Second Chance Summer

“Right,” I said, trying to be cheerful too, even though I didn’t mean it at all. “It’ll be great.” I gave her a big, fake smile, but Lucy just stared at me for a moment, and we both started cracking up.

“T,” she said, shaking her head. “You are the worst liar ever.”

“I know,” I said, even though I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever needed or wanted to lie to Lucy.

“But at least you aren’t going to be all alone in New Jersey, like I am,” Lucy said with a dramatic sigh. “I’m going to be so bored.”

“I’m going to be bored too,” I assured her. “Who am I going to hang out with?”

Lucy shrugged, and for some reason didn’t meet my eye when she said, “Your friend Henry, maybe?”

Even though I knew it wasn’t fair to Henry, I groaned in response. “It’s not the same,” I said. “All he wants to do is go into the woods and look at rocks. He’s a huge dork.” This wasn’t exactly true, and I felt bad after I said it, but I was trying to make Lucy feel better.

“Lucy!” Mrs. Marino yelled from the house, and as I turned to look, I could see her standing in the driveway, where the car was packed up and ready to go.

Lucy let out a long sigh, but both of us seemed to realize it was time to leave. We scooped up our Skittles and walked toward the house. In her driveway, we did the hand-slap pattern we spent most of last summer working out (it involved a double spin) and then said good-bye and hugged quickly when Lucy’s mom started complaining about how if they didn’t get started soon, they weren’t going to beat the traffic.

I stood with my bike at the side of Lucy’s driveway and watched the car pull away, Lucy leaning out the window, waving until I couldn’t see her any longer. Then I got on my bike and started to pedal slowly in the direction of home. I didn’t necessarily want to be there—it was hours until dinnertime—but I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed incredibly lame to go to the beach or the pool by myself.

“Hey, Edwards!” I looked over, but I knew it was Henry, skidding to a stop next to me. He’d been going through a phase recently where he was calling everyone by their last names. And even though I knew he wanted me to, I refused to call him “Crosby.”

“Hey, Henry.” I stepped down to the ground and kicked at my pedal, setting it spinning. Henry, on the other hand, kept riding, looping in circles around my bike.

“Where’s Marino?” he asked, as he circled me. I kept having to turn my head to look at him, and I was starting to get dizzy.

“Lucy’s gone for the summer,” I said, feeling the impact of the words. “Most of it, anyway.”

Henry stopped circling me and dropped one bare foot to the ground. “That’s a bummer,” he said. “Sorry to hear that.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure Henry meant it. He and Lucy had never gotten along that great. I knew he thought she was too girly, and she thought he was a know-it-all. The few times the three of us had tried to hang out together, I’d felt like I was a referee, constantly trying to make sure everyone was getting along, and it had been exhausting. So I tended to hang out with them separately, which worked out better for everyone.

“So,” Henry said, getting back up on the bike’s pedals, “I was going to the beach. Want to come?”

I looked at him and thought about it. Hanging out with Henry would definitely be better than going home—even if he did call me Edwards and was always trying to get me to race him or see who could eat more hot dogs. “Okay,” I said, spinning my pedal back and standing on it. “Sounds fun.”

“Awesome.” Henry smiled at me, and I noticed that his teeth were no longer crooked in front, like they’d been when I first met him. And his smile was really nice. Why hadn’t I ever noticed that before?

“Race you to the beach?” he asked, already ready to ride, his hands gripping the handlebars.

“I don’t know,” I said, as I pretended to fuss with my gears, all the while getting into position. “I’m not sure if I—Go!” I yelled the last word and started pedaling as fast as I could, leaving Henry to catch up. I laughed out loud as I started to fly down the street, the wind lifting my ponytail. “Loser buys the Cokes!”

Lost & Found

Chapter twelve

THE WAITING ROOM IN THE ONCOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF THE Stroudsburg hospital seemed like it had given up on any attempts to be cheerful. The walls were painted a dull peach, and there weren’t any encouraging posters about managing your cold or proper hand-washing techniques, like I’d been used to seeing in my doctor’s office. Instead, there was only a single badly painted landscape of a hill dotted with either sheep or clouds, I wasn’t sure which. The chairs were overstuffed, making me feel like I was slowly sinking down into them, and all the magazines were months out of date. Two of the celebrity marriages trumpeted on the glossy covers had since imploded in messy divorces. I flipped through the closest magazine at hand anyway, realizing how different these happily-ever-after stories seemed when you were aware of what the outcome was going to be. After a few minutes, I tossed it aside. I glanced down at my watch, and then at the door my father had gone through to meet with his doctor. This was not exactly how I’d imagined spending my day off.

I had planned on quitting the snack bar after the first disastrous day, seeing no reason to spend the summer with people who disliked me and made no secret of it. But at dinner that night, as we’d feasted on corn on the cob, French fries, and hamburgers cooked on the grill—what felt like our first real summer meal—my plan hit a snag.

Gelsey, it seemed, hated tennis. While she complained about how stupid the sport was, and how all the people in her tennis class were equally stupid, and Warren was simultaneously attempting to tell us that tennis had been invented in twelfth-century France and popularized in the court of Henry the Eighth, I’d just sat there, enjoying my corn, waiting for the moment that I could jump in and explain that while I was sure that there were merits to working at the snack bar, I felt that my time might be better utilized this summer by doing something else. Anything else. I was working out my explanation in my head, and so wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation around the table. It was only when I heard my name that I snapped back to attention.