Summer of Brave

by Amy Noelle Parks

  Or neither. It depends how you look at it, I guess.

  This setup is called “bird-nesting.” They read about it in some magazine. Usually it means the kid stays in the same house (or nest) all the time, and the parents move in and out (like birds, I guess). But Mom and Dad say it’s easier to have a duplex and have me move back and forth.

  They did not like it when I asked easier for who.

  Mom and Dad say they are Committed Co-parents who put my needs in front of theirs. When they say this, you can tell they are very proud of themselves. But if they actually thought my needs were as important as theirs, bird-nesting wouldn’t be necessary, would it?

  Even though I don’t have to move back and forth across town like Knox, the book I’m reading and the sweater I want and my sketchbook are always in the bedroom I’m not in.

  Mom and Dad say the whole thing is a fair way to share custody.

  Even before the divorce, Mom and Dad were big on fair. They divided up my name. Dad picked Lilla for the painter Lydia Cabot Perry. Mom chose Edith for Edith Patch, the first woman president of the Entomological Society of America. Baxter is Mom’s last name, and Willoughby is Dad’s. Lydia “Lilla” Edith Baxter-Willoughby. It’s a lot of name, but there’s something for everyone.

  My activities are also evenly split. When Mom signed me up for Girls Who Code, Dad put me in a drawing class. I like computers and art, but sometimes I wish everything didn’t have to be so balanced. It’s like my whole personality is a popularity contest.

  Three nights a week, I eat dinner with Mom, and three nights I eat with Dad. The seventh night we go out as a family, so I can feel secure and not grow up to do something terrible because of the divorce, like shoplift or not get into a good college.

  They think I’m fine with all this. And I try to keep it that way. Even when I want to, I make sure not to shut myself in my room. Either one of them.

  And I do not cry at the dinner table. Because that is what therapy is for, and Dad says I should not manipulate people with my tears.

  I don’t complain when I have to walk downstairs for my phone charger, because lots of girls my age don’t even have phone chargers.

  It’s true that one time I underlined the part of the article about bird-nesting that said the child gets to stay in one place.

  Mom and Dad said this was not giving them the Credit They Deserved. They say I should be grateful they don’t shout all the time like Knox’s parents or force me to choose between them or make me live far away from my school. They have worked hard to make this easy for me, so the least I can do is Appreciate Their Efforts because this bird-nesting thing is not so fun for anyone.

  Mom and Dad say they got divorced because they weren’t happy. I didn’t even know you could do that. I thought you got divorced if someone did something terrible or if you screamed and yelled all the time. I thought if you weren’t happy, you got a hobby. Or therapy. Or meds.

  Not a bird’s nest.

  So now, even though it’s hard sometimes, I do all I can to keep them happy. Because if they’re not, who knows what they’ll do next.

  CHAPTER 3

  Choices

  The door on the left side of our duplex is open behind the screen. Dad’s door is closed up tight, so he’s probably not home. Which is fine. It’s Mom’s day anyway. I trot up the stairs, because the faster you move, the happier you sound.

  “Welcome home, eighth-grader!” Mom calls.

  “Smells good,” I say as I come into the kitchen.

  “Grilled cheese with cinnamon apples.” This is our favorite sandwich, and we eat it all the time. It’s one of the good things about the divorce.

  Dad says sandwiches are not an appropriate dinner. He likes to cook fancy meals and grow his own vegetables and make furniture in the basement and write and read and go to art museums.

  Mom’s more focused. She likes me. And bugs. And people who study bugs. And that’s about it. A few years ago, she got to combine all her favorite things on a trip to Ecuador. She discovered a new kind of wasp and named it after me—the Aleiodes lilliae. It’s a little bit blue and sort of pretty. It could have been worse.

  “Letter on the table for you,” she says, grabbing plates for dinner. Her forced No-Big-Deal tone lets me know what it is: my end-of-grade test scores.

