My Almost Epic Summer (7 page)

“All through spring.” Starla’s whisper is humid in my ear. “April fifteenth through June twenty-first. And then
phhht.
School ended and he broke up on e-mail.”

“Oh.”

“He’s really smart, brain-wise, but he’s not all that hot, right? You wouldn’t even look at him twice.”

“I guess not.”

“Right.” But as soon as D glances our direction, Starla just about bounces out of her skin with the effort of not looking twice.

I nose around, taking a few more peeks at the mysterious D. The main interesting thing about him is the electricity he’s charged up in Starla. She prowls up and down the aisles like a deranged cat, pausing to flick her eyes at D while pulling and replacing items from the shelves.

D doesn’t acknowledge her. He keeps ringing up customers. There’s a lot of traffic at Shady Shack, but I figure that’s not the only reason D has not looked at Starla once.

“Can we go?” asks Lainie. “I made my pick. I want gum instead of candy.”

“Sure.” I buy myself an iced tea and a bag of caramel popcorn, a giant green Superblo gumball for Lainie, plus Evan’s cheese curls.

“Hey,” says D when he hands me my change. He looks up at me full-on, and I realize I was wrong. As eyes go, D’s, in fact, could be described as piercing. They are long, almond-shaped and bright, silvery green.

“Thanks,” I say back.

Starla, who has been watching D and me intently from her place in line, makes a squeaky noise, as if someone has stepped on her toe. I move on, quick.

When D rings her up, he says, “Yo, Malloy.”

“Yrrmm,” Starla mumbles. She keeps her chin tucked. In the visor and sunglasses, now she looks like a famous person trying not to be recognized while making an illegal purchase. When D drops her change into her palm, Starla makes a show of not wanting to let his fingers touch hers, which seems very immature to me.

As soon as we get outside, Starla claps a hand to her mouth. “Look!” She opens her basket-weave sling bag for me to see inside.

I look. I can’t believe it. She must have stolen at least half a dozen candy bars. I also count four minibags of pretzels, two Lemon Fizzies, and multiple packs of chewing gum and Life Savers.

“You’re crazy!” I whisper. “That’s a crime!” My eyes dart left and right. I half expect the police bullhorns to start shouting for us to drop our weapons and surrender. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because of
him,
duh,” she says. “It’ll mess up his inventory like you don’t even wanna know. Mrs. Hayes, the owner?—she’ll definitely suspect him. She could even get him fired.” There’s a shine of sweat on Starla’s skin. Her smile is as close to ugly as a drop-dead gorgeous person’s smile can get.

“I got fired from a job once,” I tell her, “and it was really humiliating, but at least it was my own fault.”

Starla just laughs. “Stop looking up at me like that, okay? You witnessed, but I know you won’t rat, right? Okay, my break’s up. See ya.”

She wants me to be more impressed, but what did she honestly expect? I search my soul for moral outrage, but the whole thing’s just got me too surprised. Then I check to see if Lainie noticed Starla’s shopping spree. If she did, she isn’t letting on. One cheek bulges with bubble gum and her eyes stare blissfully at nothing.

Starla hops down the steps and walks away. Her weighted bag bounces low on the back of one thigh. I stare at the strong T of her shoulders and the lope of her brown, mile-long legs.

Lainie stares, too. “Hey, what’d she want to show us, anyhow?”

“Nothing important. How about you and I take the raft out now?”

“Yeah!” Lainie is easy bait. She squeezes my hand. “That lifeguard could win five hundred beauty contests in a row,” she says, “but I like you being my babysitter much more.”

“ ‘Much more’ is redundant,” I tell her, but I squeeze her hand back.

 

 

 

From: [email protected]

Teeny Ireeny where are ye? I hope you’re OK! You’re not mad at
me right ? Have you forgotten all about your bestest pal?

OK nuff about you, on to moi. . . . Soooo it was hasta la pasta to Oh My Ganzi yesterday and now I’m totally loving Walt Waterman. Don’t get me started on the name since his mom and dad must have been sucking on helium balloons the day they thought it up but lucky for him he is so awesome he transcends it. I’m not kidding. We had a barbecue last night and let’s just say me and Walt also got hot and smokin’ .

More on my love life as it happens . . .

As for other news: Big Mystery Hits Star Point Camp! Someone’s been planting dead mice in the girls’ sports bags. I am totally freaked but everyone agrees this joker’s an improvement on last year’s gift-giver known by all as the Crapping Bandit. Mia Whitbottom got moused 2wice so everyone suspects it’s this kid Jay Crane who used to go out with her till she dropped him for Vasilii Gubin who’s ranked #19 on the pro circuit.

