Julian's Glorious Summer

by Ann Cameron

To Each His Own

  Right after lunch my dad offered Huey the same great opportunity he’d offered me—to work all summer. “No, thanks,” Huey said. “I’d rather go play at Gloria’s house.” And he left.

  “More sharp rocks for you, Huey!” I thought.

  But pretty soon there was not even time to think about sharp rocks. My dad gave me my jobs.

  To begin with, I polished twelve pairs of shoes, including two pairs my dad had been saving for a dog to chew, if we ever got a dog.

  Then I swept the porch.

  Afterward I brushed cobwebs off the porch ceiling and under the eaves all around the house.

  When I finished that, it was four o’clock. I sat down. My neck ached from reaching high to get all the spider webs. I pushed my head around with my hands to make sure it still moved as many ways as it used to. I wasn’t sure it did.

  At four thirty my dad came home from the shop. “Hello, Julian,” he called. He came over to check on the work.

  “I think we’re practically all out of jobs around here,” I said.

  My dad looked at me. He had little orange sparks in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Julian!” he said. “I’d hate for you to be out of work! There are still plenty of jobs for you!”

  And he got me started weeding the garden.

  One good thing I noticed about weeding the garden: once my back started to ache, I forgot about how my neck felt.

  “What luck!” I said to myself. “Maybe in a few days I’ll just be numb. Nothing will hurt. And when the summer is over, I’ll go to the hospital for a long vacation.”

  Pretty soon Gloria pedaled up on her bike. She laid it carefully on the grass.

  “Huey couldn’t keep up with me, so here I am,” she said. “But I can’t stay long. My mom is expecting me back.”

  She stood with her thumbs in the belt loops of her blue jeans, staring at me. Then she whispered, “Julian! Your dad really is doing it? He really is going to make you work all day and all night, all summer long?”

  “Only all day,” I said.

  “He really is mean,” Gloria said.

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. “Actually, I want to work. Actually, it was my idea.”

  “Your idea?” Gloria said.

  “Yes. I want to save money. To buy a race car.”

  “You’re going to work all summer? You want to?”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  My forehead was sweaty. I wiped it with the back of my hand. Dirt from the weeds trickled down my neck. I thought, “Of all the not-quite-true things I have ever said, this is the not-quite-truest of all.”

  “Well,” Gloria said, “to each his own.”

  I didn’t know what “to each his own” meant.

  Usually I wouldn’t ever have asked, because I don’t want Gloria to know when I don’t already know something. But I was living under emergency conditions. It was too much trouble to pretend I knew everything. I decided that if I wanted to know something, I would just go ahead and ask.

  I asked.

  “It’s something my mother says,” Gloria answered. “It means each person has his or her own way of doing things and his or her own things to do. It means if you want to work all summer—it’s not for me to say you’re crazy. You just might not be crazy. Even though I think you are.

  “To each his own,” Gloria said again. And she left.

  In a little while Huey came up.

  “Julian,” he said, “may I help you weed?”

  “Sure,” I said. I wondered why Huey wanted to help.

  I have to give him credit. He worked hard. We got the whole garden done before supper.

  “Thanks a lot, Huey!” I said when we put the tools away.

  “It’s nothing,” Huey said. “Anyway, Gloria told me I had to help you. She said I should be very kind to you. Because maybe your brain is out of order.”

  “Oh, really?” I said.

  My back was out of order. My neck was out of order. My fingers were out of order. My legs were out of order. On top of that, my best friend was insulting my brain.

  “Come on, brain,” I said to it. “Lead me to dinner.”

  And it did. Not only that, it advised me to sneak upstairs and take the sharp rocks out from under Huey’s mattress so he wouldn’t stop helping me.

  The Beginning of Happiness

  “Julian!” my mother said. “JULIAN!” she shouted.

  My head jerked up. My eyes jumped open like electric-eye doors.

  “Julian,” my mother said, “if you nod one more time, your chin is going to make a crash-landing in your creamed corn.”

  “Julian is tired,” Huey said.

  I was amazed. Huey sounded like he cared. He wasn’t sounding like a brother. He was sounding like a friend.

  “If you can’t eat any more,” my mother said, “a nice hot bath might relax your muscles.”

  “Okay,” I said. It sounded wonderful. It sounded like the next best thing to a year in the hospital.

  “I’ll put lots of bubbles in the water, and I’ll get you a nice big clean towel,” my mother said. “You just wait till the water’s ready.”

  I listened to the sound of water running into the tub. Then I ached out of my chair and pained my way to the bathroom.

  The bathroom was steamy and full of clouds.

  My mother helped me out of my shirt, the way she used to when I was little.

  When I got into the tub, she scrubbed my back for me with a washcloth. It felt very good.

  “Dad told me he’s sorry you’re not getting time to learn to ride Gloria’s bike,” my mom said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Of course, I want to learn—but it can wait.”

  “Also,” my mom said, “Dad is very proud of you. He likes the way you stick to what you say you’ll do, and the way you work hard. He said you did a very good job with everything.”

