My Life Next Door

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  “It was her first word.” Mrs. Garrett takes her from me, heedless of Patsy’s damp swimsuit. “There’s one for the baby book.”

  Chapter Nine

  With Mom and Tracy both out, the house is so quiet at night that I can count the sounds. The whir-clunk of ice dropping from the ice machine into the freezer bin. The shift of the central air from one speed to another. Then a noise I don’t expect as I’m lying in my room at about ten o’clock that night, wondering if I should say anything to Mom about that woman with Clay. It’s this rhythmic bang, bang, bang sound outside, below my window. I open it, climb out, looking down to find Jase, hammer in hand, nailing something to the trellis. He looks up, nail between his teeth, and waves.

  I’m happy to see him, but this is a bit odd.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “You have a loose board here.” He takes the nail out of his mouth, positions it on the trellis, and begins hammering again. “It didn’t seem safe.”

  “For me or you?”

  “You tell me.” He gives a final knock to the nail, puts the hammer down on the grass, and, in seconds, has climbed up the trellis and is sitting next to me. “I hear you’ve been engulfed by my family. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine.” I sidle back a little. I’m again in my nightgown, which seems a disadvantage.

  “They’re the best thing I’ve got, but they can be a little”—he pauses, as though searching for a definition—“overwhelming.”

  “I’m not easily overwhelmed.”

  Jase gazes at me, those green eyes searching my face. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you?” It strikes me, sitting there, that I can be anyone I want to be with him. Then I notice something move on his shoulder.

  “What’s that?”

  Jase turns his head to the side. “Oh, you mean Herbie?” He reaches up and pulls a squirrel—a rabbit—something furry—off his shoulder.

  “Herbie?”

  “Sugar glider.” He extends his hand, now containing a fuzzy thing that looks like a flying squirrel, with a big black stripe down its back and black-shadowed eyes.

  I stroke its head uncertainly.

  “He loves that. Very tactile.” Jase moves his other hand over so Herbie’s cradled in between two palms. His hands are rough and capable. So much about Jase Garrett seems like a man, not a boy.

  “Are you…like…Dr. Doolittle or something?”

  “I just like animals. Do you?”

  “Well, yeah. But I don’t have a zoo in my room.”

  He peers over my shoulder, in my window, then nods. “No, you sure don’t. What a clean room. Is it always like that?”

  I feel defensive, and then defensive about feeling defensive. “Generally. Sometimes I—”

  “Go a little crazy and don’t hang up your bathrobe?” he suggests.

  “It’s been known to happen.” He’s sitting so close, I can feel his breath on my cheek. My stomach flip-flops again.

  “I hear you’re a superhero.”

  “Yup. A few hours with your family and now I have supernatural powers.”

  “And you’ll need ’em.” He leans back, resting Herbie on his stomach, then slanting onto his elbows. “Plus, you do back dives.”

  “I do. Swim team.”

  Jase nods slowly, looking at me. Everything he does seems so thought-out and purposeful. I’m used to boys just sort of hurling themselves through life, I guess. Charley, who was basically all about hoping for sex, and Michael, at the mercy of his moods, either elated or in deep despair. “Want to go for a swim?” Jase finally asks.

  “Now?”

  “Now. In our pool. It’s so hot.”

  The air is muggy and earthy, almost thick. Let’s see. Swimming. At night. With a boy. Who’s virtually a stranger. And a Garrett. It’s dizzying how many of my mother’s rules this is breaking.

  Seventeen years of lectures and discussions and reminders: “Think about how it looks, Samantha. Not just how it feels. Make smart choices. Always consider consequences.”

  Less than seventeen seconds to say:

  “I’ll get my suit.”

  Five minutes later, I’m standing in our yard beneath my bedroom window, waiting nervously for Jase to return after changing into his trunks. I keep peering toward our driveway, afraid I’ll see a sweep of headlights and it’ll be Clay driving my mother home, finding me standing here in my black tankini, so not where she expects me to be.

  But instead, I hear Jase’s quiet voice. “Hey,” he says, walking up my driveway in the dark.

