The Summer I Learned to Fly

by Dana Reinhardt

  ALSO BY DANA REINHARDT

  The Things a Brother Knows

  How to Build a House

  Harmless

  A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Dana Reinhardt

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reinhardt, Dana.

  The summer I learned to fly / Dana Reinhardt. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89787-0

  [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Single-parent families—Fiction. 3. Stores, Retail—Fiction. 4. Rats as pets—Fiction. 5. Family life—California—Fiction. 6. California—History— Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R2758Sum 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010029412

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Wendy Lamb and Douglas Stewart, for believing

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Grand Opening

  A Note About Names

  The Book of Lists

  Throwing Caution to the Wind

  Swoozie

  Friends: A History

  Mom, A Vanishing Act

  Sunday

  On the Loose

  Emmett Crane

  The Tin Man

  Word Games

  A Day Off

  Garfield Park

  Absolutely, Positively Fine

  A Face to Unlock Doors

  The Stolen Child

  The In-Between

  Indigo Night

  Done

  The Jingle of the Bell

  Looking for Somebody

  What It Said Inside the Paper Crane

  Someone Like Me

  So Vital

  Have You Seen Me?

  Grounded

  This Is Not a Dream

  The Onion Fields

  The Legend

  Taking a Leap

  The Runaway Type

  The Silver Car

  One Last Stop

  Let Me Go

  Awake and Alive

  The Magician’s Party Trick

  You Are Here

  Hold on Tight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  the grand opening

  For some people it’s the smell of sunblock. Or pine trees. A burnt marshmallow from the embers of a campfire. Maybe your grandfather’s aftershave.

  Everyone has that smell. The particular scent that transports you, even if only for an instant, to the long-ago, faraway land of your childhood.

  For me, it’s the smell of Limburger. Or Camembert. Sometimes Stilton. Take your pick from the stinkiest of cheeses.

  My mother’s shop was on Euclid Avenue. But believe me, it’s not the Euclid Avenue you know now, with thirty-dollar manicures and stores that sell nothing but fancy soap in paisley paper.

  Back then Euclid Avenue was the kind of place where a kid like me could find something to spend fifty cents on. And I did, almost every day, at Fireside Liquor. It was the summer of 1986 and I wasn’t buying alcohol; I was only thirteen. But fifty cents bought me a Good News: peanuts, caramel, chocolate. The red label declared it Hawaii’s Favorite candy bar, an odd claim, but one that made it seem, and even taste, exotic.

  I’d never been to Hawaii. I’d never been anywhere to speak of. We didn’t have much money, only what we got from Dad’s life insurance policy, and what we did have had all gone into the Cheese Shop.

  That’s what it was called. The Cheese Shop. No stroke of brilliance in the creativity department, but the name said what it needed to say: Come inside and you’ll find cheese. Any sort you can imagine.

  On the day we opened, Mrs. Mutchnick, who owned the fabric store across the street, a grandmotherly type with her hair barely holding on to its ever-present bun, brought over a gift. It was a most unexpected opening-day gift. Not flowers. Not champagne. And I couldn’t possibly have guessed when I unwrapped it (because Mrs. Mutchnick presented it to me) that this gift would come to change my life.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  First, there was the issue of the health inspection.

  There are basic requirements. Things one must do in order to open a store that sells food.

  Keep your shop clean. I mean truly clean, not what you try to pass off when your mom looks at your room, with everything shoved in a drawer or under your bed. You must keep your establishment absolutely spotless.

  Have running water, hot and cold, and a working restroom.

  Your freezer must be a certain temperature, which is different from the temperature you must keep the refrigerated cheese cases, which is different from the temperature you must keep the shop itself.

  And generally, things need to smell good, which is easy enough, unless you happen to be in the business of selling stinky cheeses.

  This is precisely where we ran into trouble with the inspector.

  He’d enter the shop nose first, as if it, and not his pea-sized brain, were in charge of the rest of him. He came around often, too often, in the days leading up to the opening, rapping his clipboard on the shop front window and doing a little wave with his spindly fingers.

  His name was Fletcher Melcher. I know it sounds like I’m making that up, but I’m not. And I’m not making up the forest of hair that lived in each of his nostrils either.

  We called him Retcher Belcher, about as inspired as calling Mom’s store the Cheese Shop, and he almost succeeded in keeping the shop from opening, which seemed to be his very purpose for walking the planet.

  The day before we were to sell our first wedge of cheese, the freezer decided to stop working. And who should arrive only moments after we’d realized this? Right. The Belcher.

  I’d taken the bus to the shop. Mom had arranged for me to ride a new bus from school, one that took me to the vicinity of the store rather than our small house not far from the beach. Nobody talked to me on this new bus, but that wasn’t much of a change from what it was like to ride the old bus.