  Even if my numbers are good, I’ll have to go through Summer Showcase, where you prove how good you are at math or coding or drawing or whatever. Because school smart isn’t enough. To get into Grover Academy, you have to be creative and curious and original.

  And those are only the adjectives I remember. There’s a whole list.

  The competition to get in is bonkers. Living in a college town, a lot of us have professors for parents, and whatever the prize, they want their kids to win. And like a lot of parents, Mom and Dad also like to pretend they don’t care. “She pushes herself,” they say to anyone who will listen.

  I flip the envelope over in my hand. There’s no clue in its weight. My scores will be printed on a single sheet of paper.

  To apply to the arts track, you have to test above the benchmark in English language arts, and for STEM, you have to do it in math. Mom and Dad disagree about which track I should focus on in high school. But they share a love for high test scores.

  Mom watches me closely. “You’re allowed to retest in case of hardship. I can call for you.”

  She means we could tell them I didn’t do well because of the divorce. But it’s hard to see how another couple of months would make a difference anyway. Even if I get used to this bird-nest thing, my parents will still be divorced.

  But then, it’s not like anyone would believe my excuse anyway. The whole retest thing is just a way to get people to back off. I don’t even blame the school. Parents around here are pretty scary.

  Last year one girl got a retake because her parents said she was devasted by the death of her goldfish. A classmate of hers got his redo because he lost his swim meet the day before.

  I keep looking at the back of the envelope, and Mom keeps not saying that it will be fine if my scores are low. Because it won’t be.

  Obviously.

  “I can’t stand it anymore. Open it!” she says finally. When I don’t move, she adds, “Unless you want your dad?” Mom twists a towel in her hand. “Should we?”

  She sounds so uncertain. This is not like her. Or at least it didn’t used to be. But she’s read so many books on divorce, and her browser history is a horror show of late-night-panic googling about everything that could go wrong for me. (I wasn’t snooping when I found this—just trying to get some homework done without having to go downstairs to get my laptop.) Mom tries real hard to include Dad on important things, even when she doesn’t want to. But I hate it when she asks me to weigh in on this stuff.

  “I don’t think he’s home,” I say. “The door was closed when I got here.” Mom frowns and looks toward the clock on the stove. It’s after six. Dad loves his routines, and it’s past time to start cooking.

  To distract her, I rip the envelope. The letter is a mess of red and green bars and arrows and numbers.

  “Well?” Mom says, hands curled into fists. She’s trying not to rip the paper out of my hands. I find what I’m looking for—ninety-eighth percentile in English language arts, ninety-sixth in math.

  I didn’t just hit the benchmarks. I sailed over them. I can’t name the feeling rising up. Relief, maybe?

  Mom grabs the paper out of my hands, gives it a quick glance, and laughs. “That face! I didn’t know what to think.” She pulls me in for a hug. “Sure, the math score’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. And we can always get you some tutoring over the summer.”

  I’d hoped once these scores came in, I could take a break. If the showcase goes all right, I’ll be set—as long as I don’t screw up too much in eighth grade. Colleges don’t see your middle school grades, so it would be a good year to chill some.

  But Mom is right. If I do the magnet school—es
pecially the STEM track—it’s going to be hard. I can’t afford to fall behind.

  It’s real important to Mom that I do well in math. Coming up in the sciences was hard for her. She was one of only a few girls all along the way, and she’s all excited for me to follow in her footsteps. She doesn’t care if it’s entomology—thank goodness—but she’s always saying things like “So many girls get pushed out of science in middle school. We can’t let that happen to you.” She would have seen it as a Failure of All Feminism if I’d chosen yearbook as an elective instead of forensic science when we did our eighth-grade schedules a few weeks ago.

  (Fun fact: Entomologists get consulted all the time to help solve crimes. Mom once identified a murderer by the flea in his hair.)

  Mom turns over the paper. “There’s an information session about Grover Academy on Tuesday night, and the showcase is a week after that. I suppose we should hear what they say before we decide on your track. Make sure you’re going to get in on the STEM side. But Elizabeth said her son got in with a ninety-two last year. You should be fine.”

