Freefall Summer

by Tracy Barrett

  “Would it be all right if I took Clancy out to dinner tonight?” Theo asked him.

  “Fine with me,” he said.

  “Um, fine with me too,” I said pointedly. They both looked at me like they were surprised I could talk. I was kind of surprised too. I usually didn’t say anything if they decided things for me, if I didn’t care about whatever it was. If I did care, I’d probably say something after we weren’t around my dad. Divide and conquer, after all. But I guess I was still irritated by the way my dad had spoken for me when Elise had said something about me making a jump, so I went on, “Isn’t anybody going to ask whether I want to go out to dinner tonight?”

  “There’s nothing to eat in the house,” Dad said at the same time that Theo said, “You always want to go out to dinner!” This was true. Aside from Beef Stroganoff, neither Dad nor I could really cook.

  “Well, maybe I don’t feel well tonight, or maybe I have other plans.”

  “You don’t feel well?” my dad asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “I feel fine,” I said. “But what if I didn’t?”

  “So what plans do you have?” Theo asked. “You didn’t say any—”

  “I didn’t say I had something else to do. I just asked, what if I did? What if I was doing something with Julia?” I stopped. I didn’t want to fight with him.

  My dad looked amused; Theo looked baffled.

  “Oh, whatever.” I gave up. “Sure. Give me ten minutes to shower. Where do you want to go?”

  Where Theo wanted to go was Manuelito’s, a Mexican place near our school. He made a point of asking me if that was okay and I said it was.

  As I headed into the house, my dad said to Theo, “Women,” and Theo laughed. I knew my dad was teasing me, but it was still irritating.

  Theo was watching the news with my dad when I came back. He stood up. “Don’t worry, sir,” he told my dad. “I’ll get her back early.”

  “Have fun.” My dad got up too and disappeared into the back of the house. The light in the kitchen went on, and I briefly wondered what he’d find to eat. Maybe I’d bring him back a taco.

  Manuelito’s was packed, and at first I didn’t think we’d find a place to sit. Then Julia waved at me from a booth in the back. Her boyfriend, Justin, sat across from her. I nudged Theo and pointed.

  “Oh, there they are!” he said.

  “You knew they’d be here?”

  He steered me past the game room and through the close-packed tables. “When you told me you were on your way home, I asked Justin to save us some seats. I figured you’d be craving flautas.”

  “Yay, rain!” Julia said as I slid into the booth next to her. Theo sat down across from me. “Yay, wind!” She put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. She was so much shorter than me that she had to reach up, and her soft hair tickled my nose. “We can actually hang out together for more than five minutes, and on a Saturday!”

  “There’s nothing special about Saturdays for me,” Theo pointed out. “I still have to go to work tomorrow.”

  “But not until the afternoon,” Justin said. “I have to get up almost as early as Clancy.” Justin had worked for his father’s landscaping company every summer since he was a little kid and weekends were busy for them, but the pool where Theo worked didn’t open until lunchtime on Sunday.

  “If the weather gets better, I’m going rock climbing in the morning,” Theo said. “Have to get in shape for the summer. The club has planned some really good trips to the mountains.” He flexed his arms as though already imagining scaling a cliff, and the muscles on his upper arms rippled.

  “Did you hear about that job at the miniature golf place?” I asked Julia.

  “Yup, they want me to come back part-time and work with the little kids.” Julia was crazy about kids, and they were crazy about her. She volunteered at a day care for underprivileged kids during the school year, and I had helped her put on a play with them over the winter.

  “So, mostly weekends?” She nodded and we high-fived. I worked mostly on weekends too, and this meant we’d have time to get together during the week.

  “I can do my homework at the DZ,” I said. “The class I’m taking is self-paced—”

  Justin interrupted me. “You’re going to summer school? What, a 4.0 isn’t enough for you?” He always tried to make me feel bad for doing well in school, like I was some kind of pathetic geek. I guess he was kidding, like Julia always said, but I didn’t find it amusing, and sometimes I just wanted him to talk normally instead of always trying to be funny. I didn’t say so because it would surely lead to, “Oh, poor Clancy, did I hurt your widdle feelings?”

