Second Chance Summer

I pulled an apple from one of the bags on the counter, and my mother took it from me, washed it quickly, patted it dry, and then handed it back. “You and Henry used to be so close,” she said.

I glanced through the kitchen window to the Crosbys’ house, mostly so my mother wouldn’t be able to see my expression. “I guess,” I said. “But that was a long time ago, Mom.”

She started to fold up the bags, and I could have helped, but instead, I leaned against the kitchen counter and started to eat my apple. “Have you called Lucy yet?” she asked.

I bit down hard on my apple, wondering why my mother always assumed she knew what was best for me. Why didn’t she just ask me if I wanted to call Lucy, for example? Which I absolutely didn’t, by the way. “No,” I said, trying to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “And I don’t think I’m going to.”

She gave me a look that told me plainly that she thought this was a mistake as she put the paper bags away where we’d always kept them, under the sink. “Your childhood friends are the ones you should hang on to. They know you in a way that nobody else does.”

After this morning’s encounter with Henry, I wasn’t convinced this was a good thing. I watched as my mother crossed to the fridge with the summer calendar. The Lake Phoenix association made them every year, and one had been on the fridge up here for every summer that I could remember. They were designed to hang vertically, so that you could see all three months of the summer at once, each month flanked with pictures of smiling kids on sailboats, happy couples relaxing by the lake, and seniors taking in a sunrise. My mom attached it to the fridge with the mismatched magnets we’d always had and that I was suddenly glad the Murphys hadn’t taken, and I leaned closer to look at it, at all those empty squares that represented the days of summer ahead.

This calendar had always been a way, especially this early in the season, to revel in how much time was still left in the summer. In years past, the summer had just seemed to stretch forever, so that by the time August rolled around, I’d had my fill of s’mores and popsicles and mosquito bites, and was actually looking forward to fall—to cooler weather and wearing tights and Halloween and Christmas.

But as I stared at it now, and started to do the math, I got a panicky feeling in my chest, one that made it harder to breathe. On my birthday, three weeks ago, the doctors had told my dad that he had four months. Maybe more… but maybe less. And three weeks of those months had already passed. Which meant… I stared at the calendar so hard, it got a little blurry. It was the middle of May, so we still had the rest of the month and all of June. And then all of July. But then what? I looked at August, at the picture of the older couple holding hands as they watched the sun rise over Lake Phoenix, and realized I had no idea what would be happening then, what my world would look like. If my dad would still be alive.

“Taylor?” my mom asked, her voice concerned. “You okay?”

I wasn’t okay, and this normally would have been when I would have hit the road—gotten in my car and driven somewhere, gone for a long walk, anything to avoid the problem. But as I’d learned this morning, going outside certainly didn’t seem to help things—and in fact, made them worse.

“I’m fine,” I snapped at her, even though there was a piece of me that knew she didn’t deserve it. But I wanted her to know what was wrong without having to ask. And what I really wanted her to do was what she hadn’t done, now that it mattered the most—I wanted her to fix it. But she hadn’t fixed it, and she wasn’t going to be able to. I threw away my half-eaten apple and left the kitchen.

Finding the bathroom miraculously empty, I took a long, hot shower, washing the dirt from the scratches on my legs and staying in there until the hot water in our tiny hot water heater started to run out.

When I came back into the kitchen, it was filled with the smell of coffee. The coffeemaker was burbling and hissing and there was half a pot already brewed. I could see my dad sitting on the screened-in porch, laptop in front of him, steaming mug in hand, laughing at something my mom was saying. And even though I knew what the calendar on the fridge said, I somehow couldn’t get it to make sense, not with my dad sitting in the sunlight, looking totally healthy, unless you knew otherwise. I walked to the doorway of the screened-in porch, leaned against the door frame, and my dad turned to look at me.

“Hi, kid,” he said. “What’s the news?” And before I could get the words around the lump that had formed in my throat, to begin to answer, he looked out to the view of the lake, and smiled. “Doesn’t it look like a beautiful day out there?”

Metamorphosis

Chapter seven

A THIRTEEN-LETTER WORD FOR “CHANGE.” I GLANCED DOWN AT the Pocono Record’s crossword puzzle and tapped my pencil on the empty squares of 19 across. Trying to concentrate, I looked through the screened-in porch and out to the lake. I wasn’t exactly in the habit of doing crosswords, but I was getting a little desperate for entertainment. After five days in Lake Phoenix, I was officially bored out of my mind. And the worst part was that in this situation, unlike family vacations or Gelsey’s dance recitals, I couldn’t complain to anyone that I was bored out of my mind and know they were feeling the same way. Because I wasn’t supposed to spend this summer being entertained. It wasn’t supposed to be fun. But that didn’t change the fact that I was, in fact, incredibly bored. And suffering majorly from cabin fever.

I heard the now-familiar sound of the FedEx truck’s tires crunching on our driveway and jumped up to intercept the daily package, just to have something to do. But when I stepped outside, I saw that my dad was already holding the white box in his hands, nodding at the driver—who, after daily deliveries, was getting to be pretty familiar.

“You’re keeping me busy in this neck of the woods,” the driver said, flipping down his sunglasses. “You’re just about the only delivery I get around here.”

“I believe that,” my dad said, pulling open the tab on the box.

“And if you guys could keep your dog tied up, I’d appreciate it,” the driver said as he settled into the front seat. “I almost hit him this morning.” He started the truck and backed down our driveway, beeping once as he turned down the road.

My dad turned to me, eyebrows raised. “Dog?”