The Summer of Letting Go

by Gae Polisner

“Oh dear, Frankie,” she says, her eyes darting to Peter’s apologetically. “I told you not to go anywhere. I left you in the TV room for three seconds . . .”

  Peter, who’s been trying to look stern, turns the color of her shoes. When he manages to look up, his eyes catch mine and he rolls them at me, as if we’re in cahoots, which we are not.

  “Mrs. Schyler . . .” he starts, but he can’t seem to get more words out. Instead, he gestures to a large sign that reads, Children Under 12 Must be Accompanied At All Times, the last three words underlined in fat black marker.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. He promised . . .” She gives Frankie an exasperated look. “What did you do, Frankie? Tell me.” The fact that he’s dripping wet should be more than enough of a clue.

  Frankie puts his hands on his hips and raises his clear blue eyes up to her. “I swimmed!” he says proudly. “I dived and I swimmed!”

  Maybe it’s the enormity of the relief I feel that makes it seem so funny, or maybe it’s just the boy’s delivery and the annoyed look plastered on Peter’s face, but I barely stifle a laugh. Peter gives me a dirty look. I see the corner of Mrs. Schyler’s mouth bend up into a smile even as she tries to discipline him again.

  “Frankie, it is not funny. You promised. You know you could have drowned! Grandpa Harris is going to have my head for this!”

  She grabs his arm and pulls him in to her, and his solid weight against her small frame nearly sends her sprawling. Her drink goes flying, leaving a slosh of snow white mush across the redbrick deck. Plus one cherry, one orange slice, and a bright yellow paper umbrella.

  “Oh dear! Look what you’ve done now, Frankie!” she says.

  “I swimmed, not drowned!” Frankie insists again, finally making me cave in and laugh. Frankie turns to me, eyes narrowed. “Who she?”

  My cheeks light on fire. “Francesca,” I stammer, embarrassed. “Francesca Schnell. But, um, everyone just calls me Frankie.” I look at Peter, who shrugs.

  The little boy takes a step closer. “Hey, I Frankie, too. Frankie Schyler. But Schyler is hard, so you can say Frankie Sky.” He beams up at me, his blond curls blazing in the sun. And that’s when I see it, how very much he looks like my brother. “Because,” he says, “Simon is just like the sky.”

  Everything goes silent. The air disappears, presses in heavy, like a vacuum seal.

  “Right?” he repeats, eyes fixed on mine. “Because Schyler sounds just like the sky?”

  He’s fixed it now, but I know what I heard. Clear as day, he had said, “Simon is just like the sky.”

  He waits for me to say something, but I can’t get the words to come out. All I can do is stare back at him.

  It’s as if I am looking at Simon.

  four

  I turn my phone over on the kitchen table and tap the text message from Lisette so its words light up on the screen.

  Where u been? Headed to movie with B. Wanna come? p.s. No worries! His idea!

  It makes me feel pathetic.

  Then again, if it was Bradley’s idea, could that mean something? That he’s the one who wants to invite me? I close my eyes and imagine us sitting side by side in the cool, dark theater. He slips his hand into mine.

  Nope, I was right. I’m pathetic. He’s probably just trying to be sweet.

  I stare at the message until the screen fades and the words disappear, wishing I knew how to do the same. Fade away right along with them.

  I walk to the sink and stare across at Mrs. Merrill’s empty driveway, then our own. The whole street seems quiet and empty. Maybe I have disappeared.

  In the months after I let Simon die, I spent countless hours trying to figure out how to stop my breath and disappear. I’m not sure I wanted to kill myself exactly. All I knew was that I wanted to be gone. To be invisible, to slip away. I wanted to feel the opposite of how I felt, which was solid and weighted and frozen. I felt my own inescapable presence in every breath, every step, which seemed totally cruel and unfair.

  I had read this story about a Buddhist monk who meditated himself into his own death. The story described how he’d sat under a tree and, knowing his body’s physical demise was near, made his breath so slow and barely-there that he simply ceased to exist.

  I wanted that. I wanted to cease to exist.

