Dedication
For Cousin Curry, thank you
for all the summers that have been and will be
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Melissa Walker
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
When I reach underneath my bed to look for Ronan’s Transformer, here is what I find:
Dust balls. People sometimes call them “bunnies,” but that doesn’t make sense to me. They’re balls, or maybe floating masses. But bunnies? No.
A red plastic spear, which could be mistaken for a toothpick. I know, however, that it’s the broken end of Darth Vader’s lightsaber from my six-year-old birthday cake topper.
A puzzle piece with blue flowers on it.
That last thing makes me go oh!, because it’s my mom’s. She does puzzles and then glues them together and frames them. They’re all over our walls. And this particular puzzle, with blue hydrangeas, has been missing its last piece for almost a year.
I stick it in my back pocket—Mom will be so happy.
“Can’t find it!” I shout to Ronan as I head out the screen door and onto our tiny square of porch where he’s waiting in the plastic lawn chair.
“Well, keep an eye out,” he says with a scowl.
“What do you need it for anyway?” I ask him. We’re eleven now, and I don’t think he plays Transformers anymore. Does he?
“It’s lucky,” he mumbles.
“What?” I’m not sure I heard him right.
“I just want it back. Okay, Claire?” he says, his face softening a little as he closes his eyes to the bright June sunlight. Ronan’s freckles are just starting to show on his pale skin as the summer sun gets more intense, and his sandy-brown hair is growing longer, shaggy. It looks good that way, like how boys on TV wear theirs.
I wonder if the Transformer search has anything to do with his father being back, but I don’t ask.
“Anyway.”
He says that word a lot lately with nothing to follow it. Like “anyway” means something. Still he stays, unmoving, in the chair on our porch square, so I think he wants to talk more.
I sit down on the top step to wait, since there’s only the one chair and our porch isn’t big enough for both of us, which is one of the reasons why “porch” is a generous word. I think you have to be able to fit two seats in an area for it to be called something as sociable as a porch.
I pick at the strings on the edges of my jean shorts as I wait for Ronan to talk, because he will . . . eventually. It’s the start of summer break, and our moms are at work; he tends to talk when there is no one else around but me.
This is the first summer I’m allowed to stay home alone. Last year I went to a YMCA camp because Mom helps clean the gym on Saturdays, but it was a lot of craft-making and running drills, neither of which are my thing. I only really like the court time—basketball is my favorite sport. In a couple of years I’ll be old enough to be a counselor-in-training, which Mom wants me to do, but I figured out a way to convince her to let me stay home this summer.
“I’ve heard that free time is really good for kids,” I told Mom. And then I quoted a poster that was in my guidance counselor’s office last year: “‘How can I be curious if I don’t have time to dream?’”
“My little girl is almost twelve.” Mom had let out this low sigh, and then she looked at me with her mushy emotional face and I knew she was saying yes. This summer is my moment between going to kids’ camp and having to do more grown-up working stuff. I turn twelve in August. So does Ronan. Our birthdays are three days apart, actually. And we live next door to each other in Twin Pines Trailer Park.
“Are you going to Brianna’s party?” Ronan asks after a long silence.
“Yeah,” I say. “Her new house has a pool, so it’s a pool party! Jealous?”
“I’m going too,” he says, sitting up and finally looking at me. “Mom left the invitation out for me this morning.”
“Oh,” I say. “I thought it was just girls.” It’s always been just girls. A boy-girl pool party . . . why didn’t Brianna say so?
Ronan stands up. “Well, I’ll be there,” he says, and then he starts to head back to his place.
“Where are you going now?” I ask him. Because I kind of thought the Transformer thing was an excuse to come over, to hang out with me for the day. I’m pretty bored, and Brianna is busy unpacking because they only just moved this week.
Ronan says, “Home.” And that doesn’t leave me much to work with.
I sit out on the porch and text Brianna. It takes forever to go through because Twin Pines is in a dead zone where the signal only works if the clouds are hanging just so in the sky, as my mom says. That’s why we still have a regular phone too.
Claire: Your pool party is boy-girl?
Waiting. Watching. Wind blowing the long grass around Mrs. Gonzalez’s trailer because she’s older, and even though we have an every-now-and-then person who comes to mow, she’s on the edge of the field and it grows really fast and wild there. I kind of like it wild though—she gets lots of those fluffy-seed dandelions you can blow in people’s faces, and she doesn’t mind if we pick them so Ronan and I can have Flower Wars. My bedroom window looks out on her yard, and I used to angle myself so I could only see her wild patches. I’d pretend I lived in the countryside, with tangled spots of flowers and long, arching grass.
Finally. A ding.
Brianna: yes! eden says it’ll be better
Eden. That’s Brianna’s cousin who’s visiting for the summer. I met her last year when she was in town for a few days. She’s twelve, but a grade older, so almost thirteen.
I don’t want to have a too-big reaction to the party news, so I just text back cool.
I kick off my dusty flip-flops and go inside, escaping the heat and thinking about maybe putting some tea bags into a pitcher for sun tea.
