My Almost Epic Summer

by Adele Griffin

  “Your opinion.” Starla makes a face. “It’s not even in a regular poem shape.”

  “It’s not supposed to be.”

  “You can’t just read some mushy sentence out of a book and call it a poem.”

  “But that’s my point. Poetry doesn’t have to—”

  “Because I can make any word rhyme. Go ahead. Pick a word.”

  I replace Obasan in my bag. “Braggart.”

  “Ha, nice try.” Starla glares at me like she’s the sheriff and I’m the sneaky outlaw. “That’s not a word.”

  “It is, too. I promise.”

  “All it rhymes with is fart.”

  “That’s only approximate rhyme, and if you’re going for that, a better choice might have been swagger. Or laggard. ”

  Starla’s glare tightens by a notch. “You’re pretty conceited. You think I can’t tell the difference between real and made-up words? You think I’m stupid, right? You and D, you both do. But I’ve got stuff going on up here all the time.” She taps her temple. “Sometimes I get dizzy from all the things in my mind. No joke.” Her voice gets louder. “All you nerds are alike. You act like you’re the only people who think. And mostly what you’re thinking about is how you’re better than everyone else. But you’re jealous of me, too. I know. I see how you watch me.”

  “I don’t think I’m better than you, and I definitely don’t watch you,” I say. It surprises me that Starla could possibly care what I think.

  “Come watch what I do next, Nerd.” Starla turns and starts walking. “I’ll show you something,” she calls. “Something worth watching.”

  And then I have to follow her, because her anger is so purposeful.

  “I can’t stay away too long. I need to keep an eye on Lainie,” I say to Starla’s back.

  She waves me off. “There’s sixty moms on patrol today. Chill.”

  So I trail her all the way to the parking lot, where Starla stops in front of a small, shiny blue car. If Starla had magical powers, the look she gives this car should have caused it to explode.

  “D took me out in this.” She kicks at a dinged hubcap.

  “We went out a lot of times. You think you’re so smart, tell me why someone would go out with you and then break up for no reason as soon as school ends?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t about you.”

  “Oh, shut up. I can get an answer like that out of any magazine.” Starla moves close into my space. “We did stuff in this car, you know? And every time I see it parked out here, I feel it all come back to me. Sometimes I feel it too much.” She presses her heart. “That’s why poetry is cool. I can explain my life a thousand times better in poem form.”

  Under the hot sun, the faint line that traces above the shape of Starla’s upper lip seems exceptionally pale, X-ray lit, against her tan skin. Or maybe I just noticed this, the way I’m always noticing new colors and angles of Starla. The smile she gives me is a duplicate of the smile I saw after she robbed Shady Shack, and my muscles tense in anticipation of whatever next trick she’s got up her sleeve. Then she fishes something out of her pocket.

  It’s a key, swinging on a loop of soft twine.

  I look around, trying to figure out what she wants to unlock. Nobody else is in the parking lot. The couple of kids lolling on Shady Shack’s porch to beat the heat have their backs to us.

  But Starla doesn’t unlock anything. She slashes the key across the car door’s paint. It leaves a dark scratch.

  “Wait! Stop!” I make a grab for her wrist and she snatches it away.

  “You don’t feel how I do when you see this car,” she says. I hear the rasp of metal on metal as the key’s edge digs deep and fierce. The scar she leaves in her wake is like the claw mark of an animal. She walks around it, slow, taking her time.

  I step back. I step back again. I can hardly breathe, but I can’t stop watching.

  Once Starla has returned to the point where she started, she pauses. Her breath is shallow. She holds up the key. “D, who took away our Love,” she intones, “Wise and Perfect as a Dove.” She’s quoting her own appalling poetry.

  “Starla, it’s not a crime to break up with someone,” I say. “But you—you’ve robbed this guy’s store, and now you’ve messed up his car. Those are crimes.”

