The Light in Summer

by Mary McNear

  He rolled onto his back now and tried not to think about how lumpy the ground felt. After a few minutes, it stopped bothering him. Other things bothered him, though. A whole bunch of mosquito bites on his ankles that itched like crazy, and an ache in his shoulders from the backpack even though he’d taken it off hours ago, but pretty soon these stopped bothering him, too. The thing was, he felt good. Even with all the bites and stuff. Because what Mad Dog hadn’t told them that first day, when he’d warned them how tired they were going to be on this hike, was that it would be a good kind of tiredness. The kind that made you feel empty, but empty in a good way. The kind that made you feel light. Like now, he felt like he could almost float away, though that might have been his sleepiness. Sleepiness, he decided, was different from tiredness.

  Still, he didn’t want to fall back asleep just yet. He lifted his head and looked around the campsite, at the silhouettes of the tents, the fire pit, and the benches. Everything was still. And the only sounds—the only people sounds—were the sounds of sleep coming from the tents. Someone was snoring softly; otherwise there was only the occasional cough, or mumble, or rustle of a sleeping bag. He put his head back down. He liked this feeling of being alone but at the same time not being alone. It was nice. Cozy, his mom would probably say. Or maybe she’d have a better word for it. She loved words. And she knew a lot of them. He missed her. He wondered if she’d talked to his dad. And if she had, what his dad had said. Would he and his dad go fishing together one day? And what about his sisters? That was the weirdest thing of all. To think it was just you, and then find out you had sisters? He’d tried to imagine what they were like, but he hadn’t been able to. Would he meet them one day, too?

  Mad Dog had told him to focus on the present, though. (Mad Dog was all about “the present.”) Luke had tried to do that. And on most nights, he was so tired he didn’t even have time before he fell asleep to think about all of these things. But now, even though his body felt tired, his mind felt awake.

  He thought about how everyone, it seemed, the campers and the counselors, had changed since the first day. His tent mate, Oscar, had changed the most. He was so homesick at the beginning that it could make you feel kind of miserable just to be around him. Then one day, on, like, the fifth day of hiking, right after they’d stopped for lunch, Oscar had been kind of crying, and Luke had walked with him for a while and talked to him about stuff. Just little stuff, just to keep his mind off being homesick. Later, when Luke was walking alone, Mad Dog had come up to him and said, “Hey, thanks for talking to Oscar. I think he’s doing better now.” And then Mad Dog kept walking with him and told him he’d noticed that Luke always helped other people, and that he didn’t have to be asked to do stuff—he just did it. “You’re a leader, Luke,” Mad Dog had told him, and Luke hadn’t even known what to say. He’d just nodded and looked away, like it wasn’t even a big deal, but it was. Luke figured if Mad Dog said something like that, he meant it. He didn’t just go around saying things to be nice, like a kindergarten teacher or something. He wasn’t the kind of person who acted fake. He was real. He wasn’t like J.P., who just said things to sound cool.

  He wondered if Van and J.P. had really gone through with their plan to steal an ATV from the Greys’ barn. He didn’t think so. And then he thought about other things—what Annabelle had looked like the last time he’d seen her, at Pearl’s, and the way her charm bracelet had clinked against the side of her milkshake glass. He thought about going into eighth grade in the fall and wondered if it would be as lame as seventh grade. And he thought about Pop-Pop, and about how ever since that day he’d talked to Mad Dog, he’d been able to think about him, think about missing him, without wanting to cry. Which was the reason he’d tried so hard for the past year not to think about Pop-Pop. Because he was afraid he might cry. Now that he had cried, though, down by the lake after Mad Dog left, he wasn’t afraid. He’d even felt better afterward.

  He yawned and looked up at the sky. There were about a million stars. More than he could see in Butternut, even. He listened to the frogs in the nearby creek. Why were they so loud? What were they doing? It probably had something to do with mating, he thought. He’d ask Randall tomorrow. He was the counselor with the bushy beard who knew the most about nature. Luke blinked, and started to drift, and he was almost asleep when something made him open his eyes.

