The Light in Summer

by Mary McNear

  Luke grabbed a menu off the holder on the counter. He pretended to read it, which was dumb; everyone who lived in Butternut knew the menu by heart, and besides, he ordered the same thing every time he came in here. “I’m working at the Nature Camp now,” he said to her, still looking at the menu. “I’m not getting paid or anything, but you know, it’s a lot of responsibility.” He realized as he said this that he was trying to impress her with a fact that he would have done anything to hide from J.P., who couldn’t believe how stupid Luke’s “job” was.

  “I heard you were doing that,” Annabelle said, twirling her straw in the parfait glass in front of her. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s okay.” He was almost whispering. And then he looked around to make sure no one else he knew had come into Pearl’s.

  “That’s cool,” Annabelle said. “I’m taking an art class in Duluth. Like, a real class. It’s in figure drawing. It has adults in it and everything. But my mom has to drive me, so”—she shrugged—“it’s a lot of time for us to spend in the car together.”

  Luke nodded sympathetically. He liked looking at her. She seemed the same but different. Her hair was longer, and a lighter shade of blond. It always got that way over summer vacation. When it did it matched her eyes, which were a brownish gold. She already had a tan, too, probably from the town beach, where he used to go with her in the summertime when they were younger. He wondered briefly what kind of bathing suit she wore now. She’d had an orange-and-white polka-dot one-piece last summer and a green one-piece with a little skirt attached to it the summer before.

  “Hey, Luke. What can I get you?” asked the waitress, Jessica, standing in front of him. She was so pregnant that her belly touched the counter. “Twins,” she’d already told everyone. “God help her,” Luke’s mom had said. Jessica was married to Frankie, the cook at Pearl’s, and Frankie was a big guy, big as in huge. Most people thought the babies would be gargantuan.

  “I’ll have the burger with fries and a Coke,” Luke said nonchalantly. Jessica smiled and said, “Coming right up.” She came back to place a glass of ice water, a napkin, and silverware in front of him, and then went back to the grill to talk to Frankie.

  “The Nature Museum’s going to have a picnic at the town beach next week, on the Fourth of July,” Luke said, the words spilling out unexpectedly. But after he’d said them, he felt a little surge of confidence. “I have to work there—I’m going to grill hot dogs or something—but if you come I could probably still hang out with you.”

  “My dad has something planned for the Fourth,” Annabelle said, playing with her straw.

  “You could come over to my house sometime, then,” he said, like he didn’t really care if she did or not. “We have Hulu now.”

  Annabelle shook her head just a tiny bit. “No. My dad won’t let me. He doesn’t want me hanging around with you anymore,” she added quietly into her milkshake glass.

  “Why not?” Luke asked with surprise. Her dad had always liked him before. Annabelle was the first friend he’d made when he and his mom had moved to Butternut, and Toby Halsey, who was in their grade and lived down the block, was the second. Up until last year, the three of them were always together, running in and out of each other’s houses. Pastor Hansen used to call them “The Three Musketeers.” And he was always nice to them when they were over at his house. It was different from Luke’s house—there were a lot of rules, and Annabelle and her two younger brothers had to do chores, like raking leaves and stuff. But it was still fun. And except for when he had to write a sermon and he’d tell them they needed to be quiet, Pastor Hansen was actually pretty cool. “Why won’t your dad let you hang out with me?” Luke pressed her.

  “He heard about your suspension,” Annabelle said. She’d finished her milkshake, and now she was using her pencil to doodle on her napkin.

  “That’s not a big deal,” Luke said, but he felt the heat rise in his face. He couldn’t believe Annabelle’s dad wouldn’t want her to hang out with him just because he’d been suspended once.

  “It is to my dad,” she said. She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “But I know a way we could see each other.”

  “You mean, like, in secret?” he asked, thinking about what it would be like to have her come with him when he snuck out at night.