  I explained, trying to keep a patient kindergarten-teacher tone out of my voice, “It’s just an online class. AP Art History. If I get the AP credit, I’ll be able to start off with upper-level art history courses in college. I want to graduate in three years, and that’ll be hard with a double major, so I’ll need all the APs I can get.”

  Theo leaned across the table. “My nerdy girlfriend.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I saw your light reading for the DZ that you left in the car. Come on, National Geographic?”

  “I like that stuff about the Incas and the Aztecs. It’s interesting, and it’s something I should know about if I’m going to be an archaeologist.”

  “Missouri Jones doesn’t have the same ring to it as Indiana Jones, though,” Julia chimed in.

  “Which were the ones that did human sacrifices—the Aztecs or the Incas?” Justin asked.

  “Both.” I waited, knowing that he’d follow this up with something that he thought was funny but I probably wouldn’t.

  Sure enough, he held his menu up to his face and peeked over its top at the waiter making the rounds. “Do you think he’s Aztec or Inca? Better be careful what you order. You don’t know where those sacrificed humans wind up.”

  “Justin!” Julia glared at him. “That’s so racist!”

  “Oh, come on,” Justin said. “No way he could hear.”

  “Well, I heard you,” Julia snapped. Justin was so clueless. Julia’s mom is Dominican, not Mexican, but still, what a jerk.

  He managed to get her to forgive him by the time the waiter brought us all large Cokes and we ordered our usuals. Julia poked me in the ribs, and I looked down to see that she was holding out a small bottle of amber liquid to me under the table—rum, I guessed. She nodded at my Coke. Obviously, she meant for me to pour some of the rum into it. I shook my head.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Live a little. Celebrate the beginning of summer break. You’re almost a junior.”

  “You know how my dad is,” I said. “He always pretends he’s just kissing me good night when really, he’s smelling my breath for alcohol.” She grimaced sympathetically and started to pass the bottle to Theo, but on an impulse I grabbed it from her, surprising myself as much as Julia. What has gotten into me today? Maybe I was tired of being predictable.

  “Changed my mind,” I whispered as I poured no more than a tablespoon of rum into my glass. I’m not driving, I reminded myself. It’s okay.

  “Well, will you look at that,” Julia said.

  Justin glanced down. He whistled under his breath. “Clancy Edwards, you are finally growing up.”

  I didn’t answer as I handed Theo the bottle under the table. “What are you doing?” he asked in a low voice, giving the bottle back to Justin without taking any. He was Mr. Designated Driver. “Won’t your dad—”

  I was already regretting what I had done but tried to shrug it off. “I fear not the wrath of my sire.” I waved a chip grandiosely in the air. “I’ll just be sure to eat enough guacamole so my garlic breath covers it up.”

  The Coke barely tasted different, especially after the splash of rum was diluted with a refill, and the food was good, as always. Julia was even chattier than usual, which was also good, because I didn’t feel like talking. That’s what usually happened. When Julia and I were ten and first saw a yin-yang symbol, with the b
lack shape and the white shape curling around each other and fitting together perfectly, we knew that was us. We were total opposites in most ways, but we fit together. She shook me out of my routine, and I reined in her craziness. It seemed that whenever she didn’t want to talk, I did, and the other way around. Her mom always said that Julia would never open a book if it wasn’t for me studying so much, and my dad liked how Julia would drag me out to movies and things when I’d been alone in my room for too long. We still drew the yin-yang symbol on each other’s notebooks in school.

  The guys didn’t seem to notice how quiet I was, and as soon as they had wolfed down their enchiladas and chiles rellenos, they got up to play pinball.

  Julia sucked the last of her Coke out of the glass. “So what’s the matter?” she asked.