  “Knox wants to do the arts program,” I say. I’m not sure why. Testing the idea, maybe.

  “Well, he has real musical talent, doesn’t he?”

  Which means my talent for drawing is what? I think. Imaginary?

  We hear the downstairs door creak open, and our eyes meet. Mom’s face goes a little sad, and she hands back the paper. “Go tell him. He’ll want to know.”

  I nod and head downstairs, wondering for the infinitieth time whose idea this divorce was. In the beginning, it seemed like Mom was making everything happen, and Dad was as stunned as I was. But now, she’s still sad, and he’s happier and happier. I have no idea what caused it. All they’ll say is that they aren’t good partners for each other anymore, and it has nothing to do with me. I think they had to memorize this line in therapy.

  The upstairs and downstairs apartments have separate doors on the front porch, but both have landings off the same wooden staircase in back. There’s an attic on the top, a door to the outside on the bottom, and little round porthole windows all up the side.

  I spend a lot of time reading out here. It’s sunny and warm, and because it’s an in-between space, it doesn’t feel like it belongs to either Mom or Dad.

  Dad lets me into his kitchen when I knock on the door. “Is it my night?” He looks over his shoulder at the stove. “I only bought enough for one.”

  I know he doesn’t mean to make me feel unwanted. Even though Mom’s the scientist and Dad’s the art historian, he’s way more literal than she is. He’s just reporting the number of steaks in his kitchen. Still, I have to squash down my sadness. “No. Mom’s making sandwiches.”

  I hold out my paper. “I got my test scores. She thought I should show you. I mean…I wanted to.”

  He takes the paper, making sense of it so much more quickly than I did. “Congratulations, Lydia Edith. I’m happy to see this.” Not that you’d know it by looking at him. Dad and I have the same hazel eyes, light-brown hair, and soft features, but his face doesn’t move around nearly as much as mine, because Dad doesn’t show emotions. He narrates them.

  This drives Mom batty. Or is it drove? Do things like this stop bothering you after a divorce?

  “So, the higher English score means the arts track. You want to take the sure bet. Guarantee you get in.” He doesn’t make any of this a question.

  “Makes sense.” Is not telling him Mom thinks I’m doing the STEM track a white lie or a silence?

  I’ll figure it out later.

  Deciding what to do for the showcase is stressful enough without my parents arguing over which track I should apply to. If I’d been really smart, I would have tanked one of the tests, so I only had one choice.

  Or I could have blown both tests and had no way to get into Grover Academy. I’d have to go to Morningside. My mind leaps away from that thought like it’s a hand over a hot stove. I want to go to the magnet school. Obviously. Why wouldn’t I?

  I missed some of what Dad said, but he seems to be explaining the rules. “You get a five-by-ten space to display whatever you want. Let’s go through your portfolio tomorrow. We’ll figure out what we can use, and if you need to do something new.”

  He means he will figure it out.

  Dad flips the paper over. “And we have to go to a meeting Tuesday. The arts one is at seven.”

  Uh-oh. “It’s not one big meeting?”

  Looking at the paper, he shakes his head. “No. First STEM and then the arts. Isn’t that always the way?” He looks up at the ceiling. “Do you need me to talk to her? Is she disappointed about your choice?”

  My choice.

  Even with his blank face, it’s pretty easy to see Dad would rather do anything other than go upstairs and explain to his ex-wife that her daughter would rather draw than do science.

  “Maybe I could go to the arts one with you and the science one with her?” I suggest.

  He tilts his head, thinking about it. “Sure. That could work. Like you’re considering both.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Like that.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Myself, But More

  Over the next two days, the breezy little thought that floated through my mind when I got my test scores grows into a hurricane.

  The more I chase away the idea, the more it pops up. When I go to bed. When I wake up. In my loopy handwriting under the self-portrait in my sketchbook. I try it on for size.

  I don’t want to go to the magnet school.