Mom will be happy when she gets back and finds her puzzle piece and a cold pitcher of sugary tea spread out like offerings on our folding table. She likes it when I’m “productive.”
But first I go into my room and find the invitation that came in the mail yesterday. It’s on the nightstand next to my bed, and I open it up carefully so I don’t tear the shiny peach envelope. The paper inside is thick, almost like cardboard, and the writing is cursive and fancy.
You’re invited to the twelfth birthday of
Miss Brianna Lane Foley
Saturday the 23rd of June
at 3 o’clock in the afternoon
415 Hobson Terrace
Bring your bathing suits!
Regrets only 555-4350
Now I’m starting to think Ronan came over just to brag about being invited! I wonder which other boys will be there.
And I wonder how often Brianna is talking to Eden, or when that started. I guess it makes sense to include boys now that we’re going to be twelve. I don’t have big birthday parties—it’s usually just me, Mom, and Dad, but I realize that if friends were invited, those friends would include
Ronan, so technically I’m a boy-girl party kind of person.
But still. A boy-girl pool party . . . why didn’t Brianna tell me?
Chapter 2
Mom comes home late in the afternoon and I’m watching TV. “Clairebear!” Her voice is bright and I know it was a good day. “I brought you a new swimsuit!”
I stand up to give her a side hug. She smooths my hair as I lean into her soft T-shirt.
“Have a look,” she says. “Tags and everything. The Skylers are going up to the lake through August, so Mrs. Skyler bought a bunch of suits. This one was a little too small for Gemma so . . . it’s yours.”
I pick up the two-piece suit with neon triangles on it. It’s cute. Maybe not what I would choose, but definitely wearable. When I glance at the price tag, I know it must be a good brand even though I don’t recognize the name. Gemma Skyler wouldn’t get anything less. She’s two years older than I am, and Mom’s been cleaning the Skylers’ house since we were kids. When we were really little Gemma and I would play together while Mom worked. Her tree house is bigger than my bedroom—we had a lot of fun there.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. Now I have a new bathing suit to wear to Brianna’s party.
“You’re welcome, baby.”
“Oh! I have something for you too,” I tell her, moving aside so she can see my welcoming table setup. “I made sun tea, and look what I found . . .” I pick up the blue-flowered puzzle piece and wave it in front of her eyes.
“The missing piece!” She grabs it and hurries over to the tray by the TV where she’s kept the hydrangea puzzle, unfinished, for months. Mom fits the last piece in, and I see her body actually relax. She likes completion. She doesn’t even blame me for losing the piece, and I’m glad.
“Where will you put this one?” I ask her. The walls in our hallway are already filled with framed puzzles.
“I’m thinking in the kitchen,” she says. “When we look at it, it’ll be like we have fresh flowers on the counter each day.” Then she yawns, even though it’s only four thirty in the afternoon. “Okay, Clairebear, I’m gonna take a shower.”
While the water runs, I pour a glass of ice tea and sit on the couch with the catalog Mom brought in from the mailbox. Then there’s a knock on our screen door.
It’s Ronan. He’s changed into a nice shirt.
“Hey,” he says. “I need your help.”
Ten minutes later, Ronan and I are standing at the top of the hill in Cleland Cemetery, which is the closest place nearby where my phone can get a solid signal. Ronan has an old flip phone that doesn’t go online, so I’m his internet source when he can’t use his family computer.
At first his face looked so serious that I got worried, but it turned out that he just wanted a good phone camera to take a picture of himself. So I yelled to Mom that I’d be back soon, and I walked out with him.
“What do you need this for, anyway?” I ask him. Then I get a suspicion. “Are you allowed to be on social media?” I’m not until I’m thirteen. Mom says that’s when it’s legal.
“Just take the picture, Claire,” he says in response, so I snap him wearing his new-looking striped polo shirt and standing in front of the big old oak tree that makes a nice backdrop, as long as I don’t get any of the gravestones in the bottom of the frame.
I glance at the image on my screen. Ronan looks older, like a teenager already, in his nice shirt. I notice that his jaw seems more grown-up, if a jaw can be such a thing. It’s sharp angled and tough looking.
Ronan grabs the phone from me.
“That’ll work.” He forwards it to his email, and his face goes from serious to smiling when he says, “Wanna hit the brook?”
I nod. I’ve been waiting to get to the brook all day. It’s nearly ninety-five degrees out.
Ronan starts running, and I’m on his heels; I’ve always been almost as fast as he is. He kicks off his fake Crocs at the edge of the water, but I barrel on in with my flip-flops. “They’re water shoes!” I say when he looks at me funny. “And so are yours.”
He laughs. “I forgot!” he says, climbing into the green rubber shoes and then wading back out to me. There are tiny pebbles under the water, so shoes help.
We make our way to the big black rock just around the southern bend of the brook from the clearing where we entered. I think of it as our rock, mine and Ronan’s, though I’ve never said that out loud.
I scramble up and settle myself on the butt-size ledge at the top while Ronan leans against the broad side of the rock and closes his eyes. There’s something sad about the way he does it slowly, for the second time today, like he can’t handle the daylight anymore.