  “No. I mean there’s a way I could see you with my parents knowing.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “You could join the youth group at church.”

  “No. No way,” Luke said automatically. He’d been to church before, of course. He and his mom went every Sunday when they’d lived with his grandparents, and they still went whenever they visited his grandmother in St. Paul. But once they’d moved to Butternut, his mom said he didn’t have to go anymore if he didn’t want to, and he didn’t want to. It was okay, his mom said. You could still be close to God without going to church.

  “What’s wrong with the youth group?” Annabelle asked, her cheeks flushing.

  “Nothing. I just don’t want to sit around and, like, talk about Jesus all the time.”

  “That’s not what we do. I mean sometimes, maybe, we do that, but most of the time we just have fun.”

  “Like what?” he asked skeptically.

  “Like . . . like two weeks ago we went on a day trip to Lake Superior, to the Apostle Islands Sea Caves.”

  “Yeah?” That actually sounded pretty cool, but he wasn’t going to say so. “I’m already doing something on Lake Superior,” he said, fiddling with the saltshaker. “You know that program, North Woods Adventures? I’m going to be hiking the Lake Superior Trail. I’m leaving in the middle of July.”

  Annabelle looked interested. He hoped he hadn’t seemed too excited about it.

  “What other kinds of stuff do you do with your youth group?” he asked.

  “Next month we’re hosting a spaghetti dinner and talent show at church. You could . . . you could do that with us.”

  “No, thanks. I mean, no offense, but that sounds really . . . lame.”

  “I should probably get going,” she said suddenly, reaching into her backpack and pulling out her wallet.

  “Hey, don’t,” he said, wanting her to stay. “I’m sorry. That spaghetti dinner thing will probably be fun. I just don’t do stuff like that anymore unless I have to. I mean, like the talent show thing, who wants to stand up there and act like an idiot in front of all those people? What are you guys going to do? Sing some Christian rock song or something?”

  He’d made things worse, he saw. “Bye, Luke,” she said, putting some money on the counter and sliding off her stool.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What? I’m not going to stay here so you can make fun of me.”

  “I’m not making fun of you,” he said, suddenly confused. “God, Annabelle,” he blurted. “When did you get so serious about everything? You used to be different.”

  “No, Luke. You used to be different. You used to be . . . nicer.” She mumbled that last word, putting her backpack on.

  “I’m still nice,” Luke said, looking around him to make sure no one was listening.

  “Why didn’t you go to Toby’s birthday party, then?” she asked, challenging. “He was your best friend, Luke, and he told me you didn’t even answer his text when he invited you.”

  “That’s why you’re so mad at me?”

  “He only invited the two of us, Luke. It was just me when you didn’t come. We went to Soak City.”

  “I can’t help it if he didn’t invite more people,” Luke said. But he felt strangely guilty. Would he have gone if he’d known this? He didn’t know. But when he’d gotten the text, he hadn’t even told his mom. She would have made him go. She liked Toby. She didn’t understand how . . . how not cool he was now.

  “Well, it was really rude,” Annabelle said, turning to leave. Was that what this was about? he wondered, watching her retreating back. Toby? But it was about other stuff, too. He knew that. Because he hadn’t ju
st stopped being friends with Toby. He’d started being friends with Van. And Annabelle hated Van. She said he was mean. Van didn’t hate Annabelle, though. He thought she was hot, “in a preacher’s daughter kind of way.”

  He watched now as the door swung shut behind her, its little bells hopping and jingling. He was so mad that when Jessica put his plate in front of him a few minutes later, he didn’t even feel that hungry anymore.

  “Hey, where’d your girlfriend go?” Jessica teased, looking at Annabelle’s empty stool.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Luke snapped. And then he was sorry. Because what kind of person was rude to a pregnant lady? “I mean, she doesn’t even like me,” he said by way of explanation.

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” Jessica said with a little smile. And then she picked up Annabelle’s money and cleared her parfait glass away.

