by Jenny Han
“Good morning, Susannah,” I said, and my voice sounded high and false, not like my own.
She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s past noon. I don’t think it counts as morning anymore.”
“Good afternoon, then.” I lingered by the door.
“Are you mad at me too?” she asked me lightly. Her eyes were worried, though.
“I could never be mad at you,” I told her, coming up behind her and putting my arms around her stomach. I tucked my head in the space between her neck and her shoulder. She smelled like flowers.
She said, still in her light voice, “You’ll look after him, won’t you?”
“Who?”
I could feel her cheeks form into a smile. “You know who.”
“Yes,” I whispered, still holding on tight.
“Good,” she said, sighing. “He needs you.”
I didn’t ask who “he” was. I didn’t need to.
“Susannah?”
“Hmm?”
“Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll never leave.”
“I promise,” she said without hesitation.
I let out a breath, and then I let go. “Can I help you with the muffins?”
“Yes, please.”
I helped her make a streusel topping with brown sugar and butter and oats. We took the muffins out of the oven too early, because we couldn’t stand to wait, and we ate them while they were still steaming hot and gooey in the middle. I ate three. Sitting with her, watching her butter her muffin, it felt like she’d be there forever.
Somehow we got around to talking about proms and dances. Susannah loved to talk about anything girly; she said I was the only person she could talk to about those kinds of things. My mother certainly wouldn’t, and neither would Conrad and Jeremiah. Only me, her pretend-daughter.
She said, “Make sure you send me pictures of you at your first big dance.”
I hadn’t gone to any of my school’s homecomings or proms yet. No one had asked me, and I hadn’t really felt like it. The one person I wanted to go with didn’t go to my school. I told her, “I will. I’ll wear that dress you bought me last summer.”
“What dress?”
“The one from that mall, the purple one that you and Mom fought over that time. Remember, you put it in my suitcase?”
She frowned, confused. “I didn’t buy you that dress. Laurel would’ve had a fit.” Then her face cleared, and she smiled. “Your mother must have gone back and bought it for you.”
“My mother?” My mother would never.
“That’s your mother. So like her.”
“But she never said …” My voice trailed off. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it had been my mother who’d bought it for me.
“She wouldn’t. She’s not like that.” Susannah reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You’re the luckiest girl in the world to have her for a mother. Know that.”
The sky was gray, and there was a chill in the air. It would rain soon.
It was so misty out that it took me a minute to find him. I finally did, about half a mile down. It always came back to the beach. He was sitting, his knees close to his chest. He didn’t look at me when I sat down next to him. He just stared out at the ocean.
His eyes were these bleak and empty abysses, like sockets. There was nothing there. The boy I thought I knew so well was gone. He looked so lost sitting there. I felt that old lurch, that gravitational pull, that desire to inhabit him—like wherever he was in this world, I would know where to find him, and I would do it. I would find him and take him home. I would take care of him, just like Susannah wanted.
I spoke first. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I wish I had known—”
“Please stop talking,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, starting to get up. I was always saying the wrong thing.
“Don’t leave,” Conrad said, and his shoulders collapsed. His face did too. He hid it in his hands, and he was five years old again, we both were.
“I’m so pissed at her,” he said, each word coming out of him like a gust of concentrated air. He bowed his head, his shoulders broken and bent. He was finally crying.
I watched him silently. I felt like I was intruding on a private moment, one he’d never let me see if he weren’t grieving. The old Conrad liked to be in control.
The old pull, the tide drawing me back in. I kept getting caught in this current—first love, I mean. First love kept making me come back to this, to him. He still took my breath away, just being near him. I had been lying to myself the night before, thinking I was free, thinking I had let him go. It didn’t matter what he said or did, I’d never let him go.
I wondered if it was possible to take someone’s pain away with a kiss. Because that was what I wanted to do, take all of his sadness and pour it out of him, comfort him, make the boy I knew come back. I reached out and touched the back of his neck. He jerked forward, the slightest motion, but I didn’t take my hand away. I let it rest there, stroking the back of his hair, and then I cupped the back of his head, moved it toward me, and kissed him. Tentatively at first, and then he started kissing me back, and we were kissing each other. His lips were warm and needy. He needed me. My mind went pure blinding white, and the only thought I had was, I’m kissing Conrad Fisher, and he’s kissing me back. Susannah was dying, and I was kissing Conrad.
He was the one to break away. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raw and scratchy.
I touched my lips with the backs of my fingers. “For what?” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“It can’t happen like this.” He stopped, then started again. “I do think about you. You know that. I just can’t … Can you … Can you just be here with me?”
I nodded. I was afraid to open my mouth.
I took his hand and squeezed it, and it felt like the most right thing I had done in a long time. We sat there in the sand, holding hands like it was something we’d been doing all along. It started to rain, soft at first. The first raindrops hit the sand, and the grains beaded up, rolled away.
