cut grass, like the smell of beach roses and sunny ball fields, is summer to me.

  It’s quiet back there except for a couple of mowers a block or two away. We just stand, staring at the ground.

  “Sean, listen…” I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I kind of blurt out, “Swimming all the way out like that—”

  Suddenly, he crouches like a hunter. “Did you see it?” His arms tense as his eyes follow a small brown shape, skittering along the patio retaining wall and heading for the toolshed.

  “What, the chipmunk?”

  “It’s a mouse,” he says. “A big mouse. It’s trying to get in the shed.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s a chipmunk. It’s Chip and Dale. Chip or Dale.”

  Sean scrabbles for a rock near the wall, finds one, and throws it. Fantastically, he manages to hit the animal just off the patio. The little thing hops once, then stumbles away into the garden.

  “Sean, what the heck!”

  My mother beeps. Disgusted, I leave Sean on the patio and come around to see Paul Landis pulling into the driveway. I look back. Sean edges after me slowly. Now I see someone else in the car. It’s a girl. Paul’s girlfriend is with him today. My chest zings. Good. Great!

  “Hi,” she says to us as she gets out. “I’m Carrie.”

  Carrie has a big, open smile. Does her being here mean she doesn’t know anything about what her boyfriend does?

  “Well, isn’t this nice. Spur of the moment. Hi, Patti,” Paul says to my mom. I’m surprised to hear him say her name, but of course they know each other from church.

  She nods, smiling. “Really, we would have taken Sean home with us.”

  “Nah, I was close by.” He bounces up the steps and unlocks the front door. He has a key, which I didn’t know, but of course he would. He slips inside the house as if it’s his own, letting the screen door flutter closed behind him.

  Carrie comes over to us, shaking hands with my mother first before turning to me. Sean is hanging by the corner of the house. “Are you … you’re Owen, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” I wonder if it was Sean or Paul who told her that, but I smile anyway, and she beams. She is cute. But it doesn’t make any sense. If Paul has such a good-looking girlfriend, why does he need to do stuff like what Sean is telling me?

  “All right, then,” Mom says. “See you, Sean. Thanks for a nice day.”

  I look at him. His eyes are down as he walks slowly around and up the front steps with Carrie. She puts her hand on his shoulder like a teacher. He doesn’t flinch. He might even lean toward her, but maybe not. She waves back at us. Maybe it will be okay with her there.

  I glance at Sean’s room on the side of the house. His shade is up, the window blue with sky. I wonder what will happen. I hope Carrie stays the whole time. The front door closes behind them.

  I feel like my face is completely draining of color and pray my mother doesn’t see it or ask me anything. But she does see. She does ask. Instead of starting the car, she sits behind the wheel, looking at me. />
  “Owen, what is it?”

  “Nothing. A chipmunk. In his backyard.”

  “Come on, O. That’s not it. You’ve been quiet all day. Sean, too. You fought. Or something. What’s going on with you two?”

  “I…” But I don’t know where I’m going with this. My mom is open and ready to listen, her brown-green eyes soft, almost moist, and looking at me so intently, wanting to put her hand on my arm or something, but not doing it. I have to glance away. Then I see Paul gazing out the picture window in the front of the house, his hands on his hips. He moves away, and I see that Carrie was standing behind him. She waves at our car.

  “I think Sean sort of lied to me about something,” I say. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.”

  Mom waves at Carrie. “What do you think he lied about?”

  It’s just for a little while, Sean said Paul told him. A little while.

  “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. It’s okay.”

  She draws a breath in slowly, loudly. “All right. But you can talk to your mother, you know. I understand things. Your dad, too. He was a boy once.”

  “I know.”

  She starts the car. “You’re thinking kids. You both are.” She leans over, kisses me on the cheek. “I love you, you know.”

  I make a show of wiping my cheek. Mom! I want to scream. Mom! But the words I need to say jumble on my tongue and I swallow them. “Love you, too.”

