Wrong Way Summer

by Heidi Lang

  “Can you . . . can you tell me a story?”

  “Me?” She blinked, surprised. “You want a story from me?”

  “Yeah. Only not a frog story. Not when I’m sleeping in a hammock.”

  She chuckled. “What kind of story, then?”

  “How about a troll story? Like the kind Dad used to tell us when we were little.”

  “You’re still little.”

  “I’m not that little.” Patrick shifted, his hammock creaking as he turned toward her. “Please?”

  “Fine,” Claire said. A troll story. She coughed, suddenly self-conscious. The only story she’d ever told had flown out of her in a tide of rage. But she didn’t feel angry right now. She felt . . .

  Sad.

  Claire closed her eyes and let herself feel that. She thought of her mother, who wanted forgiveness, but not a place in their lives, who painted horses running through oceans, but had saddled her own life to a Dirk Rockaford. Then she thought of her dad’s Wrong Way Jacobus and his search for Evangeline Rose, and how somewhere along the way that quest became less important than caring for his cows. And finally, she thought of Patrick, who’d been hoping for some kind of story of his own, a story with a fairy-tale ending, and instead was left with . . . what?

  She cleared her throat. “Once upon a time—”

  “Seriously?”

  “Hey, you asked me to tell you a story, so I’m telling you a story. Which means I get to choose how it begins. And this one begins, ‘Once upon a time.’ You got that?”

  “Fine,” Patrick grumbled.

  “Once upon a time,” Claire said firmly, “there was a queen. She was beautiful, so beautiful, with eyes the color of moss and skin that glowed like the reflection of the moon on water.”

  “She’s not a frog queen, is she?”

  “No, she’s not a frog queen.”

  “Because you said you weren’t going to bring up frogs, and here you’re all talking about water and moss and—”

  “She’s not a frog queen! She’s a troll queen, okay?”

  “I guess that’s okay.”

  Claire sighed. “This troll queen had everything she could possibly desire, but still, she couldn’t be satisfied. She wanted a larger cave, so her husband, who adored her, built a new cave with his bare hands. She wanted more gems, so her daughter, who adored her, emptied all of her treasure chests at the queen’s feet, until the entire cave floor glittered with them. And still she wanted more . . .

  “Her son, who adored her most of all, asked what he could bring her. As this was ‘once upon a time,’ he knew his mother just needed a third task completed, and her curse of restlessness would be broken.

  “‘I don’t know what I want,’ she told him, again and again. ‘I just know that I want.’ And then one night, one clear summer night, she went out to the little pool outside her enormous cave and sat beside it. And this time she noticed the reflection of the moon, and how it glowed even more brightly than she ever could. And suddenly she knew exactly what she wanted.

  “‘Son,’ she called. ‘Fetch me the moon, and then I shall be happy.’

  “Her son looked at her with his large troll eyes, and then looked at the moon, so far away. It seemed impossible. ‘If I do this for you, will you be satisfied?’

  “His mother nodded, for she was sure this was all that she was lacking.

  “‘Then I will find a way.’ He thought about it all the rest of that night and all the next day. His sister, who adored him, found him wandering their cave, crying crystal troll tears.

  “‘What is wrong, dear brother?’

  “‘I don’t know how to reach the moon.’

  “‘The moon?’ His sister wiped his face and smiled. ‘That’s easy. We just need to find a spaceship.’

  “‘And where can we possibly find one of those?’

  “She thought about it, all that next night and all the next day. Her father, who adored her, found her hunched in the corner of their cave, pulling on the strands of her moss hair in frustration.

  “‘What is wrong, dear daughter?’

  “‘I don’t know how to find a spaceship.’

  “‘And why do you need a spaceship?’ he asked, gently lifting her hands from her hair and pulling her to her feet.

  “‘So my brother and I can reach the moon.’

  “‘And why must you reach the moon?’

  “‘So we can catch it and bring it to our mother. So that she will finally be happy.’

