Unforgettable Summer

by Catherine Clark

  “Yeah,” he says with a laugh. “Maybe I’ll just leave the windows down for a while. It’ll be easy with my new job, because it’s going to be hot and I don’t have A/C.”

  “What’s your new job? Delivering pizza or something?” I ask. I’ve been down that road before—and crashed.

  Mike’s face falls. “Yeah. How did you guess?”

  “Sorry. It was just the one job I really associate with driving. Which place are you working for?”

  “Smiley’s,” he says.

  I nod. “I worked for Bob’s—last spring,” I say.

  “Really? Cool.”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t last very long,” I say.

  “You hated it?” Mike says.

  “Something like that.” I smile, deciding not to tell him about the unglamorous crash I had. I might want to borrow his car someday or something.

  What am I saying? The lack of pure oxygen must be affecting my brain. Like I’d ever borrow Mike’s car. Then again, I never thought I’d be sitting on a tailgate next to him, either.

  I glance over at Steve. He’s the one I’m supposed to be sitting next to. This is all wrong.

  “So, uh, when do you start?” I ask Mike.

  “Tomorrow,” Mike says, sounding a little more proud now.

  “So I won’t see you on the bus anymore? You’re leaving me to perish with Kamikaze Driver at the wheel?” I put my hand to my throat. “How could you?”

  Mike laughs. “Sorry. Is that what you call him?”

  “Among other things.” I take a sip of my root beer. I glance over at Charlotte, who now has one leg thrown over Ray’s. I check to see whether Steve and Jacqui have moved an inch away from each other yet. Nope.

  I hate being in this type of situation. Where there are couples all around you hooking up, and you’re so obviously not. When you don’t know someone very well, and you’re trying to make conversation and it’s impossible. When you have to be home by 10:00.

  As I’m staring at Steve, I notice Mike is kind of looking at me, observing my obsession. I don’t want him telling Steve that I was staring, so I turn to him and blurt out, “You should have seen him today. Kamikaze. He was so obsessed with making every light. I swear he was counting them down out loud, as he went through each green or yellow light. There might have been some red ones in there—after a while I stopped looking because I didn’t want to know.”

  “He’s the kind of person who’s going to be arrested, and then everyone will say, yeah, he seemed really weird,” Mike says. “You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” I stare at Steve and Jacqui. They’re entwined, like an exotic plant.

  Why did she have to show up here this summer? Why did she have to ruin my plan? It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was in development. Now it’s dead.

  “Hey, um, Peg?” Mike gently pushes his fingers against my thigh. I feel these strange shivers travel up my spine when he touches me. “Whoa. You’ve got really strong muscles,” he says.

  “It’s, um, from skating,” I say as goose bumps break out on my arms. “In-line.”

  “Fleming skates everywhere,” Charlotte says.

  Except on the ice, I think.

  “She’s amazingly good. Me, I can hardly make it around the block,” Charlotte goes on, but I can’t talk to her right now for some reason. I can’t stop looking at Mike’s hand, which looks strange just perched there on my thigh. What is he doing?

  “You know what?” Mike says to me, giving my leg a little squeeze.

  “What?” I say, sort of softly, because I feel really close to him all of a sudden.

  “I’m starving,” Mike says. “Let’s grab Gropher and hit the Hamburger, okay?” He slides off the truck tailgate.

  That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting him to say.

  Five minutes later, the four of us are sitting in the Happy Hamburger drive-thru—me and Mike in the front seats, Jacqui and Steve wedged into the backseat of the Geo, on top of each other. This is not the double date I had in mind. In fact, this is worse than the one I was on five minutes ago.

  I order small fries and a lemonade. Jacqui and Steve split a concrete shake and a double hamburger and large fries, like they’re incapable of ordering on their own. They have to share the ketchup and the mustard and the bun or they might self-destruct. I am probably jealous only because Steve and I never actually managed to have a meal together—our relationship wasn’t deep enough for that. But we did share spilled ketchup, which is a lot more intense than people might realize.