  There was a milky white cloud in the sky that hadn’t been there a minute ago. Was it . . . light from a flashlight? No. It was too high up. And then it was gone. Strange. He blinked again, sleepily, and it came back again, only this time it was greenish, and it was moving, moving almost like a wave, or a . . . a slinky? It was spooky, but he wasn’t scared. He knew what it was. Not because he’d seen it before, but because he’d heard his mom talk about it. It was the northern lights. The light green cloud spread out again, and now there were even little threads of red in it. Should he tell somebody? Mad Dog? Or wake up the kids in his tent? No, he decided, sleepy again. He wouldn’t tell anyone. It was cool that he was the only one seeing it. It was like the lights belonged to him, for right now, anyway. He watched them a little bit longer, feeling this kind of happy feeling. When they stopped after a few minutes, the feeling stayed with him until he fell asleep. He still felt it, in fact, when he woke up the next morning. But he didn’t tell anyone what he had seen. He kept it inside, a good kind of secret.

  CHAPTER 29

  Billy arrived early to pick up Luke from camp that afternoon and ended up sitting in her car in the Gooseberry Falls visitor center parking lot, eating Cracker Jack and trying to keep her emotions in check, since excitement and anxiety were both vying for attention. To distract herself, she took a copy of Luke’s itinerary out of her purse, unfolded it, and checked the schedule for today. It had begun with a “special breakfast” at the last campsite—Billy guessed that at this point, any breakfast without an errant pine needle in it would probably qualify as “special”—and was followed by hiking to the spectacular Gooseberry waterfalls. The campers were due at the visitor center by noon. Billy folded the itinerary and put it back in her purse, then reached into the box of Cracker Jack and searched for a peanut. (Where were the peanuts? This was an outrage. Her father, whose first stop on any long drive had always been at a gas station to buy a bag of Cracker Jack, would not have approved.)

  She checked her cell phone. It was 12:05 now. And she was about to get out of the car when she saw a group—a couple of counselors and a handful of ragtag boys—come around the corner of the visitor center. There was the soft, pasty-looking boy named Oscar who’d clung miserably to his parents at the drop-off point two weeks earlier. Luke had looked embarrassed for him, but Billy had been secretly jealous. A little part of her had wished her own son, who’d been sullen in his good-bye, would miss her as much as Oscar was obviously going to miss his parents. This Oscar, though, looked different. He was suntanned and cheerful as he chatted with one of the counselors. But where was Luke?

  And then she saw him. He was walking between two other boys, toting his backpack and wearing a baseball cap she didn’t recognize. It was obvious, from his animated gestures, that he was telling some kind of a story, and he and his friends were laughing and jostling each other as they walked along. In that second, Billy felt like crying. Then she realized something. She hadn’t just missed Luke. She’d missed the Luke who got excited and laughed and told stories. He’d been absent for far too long.

  As Billy got out of the car, Luke saw her and waved, a big wave. She wanted to run over to him and give him a hug, but recently hugging had seemed to be out, so she forced herself to walk calmly over to him until he called out, “Mom!” and gestured for her to hurry. When she got to him, Luke gave her a look that seemed to say, Well . . . ? Billy smiled and nodded emphatically. But one of the boys with Luke—a sandy-haired kid in a snowboarding T-shirt—asked Luke for his contact information, and there ensued a search for something to write with and on. Billy provided them a scrap of paper—the back of
a recent shopping list—and a stubby library pencil from her purse. As Luke’s friend was scribbling away, Billy gave Luke a hug, which, miraculously, he didn’t resist.

  “Mom, this is Travis,” he said then, indicating his friend. “He’s from Minneapolis. He plays youth hockey with Charlie,” he added. “Can you believe it?” Charlie had been Luke’s best friend when they’d lived in St. Paul.