  I shrugged and looked across the room to where Justin and Theo were battling it out. “Just tired, I guess.” I didn’t want to tell her that Theo was getting on my nerves, not after I had been obsessed with him since the first day of tenth grade, when he was newly arrived from Alabama. I got so excited when he finally asked me out in January that I nearly fainted. Half the girls in our class had a crush on him, yet he chose me. I still couldn’t believe it sometimes. Julia would think I was crazy if I suddenly said that Theo’s never-ending attention was getting old. For her, the more attention, the better. Besides, it was probably just that I’d been in a weird mood ever since I’d been at the DZ. Ever since I’d met Denny.

  “Maybe you can stay home tomorrow,” Julia suggested. “Tell your dad you’re sick.”

  I sighed and twisted my paper napkin around and around. “No, I need the money. The weather’s supposed to be better tomorrow, and there’ll be lots of students. Besides, if I don’t go, my dad’ll stay home, and then I’ll feel guilty. And I can’t go to Angie’s, so my dad would have to find someone to stay with me.” Angie had left for New Mexico in a hurry a few weeks earlier, when her son-in-law had walked out on her daughter, Leanne—my former babysitter—and their twins. Angie was going to take care of the grandkids until her son-in-law either came back or paid enough child support to pay for day care. Angie’s son, Jackson, had just come home after finishing his freshman year of college and was watching the house.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Julia said. “You’re sixteen. You don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Ha! It’s not a babysitter he thinks I need. He doesn’t think I need someone to make me dinner and keep me from falling down the stairs. It’s a chaperone he wants.”

  “But Theo’s working all day!”

  “He’s not worried about the daytime—it’s after Theo gets off work.” I twirled the paper wrapper from my straw and sighed. “My dad must have been really wild and crazy when he was our age, because he keeps saying, ‘I know what teenagers are like.’ ” I made my voice dark and growly, and Julia laughed. “He says that without a mother’s influence, I need more supervision than other girls my age.”

  Julia was still laughing. “You need supervision? You need less supervision than anyone I know! You’ve never even broken curfew.”

  “Yes, I have—” I protested, but she wagged a finger at me.

  “Five minutes late on Halloween when you’re in high school doesn’t count. You have the cutest boyfriend at Hawkins High and you’re still a virgin. You don’t drink, even though you could totally get away with it. You don’t smoke, you’re a straight-A student, you leave the room when someone even lights up a joint—”

  “Secondhand smoke. My dad could whip out a drug-testing kit any minute.”

  “Oh, you know he’d never do that!”

  I took a sip of Coke to untie the sudden knot in my throat. When I could speak, I said, “Jules, I can’t do anything risky. You know that. It would kill him if something happened to me. It took him forever to get over my mom. I mean, he still hasn’t gotten over her—he never talks about her or anything—but it took him forever to stop being a zombie.”

  “I know,” she said. “But your dad’s a big boy. You don’t need to take care of him.” It was an old argument, and I knew she didn’t expect me to answer. She knew what I’d say anyway—that both of her parents were alive, even if they were divorced, and that although her dad lived in Vermont and she hardly ever saw him, it was totally different. She couldn’t understand what it was like to have her mom die. She didn’t know what it was like to see her dad with a wound that everyone thought was scarred over but that sometimes opened. I’d do anything to keep from reopening it myself.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “maybe he’ll marry one of those women he keeps going out with, and he’ll lighten up on you some.”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t feel hopeful.

  We sat without speaking again, her head on my shoulder and my cheek on her hair, until the guys came back.

  Justin looked us up and down. “Everything okay?”

  “Just girl talk.” Julia straightened up. “Where do you guys want to go now?” She squeezed my hand and released it.

  “I got up at five o’clock this morning,” I said, “and I have to get up at five tomorrow morning. I’m too tired to be any fun. I just want to go home and watch something stupid on TV and go to bed. You guys go on without me. Theo can take me home, and then go do whatever you two wind up doing.”

  Julia protested, but I could see that Justin thought it was a great idea. I gave Jules a hug and said good-bye to Justin, and Theo and I walked back to his car, our fingers entwined.