  “‘Well, I do know where a spaceship is buried,’ her father said. ‘And if you ask me to, I will fly it to the moon with you and your brother. I will do anything that you ask me to do, for such is my love for you both. But know this: when someone asks for the moon, it’s never just the moon.’”

  Claire stopped talking, her throat raw.

  “What happened next?” Patrick whispered.

  She swallowed and opened her eyes. “They flew to the moon, of course, and working together, the three of them trapped it and brought it down into the cave for the queen.”

  “And . . . was she happy?”

  “She was,” Claire admitted. “All that night and the day after, she was happy. But then as the next night began, she noticed how dark it was outside. How gloomy. And she sat there by her pool until the sun came up. The beautiful, glorious sun. A single crystal tear slid down her cheek, and she knew, if she could just have that sun, then she’d be happy.”

  Patrick was so still in the dim van for so long that Claire wondered if he’d gone to sleep. And then he let out a breath that might have been a sob.

  Claire reached across the five inches of space between them, so much space, and tousled his hair. “Good night,” she said. “I love you, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, fixing his hair. “I know.”

  Claire was almost asleep when she heard him say, “I love you, too.” She smiled, until he added, “I liked your frog story better, though.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The next day, Claire woke up early. Her dad was snoring below her, her brother sleeping with one arm thrown across his face. Claire pulled a blank postcard out from the front zippered pocket of her backpack and drew a picture. Then she wrote her mother a note beside it.

  She didn’t forgive her. She’d probably never forgive her. But at least now a part of her understood her.

  Claire slipped out of bed.

  “Ow, Claire,” her brother whined.

  “Shh,” she said, accidentally stepping on her dad’s head.

  “Ow, Claire,” he groaned. “You’ve made your point, okay? Next time I’ll build you a stupid toilet.”

  “And shower?”

  “Don’t push your luck.” He sat up, reaching for his glasses. “Guess I’m awake now.”

  “I’m just dropping something off,” Claire said quickly. She wasn’t ready to share it, not with anyone else.

  Her dad smiled. “Go drop it off, and we’ll hit the road, okay? Sound good, Patrick?”

  “Can we get waffles?”

  “Sure. We can get waffles.”

  “Then it sounds good.”

  “What do you folks want to do next?” their dad asked as they sat in the diner, eating their breakfast.

  “We could go visit Julian again,” Patrick suggested. “Maybe he has more tips for me.”

  “Absolutely not!” Their dad’s jaw clenched. It turned out Julian’s advice for how to slip into a place unnoticed worked as well for a train as it did for an amusement park. Patrick said he had snuck past the conductor by pretending he was hurrying after his mom, and then spent the train ride in what he described as a “vicious cat and mouse game” with that same conductor. Later, he admitted that they’d actually only gone around checking tickets once, which he’d avoided by crouching among the luggage by the doors.

  “Maybe we could go back to Aunt Jan’s,” Claire suggested carefully. “I think . . . I think she’d like that.”

  “You do?” Her dad sounded surpr
ised.

  “I think she’s lonely.”

  He seemed to consider that. “I do owe her a few years’ worth of visits, I suppose. And she did say we could come by anytime.”

  “And stay as long as we wanted,” Patrick said. “Unless she’s mad at me now?”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re all mad at you,” their dad said.

  “Can you really be mad at this?” Patrick beamed his widest, brightest smile, and pointed at it.

  Their dad shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m feeding you waffles.”

  “You trained him,” Claire said. “Well . . . you and Julian.”

  Her dad chuckled, and Claire wondered if the Great Train Adventure would work its way into his next round of stories, becoming a part of Patrick’s legend. And someday, maybe Patrick’s great-great-great-grandkids would hear some version of it.

  “What about the rest of the story?” Patrick asked suddenly. “After Wrong Way rescued Evangeline Rose and brought her to Michigan, what happened? Did she leave?”

  Claire frowned out the window. The sky was already hazy with the start of the day’s heat, but the diner was nice and cool. Outside she could see a few cars lined up in the parking lot, but if she squinted, she could see the reflection of her own face instead, and her brother’s face. And her dad’s.