  Every day after school, I would practice. I’d sit against the big old oak in our backyard, close my eyes, and inhale and exhale so slowly and so shallowly that I couldn’t feel my breath at all. I would stay like that for what felt like hours, but whenever I’d finally open my eyes again, I’d still be sitting there, our house in front of me, everything intact except Simon.

  Now I close my eyes and try to slow my breath like I did then, taking in air only through my nose. I keep the respirations shallow so that my chest barely moves, but I keep getting distracted by the face that looked so much like my brother’s.

  I picture the boy named Frankie Sky, the way he looked at me, over and over in my head. I hear his words, Simon is just like the sky. I must have misheard him. There’s no way that’s what he said.

  It was just my nerves getting the best of me, seeing him go under like that.

  I give up on breath-holding or anything remotely meditative, slide my cell phone over, and respond to the text from Lisette.

  Thanks, Zette. Think I’ll pass. Weird day. Tired. Tell u about it later.

  I wait a few minutes, but she doesn’t text back, so I head upstairs to my room.

  At the top of the steps, I freeze. Simon’s door is open. Not fully, just the slightest bit ajar. Which shouldn’t be that strange, except it is. Because Simon’s door is never open. Ever. Only my mother opens it, and only my mother goes in. And neither she nor my dad is home.

  It’s not like there’s a rule against his door being open. It’s just unspoken, the way it’s always been. In the weeks after he died, Mom went in there and cleaned out some things—I don’t know what things—then closed the door and kept it that way. It seemed clear she didn’t want anyone else to go in. But now, here it is, open, in the middle of the afternoon.

  I stare at the narrow opening, my mind racing to the blond boy once again. But I shake the thought. Now I’m just being silly. Maybe Mom is home; maybe her car pulled in and I didn’t hear it, and she snuck past me and is sitting in there on his bed.

  A sense of urgency comes over me, the kind I always feel when I remember that I’m the one responsible for how things are, so it’s my job to keep my mother from breaking.

  I take the few remaining steps to the door and push it open wider.

  The room is empty. Sunlight spills in through the window, spreading baptismal rays across the pale blue carpeted floor. Dust motes dance in the swirling lines. Everything’s peaceful and quiet. I force myself to walk in.

  The room is pristine, sleepy. Sky blue walls the color of the rug, as if the whole room is suspended in air.

  Simon is just like the sky.

  I let my eyes fall to Simon’s bed, to his navy comforter with the orange and green tree frogs. Next to that, his nightstand with the silly little lamp I’d forgotten. Simon loved that lamp because of the frog engineer, the small striped cap on his head. A red train circles the wooden base. You’d flip the toggle switch to make it go around.

  Everything is intact, the way I remember it. For a second, I think about touching Simon’s pillow, sitting on his bed, but seeing that frog engineer breaks my heart, so I duck back out, pulling the door closed tightly behind me.

  Down the hall in my room, I kick off my shoes and lie on my bed, but I’m just too restless and get right up again. I take off my shorts and T-shirt, open my closet door, and stare at my bikini’d body in the mirror. I squint and twist around backward, trying to see myself the way someone else might. Like Bradley might. My legs are okay, and my butt, but the rest of me isn’t impressive. I’m skinny like a stick. Straight hair, straight figure, all boring. My face is fine, but bland. And my eyebrows are too thick. “Like Brooke Shields,” my father
says, but I have no idea who he’s talking about.

  Lisette is so much prettier. No wonder she has Bradley and I have no one.

  I squeeze my arms together to make my cleavage deepen like Mrs. Schyler’s, give up, yank off the top, and throw it in the deep recesses of my closet. I get dressed again, walk downstairs, and stare out the kitchen window. Still no black Mercedes. Of course, Dad isn’t home, either. Were they together? In the commotion of the blond boy’s dive, I’d lost all track of Mrs. Merrill.

  I check the clock. It’s one forty-five p.m.

  From these facts, I deduce absolutely nothing.

  I sit at the kitchen table and rest my cheek on its cool surface. I think of Lisette, of her giddy remark a few weeks ago about how, now that we’d be juniors, we’d have so much more freedom this summer. So much more fun. I’d felt hopeful then, but that was before Bradley Stephenson, before she had wrapped him around her finger like she always does, and I was stuck all alone.