  “You can’t judge me. You’ve never been in love.” Starla reaches over, bringing the point of her key to the underside of my chin, and for a half second I wonder if she’s going to scratch me, too. I don’t speak, I don’t move, even my lungs seemed to have stopped functioning. Starla holds my eye. Then she pockets the key. “When you’re in love, when you want to be with someone so much that you’ll go with that person anywhere, you’ll ride in his car and let him drive you where he wants and let him touch you where he wants and do what he wants and then he has all that . . . information about you, to tell his friends or whatever he wants to do with it—that’s a crime, too, okay?”

  I try to imagine D telling his friends all the secret details of Starla. About where her hidden moles are located and if she’s got bikini rash or bad breath. And while D doesn’t seem to be the type to gossip, I guess that’s not the point.

  “Call it a tie now,” I tell her. “Because now you have information, too. You know who robbed Shady Shack. And you know who messed up his car.”

  She smiles. It’s a sad little-girl smile. “And you know it, too, right? You’re my Witness.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Because if I didn’t have you watching, it’s like it didn’t happen.”

  “It happened, I promise.”

  This seems to relax her. Now she looks around, as if she’s just remembered where she is. “Y’know, every time I put on my Off Duty sign, one of those moms complains. No joke. Every single time. What, I can’t even go to the bathroom?” She wipes her shiny forehead with the back of a hand. “I need a cold drink. Come with me.” She eyes Shady Shack. And I know what she wants to do. She wants to gloat, to waltz and loiter up and down the aisles, stealing looks at D, making him uncomfortable, enjoying her information.

  “Actually, I brought juice pouches,” I say. “Shady Shack’s so overpriced.”

  “Ha, I can get you a discount.” Starla winks.

  I haven’t done anything wrong, of course, but even sharing this laugh with her makes me feel guilty.

  Longing and Disappointment

  STARLAMALLOY ’S JOURNAL

  D, there are Rumors that you are Free of Me. I am Happy for you. I want you to be Free. But. Know this: Freedom has its Price.

  A Heart that Beat for you,

  Still Beats with Love

  Without You.

  The poem doesn’t rhyme, and yet it retains the distinct Starla quality of being terrible.

  I log off and pick up Sister Soledad’s note.

  From: Soledad@olothtrc.com

  Dear Irene,

  I’m sorry not to have written you back promptly, but I’ve been a bit down in the dumps. Recently I have learned that Sister Maria Martinez has requested to be reassigned to Sisters of Saint Luciana, a convent right outside Lima, Peru. She has family there, and she leaves in less than two weeks.

  It is impossible to think about this house without Sister Maria inside it. She is the heart and soul and life of the Holy Trinity. She brightens up every room she’s in.

  Don’t be too upset with Whitney’s presumably perfect days at tennis camp, or Britta’s summer in Texas. And don’t be upset that you are resentful. Envy is, alas, a natural condition. I am recommending Tender Is the Night as a story about people who on the surface seem to have everything. It also has those inimitable Jazz Age hairstyles.

  Fondly,

  Sister Soledad

  Sister’s S’s note is more personal than I am used to. I never think of Sister S as “down in the dumps.” I’ve never thought about her emotions, period. She is, after all, a nun.

  I try to picture Sister’s life as an Epic, set to a soundtrack of organ music. I imagine dozens of creaky sister
s on creakier rocking chairs on the creakiest wraparound porch in Cape May. Then I stop. It’s too dismal. Sister S’s life is not a movie I’d go see, or a book I’d pick up. But Sister Soledad shouldn’t be sentenced to the rocking chair—not yet, anyhow. She’s too lively. Her eyes are like silver marbles that could confuse a person into wondering if she’s a crazed religious zealot or a soothsayer, but she’s neither. She’s just curious. Every year, Sister pieces and sews a quilt using scraps of material donated from each of her English students. She’s traveled to Yosemite with Bird Quest. She roots for the Knicks over the Nets. She Irish step-danced for the March of Dimes at Bishop Middle’s Spirit Day. Sister’s lots of things, and she’s also shy. Not that she ever admitted such a thing, but you could always hear it when she had to make announcements at morning assembly, how she’d breathe too hard in the microphone, then scurry from the podium while kids still had their hands raised.