  “He did? He is? Really?” I said.

  I started to feel very happy and proud about all the work I was doing. But then I remembered how sore I was. I remembered I didn’t feel good; I felt bad.

  “Dad is pushing me too hard,” I said. “He is making me suffer.”

  I hoped my mother would say, “I’ll get him to let up on you. I’ll get him to give you less work.”

  But she didn’t. She just rubbed my neck with the washcloth some more and smiled.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “suffering is the beginning of happiness.”

  She helped me out of the bathtub and helped me dry off. When I had my pajamas on, she walked upstairs with me and tucked me in bed, the way she did when I was little.

  I wiggled my toes. They ached.

  “Suffering isn’t happiness!” I said. “Suffering is the opposite of happiness!”

  “Yes,” my mom said, “but sometimes we all have to suffer a little to do things that are worth doing—to do the things that really make us happy.”

  “Things like earning money?” I said.

  “Yes. Or simple things—like telling the truth,” my mother said. “For example, I wonder what you truly think about bicycles.”

  Usually I wouldn’t have told. But I was very tired. If things kept on the way they were, I thought, I’d be the first boy ever to be declared a national disaster.

  “You really want to know?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t tell anybody? Not even Dad?”

  “I won’t tell anybody. Not even Dad.”

  “The truth is—the truth is, I don’t like them.”

  “I thought you didn’t like them,” my mom said very softly.

  I looked at her face. She didn’t seem to have a bad opinion of me for not liking bicycles. It did feel good to tell the truth. Once I began to tell the truth, it seemed like it almost had a taste, like some really delicious food to chew on, that I wanted to have more and more of in my mouth.

  “I hate bicycles!” I said. “I hate the tubes, the tires, the wheels, the spokes,
the pedals, the chain, the fenders, the handlebars, the reflectors and the lights—and that’s just the beginning.” I said.

  “What’s the rest?” my mother said.

  “The rest is—I hate the idea of falling.”

  “You might not fall,” my mother said.

  “Then again, I might,” I said. “That would be suffering.”

  “Uhm-hmm,” my mom said. She smiled again. Then she leaned down and put her arms around me and gave me a hug so big it hurt.

  But it felt good, all the same.

  I Get My Just Reward

  I did a lot of work in the next three weeks.

  I cut the lawn and the edges of the grass next to the house.

  I swept the garage and washed the garage floor.

  I washed my dad’s truck, inside and out.

  I washed all the downstairs windows of the house.

  I scraped old paint off the house where my dad plans to repaint.

  Sometimes Gloria and Huey helped me quite a bit. But other times it was bad. It was bad when Gloria came down the street on her bike, ringing her bell or riding one-handed. It was worse when she learned how to ride with no hands. Worst of all were the times when she came by riding Huey on her back fender.

  One good thing was that Huey left the sharp rocks on my shelf and didn’t put them back under my mattress—even though I wouldn’t have known if I’d been sleeping on the tiptoppiest point of Mount Everest.

  When I got up on Saturday at the end of the third week, Huey was still sleeping. My mom was shopping, but my dad was still in the kitchen eating breakfast.

  “GOOD morning, Julian!” he said very cheerily. “How are you?”

  “Alive,” I said.

  “Excellent!” my dad said. “What could be better?”

  I thought it would be better if I were a little more alive than I was. But I didn’t say anything; I just sat down at the table.

  My dad pushed milk and sugar and toast and jam and oranges and cornflakes toward me.

  “Better eat a big breakfast, Julian,” he said. “You have a big day in front of you.”

  As soon as he said that, all the food on the table looked like a new job. I hardly ate anything. Pretty soon I got up from the table.

  “So,” my father said, “are you ready for a tough day?”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “First of all,” my dad said, “I hope you’re feeling good enough to take some bad news.”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  I thought that after all I had been through, I could take anything.

  “Well,” my dad said, “this is actually very bad news. I think you should sit down before I tell you. So you don’t fall down.”

  “Okay.” I sat down.

  I still thought I could take anything, but I was afraid he was going to tell me he wanted the entire house rebuilt from the foundation.

  “The bad news is—” My dad paused. He started over.

  “The horrible news is—” My dad seemed afraid to say it.

  “The dreadful news is—” He coughed.

  “TELL me!” I demanded.

  “Well, the very, very bad news is”—my father was almost whispering—“there are no more jobs. Oh, maybe a few next month. And some next summer. But no more for now. I hope you can stand it.”

  “I can stand it!” I said. I was ready to head for the door.

  “Wait a minute!” my father said. “Today is payday!”

  He handed me a brown paper bag from the kitchen counter. I opened it. Inside was ten dollars and a book on race cars with lots of pictures and facts about engines and records and high-speed performance.

  “Thank you!” I said.

  “Just one other thing,” my dad said. “Would you mind picking up something in the living room?”

  “Glad to,” I said. I went to the living room.

  “Oh, no!” I said.

  Parked next to the couch was a brand-new bicycle, just like Gloria’s, except that it was a boy’s bike, red with white stripes, and behind the seat on a stick it had a red pennant with my name on it—JULIAN—in big white letters.