  With or without Bradley, I should have known better. For me, there are never any good summers, only survivable ones.

  I close my eyes and slide my cheek to a cooler spot, letting Lisette fade away and Frankie Sky slip back in. Hands on his hips, sunlit curls, bright blue eyes smiling.

  So what if I don’t know how it could be? I know it was Simon’s face looking back at me.

  five

  I wake up early, determined to make something of my summer and stop worrying about foolish things I can’t fix, to be normal and attempt to hang out with my best friend.

  Or at least try to, when she’s not completely preoccupied with Bradley.

  After all, that’s what we are, best friends. And best friends don’t require fancy plans. So I head over there, to Lisette’s.

  It’s already sunny and hot, and I’m sweating by the time I reach her street. The Sutters’ house is halfway down, a brick Colonial on a pretty grass hill, with white shutters and a giant brass cross on the front door.

  I eye Lisette’s bedroom window as I knock, but I can’t see anything up there. A few seconds later, Andreas answers.

  “Hey, Frankie.” He gives me his typical look, tongue-in-cheek, ready to tease. “You trying to bust down the place?” Andreas is the younger of Lisette’s two brothers, just graduated and about to head off to college in Boston. Lisette’s older brother, Alex, is back from his junior year at UPenn. I’ve known them forever, so they’re pretty much like family to me. “Geez, it’s hot out, huh?” He closes the door behind me.

  “Is that Bradley?” Lisette’s voice drifts, hopeful, from upstairs, and my heart sinks.

  Andreas shakes his head like she’s lame. “You know her,” he says. “One-track mind.”

  “No, sorry. Just me,” I call.

  “Oh, hey, Beans! What’s up?”

  The vision that’s my best friend since first grade appears at the top of the stairs, smiling as she hops down them to meet me. I feel instantly better. She seems happy enough that I’m here.

  I can tell from her outfit that her father isn’t home. He’s a pastor, and her stomach shows. Specifically, she’s wearing a white cropped T-shirt that says Pink across it in silver script, and short jean shorts. She’s barefoot, her toenails painted a raspberry sherbet pink. I feel boring in my shapeless green T-shirt dress.

  “This is nice. New?” I flick the hem of her shirt as we head back upstairs. “I don’t see you for a few days and you already have a new wardrobe? Oh, and since your ass will be totally grounded when your father sees it, can I borrow it for the rest of the summer?” Lisette laughs, but holds a finger to her lips because I’ve said the word ass in her house. “By the way, I would have called first,” I add, “but . . .” Then I stop because I realize that whatever I was going to say would sound hurt on my part, or sarcastic.

  She picks up on it anyway. “I invited you to the movies, Beans.” I give her a look like that invite was just sad, which it was. “I know, I know,” she says, “but, honestly, you could have come.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, seriously, I’m telling you, Brad likes you. He does. He’s always bringing you up.”

  I look away fast. I don’t want her to see how badly I hope that it’s true.

  “So, how was the movie?” I need to lighten up. I can’t blame her because she has a gorgeous-but-somehow-also-smart boyfriend who I wish was my boyfriend instead.

  “Okay, Beans, where are you? I said it was good.” She waves her hand in my face. We’ve reached her bedroom, and clearly I haven’t heard a word that she’s said.

  Other than my dad (and Mom, who doesn’t anymore), Lisette is the only person who calls me Beans, and only in private, because she knows I’d be mortified if it caught on. Everyone would equate it with my being built like a string bean, even though it has nothing to do with my looks. My dad started calling me Beans when I was little. It came from Frankie, short for Francesca, which he had morphed into Franks ’n’ Beans.

  “It’s cute,” Lisette always says, “and anyway, you are in no way built like a string bean.” Easy for her to say with her Victoria’s Secret–perfect figure.

  “Um, Francesca, I am so not kidding. Where are you?”

  I finally focus on her, and she promptly rolls her eyes. I roll mine back and we laugh, but something feels off between us. Like we’re disconnected—us on the outside, but inside we’re some weird alien replacement of friends. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen her in a while or told her the crap that’s going on with Dad. Or about my visit to the club, and the boy, Frankie Sky, who looks so much like my brother.