  As Luke started to eat his burger—he was wrong about not being hungry anymore—he was reminded of another time he’d been with Annabelle. It was last summer, and they were swinging on the tire swing in his backyard, just the two of them. He didn’t know how many times they’d done this over the years, probably about a million. And this time didn’t seem any different at first. They were just talking, he couldn’t even remember what about, and he was watching her. She’d swing up, and she’d have the sky behind her. She’d swing down, and she’d have the lawn behind her. She was wearing a pale blue T-shirt and denim shorts, and she was really tan—an end-of-summer tan, and her dark blond hair was flying around her face. Luke said something that made her laugh, and he remembered thinking, She’s beautiful. She’s really beautiful. He’d never thought that before. It surprised him, and he didn’t know why but it scared him a little, too. That was when things started to change. After that, he couldn’t forget she was beautiful, and he couldn’t remember she was his best friend, either. All the things that had been easy between them suddenly felt harder.

  Then a lot of other stuff had happened. Pop-Pop had died. He’d started hanging out with Van. He’d stopped hanging out with Toby . . . and the thing with Annabelle had just gotten more uncomfortable, so that he was actually trying to avoid her most of the time. Then he thought about one day last spring, after school, when he walked home with her, kind of by accident. It was one of those gray, slushy days in late March that make you feel like winter would never end. Van hadn’t been at school that day—he missed a lot of school—so Luke hadn’t really had anyone to hang out with at lunchtime. Now, with school over, he couldn’t go back to Van’s house and play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with him, which was too bad because he wasn’t allowed to play any games “rated M for Mature” at home.

  Luke was coming down the steps of the school, and he’d seen Annabelle cutting through the parking lot. She was alone, which was different. She usually had other girls around her. When Luke realized that they were both going home, he ran to catch up with her. He didn’t even really know why he did this, because when he got to her he couldn’t think of anything to say. She let him walk beside her, but she didn’t help him out with the whole talking thing. It was strange to think they’d walked home from school together a thousand times since third grade without even thinking about it, and now walking the six blocks from school to the center of town felt like it took forever. He was thinking, in fact, of inventing an errand he needed to run in town, and just ditching her there, when it started to rain. It wasn’t a normal rain, though. It was like this hard, icy rain. After they both started to run down Main Street, he took her arm and, without thinking, pulled her into the doorway of the building where Beige Ted had his accounting office.

  “What are you doing?” Annabelle asked.

  “Getting you out of the rain,” he said, looking down at her. Her red down jacket was already streaked with water, and her hair was kind of wet, but she looked so pretty standing there that he bent down and kissed her. She was surprised, but he was more surprised. He’d had no idea he was going to do this until he’d actually done it. When he stopped, she didn’t say anything, so he kissed her again.

  “Someone’s going to see us,” she said after that kiss.

  “No, they’re not,” he said, looking over his shoulder onto Main Street and then kissing her some more. He hoped he was doing it the right way. He tried to remember how Vin Diesel had kissed Michelle Rodriguez in Furious 7, but he hadn’t really studied that scene. He didn’t know he’d need to. Still, he put his arms around Annabelle and kind of squeezed her, and she did the same thing back to him. And it was nice. It was really nice. Except he wished he could feel her more through the puffy layers of her down jacket. It was like she was wearing a sleeping bag. But that was okay. He knew she was under there. They kissed a little more, and they might have kissed for a while, except the door behind them opened, and they had to pull themselves apart.

  “What are you two doing?” Beige Ted asked as he came out of his office. He was wrapping a scarf around his neck and looking at them like they’d been doing something wrong.

  “Nothing,” Luke said, innocently. “We were just trying to get out of the rain.” Annabelle had already left, though, and when Luke caught up with her, he couldn’t tell if she was angry with him or not. She trudged down the slushy sidewalk, studying the storefronts as if she’d never seen them before though she’d walked by them every day of her life.