  I was coming from Fireside Liquor, about to open my Good News, and I could see through the storefront window that Mom was in a state.

  She was all flailing limbs. Her usually short and spiky hair had taken on that puffy look it got when she ran her fingers through it obsessively. She was yelling at Nick while he stood by and took it calmly, as only someone in possession of two particular qualities could.

  One: Nick was unflappable. Some people would attribute this to the proximity of Fireside Liquor. But Nick wasn’t a drunk; he was a surfer, just turned nineteen. Mellow to the max.

  Two: Even if he knew almost nothing about cheese, Nick could fix practically anything.

  The bell jingled as I walked through the front door. A sound that would later come to drive me mad.

  “Drew,” he said, and he put both of his hands on my shoulders. He fixed his green, sea-glass eyes on mine.
“Thank God you’re here.”

  His third outstanding quality: Nick Drummond was impossibly good-looking.

  “Get your old lady under control, will you? Take her outside for some fresh air. Or maybe even a smoke.” And with that he disappeared into the freezer.

  This was Nick’s stab at humor. Mom didn’t smoke. Except for her love of cheese, she was pretty much a health nut. She did yoga. She meditated. She wore an earthy-smelling perfume, except when she was at work, because Mom believed that nothing should interfere with a customer’s right to freely whiff the cheese.

  “We’re up a creek,” she said.

  “Chill out, Mom. It’s gonna be cool.” I’d only known Nick about a month, since we’d started getting the shop ready to open, but I was already perfecting his lingo. Anything to make him notice me.

  “No, Drew. It’s not gonna be cool. Fletcher Melcher is on his way. Daisy called. He’s just asked for his check.”

  Daisy owned the diner three blocks up. That the Belcher was taking his lunch there could only mean one thing: he was on his way to us. He had it in for Mom and the shop, and every merchant on Euclid Avenue knew it.

  “Nick’ll take care of it,” I told her. “He can do anything.”

  Mom reached over and stroked my hair. She smiled at me wistfully. “Oh Birdie, you’re too sweet.”

  She walked behind the counter, grabbed an oversize wheel of Jarlsberg, and cut us each a slice. A disconcerting clanging came from inside the walk-in freezer. Mom winced. I pointed to the slice in her hand, then pointed to her mouth. She took a bite.

  Jarlsberg: the comfort cheese.

  As predicted, the rapping of the Belcher’s clipboard on the front window followed. As did his little wave. Mom reluctantly motioned him inside.

  He stuck that nose of his into the air and made a beeline for the cheese case’s thermostat. Forty-four degrees. Perfect.

  He walked around the back of the counter. Ran his fingertip along the butcher block. Checked the sink. The hand soap. Slithered his way past the shelves of crackers and jars of olives, toward the back office and the ill-fated walk-in freezer.

  He reached for the handle and jumped back as the door seemed to open itself. There stood Nick in one of the parkas we kept nearby for anyone who had to spend a stretch of time inside the freezer shelving sauces or lasagnas, ravioli or chicken pot pies, the things we sold other than cheese, because nobody, not even Mom, could live on cheese alone.

  Nick smiled, his cheeks red with cold. He looked like he’d just gotten off a chairlift at the top of a snow-covered mountain on a gloriously sunny day.

  The Belcher pushed past him. He checked the thermostat, grudgingly nodded, and moved on to the employee restroom.

  Mom shot Nick a thumbs-up. He did an extravagant bow.

  When Fletcher Melcher finally took his leave, Nick told us that he hadn’t fixed the freezer; he’d only messed with the thermostat. So back on went the parka, and back went Nick into what was left of the cold, and thirty minutes later the freezer was working again, and sixteen hours later we were officially in business, because Nick Drummond was nothing short of a miracle.

  And later the next evening, when we had our grand opening party, with platters of cheese and wine in plastic cups, Mom wandering through the crowd receiving hugs and flowers and unsolicited advice, Mrs. Mutchnick closed up her fabric store and crossed Euclid Avenue with a gift.

  It was wrapped in a piece of striped fabric, tied loosely on the top with twine.

  What a clever gift, she’d thought. Perfect for someone in the business of selling cheese. She didn’t have to go any farther than four blocks to Pacific Pets and Pet Supply to buy it.

  She brought it right over to me, though she’d intended to give it to Mom. She gave it to me, she said, because I looked lonely.

  I looked like I needed a friend.

  “You might want to open it now, dear.”

  I untied the twine. Inside that striped fabric wrapping was a small wire cage, and inside that small wire cage was a rat.

  He was an ordinary rat. He didn’t talk. He didn’t have magical powers, a lesson to teach me, or wisdom to impart. He was just a rat, and although at first he made me squeamish, I grew to love him terribly.

  But that isn’t why he changed my life.