  He was watching her and Patrick, that same fragile expression filling his eyes and deepening the lines of his face. Like he was bracing himself for bad news. “Yes,” he said finally. “She left.”

  Patrick considered this. “So . . . Wrong Way ended up alone?”

  “He wasn’t alone,” Claire said abruptly, turning back to the table. “Wrong Way had Sourdough. And he had Rye.” She smiled at her dad. “And that was all the family he’d ever need.”

  Tears filled her dad’s eyes and spilled over his cheeks, and he let them. And even though he was crying, Claire thought he looked happier than she’d ever seen him.

  Finally he scrubbed his arm across his eyes, then beamed at her and Patrick. “Let’s go home.” And they left the diner and went back to their van.

  Epilogue

  “How do I look?”

  Claire looked her dad up and down. “Like a museum attendant.”

  He grinned. “But a fun one, right?”

  “As fun as one could possibly be,” she muttered.

  “I suppose that’s the best praise I’ll get. I’ll see you in a few hours. If all goes well, I’ll take you and your brother out for a celebratory ice cream. And if it doesn’t go well? I’ll make your aunt take us all out for a commiseratory ice cream instead.”

  “Pretty sure that’s not a word, Dad,” Claire said.

  “Well, it should be.” He checked his phone. “Ack! Gotta run.”

  Claire lay on her bed in her aunt’s guest room and stared up at the ceiling. They’d been there for a little over a week, and it was starting to feel almost like home. Although secretly Claire kind of missed her hammock in the van, the feel of the diesel engine rumbling, the knowledge that they might go anywhere. But the future was an open road, and even though they had moved in with her aunt Jan for the next school year, the summer afterward was wide open.

  Claire’s fingers ached, and she looked down, surprised to see her hands curled into fists.

  “Your dad leave for his job interview?” her aunt asked from the doorway.

  “Yeah.” Claire shook out her fingers, and as they unfurled, she knew what she had to do. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  A few minutes later and Claire had dialed Ronnie’s number by heart. Her mom had never called them because she was scared of the silence. Claire didn’t want to be like that.

  Besides, if she never called, then silence was all she would get.

  “Hello?” Ronnie’s deep, confident voice filled the phone.

  “H-hey,” Claire said, suddenly shy.

  “Claire? Claire! I’m so glad you’re not dead!”

  “Why would I be dead?”

  “You stopped writing me! And your dad never answered his phone, even though I tried calling it a hundred times. Mike was all set to track you down.”

  “You tried calling?”

  “Obviously!”

  Claire frowned. “But . . . Oh.”

  “Oh? Oh?”

  Her dad had bought a new phone right before they’d left. He must have gotten a new number, too. “I forgot,” Claire whispered, embarrassment flooding through every inch of her.

  “You forgot what? What’s going on? What are you up to out there? How’s hashtag vanlife?”

  “Whoa,” Claire said. “Slow down a little, Ronnie. Give yourself some space.”

  Silence. Then, “That’s not funny.”

  Claire laughed. “It’s a little funny.”

  Click-click. Click-click.

  Claire’s heart stuttered, just for a second. “H-hi, Mike.”

  “H-hey Claire,” he stammered back.

  Claire tried to think of something else to say, but her mouth had gone strangely dry and no words escaped.

  “Well, this got awkward quickly,” Ronnie said, and Claire could practically hear her smirking. “But that’s not surprising. Nothing more awkward than puppy love.”

  “Ronnie!” Claire and Mike both protested.

  Ronnie chuckled. “See? Totally awkward.”

  “Whatever,” Claire said, but she found herself smiling.

  “So tell us,” Ronnie said. “What’s the vagabond lifestyle been like?”

  Warmth filled Claire’s chest as she cradled the phone against her ear. “Ah,” she began. “Now, that is an interesting story.”