It started to come down harder, and I wanted to get up and go back to the house, but I could tell Conrad didn’t. So I sat there with him, holding his hand and saying nothing. Everything else felt really far away; it was just us.
chapter forty-four
Toward the end of summer everything slowed down, and it started to feel ready to be done. It was like with snow days. We once had this great big blizzard, and we didn’t go to school for two whole weeks. After a while you just wanted to get out of the house, even if that meant school. Being at the summer house felt like that. Even paradise could be suffocating. You could only sit on the beach doing nothing so many times before you felt ready to go. I felt it a week before we left, every time. And then of course, when the time came, I was never ready to leave. I wanted to stay forever. It was a total catch-22, like a contradiction in terms. Because as soon as we were in the car, driving away, all I wanted to do was jump out and run back to the house.
Cam called me twice. Both times I didn’t answer. I let it go to voice mail. The first time he called, he didn’t leave a message. The second time he said, “Hey, it’s Cam. … I hope I get to see you before we both leave. But if not, then, well, it was really nice hanging out with you. So, yeah. Call me back, if you want.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I loved Conrad and I probably always would. I would spend my whole life loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Co
nrad’s. How did I say those things to Cam? How did I tell him that there was a piece saved for him, too? He was the first boy to tell me I was beautiful. That had to count for something. But there was no way for me to say any of those things to him. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I just left it alone. I didn’t call him back.
With Jeremiah it was easier. And by that I mean he went easy on me. He let me off the hook. He pretended like it hadn’t happened, like we hadn’t said any of those things down in the rec room. He went on telling jokes and calling me Belly Button and just being Jeremiah.
I finally understood Conrad. I mean, I understood what he meant when he said he couldn’t deal with any of it—with me. I couldn’t either. All I wanted to do was spend every single second at the house, with Susannah. To soak up the last drop of summer and pretend it was like all the summers that had come before it. That was all I wanted.
chapter forty-five
I hated the last day before we left, because it was cleanup day, and when we were kids, we weren’t allowed to go to the beach at all, in case we brought in more sand. We washed all the sheets and swept up the sand, made sure all the boogie boards and floats were in the basement, cleaned out the fridge and packed sandwiches for the drive home. My mother was at the helm of this day. She was the one who insisted everything be just so. “So it’s all ready for next summer,” she’d say. What she didn’t know was that Susannah had cleaners come in after we left and before we came back.
I caught Susannah calling them once, scheduling an appointment. She covered the phone with one hand and whispered guiltily, “Don’t tell your mom, okay, Belly?”
I nodded. It was like a secret between us, and I liked that. My mother actually liked to clean and didn’t believe in housekeepers or maids or in other people doing what she considered our work. She’d say, “Would you ask someone else to brush your teeth for you, or lace up your shoes, just because you could?” The answer was no.
“Don’t worry too much about the sand,” Susannah would whisper when she’d see me going over the kitchen floor with a broom for the third time. I would keep sweeping anyway. I knew what my mother would say if she felt any grains on her feet.
That night for dinner we ate everything that was left in the fridge. That was the tradition. My mother heated up two frozen pizzas, reheated lo mein and fried rice, made a salad out of pale celery and tomatoes. There was clam chowder too, and half a rack of ribs, plus Susannah’s potato salad from more than a week before. It was a smorgasbord of old food that no one felt like eating.
But we did. We sat around the kitchen table picking off of foil-covered plates. Conrad kept sneaking looks at me, and every time I looked back, he looked away. I’m right here, I wanted to tell him. I’m still here.
We were all pretty quiet until Jeremiah broke the silence like breaking the top of a crème brûlée. He said, “This potato salad tastes like bad breath.”
“I think that would be your upper lip,” Conrad said.
We all laughed, and it felt like a relief. For it to be okay to laugh. To be something other than sad.
Then Conrad said, “This rib has mold on it,” and we all started to laugh again. It felt like I hadn’t laughed in a long time.
My mother rolled her eyes. “Would it kill you to eat a little mold? Just scrape it off. Give it to me. I’ll eat it.”
Conrad put his hands up in surrender, and then he stabbed the rib with his fork and dropped it on my mother’s plate ceremoniously. “Enjoy it, Laurel.”
“I swear, you spoil these boys, Beck,” my mother said, and everything felt normal, like any other last night. “Belly was raised on leftovers, weren’t you, bean?”
“I was,” I agreed. “I was a neglected child who was fed only old food that nobody else wanted.”
My mother suppressed a smile and pushed the potato salad toward me.
“I do spoil them,” Susannah said, touching Conrad’s shoulder, Jeremiah’s cheek. “They’re angels. Why shouldn’t I?”
