The Summertime Girls

by Laura Hankin

  “Oh, my friend’s grandmother. We’re helping her pack up her house. I spent all morning carrying boxes down stairs. Hence the sweatiness,” she said, indicating her limp hair, the slightly stained armpits of her shirt.

  “You’re not that sweaty.”

  “Thanks,” she said, letting out a little laugh.

  “So helping out your friend’s grandma? That’s nice of you.”

  “Well, it’s nice of you to help out your father-in-law. Besides, it’s also about spending time with Beth—my friend—since apparently I’m never going to see her again after this.” She tried to smile to counteract the bitterness in her voice, but it hurt, just thinking about how Beth so easily could choose a life without her. She realized now that, even though Beth had stopped communicating with her, even though she’d warned herself that Britton Hills this time would feel different, she hadn’t fully believed it. She’d thought that things would get back to normal. But there was no way they could when Beth was just going to disappear again. How could you want to repair something so temporary?

  She didn’t want to be temporary to another person. She’d been expendable to Tom (well, maybe—she still clung to the hope that their breakup was a mistake that he’d want to unmake as soon as they were in the same place again). Her father—after the divorce, he’d taken off to California, where he lived with a stiff, polite woman Ally had never really gotten to know. Throughout the rest of her childhood he’d sent regular checks to support her and Marsha, whose focus on two creative Ps—pottery (lumpy) and poetry (abstract)—didn’t do much to pay the bills. Thanks to his dot-com money, he’d been able to put Ally through college, for which she was grateful, of course. But that wasn’t love, not really. He knew the highlights version of her life and didn’t seem interested in anything more. And Marsha. Ally could never quite get a read on how much she mattered to her mother.

  Beth had been the constant factor, the symbol that was always supposed to equal the same thing—support, stability, love. She had as good as promised it, ever since that day at the end of eighth grade. They’d gone on a field trip to a Revolutionary War battlefield with their class, the teachers doing everything in their power to kill time until the school year ended, driving on a cramped bus from Delaware into New Jersey, and Beth and Ally had, of course, been bus partners. They’d stuck together the whole day like they normally did, but on this day, Ally had been ornery. She’d turned fourteen the day before, and while a lot about her birthday had been very right (her mom had baked her a dark chocolate cake with rich icing, and Beth and some other friends had surprised her at school with balloons and little presents like lip gloss and nail polish), her dad hadn’t called her. He hadn’t sent a card either. He’d clearly just forgotten. It felt to her, after the divorce and his move away, like he’d halfheartedly tried to stay in her life for a couple of years, doing the requisite divorced-dad things, but now he was starting to give up. He was letting go of his duties slowly but intently, and pretty soon she’d have nothing left of him. Little things about being with him were starting to recede in her mind. The snort that crept into his laugh whenever she did something he found genuinely funny, the way he fought against his natural competitiveness when they played Clue together so that she could win, these were now things that she told herself about rather than things she actually remembered experiencing.

  The class had listened to a presentation from a historian Ally considered far too chipper, and they had eaten a Colonial-themed lunch of apple butter and roast beef. After everyone split up to wander around for the last hour before their buses came back to take them home, Ally had just wanted to be alone. But Beth had followed her as she walked silently into the field, chatting along about facts from the worksheet the historian had passed out, as if Ally couldn’t read them herself.

  “Did you see this—that nearly three hundred men died here? Oh man. And they think maybe more people would have died, but the British couldn’t get some of their cannons to work . . .”

  The trees around them hung heavy with mid-May blossoms, whites and pale pinks nestled among the green leaves, and the sky above them stretched out clear and uninterrupted by clouds. Birds sang to one another with lilting melodies. Ally felt like she’d stepped into the most beautiful landscape painting she’d ever seen, but the canvas was smothering her. She sat in the grass, pressed down by an invisible weight.

  “It’s so weird,” Beth was saying as she sat down next to her, her voice drilling into Ally’s ear, “that all these people died here, but now it’s so beautiful, right? Kind of crazy!”

