Second Chance Summer

“I guess so,” I said to Connie, making sure to keep a smile on my face. “Well…”

“Any big plans for the summer?” she asked brightly, apparently completely unaware that I was trying to end this conversation. The dog, maybe realizing this was going to take a while, flopped down at her feet, resting his head on his paws.

“Not really,” I said, hoping that might be the end of it. But she continued to look at me, eyebrows raised, so I stifled a sigh and went on. “We’re actually leaving today to spend the summer at our lake house.”

“Oh, wonderful!” she gushed. “That sounds lovely. Whereabouts is it?”

“It’s in the Poconos,” I said. She frowned, as though trying to place the name, and I added, “The Pocono Mountains. In Pennsylvania?”

“Oh, right,” she said, nodding, though I could tell from her expression that she still had no idea what I was talking about, which wasn’t actually that unexpected. Some of my friends’ families had summer houses, but they tended to be in places like Nantucket or Cape Cod. Nobody else I knew had a summer house in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania.

“Well,” Connie said, still smiling brightly. “A lake house! That should be nice.”

I nodded, not really trusting myself to answer, since I didn’t want to go back to Lake Phoenix. I so didn’t want to go back that I had snuck out of the house with practically no plan and no supplies except my sister’s iPod, rather than face going there.

“So,” Connie said, tugging on the dog’s leash, causing him to lumber to his feet, “be sure to say hello to your mother and father for me! I hope they’re both doing well, and—” She stopped suddenly, her eyes widening and cheeks reddening slightly. I recognized the signs immediately, even though I’d only been seeing them for three weeks. She had Remembered.

It was something that I had no idea how to handle, but as an unexpected upside, it was something that seemed to be working in my favor. Somehow, overnight, everyone in school seemed to know, and my teachers had been informed, though why or by whom, I’d never been sure. But it was the only explanation for the fact that I’d aced all my finals, even in classes like Trig, which I’d been dangerously close to getting a C in. And if that wasn’t enough proof, when my English teacher had passed out our exams, she’d set mine down on my desk and rested her hand on it for just a minute, causing me to look up at her.

“I know that studying must be hard for you right now,” she’d murmured, as though the entire class wasn’t listening, ears straining for every syllable. “So just do your best, all right, Taylor?”

And I’d bitten my lip and done the Brave Nod, aware the whole time that I was pretending, acting the way I knew she expected me to act. And sure enough, I’d gotten an A on the test, even though I’d only skimmed the end of The Great Gatsby.

Everything had changed. Or, more accurately, everything was going to change. But nothing had really changed yet. And it made the condolences odd—as if people were saying how sorry they were that my house had burned down when it was still intact but with an ember smoking nearby, waiting.

“I will,” I said quickly, saving Connie from having to stammer through one of the well-meaning speeches I was already sick of hearing—or even worse, telling me about some friend of a friend who had been miraculously cured through acupuncture/meditation/tofu, and had we considered that? “Thank you.”

“Take care,” she said, putting more meaning in those words than they usually had, as she reached out and patted me on the shoulder. I could see the pity in her eyes, but also the fear—that slight distancing, because if something like this was happening to my family, it could happen to hers.

“You too,” I said, trying to keep a smile on my face until she had waved again and headed down the street, dog leading the way. I continued in the opposite direction, but my escape no longer felt like it was going to make things better. What was the point of trying to run away if people were going to insist on reminding you of what you were running from? Though I hadn’t felt the need to do it for a while now, running away had been something I’d done with real frequency when I was younger. It had all started when I was five, and I had gotten upset that my mother was paying attention only to baby Gelsey, and Warren, as usual, wouldn’t let me play with him. I’d stomped outside, and then had seen the driveway, and the wider world beyond it, beckoning. I had started walking down the street, mostly just wondering how long it would take for someone to realize I was even gone. I was soon found and brought home, of course, but that had begun the pattern, and running away became my preferred method of dealing with anything that upset me. It got to be such a routine that when I used to announce from the doorway, tearfully, that I was leaving home forever and ever, my mother would just nod, barely looking at me, telling me only to make sure to be back in time for dinner.

I had just pulled out Gelsey’s iPod—willing to suffer through even the Bentley Boys if it meant a distraction from my thoughts—when I heard the low rumble of the sports car behind me.

It occurred to me that I must have been gone longer than I’d realized as I turned around, knowing what I would see. My father was behind the wheel of his low-slung silver car, smiling at me. “Hi, kid,” he said through the open passenger-side window. “Want a ride?”

Knowing that there was no point in even pretending any longer, I pulled open the passenger side door and got in. My dad looked across at me and raised his eyebrows. “So what’s the news?” he asked, his traditional greeting.

I shrugged and looked down at the gray floor mats, still pristine, even though he’d had the car for a year. “I just, you know, felt like a walk.”

My dad nodded. “Of course,” he said, his voice overly serious, as though he completely believed me. But we both knew what I’d really been doing—it had usually been my father who would come and find me. He always seemed to know where I would be, and rather than bringing me right home, if it wasn’t too late, we would go out for ice cream instead, after I’d promise not to tell my mother.

I buckled my seat belt, and to my surprise, my dad didn’t turn the car around, but instead kept driving, turning onto the road that would take us downtown. “Where are we going?” I asked.