  “You don’t still have Herbie, do you?”

  “Nah, he’s not a water fan. Come on.” He leads me back down and around my mother’s six-foot barricade, up the Garretts’ driveway to their backyard, and over to the tall green chain-link fence that encircles their pool. “Okay,” he says, “are you a good climber?”

  “Why are we climbing over? It’s your pool. Why don’t we just go through the gate?”

  Jase folds his arms, leaning back against the fence, smiling at me, a flash of white in the dark. “More fun this way. If you’re breaking the rules, it might as well feel like it.”

  I look suspiciously at him. “You wouldn’t be one of those thrill-seeking-get-the-girl-in-trouble-just-for-kicks types, would you?”

  “I would not. Climb over. Need a boost?”

  I could use one, but would not admit that. I stick my toes in a hole of the chain link and climb up and over, clinging to the other side before dropping down. Jase is beside me almost immediately. A good climber. Naturally, I think, remembering the trellis.

  He snaps on the underwater pool lights. The pool contains several inflatable toys, something Mom’s always lamenting. “Don’t they know you’re supposed to put those away every night or the filter doesn’t work? God knows how unsanitary that pool is.”

  But it doesn’t look unsanitary. It’s beautiful, glowing sapphire in the night. I dive right in, swim to the end, come up for air.

  “You’re fast,” Jase calls from the middle of the pool. “Race?”

  “Are you one of those competitive beat-the-girl-in-a-race-just-to-prove-a-macho-point types?”

  “You seem,” Jase observes, “to know a lot of annoying people. I’m just me, Samantha. Race?”

  “You’re on.”

  I haven’t been on the swim team for a year. Practices started to take too much time away from my homework, and Mom put her foot down. I still swim when I can, though. And I’m still fast. He still wins. Twice. Then I do, at least once. After that we just paddle around.

  Eventually, Jase climbs out, pulls two towels from a big wooden bin, and spreads them on the grass. I collapse onto one, staring up at the night sky. It’s so hot, the humidity pressing down on me like fingers.

  He lies down next to me.

  To be honest, I keep expecting him to make a pass. Charley Tyler would have been reaching for the top of my swimsuit faster than Patsy. But Jase just folds one arm behind his head, looking up at the sky. “What’s that one?” he asks, pointing.

  “What?”

  “You said you were into stargazing. Tell me what that one is?”

  I squint where his finger is pointing. “Draco.”

  “And that?”

  “Corona Borealis.”

  “And over there?”

  “Scorpius.”

  “You really are an astrophysicist. What about that one over there?”

  “Norma.”

  A bark of laughter. “Honestly?”

  “You’re the one who had a tarantula named Agnes. Yes, truly.”

  He rolls onto his side to look at me. “How’d you find out about Agnes?”

  “George.”

  “Of course. George tells all.”

  “I love George,” I say.

  Okay, now his face is close to mine. If I were to raise my head and tilt over just a bit…But I will not, because there’s no way I’m going to be the one who does that. I never have been, and I’m not starting now. Instead I ju
st look at Jase, wondering if he’ll lean any nearer. Then I see the sweep of headlights pulling into our circular drive.

  I jump up. “I’ve got to get home. I’ve got to get home now.” My voice is high, panicky. My mother always checks my room before she goes to sleep. I run over to the chain fence, bang through the gate, then feel Jase’s hands at my waist, lifting me up so I’m nearly to the top of our tall slippery one, close enough to throw one leg over.

  “Easy. You’ll make it. Don’t worry.” His voice is low, soothing. Probably his calm-the-nervous-animal voice.

  I drop down on the other side and am running for the trellis.

  “Samantha!”

  I turn, though I can only see the top of his head over the fence.

  “Watch out for the hammer. It’s still on the grass. Thanks for the race.”

  I nod, give a quick wave, and run.

  Chapter Ten

  “Samantha! Samantha.” Tracy comes hurtling into my bedroom. “Where’s your navy blue halter top?”