  “Beth,” Ally said. “Shut up.”

  “What?”

  “You’re being really freaking annoying. Shut up. I don’t care about that stupid stuff. You’re acting like such a big nerd.” She put on a cartoon nerd’s mocking voice, and said, “Oooh, isn’t it pretty here even though people died?” She was being mean, like one of the popular girls, and for a second she liked seeing how Beth’s face whitened and her eyes registered a deep betrayal, so she pushed it even further and started to yell, something she’d never done in front of Beth before. “I. DON’T. CARE. I just want you to go away!”

  But then Beth got to her feet and started to run away, and Ally couldn’t stop herself from calling out after her. “Wait—I’m sorry.”

  Beth whirled around. “That was really not nice of you.”

  “I know. I just—my dad forgot my birthday yesterday.”

  Slowly, Beth started back toward Ally. “Really? He forgot? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t call or anything.”

  “Maybe he sent you a card, and it’s late getting to you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That really sucks.” Beth sat back down on the grass again, not as close as she’d been sitting before.

  “Sometimes I hate him.”

  “Well, yeah, that makes sense.”

  “No, but sometimes I really hate him. Like, like I want him to die. Like he could just die some painful death. Be, I don’t know, bayoneted by a redcoat or something, and I wouldn’t care. I would say, ‘Serves you right for leaving me.’” Ally couldn’t look at Beth as she said this. She’d never told anyone before about this ice in her veins. “And sometimes that hate just takes over and gets bigger and bigger, and then I hate everyone.”

  “Even me?” Beth said in a little voice.

  Ally met her eyes then and nodded, ashamed of herself. “Yes. Even you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you hate me sometimes?”

  Beth considered this as Ally held her breath. Then she shook her head slowly. “No. No, I don’t hate you ever. Sometimes I get really annoyed with you, but I always still love you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ally said. “I’m sorry I’m such a bad person. I understand if you don’t want to be friends with me anymore or anything.”

  “I’m a bad person too sometimes,” Beth said.

  “No you’re not. You’re perfect.”

  “I’m not perfect.” Beth looked around to see if anyone was nearby. “And sometimes I get so annoyed with acting like I am that I just want to do bad things on purpose.”

  “But you don’t actually do them, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Beth said. “Except—except last weekend when my mom and I went to the mall—we were at Isabel’s Closet and there was another mom with her daughter right by us. The daughter was throwing this fit ’cause her mom said she couldn’t get a skirt she wanted. And my mom turned to me and patted me on the head like I was a dog and said, ‘Thank goodness for you, my good girl.’ So, when she went to a different part of the store to look at the scarves, I went to the earring section and”—she fixed her gaze on Ally, worried—“I stole a pair. I just slipped them in my pocket, these little smiley face earrings. I didn’t even like them that much. I threw them out when I got home—buried them in the bottom of
the trash can. I just did it, I don’t know, for fun or something, or because I had to.” She blinked down at the ground, her face white. “I stole from them. I’m a criminal. So I understand if you don’t want to be friends with me.”

  “But I do,” Ally said, and grabbed Beth’s hand. They lay back with their heads against the grass and stared at the sky until Ms. Mandrino blew the whistle, summoning them back to the buses.

  Something had shifted between them that day. They’d been best friends before, but now they were more than that. Ally had shown a secret, unlovable part of herself to Beth, and Beth had shown her own in turn. And they’d looked at these half-formed shames and said, “Okay. I love you anyway.” So Ally had thought nothing could change that.

  But now it had changed, and figuring out how to switch it back, now that the givens of her life had mutated on her, felt insurmountably difficult.

  She could feel Nick looking at her. “Well, if you can tear yourself away from your friend, come here and we’ll write songs,” he said, calling her back to her stool.

  She smiled at him. “Maybe I will,” she said.