“You should bring Ellie here with us sometime,” I say. Ellie is Ronan’s pet lizard. He got her when his dad left, I guess because his mom felt bad or something. I don’t think a lizard replaces a dad, but Mom told me it isn’t for me to say.
Ronan grins. He loves Ellie. He named her after our student teacher that year, Miss Ellie, who always let Ronan sit by her side at morning meeting that spring when his dad went away.
“I taught her to flick out her tongue on command,” he says.
“No way!”
“Yup. All I have to do is stick out my tongue and she does it back.”
“Cool. I think Ellie is an uncharacteristically smart lizard.”
“I like it when you use eight-syllable words,” Ronan says.
Then we count uncharacteristically out on our hands, and he’s right. Eight syllables.
We’re quiet for a while, me sitting up high and Ronan standing, leaning with our rock against his back. Even though it feels still and humid where we are, there’s a little breeze up high. It’s working its way through the green leaves above me, making them twitch and dance.
“You know why I love this place?” Ronan asks.
“Why?”
“Because there’s no them, there’s just us,” he says. And I know he’s talking about his parents—his dad, really. Mr. Michaels left their family for, like, two years, and now he’s back. It must be weird.
I love this place too for that reason, and others. Even in the winter I like to come down here and crack the ice that forms around the edge of the water—it breaks into pretty patterns that look like magic. But the summer, right now, is the brook’s best time.
Usually it’s just Ronan and me here. There aren’t any other kids our age at Twin Pines Trailer Park—it’s mostly older people with what my mom calls “fixed incomes” and people who move in for a few months and move out again. I really don’t get to know everyone who comes and goes in the park, but the ones who’ve been my neighbors all along, like Mrs. Gonzalez and Ronan and his mom, they feel like family.
I turn my eyes down and notice that Ronan’s hair is getting lighter from the sun already. It looks like all the colors on a box of Honey Nut Cheerios that goes from a darker brown to a brighter blond. I love naming colors, and I’d call Ronan’s hair Harvest Gold.
A fish jumps in the deep area, and Ronan looks up at me quickly with wide eyes like, Did you see?
“Your hair looks like a cereal box,” I say, and he gives me a shrug. He’s used to me saying weird stuff.
“Shoulda brought my rod,” he says.
“Hey, did you know Gemma Skyler gets to spend the whole summer at the lake?” I ask. I know Ronan always wishes he could get to Town Lake, which everyone calls “the lake,” to fish. But it’s, like, an hour away and his mom works a lot. Maybe his dad will take him this summer.
Ronan raises his eyebrow and says, “Anyway.” He starts hunting for flat rocks to skip, and then he throws a few across the brook’s surface with an expert wrist-snap. The last one skips about ten times, and I let out a loud whistle.
“Who’s the king?” asks Ronan, and I like seeing his smile big and bold like this, going all the way to his eyes.
From up on the rock I give him a deep, seated bow. “Your Majesty.”
He laughs, and then his head turns toward Twin Pines. “D
id you hear that?”
“What?”
“Rocky,” he says. “We’d better get home.”
Rocky is the dog that lives behind Ronan with Mr. Brewster, a new neighbor who moved in last winter. It seems like Mr. Brewster might stay in our neighborhood, at least for a while, because he built a little pen next to his trailer for Rocky. Mr. Brewster works a lot and he told Ronan he wants Rocky to be able to be outside. The dog is a big, sweet goofball, a rescue bulldog mix, and Ronan is crazy about him. Mr. Brewster gave Ronan an extra leash when he saw their bond, so Ronan takes Rocky for walks sometimes. And the thing is, for some reason Rocky really doesn’t like Ronan’s dad. He’s been barking a ton since Mr. Michaels came back.
Ronan reaches up to help me down from the rock, but I push off and jump into the brook, kicking up a pretty good splash in the shallow water—and his shorts get wet.
“Jerk,” he says, but I hear the smile underneath. We walk close to each other as the sky gets dusky on the way home.
When we reach our trailers I start to wave good-bye, but he says, “Wanna come in?” and I have the feeling he needs me to, so I say yes.
Ronan’s dad is on the couch watching TV. When he sees me, he doesn’t get up or even move. His hair is long and his face is stubbly, but that’s how I remember him from before too, maybe with fewer gray patches.
“Claire Ladd,” he says, drawing out my full name like it’s ten syllables instead of two. His voice sounds far away, like he’s on the other side of a long tunnel even though he’s right in front of me.
“Hi, Mr. Michaels,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything else, just turns back to the TV.
I glance over at Ronan, but he’s looking down. The space feels dark somehow, like even though the TV is blasting and the corner lamp is on and there are three of us in this room, there’s an emptiness here too.
“We wanted to ask if Ronan could come over to my house for dinner,” I say before I can think. I look over at Ronan, and he lifts up his head.
Mr. Michaels nods slowly.
“Great,” I say, and I take Ronan’s hand. “I’ll see you around, Mr. Michaels.”
He doesn’t respond.
Why Can't I Be You Page 1