  “In my drawer, Trace. Whyever do you ask?” I respond sweetly. Tracy’s packing to leave for Martha’s Vineyard—half an hour before Flip’s picking her up. Typical. She regards it as the right of the first born to co-opt any articles of my clothing she fancies, as long as they’re not actually on my back at the time.

  “I’m taking it, okay? Just for the summer—you can have it back in the fall, promise.” She yanks open my bureau drawer, scrabbling through clothes, pulling out not only the blue top but a few white ones.

  “Right, because fall is when I’ll really need the halter tops. Put those back.”

  “Come on! I need more white shirts—we’ll be playing tons of tennis.”

  “I hear they may even have stores on the Vineyard these days.”

  Tracy rolls her eyes and shoves the shirts back in, whirling to return to her room. Last year she taught tennis at the B&T, and I’m suddenly conscious that it will be weird without her there too, not just at home. My sister is, for all intents and purposes, already gone.

  “I’ll miss you,” I say as she whips dresses off hangers, shoving them helter-skelter into a suitcase of Mom’s, not at all bothered by the prominent GCR monogram.

  “I’ll send you postcards.” She opens up a pillowcase, striding into the bathroom. I watch as she sweeps the hair straightener, curling iron, and electric toothbrush off the counter into the sack. “I hope you won’t really miss me, Samantha. It’s the summer before your senior year. Forget Mom. Bust loose. Enjoy life.” She waves her birth control compact at me for emphasis.

  Ugh. I so don’t need a visual aid for my sister’s sex life.

  Shoving the compact into the pillowcase, she knots the end. Then her shoulders sag, her face suddenly vulnerable. “I’m afraid I’m getting in too deep with Flip. Spending the whole summer with him…Maybe not smart.”

  “I like Flip,” I say.

  “Yeah, I like Flip too,” she says shortly, “but I only want to like Flip till the end of August. He’s going to college in Florida. I’m headed to Vermont.”

  “Planes, trains, automobiles…” I suggest.

  “I hate that messy long-distance stuff, Samantha. Plus, then you wonder whether he’s got some girl on campus that you don’t know about and you’re making a fool of yourself.”

  “Have some trust, Trace. Flip seems pretty devoted.”

  She sighs. “I know. He brought me a magazine and a Froz-Fruit at the beach the other day. It was so sweet. That was when I realized I might be getting in too deep.”

  Ooops.

  “Can’t you just see how it all goes?”

  Tracy’s smile is rueful. “I seem to remember that when you were dating Charley you had some sort of timetable for every move you’d let him make.”

  “Charley needed a timetable or he’d have tried for sex in his dad’s Prius in our driveway before our first date.”

  She chuckles. “He was a total hound. But great dimples. Did you ever actually sleep with him?”

  “No. Never.” How can she forget? I’m kind of hurt. I remember every detail of Tracy’s love life, including that traumatic summer two years ago when she dated three brothers, breaking two of their hearts and getting hers thoroughly broken by the third.

  Flip honks from the driveway, something Mom would generally deplore but somehow puts up with from him.

  “Help! I’m late—gotta go! Love you!” Tracy tramples down the stairs, loud as a herd of elephants in tap shoes. I’ve never understood how my petite, slender sister can make so much noise on the stairs. She throws her arms around Mom, squeezes her a second, dashes to the door, and shouts, “Coming, Flip! I’m worth waiting for, I promise!”

  “I know, babydoll!” Flip calls back.

  Tracy runs back to me, kisses my cheek noisily, pulls back. “Are you sure about the white shirts?”

  “Yes. Go!” I say, and with a twirl of skirt and a slam of the door, she’s gone.

  “Soooo, there’s an SAT test prep at Stony Bay High this August,” Nan says as we walk to the B&T. We stopped at Doane’s and she’s slurping her cookies-and-cream milkshake while I crunch the ice of my lime rickey.

  “Be still my heart. It’s summer, Nan.” I tip my face up to the sun, take a deep breath of the warm air. Low tide. The sun-warm scent of the river.

  “I know,” she says. “But it’s just one morning. I had the stomach flu when we took them last time, and I only got nineteen hundred. That’s just not good enough. Not for Columbia.”