  Mike parks in the Happy Hamburger parking lot, which seems kind of stupid when we could drive anywhere. Steve and Jacqui are eating and slurping their shake. It’s a little more than I can take. I always thought the reason Steve and I didn’t really go out was because he didn’t want to go out with anyone long-term. But he seems okay with seeing Jacqui night after night, so why not me?

  I glance over at Mike, who’s staring at me for no reason. “So. Um. I think I need a refill,” I say, shaking the ice in the bottom of my lemonade cup. This is my lame attempt to prolong the night. Why do I want to prolong agony, I wonder?

  “No problem,” he says with a nice smile. He reaches over and squeezes my leg again. Then he peels around the parking lot and we approach the speaker with a loud screech.

  “I’ll order,” Steve says. “Pull up, Kyle, pull up!”

  The car lurches forward as Mike holds on to the clutch a little too long, because he just got the car and isn’t used to it yet. Then he starts doing it on purpose, inching forward, jerking and bucking the car.

  “May I take your order?” a voice asks from the black speaker box.

  “Can we get . . . can we get . . .” Steve stammers. He and Mike both start laughing so hard that neither of them can order.

  “Hello?” the voice says.

  “How about a new clutch?” Steve finally asks. “With fries?”

  Mike peels away from the speaker and we fly past the drive-thru window, all of us laughing hysterically—except Jacqui.

  “What’s so funny?” Jacqui asks. “Steve, what’s so funny?”

  She’s the kind of person who’s never cracked up for no reason at a drive-thru before. I don’t know what Steve sees in her.

  I glance in the rearview mirror at Steve as I laugh and he suddenly leans forward and says, “I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I just did that, why did I just do that?” He smiles at me and for a second I feel like there’s no one else in the car.

  I smile back at him. At first I’m really flattered because he remembers, and because I think about him whispering it in my ear as he kissed me.

  Then I’m mad because it was something he used to say to me in private, because it was our thing, and now he’s saying it in front of his new girlfriend. I’m thinking, I can’t believe he just did that.

  Call Me Cinder-Peggy

  “P. F., you are an hour late,” my father says sternly when I get home. He looks at his watch. “Correction. An hour and twenty-five minutes late.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Am I? I’m sorry—I didn’t realize.” However, I did realize that when we left the Lot, it was almost 11:00—making me an hour late. But I was just having such a good time, watching Steve and Jacqui split that last French fry.

  “I worry about you!” my father says. “Do you know how many terrible things could happen to you on your way home at eleven-thirty at night on Rollerblades?”

  I raise my eyebrows. If he feels that way, then why won’t he let me drive? “I was perfectly safe. I was with friends.” Of course, neither one of these statements is totally true. But “I was with some boys who drive crazy and drive me crazy” wouldn’t be the answer to give him right now.

  “You were hanging out at that . . . lot, weren’t you?” he says in a disapproving tone.

  “Yes,” I say. “Dad, it’s where everyone hangs out.”

  “Yeah, well,” he says. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “You should be gla
d I don’t hang out with the cemetery crowd,” I tell him.

  “There’s a cemetery crowd? Which cemetery?” Dad asks.

  “Eastman. There’s the Lot crowd, and then there’s the Plot crowd,” I tell him.

  “You live to worry me, don’t you?” He closes the door behind me. “I really wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Just trying to keep you informed.” I open the fridge and get out a carton of orange juice.

  “You’ve got the early shift tomorrow,” he says, eyeing the juice as if it’s a dangerous stimulant. “Are you going to be up in time?”

  “Dad, I’ll be fine.” I pour juice into a giant plastic cup with LINDVILLE SAVINGS & LOAN on the side—another of Mom’s freebies, as she calls them. I hate the word freebies.

  “Look, P. F., I’m begging you. Please don’t be so late next time, okay?”

  What about the fact that he and Mom are late every single time they’re supposed to come home and take over watching the kids? “Dad, it’s summer, and I’m only taking one class, and nobody else has to be home by ten. I don’t even get out of work until eleven on Saturday nights.”

  “Be home by eleven then,” Dad says. “Fine. Eleven. But I need your help with something.”