  “What a coincidence!” Billy said, though she was staring at Luke’s sunburned, peeling nose. What had happened to the sunscreen she’d so carefully labeled “Harper” before packing it in his backpack? And, for that matter, what had happened to the insect repellant? she wondered, noticing a collection of mosquito bites on one of his arms, a few of them scratched almost to the point of bleeding. Oh, well, nothing to be done for it now, she decided, smiling at Luke’s new friend instead.

  “Mom, Travis and I are going to get together the next time we visit Grandma, all right?”

  “Absolutely,” Billy said, and there was a bustle of activity now as more parents arrived, more introductions took place, and more cell phone numbers were exchanged. As families began to leave, Billy reached down and picked up Luke’s backpack, which he’d let slide onto the ground.

  “I’ll get that, Mom,” Luke said, taking it from her—whether out of protectiveness or politeness, she didn’t know.

  “Okay,” she said. But as they headed for the car, they were stopped by Mad Dog, the head counselor Billy had met at drop-off. “Hey, Luke,” he said, seeming incredibly relaxed for someone who’d just spent two weeks with a dozen adolescent boys. “I wanted to be sure to say good-bye before you left.” He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “You’ve got a great son here,” he said to Billy. “If he wants a job with us in five years, we’d be happy to have him.” Billy beamed, and Luke, she saw, tried to appear nonchalant.

  “It sounds like the trip was a success,” she said.

  “It was the best group of boys we’ve ever had,” Mad Dog said. He told Luke and Billy good-bye, and Luke started walking toward the car.

  “What does astute mean?” Luke asked her after he’d tossed his pack onto the backseat.

  “Astute? It means . . . being perceptive or insightful. Someone who’s astute is someone who’s good at assessing a person or a situation,” Billy said as they got into the car.

  “Oh. ’Cause, um, Mad Dog said I was astute,” Luke said casually, not looking at her.

  She hid a smile. “Well, it sounds like Mad Dog knows what he’s talking about.”

  Once they were both in the car, though, with the doors closed, Luke turned toward her. “Mom, what’d he say?” he blurted. And she realized he’d used all his self-restraint to wait until they were alone to ask her.

  “He said . . . he said he wants to meet you. He’s going to try to come to Minneapolis sometime in the next couple of weeks, before school starts.”

  He stared at her, elation and fear mingling in his face. She was tempted to put her hand on his arm, to offer reassurance, but something told her not to. Something told her he needed space to process this on his own.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said finally, shaking his head.

  “That makes two of us,” she said.

  “And, um, my sisters? Are they coming, too?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t think so,” she said, though she hadn’t asked Wesley about this. “I think you might have to wait for that,” she added carefully. What she wouldn’t—couldn’t—tell Luke now was how uncertain Wesley had sounded on the phone. Not unfriendly, but uncertain. He’d told her that he’d thought about her letter for more than a week before calling her. She’d worried that he might not remember the night they’d spent together, but he’d told her he remembered it “very clearly.” And then he’d asked her, with more than a little awkwardness, how she knew Luke was his. She’d told him that he was the first man she’d ever been with and that she’d lied about being on birth control pills. “I see,” he’d said finally, and it was impossible for Billy to read in those two words what Wesley might be feeling. He’d asked her then about Luke—he wanted to know more than she’d put in her letter—and she’d told him, honestly, what an amazing kid she thought he was. And then she’d pressed, gently, for them to arrange a time and a place for him to meet his son.

  “Did you tell him I’m a really good fisherman?” Luke asked, excitedly.

  “I did not,” she said, smiling. “I’ll let you tell him that in person. He’s going to confirm with me in the next couple of days.”

  “I’m really going to meet him,” Luke said, more to himself than to her. “Holy shit,” he breathed.

  “No swearing,” Billy said, though this so perfectly described the way she was feeling that she was tempted to laugh.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he muttered.

  She started the car now and pulled out of the parking lot. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Because we can go straight to lunch.”

  “No, I can wait,” he said, reaching into the open box of Cracker Jack in the console. He put a handful in his mouth. “I can just eat this.”