  “So why the booze?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Just wanted to see what the big deal was, I guess.” But what I had really wanted was to see what it felt like to not always be a good girl, to do something that would upset my dad if he knew about it. I just had to make sure he never did know about it.

  Even though it was June, the air was cool after the rain, and Theo’s hand felt nice and warm. I matched my stride to his, and he kissed the top of my head and then my cheek. We stopped walking, and I turned to him. He held my face in both his hands and kissed me, gently and sweetly at first, and then, as I pressed myself into him, harder and more eagerly. His hand moved to my back and slid up under my T-shirt.

  “Get a room!” Justin called from his car window as he and Julia took off, and Theo jumped back as though someone had hit him.

  “Justin can be such a jerk.” He sounded embarrassed.

  “You speak sooth,” I said. “He’s a rank and arrant knave.”

  He chuckled and put his arm around me. “Well, I don’t know that he’s that bad. Jerk, maybe sometimes. ‘Rank and arrant,’ whatever that means—I don’t know.”

  I rolled my eyes in theatrical disagreement, which made Theo laugh again.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  My dad was dozing in his recliner with the TV on. I stood for a minute and watched him. He must have been exhausted. I wished he’d just go to bed when I was late coming home. My dad always said he wasn’t waiting up for me, but that he got interested in a movie or couldn’t sleep or got up to make a snack, but I noticed he never fell asleep in the recliner when I stayed home.

  I switched the TV off. “Dad,” I said. He grunted. “Dad, I’m home. Going to bed now.” I started to go past him to get to my room, but he woke up enough to say, “Give your old dad a good-night kiss.” I bent over to kiss his cheek, holding my breath.

  “Garlic much?” He waved a hand in front of his face. He didn’t say anything about me coming back early. He probably figured that Theo was being thoughtful by bringing me home before curfew, knowing that I had to get up early. I’d once heard him tell one of the Stroganoff ladies, “Theo takes such good care of her,” like I was a puppy.

  The next morning Dad had to call me three times before I dragged myself out of bed. The sun wasn’t up yet, so the grass was damp and a bit of a chill still hung in the air. I lay down on the backseat as soon as I got in the car and wrapped myself in the afghan I kept in the car after fastening the seat belt, which I knew
Dad would check. I pretended to fall asleep so I wouldn’t have to talk if he got chatty. Pretty soon I did doze off, and I woke up only when we arrived at Skydive Knoxton.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The sky was turning from dawn orange to summer blue, and everything sparkled after the rain. I glanced at my reflection in the side mirror of the car. My eyes were red and puffy, and I was wearing the same T-shirt I had slept in. My hair is so thick that it had still been damp from my shower when I went to bed the night before, and now it poked out in all directions. When I ran my tongue over my teeth, I could tell that my hasty toothbrushing that morning had already worn off. No makeup, of course. The students would be so nervous and the regular jumpers would be so focused on what they were doing that no one would have noticed if I’d walked naked through the hangar. And there was no point in making the effort anyway, I had told myself, since I’d be folding canopies, stowing lines, and closing containers all day. The work was dusty, and even though it was only June, the metal roof of the hangar would turn the place into an oven by noon.

  Why did I even look in the mirror then? Denny might come back today, something in me said.

  “So what?” I said out loud, but I couldn’t squelch the hope that he’d be there.

  I hauled myself out of the car and picked up my book, even though with the beautiful weather, we’d probably have so many students that I’d be too busy to read. Mentally, I added up how much money I was likely to earn. If I thought about the weather and money, I wouldn’t think about Denny. The only reason I was thinking about him at all was because he was fun to talk to, I told myself.

  In the office, Cynthia was passing out forms to four students, three guys and a girl. No Denny. The realization brought a sour feeling of disappointment, followed immediately by guilt that I was disappointed. You’re overreacting, Carys Clancy, I told myself firmly. No more late nights before work—I got emotional too easily when I didn’t sleep enough. That explained my mood.