  “Can’t you take it online?” I like school and I love Nan, but I’d just as soon not think about GPAs and test scores until after Labor Day.

  “It’s not the same. This is proctored and everything. The conditions are exactly like the actual test. We could do it together. It would be fun.”

  I smile at her, reaching over to snag her milkshake for a taste. “This is your idea of fun? Couldn’t we just swim in shark-infested waters instead?”

  “Please. You know I get totally freaked out about these things. It would help to practice under real circumstances. And I always feel better knowing you’re there. I’ll even pay your fee. Pleeease, Samantha?”

  I mutter that I’ll think about it. We’ve reached the B&T, where we have to fill out paperwork before we start work. And there’s another thing I want to do too.

  I’m sweating slightly as I knock on the door of Mr. Lennox’s office, peering around guiltily.

  “Do come in!” Mr. Lennox calls. He looks surprised when I poke my head in.

  “Well, hello, Ms. Reed. You do know your first day isn’t until next week.”

  I enter the office and think, as always, that they should get Mr. Lennox a smaller desk. He’s not a tall man, and it looks as if the massive slab of carved oak is swallowing him whole.

  “I know,” I say, sitting down. “Just filling out the paperwork. And I was wondering…I need to…I’m hoping to get back on the swim team this year. So I want to train. I wondered if maybe I could come in an hour early, before the pool opens, and swim in the Olympic pool?” Mr. Lennox leans back in his chair, impassive. “I mean, I can use the ocean and the river, but I need to get my timing down, and it’s easier if I’m sure how far I’m going and how fast.”

  He tents his fingers under his nose. “The pool opens at ten a.m.”

  I try not to let my shoulders slump. Swimming with Jase the other night, competing, even in a casual way, felt so good. I hated giving up swim team. My grades in math and science dipped to B’s midway through fall semester, and so Mom insisted. But maybe if I up my time and try really hard…

  Mr. Lennox continues: “On the other hand, your mother is a valuable member of our board of directors…” He moves his fingers away from his face enough to show a tiny smile. “And you yourself have always been a Most Satisfactory Employee. You may make use of the pool—as long as you follow the other rules—shower first, use a bathing cap, and Do Not Let Another soul Know of our Arrangement.”

  I jump up. “T
hank you, Mr. Lennox. I won’t, I promise. I mean, I’ll do everything you say. Thank you.”

  Nan’s waiting outside when I emerge. When she sees my smile, she says, “You do realize that this is probably the only time in his entire existence that Lennox has colored outside the lines? I don’t know whether to congratulate him or keep pitying him.”

  “I really want this,” I tell her.

  “You were always happier when you were swimming,” Nan agrees. “And a little out of shape now, maybe?” she adds casually. “It’ll be good for you.”

  I turn to look at her, but she’s already a few steps away, heading back down the hall.

  I have the late shift at Breakfast Ahoy the next day, nine to one instead of six to eleven. So I decide to make myself a smoothie while Mom frowns at her phone messages. This is the first time I’ve really seen her in days, and I wonder if now’s the time to tell her about Clay. I decide I will just as she snaps her phone shut and opens the refrigerator door, tapping her open-toed sandal on the floor. Mom always does this in front of the fridge, as though she’s expecting the bowl of strawberries to shout “Eat ME” or the orange juice to jump out and pour itself into a glass.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  This is a favorite technique too, silence so loud someone has to start talking to fill it. I open my mouth again, but to my surprise, it’s Mom who speaks first.

  “Sweetheart. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  And the way she says it, I just can’t help myself. “About my summer schedule?” I ask, and instantly feel guilty for the sarcasm under my words.

  Mom takes a carton of eggs out, stares at it, returns it to the refrigerator.

  “That, certainly. This election won’t be easy. It’s not like the first time I ran, when my only opposition was that crazy Libertarian man. I could lose my seat if I don’t work hard. That’s why I’m so grateful for Clay. I need to concentrate, and know you girls are taken care of. Tracy…” More foot tapping. “Clay thinks I shouldn’t worry. Let her go. She’ll be off to college in the fall, after all. But you…How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?”