  “It’s a surprise!” my dad said. “I didn’t even tell your mother I was getting it for you.”

  My dad smiled. “You know I don’t like it when you make up stories. But after a while I thought the reason that you said you wanted so many jobs was because you didn’t want to be around someone with a bicycle. You were afraid you couldn’t have your own bicycle. Well, now you have one! Of course, if what you really want is to save money for a race car, you can take it back to the store.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I really want.”

  I had worked so hard to keep bicycles out of my life. What did I get for it? A bicycle!

  I was stunned. I needed to talk to somebody. I needed advice.

  “Should I teach you how to ride it?” my dad asked.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “First I want to show it to Gloria.”

  I Take Off

  I wheeled the red bicycle all the way to Gloria’s house. Its silver spokes were shining in the sun as if it was saying “Look at me! Look how beautiful I am!”

  “Okay, I’m looking,” I said.

  Before I could even ring Gloria’s doorbell, she came running out.

  “I was watching from my window!” she said. “What an excellent bicycle!”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I want to take it back to the store.”

  “Take it back to the store!” Gloria said. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like the color?”

  I paused. I was going to say I wanted to trade it in, to have more money saved for a race car. But that wasn’t true. And it seemed like I got in a lot of trouble getting out of trouble by saying things I didn’t mean.

  “Gloria,” I said, “I don’t like bicycles. People fall off bicycles!”

  “That’s for sure!” Gloria said. “Look!”

  She raised the corner of her skirt. Her knee was all scraped up and painted orange.

  “I fell yesterday,” she said. “A dog ran at me. And to think I’ve always been afraid of cats, not dogs! We never know what to be afraid of in this life!”

  “So you aren’t going to ride your bicycle anymore?” I couldn’t help asking. Maybe Gloria would stop riding her bicycle. I would take mine back to the store. Things would be just the way they used to be.

  “Of course I’m going to ride it. I’m just going to be more careful, that’s all.”

  “But you hurt yourself,” I said.

  “The fun of it is bigger than the hurting,” Gloria said.

  She touched the white stripes on my bicycle.

  “If you don’t like your bike, I’ll go with you to return it,” she said. “Even if you never ride a bicycle, we’ll always be friends. But don’t you want to try it?”

  I stood for a long time. I remembered how much I used to like my tricycle. But I was too old for tricycles. I thought how I didn’t want to do something silly, like smoothing out the street with my nose.

  “All right,” I finally said. “I’ll try it.”

  “Okay!” Gloria said. “See those two cement blocks? We’ll move them and put the bicycle between them, and then you can get on.”

  We hauled the blocks into place. I wheeled the bicycle over and got on. It didn’t feel so bad.

  “Now,” Gloria said, “take your feet off the blocks.”

  I did. At first I kept my balance. Then the bicycle started to lean to one side. I put my feet back on the blocks fast.

  “Try balancing a few more times,” Gloria said.

  I did. It got easier.

  “Now use the bike like a scooter,” Gloria said.

  I moved away from the blocks. Then I skimmed down the driveway, holding on to the handlebar and the bike seat and putting just one foot on the near pedal.

  “That was fun!” I said.

  “Okay,” Gloria said. “Now use the blocks again.”

&nbs
p; I put the bicycle between the cement blocks and balanced on it again. Gloria took hold of the side of the bicycle seat.

  “When your bike leans one way,” she said, “steer and lean the other way. Pedal now!” she said. “Take off!”

  I pushed the top pedal. I left the blocks behind. Gloria ran beside me, holding the bike seat.

  I balanced. I didn’t fall—even though every time I pushed the pedal down it seemed like my whole body was dropping into the Grand Canyon.

  Gloria let go of the seat.

  I turned. I was out on the street. I was heading toward my house.

  On the sidewalk I saw Huey.

  “Julian! Wow!” he called. He took off toward our house.

  I heard Gloria’s bicycle bell ring. She pedaled up beside me.

  I didn’t dare look at her. I was scared I’d fall.

  “Keep going!” she shouted. “If you think you’re going to fall, just keep pedaling!”

  It started to seem like I was standing still. Trees and houses floated by me, like green ships and like white ones.

  I saw our big tree with our swing. I saw my mom and dad and Huey standing on the curb.

  “Good going!” my mom called.

  I saw a pothole. I steered and missed it.

  “That’s the way, Julian! You’ve got it!” my dad shouted.

  Huey started running along the sidewalk. “There goes my big brother!” he shouted.

  We left my house behind. We turned in at the park.

  Gloria rang her bell. My flag flapped behind me. We rolled under big trees.

  “Isn’t it great?” Gloria called. “We can go exploring! We can go on picnics! Isn’t it a glorious, glorious summer?”

  Ann Cameron is the bestselling author of many popular books for children, including The Stories Julian Tells, More Stories Julian Tells, The Stories Huey Tells and More Stories Huey Tells. Her other books include Julian, Secret Agent; Julian, Dream Doctor. Ann Cameron lives in Guatemala.