  TEN

  Beth yanked herself back to the attic, hurtling across the ocean to rest on Grandma Stella’s floor. She didn’t want to think about that morning at Open Arms, not now. Instead, she finished cleaning like someone hopped up on speed. Not that she knew what that felt like. She’d never considered doing drugs. Even alcohol sometimes made her nervous. She worried at the way it coursed through her body, leaving a looseness that convinced her she could sleep for an entire day or dance for an entire night. She only thought about herself and what she wanted when her body unknotted itself like that.

  She swept the last of the cobwebs out of the attic, now cleared of everything except the BAAB, the pictures of Grandma Stella, and an old dark wood picture frame she’d found in a dusty box. Then she grabbed the beach picture, of Stella and Lila radiant in their bathing suits, and fit it into the frame. She marched downstairs, stepping over the rejected odds and ends encased in their trash bags, and walked into the kitchen.

  “Cleaning’s done,” she trilled. “I’ll drive over to the dump in just a little bit, so the trash won’t be in the way for your party.”

  “You’re a lifesaver!” Grandma Stella replied from her seat at the kitchen table.

  “Oh, no, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re my angel, my sweet, sweet doll! Now take a break.” Grandma Stella patted the chair next to her, and Beth came and sat down.

  “I have a surprise for you. Ally and I found this in the attic and thought you might like to take it with you to Sunny Acres.” She pulled the photo out from behind her back and set it on the table.

  “Oh?” Grandma Stella said, her face filled with love as she looked at Beth. Then she leaned forward to see the photo. Her eyes focused on it, and her smile drained away. Beth waited for exclamations of joy, but they didn’t come.

  Finally, after a few seconds, Grandma Stella said, “That’s nice.”

  “It’s such a lovely photo,” Beth said. “You both look beautiful.” Grandma Stella shot her a wary look, one that Beth wasn’t used to seeing, so Beth kept talking. “I don’t think I’ve seen pictures of her that age before. Lila, I mean.”

  Grandma Stella let out a quick exhale when Beth said Lila’s name. “Oh. Yes,” she said. Then she stood up and headed over to the refrigerator, burying her face inside it. “Thank you. Now, do you want something to eat? I have oranges so juicy, you’ll think you hopped in a swimming pool.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Beth said, remaining at the table. She looked at the photo again, then at her grandmother’s stiffened back. She walked up to join her at the fridge. “I really don’t need any—”

  The sight of Grandma Stella’s face cut off the rest of her sentence prematurely. Her eyes were wet and red, and she was biting her lip as if doing so could prevent her eyes from getting any wetter and redder than they already were.

  “Oh,” Beth said. “I’m so sorry. I thought you’d like it.”

  “No, no, I do.” Grandma Stella dabbed at her eyes with her pointer finger, then blinked rapidly. “I guess I just miss her.” She let out a deep breath and gave Beth a half smile. “Now, are you sure I can’t feed you?”

  Just then, someone rapped on the door. Grandma Stella scooted off to answer it. A few moments later, Beth heard her chatting excitedly as she led the visitor into the kitchen.

  “Beth, darling, look who it is!” she said. She seemed to have shaken off her prior distress as she tugged Owen Mulberry by the hand. His hand, callused and strong, nearly swallowed hers whole. She moved her eyebrow up and down in a lascivious wiggle meant only for Beth, but Owen had no trouble seeing it. He bit down on his lip to keep from laughing.

  Beth felt like the air-conditioning had decided to take a lunch break. All of a sudden, she was far too hot. “Hi, Owen,” she said.

  “Hi, Beth.” He smiled a colossal smile. Grandma Stella looked back and forth between the two of them like a hyped-up Jack Russell, and Beth remembered that, generally, in a conversation, a person was supposed to say something.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. He held up some flattened cardboard boxes.

  “I thought you might need these to go along with your packing tape. We have a bunch of extra cartons sitting around the store.”

  “Oh. Thank you. That’s really thoughtful of you.”

  Grandma Stella chimed in. “Coming all this way, when it’s so warm outside! Owen, that’s over a thirty-minute walk.”