  So when Sister Maria Martinez came bouncing around the creaky corner of that wraparound porch with plans for a night out in Atlantic City, I’m sure Sister Soledad’s pale eyes flared like sparklers. She loves new things and fun things and anything that makes her laugh.

  It’s been a while since I felt truly sorry for someone other than myself. But I do now. Only I don’t know what to write back to Sister Soledad. An inspiring quote feels too distant, like shouting down a mountain when what Sister S needs is a whisper in her ear. So I close up her letter, unanswered.

  There’s no mail from Whitney. I’m sure she is mad with me, but I can’t scrape up the energy to put together a whole letter, complete with I’ve-been-so-superhumanly-lame-not-writing-you-back-please-forgive-me apology.

  Instead, I find these really dumb Internet jokes and forward them to her, with a little note that says Funny! and I feel like a cop-out for doing it, since we both hate that kind of corny stuff.

  Finally, I scribble Write Whitney on a Post-It, stick it to my screen and hope that does the trick.

  My Mother Makes Up Her Mind About Me

  “DO YOU THINK we’ll ever see him again?”

  Mom paces the windows. Back and forth. She could use a widow’s walk. Too bad Roy’s home improvements never extended to that.

  “No,” I answer honestly.

  “No, not next week? Or no, not ever?”

  “No, not . . . for a while.” Behind my copy of Tender Is the Night, I am crossing my fingers, because I know the truth. No, not ever. Never.

  “I wasn’t watching him close enough.” Pace, pace. “I wasn’t paying attention and I didn’t see what he needed.” Pace, pace. It’s making my nerves jangle.

  “Roy left,” I explain steadily, “because that’s his nature. He got bored with suburbia. End of story.”

  Sometimes too much of the truth is more than Mom needs. I know I’ve overstepped it, even before I see the shine in the corners of her eyes when she looks over at me. “That sure is a nasty thing to say.”

  “Well, sorry, but it’s not like Roy has this tremendously complicated personality that takes more than fifteen seconds to analyze.” Oh, Lordy. Why’d I have to add that? Mom’s tears seem to bring out the worst in me.

  “You know, Irene, you can be real priggish at times.” Mom’s voice cracks. “Real priggish.”

  I lift my book over my face. I might be priggish, but at least I’m not mystified about whether or not dopey Roy is coming back. The guy is probably in some honky-tonk truck stop, watching live televised female mud wrestling, as his one-year-plus-two-months’ relationship with Mom turns into memory mildew. Besides, Mom will find someone new. She always does. She’s the kind of person who has to live in a pair, same as Whitney.

  In Tender Is the Night, Dick and Nicole Diver’s love wraps around each other so cobra tight that they sign their letters Dicole. I wish I could be somebody’s Direne. A perfect somebody, with the cuteness of Paul Pelicano, the laid-back style of Dan Prior, and a touch of Mr. Rochester’s haunted past. He would be named Lars and he would live in Malibu Beach, and when I had to attend glamorous Hollywood events, Lars and I would arrive fashionably late in his steel blue convertible as onlookers murmured There will never be a love as great as theirs while snapping our picture from flattering angles.

  Mom is still pacing. Poor Mom. I mark my page with Britta’s latest postcard and put down my book.

  “You want me to walk into town and rent some movies? We could do a whole popcorn-and-movie-night thing.”

  “Mmm.” She stops, drops to the rocker. “Yeah, okay. That might be nice. No horror, though.”

  But then, just as I’m kicking on my sneakers, Bella phones to invite Mom for a Girls’ Night Out.

  “Thank God. Now that’s exactly what I need. Gimme half an hour.” Mom hangs up and turns purposeful. I follow her into her bedroom and stand in the doorway, watching as she yanks a comb through her hair and blots on her lipstick.

  “So I guess you’ll take a rain check on movie night?” I can’t help myself from sounding hurt. Mom stops, mid-blot.

  “Honey, you know it’d be good for me to get out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to sit here and . . . and dwell on how I just got dumped.”

  I clear my throat. “Have you ever noticed how every time a guy dumps you, you dump me?”

  “That is not true.”