The two boys looked at each other from across the table for a second. Then Conrad said, “I’m an angel. I would say Jere’s more of a cherub.” He reached out and tousled Jeremiah’s hair roughly.
Jeremiah swatted his hand away. “He’s no angel. He’s the devil,” he said. It was like the fight had been erased. With boys it was like that; they fought and then it was over.
My mother picked up Conrad’s rib, looked down at it, and then put it down again. “I can’t eat this,” she said, sighing.
“Mold won’t kill you,” Susannah declared, laughing and pushing her hair out of her eyes. She lifted her fork in the air. “You know what will?”
We all stared at her.
“Cancer,” she said triumphantly. She had the best poker face known to man. She held a straight face for four whole seconds before erupting into a fit of giggles. She rustled her hand through Conrad’s hair until he finally wore a smile. I could tell he didn’t want to, but he did it. For her.
“Listen up,” she said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m seeing my acupuncturist, I’m taking medicine, I’m still fighting this the best I can. My doctor says that at this point that’s the most I can do. I refuse to put any more poison into my body or spend any more time in hospitals. This is where I want to be. With the people who matter most to me. Okay?” She looked around at us.
“Okay.” We all said it, even though it was in no way, shape, or form okay. Nor would it ever be.
Susannah continued. “If and when I go off slow dancing in the ever after, I don’t want to look like I’ve been stuck in a hospital room my whole life. I at least want to be tan. I want to be as tan as Belly.” She pointed at me with her fork.
“Beck, if you want to be as tan as Belly, you’ll need more time. That’s not something you can achieve in one summer. My girl wasn’t born tan; it takes years. And you’re not ready yet,” my mother said. She said it simply, logically.
Susannah wasn’t ready yet. None of us were.
After dinner we all went our separate ways to pack. The house was quiet, too quiet. I stayed in my bedroom, packing up clothes, my shoes, my books. Until it was time to pack my bathing suit. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I wanted one more swim.
I changed into my one-piece and wrote two notes, one for Jeremiah and one for Conrad. On each of them I wrote, “Midnight swim. Meet me in ten minutes.” I slid a note under each door and then ran downstairs as quick as I could with my towel streaming behind me like a flag. I couldn’t let the summer end like this. We couldn’t leave this house until we had one good moment, for all of us.
The house was dark, and I made my way outside without turning on the lights. I didn’t need to. I knew it by heart.
As soon as I got outside, I dove into the pool. I didn’t dive so much as belly flop. The last one of the summer, maybe ever—in this house, anyway. The moon was bright and white, and as I waited for the boys, I floated on my back counting stars and listening to the ocean. When the tide was low like this, it whispered and gurgled and it sounded like a lullaby. I wished I could stay forever, in this moment. Like in one of those plastic snowballs, one little moment frozen in time.
They came out together, Beck’s boys. I guessed they’d run into each other on the stairs. They were both wearing their swimming trunks. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Conrad in his trunks all summer, that we hadn’t swum in this pool since that first day. And Jeremiah, we’d only swum in the ocean once or twice. It had been a summer with hardly any swim time, except for when I swam with Cam or when I swam alone. The thought made me feel unspeakably sad, that this could be the last summer and we’d hardly swum together at all.
“Hello,” I
said, still floating on my back.
Conrad dipped his toe in. “It’s kind of cold to swim, isn’t it?”
“Chicken,” I said, squawking loudly. “Just jump in and get it over with.”
They looked at each other. Then Jeremiah made a running leap and cannonballed in, and Conrad followed right behind him. They made two big splashes, and I swallowed a ton of water because I was smiling, but I didn’t care.
We swam over to the deep end, and I treaded water to stay afloat. Conrad reached over and pushed my bangs out of my eyes. It was a tiny gesture, but Jeremiah saw, and he turned away, swam closer to the edge of the pool.
For a second I felt sad, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it came to me. A memory, pressed in my heart like a leaf in a book. I lifted my arms in the air and twirled around in circles, like a water ballerina.
Spinning, I began to recite, “Maggie and milly and molly and may / went down to the beach (to play one day) / and maggie discovered a shell that sang / so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and / milly befriended a stranded star / whose rays five languid fingers were—”
Jeremiah grinned. “And molly was chased by a horrible thing / which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and / may came home with a smooth round stone / as small as a world and as large as alone. …”
Together, Conrad too, we all said, “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.” And then there was this silence between us, and no one said anything.
It was Susannah’s favorite poem; she’d taught it to us kids a long time ago—we were on one of her guided nature walks where she pointed out shells and jellyfish. That day we marched down the beach, arms linked, and we recited it so loudly that I think we woke up the fish. We knew it like we knew the Pledge of Allegiance, by heart.
“This might be our last summer here,” I said suddenly.
“No way,” Jeremiah said, floating up next to me.