  Looking at the page, I whisper it. Lightning doesn’t crack across the sky, and the walls of my room don’t shake. I’m a little surprised.

  Turning down the magnet school is not something professors’ kids do. We never even talked about whether I would go. As long as I can remember, going to Grover Academy was the thing I would do before college. The school’s reputation was part of why Mom and Dad took jobs here in the first place.

  Sometimes, they did talk about what would happen if I didn’t get in. Their backup plan was tutoring and retesting so I could transfer in later.

  Dad says it’s where you graduate that matters, not where you start. He grew up in the middle of nowhere and did two years of community college after high school. Even before things got bad, he used to make a lot of little comments about the fancy schools Mom went to.

  Of course, that doesn’t stop him from wanting them for me.

  Maybe I’ve watched one too many movies, but I want high school to be more than choosing between AP Art and AP Chem. I want to go to football games on Friday nights and art club and Odyssey of the Mind.

  And—I feel like I have to whisper this thought even in my head—maybe I want a school where everyone doesn’t know me as the girl who follows Vivi and Knox around.

  They’re both so sure of what they want. Knox never looks more like Knox than when he plays the guitar, and Vivi’s the same when she codes. I can see her next to me finding pathways two and three steps ahead. If I talk to her when she’s in the middle of it, she jumps right out of her seat.

  Sometimes I wonder if something’s wrong with me because I don’t feel like that about anything. I like coding and drawing and writing and solving equations. But not the way they do. I’m not even sure I’d want something to take me over like that.

  My phone buzzes.

  Vivi: Summer Wish check-in!

  Lilla: Only 3 lies. I told you. Very honest.

  Vivi: And white lies?

  Lilla: *sigh* 16. It’s their fault. They keep asking me questions.

  Vivi: Oh, well *questions.* Who can blame you?

  Lilla: And before you ask, there’s lots of silences too. I don’t know how many.

  Vivi: Because you can’t count that high.

  Lilla: Harsh. Do I win the first round?

  Vivi: Depends on how complete your journal is. Knox wrote a song about lying to his dad. So pressure’s on. See you after your interview tomorrow?

  Lilla: I’ll
find you.

  Vivi: Good luck!

  Vivi, Knox, and I applied to be junior counselors for the summer camps run by the three museums on campus. My cousin Sara says I’m extra for wanting a summer job while I’m still in middle school. And I get it. Part of me likes the idea of spending my whole summer swimming.

  But summers by the pool aren’t so much the vibe in our town. Here, kids go to orchestra camp so they can finally take down that girl who beat them out for first chair the last two years, or they travel to other countries to brush up on their second (or third) language, or they take math classes at the college so they can get to calculus as sophomores and then do who knows what their last two years of high school.

  If I said I wanted to lie around by the pool all summer, my parents would send me right back into counseling because they’d worry the divorce led to a Lack of Ambition.

  Besides, I’ve always loved the museum camps. Junior counselor is first step to being hired as a real counselor when you’re sixteen, and that would be a pretty awesome summer job.

  Because Dad is the director of the art museum, I basically grew up inside the giant building that houses the museums. I learned to draw by copying paintings, and I spent hours in the science museum looking at fossils, giant beehives, and models of the lunar surface, but the children’s museum has always been my favorite.

  You can race boats through a maze of waterways and build a Rube Goldberg machine and work in a pretend grocery store with carts and a cash register and a conveyor belt that moves when you press a button with your foot. There’s a giant pirate ship you can climb on and a tree house with a reading nook.

  I’m too old for all of it, but if I get picked as a junior counselor, I’m totally building a fort with the giant foam blocks. Knox and I tried the last time we were there, but little kids kept taking our blocks and looked like they’d cry if we took them back.

  They only pick six kids across the three museums, and they’ll for sure put Vivi in the science camp. And Knox is perfect for the children’s museum. He plays the guitar and the piano and makes up games all the time. I’m not as sparkly as they are, but I think I’d be good at working with shyer kids. I hope I can make them see that.