  I sit on her bed. She sits next to me and drapes her arm around my shoulders. “I’ve missed you, Frankie. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing much.” I slip off my flip-flops and run my toes through her rug.

  “Well, we need to fix that, don’t we?” She twists her hair off her neck and lies down, letting her long locks splay loose around her face. She looks like a Sun Goddess Barbie I once saw in a doll-collecting magazine. I look around her room instead.

  I’ve been in Lisette’s room so many times, it feels like my own. Pale pink walls, darker pink carpeting. Antique white rocking chair that was her grandmother’s as a girl. Desk across from that. Wrought-iron sleigh bed. And a giant rosewood cross above the headboard, hand-carved with ornate flowers and swirls. The cross has been there since I met her. Lisette minds it, but I think there’s something pretty about it.

  “Oh come on! What boy is going to want to feel me up under that?” she had asked last summer, when being felt up still seemed a faraway thing. Sitting here now, I’m guessing the answer is one handsome Bradley Stephenson.

  I’m sure Bradley will want to feel you up under that cross, I want to say to her now. I bet he already has.

  I’m dying to know if it’s true—if Bradley has lain here on top of her, his fingers wandering up under her T-shirt as they make out, groping under her pink lace bra, caressing her picture-perfect breasts. Maybe more than just his fingers . . .

  Envy fills me to bursting. I want it to happen for me. I long for it, even if the thought also terrifies me a little.

  For a second, I let myself imagine Bradley’s lips on mine, his strong hands slipping up under my shirt. Then I knock it off because I’m sure imagining my best friend’s boyfriend like this is a sin of the absolute worst kind.

  “Beans?” Lisette stares at me, but I don’t answer.

  The room has grown stuffy and warm. I feel overwhelmed by the need to be like we used to be, just the two of us. I don’t like feeling so alone.

  I should tell her everything, like I used to, all the weird, stupid stuff that’s been going on. Even if it’s nothing, at least it’s news. But for some reason, I don’t. I can’t. And I can’t explain why. It feels like there’s a wall between us, invisible from her side, maybe, but still there, like one of those two-way mirrors.

  Plus, why would I tell her about the boy named Frankie Sky? I saw him once, and it’s not like I believe
in angels or karma or reincarnation. Simon is dead. Period. That boy had nothing to do with Simon.

  “Oh my gosh. Seriously, Beans, I’m starting to worry. What on God’s green planet is up with you?”

  I sigh and lie back so our arms touch. “Nothing. And besides, why do people call it green when there’s way more water than land?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Water. Water is blue, Zette. So the planet is mostly blue.”

  “Okay, fine, blue. God’s blue planet, is that better? What on God’s blue earth is eating you?”

  I turn my head sideways and force a smile. It’s not Lisette’s fault that she has a boyfriend, and it’s not her fault that I’m cranky.

  “Hey, Zette,” I blurt without thinking, “has your dad ever said anything about reincarnation?”

  “Excuse me?” she says again.

  “Reincarnation. You know, like coming back to life after death?”

  She narrows her eyes, but I already know I sound crazy. “Um, no? It’s not very ‘Christian,’ I don’t think, that whole reincarnation thing.” She makes air quotes around the word Christian to remind me that she doesn’t share her dad’s deep religious beliefs any more than I do. “Why are you asking, anyway? You sound like Bradley now.” She sits up. “Beans, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my mind stuck on her comment about Bradley. “I’m fine, really. Never mind. It’s stupid. I’ve just been thinking about my brother.”

  “Oh. I get it.” She rubs my arm to console me.

  “Forget it, Zette. Subject closed. Speaking of Bradley, tell me everything that’s going on.”

  She flips onto her stomach, props up on her elbows, and studies me. Loose strands of her hair slip across my neck, tickling me. I make a face to let her know she shouldn’t feel sorry for me about Simon, or about the fact that she has a life and a boyfriend and I don’t, and wait for her to feed me information. Even though I don’t know if I can really bear to hear it.

  When she doesn’t say anything, I say, “Come on, Zette, something juicy. I could use something juicy right now.”