  They were quiet until they reached the sidewalk in front of her house, and then she said, “Good-bye, Luke,” reached up, and kissed him quickly on the lips. After that, she ran down the walkway to her house without looking back. He stood there, surprised as hell, wondering what had happened and what was going to happen.

  What happened was this. The next day after school, Annabelle was waiting for him. He knew this because even though she was talking to a couple of friends as he came down the steps, she broke away from them, and she looked, kind of shyly, up at him. He waved at her, feeling nervous, but feeling something else, too. Before he got down the steps, though, Van rode up to the school on his bicycle through the still slushy parking lot.

  “Hey, Luke, let’s go,” he said impatiently. “I got to get out of here before someone sees me.” By someone he meant Mr. Niles, the school counselor. Once again, Van had skipped school that day. “Come on, let’s go,” Van said, jumping the curb on his bike and slamming on the brakes at the bottom of the steps. Luke shrugged, and, not looking at Annabelle, went with him. That was the last time she waited for him to walk home with her . . .

  “Can I get you anything else?” Jessica asked now, standing in front of him. Luke had finished everything on his plate, even the lettuce and tomato that came with his burger.

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “All right then.” She put the check on the counter and started to take his plate.

  “Jessica?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I was rude before.”

  She smiled. “You were fine,” she said.

  When she left, he counted out his money. He had to go to the library now and stay there until closing time with his mom. That was the deal. Nature Camp. Library. Home. He could stop at Pearl’s if he called his mom from the phone at the Nature Museum. No Van. No J.P. And no Annabelle, either. Not that his mom would mind if he saw Annabelle. But he had to face it: Annabelle didn’t want to see him.

  He was still thinking about this when he left Pearl’s a few minutes later, but if he’d felt sorry before, he was feeling something else now . . . a little irritated, actually. Like, why did Annabelle have to make such a big deal out of everything? When he saw her the next time, he thought, he might not even really talk to her. He might just say hi or wave or whatever, but he wouldn’t, like, try so hard. He wouldn’t say he was sorry. Because what was it, exactly, that he was sorry for, unless it was for not being perfect? And nobody, not even the kids in the youth group at her church, were perfect.

  He would have crossed the street then, on his way to the library, if he hadn’t noticed one of the
cars parked right up the block. Whoa. Even Luke, who didn’t know a lot about cars, knew it was a Porsche. You almost never saw cars that cool in Butternut, unless you counted Rae’s boyfriend Moe’s tricked-out Chevy Tahoe, and even that didn’t come close to this. He stopped to take a closer look at it and then realized there was a man leaning against it, typing on an iPhone.

  “Hey,” he said, noticing Luke.

  “Hey,” Luke said, and he started to move away, but something about the guy seemed friendly, so he stopped and asked, “Is this yours?”

  “Yep,” the man said. “It’s mine.” He stopped typing. “Are you interested in cars?” he asked.

  “Not, like, in general,” Luke said. “I can’t even get my learner’s permit for another year and a half. But this car . . .” he said, wanting to run a hand over its shiny silver surface. “One of the skateboarders I follow,” he said, “his name’s Theotis Beasley, bought a Porsche Cayenne when he went pro.”

  “I thought about getting a Cayenne,” the guy said. “And now, actually, I kind of wish I had. It’d be a lot more practical to have an SUV on some of these back roads up here.”

  Luke nodded. He was right about that. Plus, if you drove a car like this up here in the wintertime, you’d probably end up in a snowbank or something. In fact, Luke and his mom were one of the few families he knew of in Butternut who didn’t own a truck or an SUV. Instead, every winter his mom put snow tires on their Ford Focus. He’d asked her before if they could get a new car, a cooler car, but she said there was nothing wrong with the one they had, even if it was ten years old. And Luke knew she was right. Still, he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to ride in this car.

  “How . . . how fast does this go?” Luke asked. “Isn’t it, like, two hundred miles an hour?”