  “It is. Because what you really can’t stand is being here dwelling on how you’re a single mom. You think you’re missing out on your real life.” I’d heard Mom say something like that once to Marianne, when she hadn’t known I was listening. Now I’m slyly glad to throw it at her. “And while we’re on the subject of things that are true . . .” But now I have to follow her as she brushes past me in a huff. I talk to the back of her head. “Girls’ Night Out is kind of a farce, don’t you think? How much about girls could it possibly be, since all you do is go somewhere to check out the guys? What’s wrong with Girls’ Night In? You could even invite Bella over or—”

  “Don’t you guilt me, Irene Morse.” Mom glares over her shoulder. “There’s a box of spaghetti in the cupboard, there’s a tomato on the windowsill. I’ll be home soon, but don’t wait up.” She opens the door and slams herself out. Which doesn’t surprise me, really, since Mom’s first reaction is always to get defensive—a trait I think I got stuck with, too.

  The important thing is I said my piece. Whether Mom re-examines it or not will be up to time. I slide back down on the couch and pick up my book. Soon I’m disappearing inside the story, on the coast of Cap d’Antibes, a place that sounds so glitzy and gold-drenched and shimmering that I wish I knew how to pronounce it out loud.

  So far, the Dicoles’ lives are perfect.

  An Unexpected Request

  THE RINGING WAKES ME. Mom, too. She must have come home after I fell asleep. I know by the way she’s bumping madly down the hall in search of the phone that she is thinking: Roy.

  Then she knocks and whispers, “For you!”

  When I open my bedroom door, Mom seems more sleepy than angry. Girls’ Nights Out are good for her that way, at least. They take the edge off, temporarily. “Tell whoever it is that next time you’ll be grounded for any calls past ten, okay?” Then she swoops back into her room.

  It takes me a few seconds to realize the phone in my hand means somebody is on the other end. Somebody who wants to talk with me. Now. While I’m still half asleep. “Hello?”

  “Irene? It’s Drew Fuller.”

  Drew Fuller? Who is that? “Hi?”

  “Is this too late to call?” I can’t place his voice, which is soft and gentle, calling to mind guitar players more than football players. “I got your number from an old Bishop Middle snow chain.”

  “What?” I cough the sleep rasp from my throat. “Are you sure you have the right number?”

  “You’re Irene, um, Morse?”

  “Yes.” One thing I’m sure of. “I’m Irene.”

  “Maybe you don’t remember me. I was in Mr. Frank’s sixth grade and
you were in Mrs. Calderon’s fifth, and we were both in the gifted program. We did the Shark Park Project together for science fair?”

  The Shark Park Project, how could I forget? It was a proposal petitioning the Fijian government for allocation and protection of a three-mile strip of water off the island of Tonga in order to preserve the near-extinct tiger shark. We were Bishop Middle’s official selection, and went on to win fourth place in the State Regionals. I still have the ribbon, although we failed to get the sharks their park.

  And now my memory also sifts up a scrawny, silent kid with a mouthful of sharklike silver braces. Why is geeky Drew Fuller calling me at midnight? And am I now supposed to talk to him as if this is a normal, every night occurrence? I give it my best. “Oh, yeah, I remember. Didn’t your dad once give some of us rides home?”

  “Yep. You still live on Valentine?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I search for small-talk topics and come up empty-handed. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Right. About Tara.” Drew Fuller coughs. “Tell Tara Malloy to stop doing that stuff. I saw her steal those candy bars and drinks. You gotta tell her, since you’re her friend, that she’s crossed the line. Also what she did to my car. My brother and I bought that car together with our own money. You can’t believe how mad he was. Tell her enough is enough.”

  It takes my brain almost a hundred years to process that Drew Fuller from the Shark Park Project is also Starla’s beloved, despised D.

  He is waiting for me to speak. What should I say first? Should I clarify that she’s Starla now, not Tara? Or that I’m not really her friend? Mostly I want to ask Drew Fuller when he got so tall.

  Instead, I come up with, “I think Starla wants more reasons about why the two of you broke up.”

  In answer, silence. Then, “We’re not each other’s types. She’s too intense. Can’t you tell her that?”