  It was because this rat, black with a white belly and whiskers too long for his small face, one afternoon escaped his wire cage, and led me to a boy named Emmett Crane.

  a note about names

  I named him Humboldt Fog, after my favorite cheese, and though certain occasions called for the use of his proper name, His Excellency the Lord High Rat Humboldt Fog, he came to be known simply as Hum.

  And since I’m bothering to explain his name, I guess I should say a word or two about mine.

  Drew is not my real name.

  I came into the world as Robin. Which accounted for why my mother still called me Birdie, and it was my misfortune that she often called me Birdie in front of Nick Drummond.

  Robin Drew Solo.

  That’s my real name. My father’s name was Drew, and I guess I would have been Drew too had I been a boy, but obviously I wasn’t, so I was named Robin after some long-lost relative nobody seemed to know or care much about.

  Then my father died. I was only three. And from the black hole of her grief Mom couldn’t let go of that name. She changed my name so she could hear herself say his, countless times a day.

  Eventually she did the paperwork and saw to it officially—and well after the fact of my birth—that despite being a girl, I be called after my father.

  So I became Drew Robin Solo. Sometimes Birdie. Except for Emmett Crane, who was the only person in my life, then or since, who chose to call me Robin.

  the book of lists

  I found it one day while looking for a shawl. I’d never seen Mom wear a shawl, so I had no reason to think I’d find one in her messy closet, but I figured it didn’t hurt to look.

  Shawls had replaced the hooded sweatshirts we all tied around our waists for the first half of the school year. Now it was all about knit woolen shawls, triangular in shape, so that the longest point conveniently covered your butt. That we lived in California, and that these were some of our hotter months, didn’t seem to matter at all. Like most of the kids my age, particularly the girls, fads were unpredictable and irrational.

  I had to have one. And since the shop was still very new, and what we might have had to spend on something like a shawl had gone instead toward a hot-seal plastic wrapper for wedges of cheese, I went looking in Mom’s closet.

  I never did find a shawl. Or anything with which to cover my butt. I found something so much better.

  I found it under a pile of balled-up sweaters, which I figured hadn’t been touched for years, not only because I’d never seen them (I paid close attention to Mom’s fashion choices), and not only because they stank of must, but also because Mom wasn’t a tall woman. And the shelf that held them was up high. Too high for an ordinary chair. So high that I had to get the ladder from the garage to reach that shelf, and the ladder spit out rust as I creaked it open.

  After holding up and then rejecting each musty sweater, I came to the bottom of the pile, where I found a composition notebook with a cover like TV static. The spaces for a name and subject were left blank, so I assumed the inside would be blank too.

  But then I opened it.

  I didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t Mom’s soft precise cursive, which I tried so hard to mimic. It was small and tight. Blocky. Leaning to the left. The handwriting of a man.

  The handwriting of my dead father.

  What other reasonable choice did I have but to re-ball Mom’s sweaters and return them to the too-high shelf? To refold the metal ladder and return it to the garage? To take that composition book to my room, sit down on my floor, and begin to read?

  Lists.

  It was a book of lists from my father. Lists of everything from favorite foods (lobster) to le
ast-favorite bands of all time (The Doors). His favorite season: winter, the real kind. Favorite place: San Francisco, at the break of day. Regrets: not taking up the motorcycle before it became a pathetic cliché. Embarrassing moments: dinner at the home of my girlfriend’s parents, clogged toilet.

  I read that composition book from cover to cover sitting on my pink shag carpet, but I didn’t stop there. I read it most days. I returned to it like some people return to the Bible. And like the Bible, there were days I needed it more than others.

  It’s hard to say whether there was something that struck me the hardest or surprised me the most. When you don’t know someone, everything you learn about him is its own sort of surprise. But I can say what it was I read that first afternoon that lodged itself inside me like a feather, so that only holding my breath would stop the fluttery, slightly sickening feeling.

  Fears: that I’ll never see my Birdie learn to fly.

  throwing caution to the wind

  Nick Drummond drove a lime-green Vespa. One afternoon, just before school let out for the summer, I was getting off the bus when he pulled up to the curb and flashed his signature grin.

  “Need a lift?”

  I was born cautious. I never liked roller coasters or scary movies. I thought the girls who smoked cigarettes outside the minimart looked foolish, like kids who walk around in their mothers’ high heels.

  I made every choice carefully. Until the afternoon Nick Drummond pulled up on his lime-green Vespa and offered me a ride, and without hesitating, for fear he might change his mind and speed off without me, I said yes.

  We were only three blocks from the shop, so I didn’t need a ride. Need wasn’t the point.

  He never wore a helmet, so he didn’t have one to offer me, and even this didn’t give my careful heart pause, because without a helmet, somebody might actually know it was me riding around on the back of Nick Drummond’s Vespa.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the school bus, but it was already departing. We took off in the wrong direction.

  “I’m not due at the shop for half an hour,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Let’s go for a spin.”