  “Okay, then. Just so we both know that.” She puts the car in gear. We drive the six short blocks home.

  FOURTEEN

  That was Saturday.

  I think about Sean every day after that, but I don’t call him. Now that I’ve made my ugly promise, he’ll keep telling me stuff, because he probably has to. But unless he calls, I can believe things aren’t getting any worse.

  I don’t actually talk to him until Wednesday, first thing in the morning, when he calls my house at breakfast.

  “I’m off to visit my grandparents,” he says. His voice is back to normal, no darkness in it, not yet.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “They live in Quincy. I have to go, but I also want to. My mother’s doing overnight inventory at the shop, top to bottom, for a couple of nights. Belle-Teak is in crisis mode.”

  “Again?”

  “People are still stealing stuff.”

  “It looks pretty easy to,” I say. “The racks outside, anybody can come along.”

  “No, that’s cheap stuff. Scarves and things and cheap dresses. Mom suspects one of the sales girls, but whoever it is, is clever. There are three of them now. Two others besides the Goth girl. People suck.”

  I wonder how Mrs. Huff could be suspicious of her staff and not of Paul, but then, she’s always worrying about one thing or another and often isn’t there when you talk to her. “You could come here, I guess. You know, sleep over.”

  “I want to go to Quincy,” he repeats. “Besides, it’s my grandfather’s birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. I begged to go. I haven’t seen them for a while.”

  “Can you…” I stop. I won’t ask. Then I remember. “My grandma’s coming on Friday anyway.”

  “See ya.”

  He hangs up, and I feel free for a couple of days at least. I’ll be more normal than if he was around, and if Paul Landis leaves town, the problem might actually go away. Sean said he’d get over it. Maybe he will. I wonder if I should ask Mom or Dad about whether they heard if Paul’s moving, but that would open up a big thing that could be messy.

  Anyway, good.

  Sean and I won’t see each other and he’ll be safe with his grandparents.

  I say that to myself. Safe. But I still don’t know if it’ll be true. Maybe I just mean that he’ll be safe from himself. But I don’t know that, either.

  My dad wonders about rain coming later in the day, so he says I can stay home if I want to. I do stay home, but Mom wants to do some shopping at the mall before she starts her new two-day-a-week job, so she, Ginny, and I all go. I get a windbreaker. Ginny’s cold is better.

  It does end up raining after all, starting in late morning. Practice is canceled. Then, because Wednesday’s lousy weather moves out at night, Dad predicts Thursday will boom at the track, so I go with him, and he’s right. It’s nonstop. I’m frantically spritzing seats all day long.

  “We nearly made up for yesterday’s loss,” Dad says, flipping a stack of receipts.

  “Nearly,” Jimmy adds. “But is having a solid week of sun too much to ask?”

  * * *

  Grandma lives a little over an hour away in Hanover and is due at our house in the late morning, but getting to the Cape on a Friday in summer is a bad idea, especially if it’s a nice day, and the morning is beautiful, so I’m not all that surprised when I come inside after trimming the lawn to find she hasn’t gotten there and it’s nearly noon.

  What does surprise me is Ginny. For some reason she’s dressed in green from head to ballet slippers and jumping up and down on the kitchen floor, yelling, “Pee! Pee! Pee! Pee!”

  I laugh. “So go, already.”

  “Not without Grandma!”

  This throws me. “You are toilet trained. I think I remember that.”

  “Not pee!” she says, then points to her green tights and green short shorts. “P … P … P … P!”

  Which sounds the same to me. “Good luck with that.”

  “The play! I already told you!” She’s shouting everything at the top of her lungs.

  “No, you didn’t. I wish people would stop not telling me things.”

  “Peter Pan Puppet Play,” she spurts. “We’re supposed to see it but Grandma’s late and we need to get seats and Mommy’s working and Daddy’s going to the track. Daddy’s always going to the track. Track, track, track!”