  He needs my help? What could I do that I’m not already doing? “What.” I don’t say it as a question because I don’t want to know the answer. I imagine more watching the kids, or maybe something new, like all the laundry instead of just some, or some new housecleaning or cooking assignments. Call me Cinder-Peggy. “Dad, I’m pretty much extended already.”

  “But this is something different—and fun. It’s a skating thing.”

  I raise my eyebrows. Skating . . . different and fun? Since when?

  He looks at the calendar on the refrigerator, nearly buried under Dean’s drawings and Torvill’s latest sticker attack. “I don’t have much time to pull this together. It’s coming up in about three weeks. So let me ask you something, and don’t say no right away—just hear me out.”

  “It’s about skating? Then no—right away,” I say.

  “P. F., come on.” Dad laughs. “Cut me some slack here. Is there any way at all you’d consider getting back into skating? Just for a onetime thing? Just to help me out?”

  “Why, is it Take Your Daughter to Skate Day at the rink or something?” I ask.

  Dad laughs. “Very funny. No. It would be you and me and . . . well, I don’t know all the details yet. This is new to me, but someone wants me to perform and I just thought . . . P. F. and I could do this together.”

  Why on earth would he think that? I’ve told him so many times that I’m not interested in figure skating anymore.

  “See, you and Mom have your childbirth class together and that’s great, but I miss hanging out with you, too,” he says. “And when the new baby comes, we’re going to be even busier, so—I just wanted for us to do something together.”

  I really appreciate the sentiment, but there’s no way I’m doing this, whatever it is. “Dad, there are a hundred reasons I can’t help you with some skating thing,” I say. “I don’t have time to practice, for one. I’m working, remember? And watching the kids, and—”

  “Okay, okay. So maybe you’d have to cut your Gas ’n Git hours a little to fit in some rehearsal time. And because you’d be doing that to help me, I’d forgive some of your debt because your paychecks wouldn’t be as high. Whatever. We’d work it out.”

  I don’t like the sound of this. He seems a little desperate. “Dad, come on. I told you. I don’t want to skate in public, ever again—are you crazy?” Anyway, don’t I do enough around here, without helping Dad’s skating career, too?

  “But you’ve been skating. Every day.”

  “That’s completely different, Dad. And anyway, what is this for?”

  He isn’t giving out any specifics. “It’s not for competition; it’s strictly for entertainment. You and I would make up the program. You wouldn’t have to do anything complicated—I just want it to be fun.”

  “Fun,” I repeat.

  “Yes, fun,” he says.

  We reach a stalemate where neither of us budges or says anything for a minute. I can’t believe he’s even asking me this. He knows I’m no good anymore.

  Then he says, “Your spins were so nice,” still pushing the idea. This is how he sells so many houses. He wears people down.

  “You can have another protégé or whatever when Dorothy gets older,” I tell him. Torvill and Dean have already tried skating and shown exactly zero interest in pursuing it. “Heck, don’t even wait. Put her on skates now. Put her in your program.”

  Dad stares out the kitchen window at the street, as if he’s considering it. He’s juggling a silver Monopoly-size house in his hand, his reward for being a top agent one year. “I don’t want Dorothy to skate with me. I want you to, P. F.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “but no. And please don’t ask me again. I mean it, Dad.”

  “Okay, but I think you’ll be sorry,” he says as he drops the little house onto the floor and it skids under the fridge.

  Somehow I know that I won’t be.

  So Sorry, Fleming

  “Monsieur LeFleur is feeling much better,” the fifth substitute teacher of the summer tells us at our next class.

  “So is he coming?” Charlotte asks.

  “Mais non,” the substitute says. “He was ready to return today, but there has been a death in the family.”

  There’s a giant, collective sigh. It’s like waiting for a rock concert to start, and then being told that the headliner’s bus broke down on the highway. Monsieur LeFleur is kind of like that to us, at least by reputation. A rock star. Letting his fans down.

  We had been making Monsieur LeFleur a giant, poster-size get-well card covered with French phrases. We now set that aside and begin our sympathy card. Nobody can agree on what to draw or say first.