  Author’s Note

  The very first time I remember thinking about money was soon after my dad lost his job. I was around eight or nine, close to the age Patrick is in Wrong Way Summer, and my parents tried to act as if everything was the same, even as they began screening phone calls and fighting with each other more often. I can still recall the many voicemail messages from creditors cluttering up our answering machine, how they seemed to seep out into the air itself.

  My mom assured me we were “getting by.” And we were. We weren’t in danger of going hungry or losing our house. There were plenty of others who had it way worse. Now that I’d gotten my first glimpse at money troubles, I noticed how other families carried around the same familiar tension. And while eventually my dad found another job and things went slowly back to normal for my family, I’ll never forget the stress of waiting for the answering machine to pick up, or of listening to my parents argue that very particular kind of fight that was less about anger and more about fear.

  Fast-forward many years, and I found myself living in Santa Cruz, California, a place with excellent weather, gorgeous beaches, and a truly astronomical cost of living. We used to joke that in Santa Cruz, everyone has three jobs: the job that pays the bills, the “passion” job, and the other job that pays the bills. And still, sometimes, that wasn’t enough. According to the 2017 Santa Cruz County Point-in-Time Census, approximately one out of every 120 people in the area is homeless; many of them either currently employed or actively looking for work. And a lot of the people defined as homeless are living out of their vehicles.

  If you look up #vanlife on Instagram, you’ll see plenty of beautiful photographs of people converting their vans into tiny homes and traveling around the country and the world. You’ll see lovely beaches and artfully posed couples and read about adventure and travel lust and escape. When I first heard about #vanlife, I was definitely swept up in the romanticism of it all. My husband and I already owned a van—courtesy of our dog walking business—and all we’d have to do would be to convert it and take off.

  But then I began noticing all the people living in their less glamorous vehicles, right there in my town. I talked to a fellow dog walker who admitted he’d lived in his car for three months after his landlord raised the rent too high and he couldn’t immediately find another affordable place that would accept his dog. I heard from st
udents who couldn’t find housing—there isn’t enough on campus, and many off-campus landlords don’t want to rent to large groups of students. I met a woman who chose to live in her truck camper so she could work just one job and then have the time to pursue the things she cared about, the things that had brought her to the area in the first place.

  That’s when I realized that so many more people than I had ever thought were just “getting by.” Some people willingly chose #vanlife, and some came to embrace it, but for many people it was a beautiful story told to make the best of a tough situation. In our society, we trade hours of our lives away for money. Sometimes people weren’t willing, or able, to trade enough away to afford housing.

  I did end up trying the vanlife myself, and it is a mixture of romantic and wonderful—adventure! escape! wanderlust!—and stressful. The constant worry about making rent is replaced by a new worry over where to park the van for the night. Showering and other basic human necessities become issues to plan ahead for and strategize around. Still, much like my characters at the beginning of Wrong Way Summer, I felt like I was on a Grand Adventure. But unlike them, I knew how this adventure would end: I had a place waiting for me when I was done exploring life on the road. And that is a luxury that many of the people I met did not have.

  I thought a lot about that luxury when I sat down to write Wrong Way Summer. Like my own dad, the dad in this story loses his job. But unlike my dad, this father is never able to recover financially, and instead ends up losing the house. He uses the #vanlife narrative of “houselessness as an exciting choice” in order to protect his kids from the scary realities of their situation. And like any story, it’s not really a lie, but instead a way of getting at a deeper truth: No matter how secure a person feels, it only takes one crisis—a health problem, a lost job, a new landlord—to potentially change everything. And when that happens, sometimes the ability to choose the narrative is the only real choice we have.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, so many people helped this story become a book, and I’m grateful to each and every one of them, including my amazing and supportive agent, Jennifer Azantian; my fantastic, eagle-eyed editor, Erica Finkel; and everyone else at Abrams, especially Siobhán Gallagher, Amy Vreeland, Emily Daluga, Jenn Jimenez, Brooke Shearouse, Nicole Schaefer, Trish McNamara O’Neill, Jenny Choy, Andrew Smith, Jody Mosley, Melanie Chang, Elisa Gonzalez, Mary Wowk, and Michael Jacobs.