  Then maybe I remember that Ginny did say something about puppets. I strain to put it together. There’s a small outdoor children’s theater in Dennis. It’s tucked away in a patch of trees, all piney and woodsy.

  I hear the clear crunch of shells through the open window.

  “Here she is!” Ginny starts jumping again. “Grandma! P-P-P-P!” She runs out the door to the car.

  “Thank God.” My dad’s rolling his eyes as he comes through the kitchen, jangling his keys, then pauses to look me up and down. “You going like that? In your yard clothes?”

  “I forgot all about it.”

  “Your grandmother came to see you, too, you know.”

  “I’ll change!” I turn to go upstairs when Grandma comes toddling in the door, saying, “Pee, pee, pee! That’s what I have to do. Hello, Dale.” She kisses my dad, then me, then runs to the bathroom. “Get in the car, kids. I know I’m late. Does anyone know the way?” I hear the squeak of the toilet seat.

  “Just down the street, Grandma,” I call. I run up and change my shirt, get into shorts, and am right back down. I hurry out, Grandma close behind. Ginny is a green elf in the car seat. She barely fits in it anymore. Dad locks up the house and a minute later drives off to the track with a wave. We are on the road to a puppet show.

  Eighteen minutes later the three of us are trekking up a long path through scrubby woods into a kind of wild fairyland in the middle of a stand of old pine trees. I carry an enormous bag Grandma pulled from the trunk. The theater is smaller than I remember, even with a new proscenium arch around it. The stage is just planks mounted about a foot above the ground, and surrounded by five sets of risers in a shallow half circle. There’s a lime green curtain hanging from the arch, and the stands are already pretty full. Grandma’s nimble, but she’s breathing hard by the time we climb to the back row of risers and take some of the last spots. She tucks her bag between her feet and slides out a small cushion that she puts on the riser under her before she plunks down.

  “My butt pad,” she whispers to me. “There. Ooof.”

  But Ginny is grumbling. “I can’t see. We’re late and I can’t see. Why are grown-ups so big?”

  “If thi
s is like the original play,” Grandma says, “Peter flies. You’ll be at eye level!” She chuckles.

  “Did you see the original play?” Ginny asks.

  “A hundred years ago? Yes, dear.”

  “Wow.”

  Grandma leans over to me. “Thank goodness I made it in time. Traffic was, well, you know. I should have known.”

  “Ginny was ready to explode.”

  “That would have been messy.”

  Ginny still seems ready to blow up. She’s squirming, crouching, stretching, bouncing, standing on tiptoes, plopping down again.

  “Don’t fidget, dear.”

  “But I can’t see!”

  “Because it hasn’t started yet,” I say, which doesn’t help. Then I spot Kyle Mahon at the entrance. I wave. He’s got his arm on his little brother’s shoulder and is looking around. He doesn’t see me. The stands are nearly full, but there are two places next to us. Their mother waits by a tree, chewing her lip.

  The show is about to start. Actors—no, puppeteers—are moving backstage, flapping the curtain a little. It’s hot. I wave again. Kyle sees this time. He nods and smiles, gives a thumbs-up. He nudges his brother—Eric? Spencer? Bruno? I have no idea—and they start climbing up the edge of the risers to the rear. Their mother steps back and leans against the tree trunk as if she’ll stay there.

  A thin boy pokes his head out from behind the curtain. He is dressed in black and wears black gloves. “If the little ones want to come down front, they can get an extra-special view. Anyone?”

  Ginny gasps, and the horde of kids cheers and tumbles down from the stands just as Kyle and his brother ease their way along the back riser to us. Ginny is on her feet again, waving at Kyle’s little brother. “Morgan! Let’s go down front!”

  Morgan—who knew?—yelps, and they teeter down the risers together and plop themselves into the soup of squirming toddlers. Grandma scooches over, and Kyle sits next to me, laughing.

  “Ginny looks like one of the lost boys,” he says and introduces himself to my grandmother as a classmate and a baseball friend.