  As they headed toward Butternut, she asked him questions about his trip, and he answered them, more or less, though she had the distinct impression now that he had to work hard to focus on anything other than meeting his dad. But he did tell her some funny stories about mystery dinners, tent mix-ups, and sleeping bag pranks.

  “Oh, Luke,” she said then, “your Pop-Pop would have loved to hear about all of this.” She looked over at him quickly. She knew she wasn’t supposed to bring up Pop-Pop. “I’m sorry,” she said, but Luke was staring steadily out his window. She sighed. Apparently their conversation was over. As they drove on in silence, Billy was reminded how quickly his mood could change.

  And then he surprised her. “I missed him on this trip,” he said, not looking at her. “I miss him all the time, but especially when I was out there. It was all the stuff he liked to do, you know?”

  “I know,” she said. Amazing, she thought to herself. This was the first time in the year since his grandfather died that Luke had admitted—to her, anyway—that he missed Pop-Pop. Just as she’d hoped, hiking the Superior Trail had offered him more than an adventure in the wilderness. “Do you want to get something to eat now?” she asked loudly as a logging truck thundered by.

  “Sure,” he said, fiddling with the radio.

  “I thought you weren’t that hungry,” Billy said, watching him bite into a second cheeseburger a little while later. They’d gotten hamburgers and fries to go from a Dairy Queen and were parked in the parking lot, eating them in the car. Or, rather, Luke was eating them. All Billy could do was sip her Diet Coke. She was still recovering, tentatively, from the stresses of the last couple of days.

  “I’m not that hungry,” he said. “But . . . can I have your fries, too?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Billy said, retrieving them from the greasy paper bag and handing them to him. She watched him eat them ravenously.

  CHAPTER 30

  Oh, good, it looks like we got here ahead of the crowd,” Billy said to Luke as she tugged open the wooden door to the Corner Bar. It was evening, a couple of days after she’d brought Luke home, and they were meeting Cal for dinner. To say that Billy was nervous about this was an understatement. It would be the first time not only that Cal and Luke had met each other but also that Billy and Cal had seen each other since he’d left for Seattle nine days earlier. (He’d driven straight here from the airport in Minneapolis.)

  Billy blinked in the room’s dim light—she’d always found this place unnecessarily dark—and tried to make out Cal sitting at the bar. But he was waiting instead at the hostess station, and he waved to the two of them now. Billy waved back at him and then, impulsively, squeezed Luke’s shoulder. “Hey, thanks,” she said to him. She meant “thanks for agreeing to do this when we both know the only thing you can think about right now is meeting your dad in two weeks.” Luke wasn’t looking at her, though. He was lookin
g at Cal.

  “That’s him?” he said. “That’s the guy with the Porsche.”

  “That’s right. Do you . . . know him?” Billy asked, mystified.

  But Cal was already grinning at Luke. “Hey. I think we’ve met before?”

  “Outside Pearl’s,” Luke agreed, shaking the hand Cal was holding out to him.

  “Luke was, uh, admiring my car,” Cal explained to Billy. Of course, she thought. She should have known that everyone in Butternut would have seen his car by now. “Small town and all,” Cal said, as if reading her mind. At that moment, Joy, the hostess, descended on the three of them with menus.

  And how had the rest of the evening gone? On the whole, Billy thought, pretty well. It was a little bit awkward, though that was, perhaps, to be expected. There were a couple of overlong pauses, a few unfinished sentences and, on Billy’s part, some gratuitous conversation with the waitress, Dawn. (Anything, she’d decided, to keep the table from sinking into silence.) It was possible that she tried too hard, and possible, too, that Luke didn’t try hard enough. Then again, maybe what Billy saw as a lack of effort on his part was really something else—watchfulness, or wariness. This was new for Luke. With the exception of Beige Ted, she’d never introduced anyone to Luke before, and even with Ted, Luke must have sensed the stakes weren’t very high. The only person at the table who seemed relaxed, in fact, was Cal; he was low-key, self-effacing, and funny. More important, he was careful not to be too affectionate with Billy, or too chummy with Luke.