  Charlotte picks up a black marker and draws a smiley face with the smile upside down and a bunch of notches in the frown. It looks like a warning for poison. We can’t stop laughing. I know it’s wrong and disrespectful, but I can’t.

  “You know what? We need more info if we’re going to do this right. So who died?” Rafael, one of my classmates, asks.

  “Pardonnez moi?” the substitute asks. “Répétez en français.” Only a few of our substitutes know French, and so far they’ve all been posers. Their knowledge expires after about five minutes—or five sentences, whichever comes first.

  “Uh . . .” Rafael pauses. “Mourir?” he says. “Famille?”

  “I still don’t understand,” the sub says. “Je ne comprends pas.”

  “In his family. Who died?” Rafael demands, sounding angry now. “I mean, what are we supposed to write?”

  “Je ne sais pas.” The sub shrugs. “Use your imagination. Be creative.”

  “What does that phrase mean again?” Charlotte asks me. “Ne sais . . . ?” She really should not be in Intermediate French, because this is one of the first things we learned in Beginning French, but somehow I sense it won’t matter in this class.

  “It means ‘I don’t know,’” I tell her. I write it down for her.

  Charlotte starts writing. “On the loss of your je ne sais pas.” She turns to me as she pushes the card across the table. “That has some French in it, so it counts,” she tells me.

  As the card gets passed around class, I open up my book and my dictionary and try to compose the perfect sympathy message. Monsieur LeFleur has been going through a terrible time lately. I want to tell him how bad I feel about all this.

  The card is handed back to me last and there isn’t any room left for me to write anything except, “So sorry, Fleming.” In English.

  When I walk out of the school, Mom is waiting in the minivan for me. Charlotte and I had planned to hit IHOP, but Mom insists I go bed shopping with her, Dean, Torvill, and Dorothy. This is because she knows she can’t keep track of them and buy a bed at the sa
me time.

  “I had plans, Mom,” I tell her as Charlotte and I stand beside the minivan.

  “Sorry, Peggy.” This seems to be the theme of the afternoon. “This is the only afternoon we can do this.”

  “There must be other afternoons,” I say. “What about Dad? Why doesn’t Dad go bed shopping?”

  “Peggy, please. I’m really not in the mood.”

  Like I am? I look at Charlotte. “Sorry.”

  “Call me later,” she says. “And don’t worry, Steve isn’t doing anything except spilling eggs on other people.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Who’s Steve?” my mother asks as I get into the minivan and pull on my seat belt.

  “Just this guy from school we know,” I tell her.

  “Steve, Steve, Steve!” Torvill chants from the backseat.

  “Shh!” I tell her. I don’t know who would overhear us, seeing as how the windows are closed and the A/C is on, but it’s a conditioned response.

  “Do they make lambs there?” Dean asks from the backseat as we drive past a large sign for Majestic Lamb Company. On it, there’s a picture of a small, very cute white lamb.

  “No. They actually make lambs into lamb chops there,” I say.

  “Cool!” Dean says, kicking the back of my seat for emphasis.

  “Peggy.” Mom scolds me instead of him.

  “Well, it’s true,” I say. “They process lambs.”

  “They’re too young to hear about that now,” Mom whispers as she makes a left. “What were you thinking? Come on, Peggy, try to think of someone besides yourself.”

  This has to be an ironic comment. Doesn’t it?

  Ten minutes later, we are standing in Sleep City, in front of a maze of cribs and bunk beds. Mom is considering purchasing something called a Funky Bunk, which has a metal frame and ladder with bright orange and purple tiger-stripe patterns on it. Dorothy, Dean, and Torvill are playing with blocks over in the kids’ play area. The strip mall we’re in is known for its sub sandwich shop, and it’s weird to look at beds and smell baking bread and melting cheese.

  The salesman, who looks about two years older than me, has decided to give us “some moments to decide,” because Mom wouldn’t stop telling him what a hard time she’s having sleeping through the night with her big belly and how she can’t get comfortable and asking him for mattress recommendations.