  “Well, Grandma,” Beth said, “I think Owen probably walks a bit faster than you do.”

  Grandma Stella nodded approvingly at Owen. “Yes, long legs,” she said, admiring them shamelessly. “And you seem very athletic. I bet you can lift heavy things!” Again, Owen bit down on his lip and made eye contact with Beth, who stuck her knuckle in her mouth and put her teeth on it, hard, stifling the breathless laugh that often betrayed her in moments of embarrassment.

  “How long did it take you to walk?” Grandma Stella pressed.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Fifteen, twenty minutes?”

  “Owen!” Grandma Stella clapped her hands together and widened her eyes, as though he’d just told her he’d saved the lives of a thousand kittens and would be giving her the cutest one. “That’s so fast! You must be thirsty. Lemonade? Ice water? I think I have cold white wine around here somewhere, and you should know that I don’t offer my good wine to just anyone.”

  “Please, I’m fine,” he said. “Actually, do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

  “Of course, of course, of course! Any time you want it, my bathroom is yours,” Grandma Stella replied, and gave him some effusive directions on how to navigate the fifteen feet to the toilet. He stepped out of the kitchen. Grandma Stella waited about three seconds, then turned to Beth.

  “He is so handsome,” she stage-whispered, beaming. “And I think he likes you! Well, why wouldn’t he? He’s smart, that’s what he is. Smart and handsome. And a fast walker!”

  Without warning, irritation cut into Beth, irritation at Grandma Stella’s blithe matchmaking, at Owen’s unthinking certainty that he could bring over some cardboard boxes and complicate her life. She hated her own body for the way her blood started humming the moment he appeared in Grandma Stella’s kitchen, making her flush. With her body acting like that, it was difficult to remember that she had important things to do far away from Britton Hills, duties that she could force herself to do much more easily if she didn’t fall in love, or in crazy lust, or whatever you could call this novel, overwhelming sensation.

  So when Owen came back from the bathroom and asked about all the trash in the hallway, and Grandma Stella said, “Oh, Beth is taking it to the dump. It’s certainly a lot for one person to handle, even if she is as capable as my granddaughter,” and Owen offered to drive with her t
o help, she knew she should say no. She opened her mouth to do just that, as politely as possible, but Grandma Stella cut in.

  “Owen Mulberry, your parents have raised you right! What a nice offer. This will make it go so much quicker, don’t you think so, Beth?”

  Grandma Stella’s car had a bigger trunk than Beth’s. At first, Grandma Stella fretted about letting them take it. “Oh, but you’ll have to bring it back by two,” she said, “because someone’s coming to look at it. What if you want to stay out longer? Maybe you should take yours instead.” But Beth insisted that they needed the extra room, so she and Owen swung the trash bags into Grandma Stella’s car and climbed in.

  Beth buckled her seat belt, checked her mirrors, and resolved to keep things friendly. It helped when she concentrated on the smell of a particularly rank bag of trash Grandma Stella had asked them to take, filled with the remains of last night’s seafood dinner. On the way to the dump, they talked about nothing things. Beth brought up the weather at one point. Owen fiddled with the radio, eventually settling on an oldies station playing Hall and Oates.

  As they pulled into the dump and opened the trunk, Beth silently congratulated herself for staying removed, aloof. Then she and Owen reached for the seafood bag at the same time and, as they both tried to pull it to their respective chests, she thought, No, we’re too close. She was about to let go when a hole in the bag split fully open. Day-old lobster juice, gnawed corncobs, and splintery cracked shells spilled out all over them, and for a moment they simply stared at each other, unsure of what exactly had happened.

  Then the smell, now free of the bag’s shield, hit their noses simultaneously, and they recoiled, dropping the torn plastic on the ground.

  “Oh, ugh!” Beth said, half laughing.

  “That’s appetizing,” Owen said, shaking some of the trash off the front of his shirt. He looked at her and laughed, a laugh he tried to politely stifle halfway through. “You, uh, there’s a lobster claw trying to get a little friendly with you.”