OK now back to you—you haven’t w/b since you were thinking about the babysitting job. Did you take my advice and chunk it? What are you up to? Living in a tree in your backyard eating raw lentils and protesting globalization or some other Ireney thing you’ve been reading up on is my bet. Britta wrote she hadn’t heard from you either. I got another postcard—she’s still in major love with Ernesto the parking attendant at her Dad’s condo who a) doesn’t speak a word of English b) won’t give her the time of day and c) is like ten years older so what is she even thinking?

Anyhow, drop me a line and tell me how’s it going.

t.t.f.n. (stands for ta-ta for now—how my roommate Grace signs off—so cute!)

Witty

 

The voice of e-mail Witty doesn’t remind me of real Whitney. E-mail Whit sounds relaxed and happy. Real Whit is a diehard tennis fiend who is sometimes too quick to tell you about the vast importance of the warm-up stretch or the saturated-fat content of a granola bar. Ever since we became best friends in fifth grade, we’ve had the same straight-aim focus on our L.A.N.J.—Life After New Jersey. And a shared sense of suffering counts for a lot. But these days, Whit doesn’t sound like she’s suffering at all. For that matter, neither does Britta, whose last postcard reported that her obsession with Ernesto the parking guy left her almost no time to write. I’ve always comfortably counted on Britta being the least sophisticated of the three of us. But what if, come September, I become the odd one out? What if Whit and Britta decide I’m cramping their style? And, worse, what if they’re right?

My fingers hover over the keyboard, but I’m not sure what to e-mail Whitney—mostly because there’s nothing noteworthy happening to me.

It’s like a galaxy separates us, and the name of that galaxy is called Whitney’s Fun Summer.

After another minute, I move on to Starla’s blog.

I reel back in my chair, stunned. She’s talking about Me. I am Who Ever. I am the Secret Keeper and the Witness, of course, because Starla showed the bag of stolen stuff to me. This must have been the only reason Starla dragged me over to Shady Shack in the first place. So that she’d have her “Proof.” Here I’d thought Starla was just trying to be friendly, but all along I was just a cog in the wheel of her Humbert-y obsession.

Why would someone like Starla want to chase after old D, who is also the one person in the world who seems wholeheartedly unimpressed with her? What does it mean? That no matter how flawless a person might look on the outside, she or he is always doomed to play the desperate Humbert, panting for someone else?

By that definition, does each and every one of us have a Humbert lurking?

Is there even some itchy old Humbert out there watching me?

I can’t say it’s an entirely disagreeable thought.

 

 

 

IT RAINS THE next day, so Evan decides to hole up in his room and take apart various electronic fixtures. Lainie cuts me no such break. She digs out her best, ultra-point Magic Markers and forces me to crank out paper dolls at sweatshop rates.

“And then you can make a bridal dress,” she commands. “After that, you can make a dress with sprinklicious flowers on it. Can you draw me a cat? And then can you draw the cat a nightgown?”

Finally I tell her that I have to finish
A Confederacy of Dunces
on her father’s orders. “He’s giving me a quiz on it Monday, so I only have this weekend to study.”

“Yeesh, he gives me quizzes on my homework, too.” Lainie’s pale brow wrinkles. “Poor you, Irene. Even in the summer?”

I nod sadly. Sometimes Lainie is just too easy to fool. If only she were as easy to ditch. She trails me to the den, and then, after a few enraptured minutes of watching me read, she trots upstairs and returns with a copy of her own book.

“You can borrow this when I’m done,” she says, waving it in my face.

“I’d never read that,” I answer.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, there’s pink glitter on the cover,” I answer.

“That’s so you know it’s about a princess.”

“And for another thing, I hate princesses.”

Lainie laughs as she settles herself on the opposite side of the loveseat, her knees pressed against mine. “Sometimes you’re a dumbo-face, Irene. It’s against the law to hate princesses.” She opens her book and sighs happily as I return to poor Ignatius and his world of mortifications and manifestos.

Rain beats on the roof and the air is moist and clammy, making a perfect reading atmosphere, but my mind drifts to Starla, and what she might be doing right now. Did she have to slog all the way out to Larkin’s in this weather? Is she sitting up there on her chair, monitoring some maniac swimmer with a death-wish-by-lightning-bolt? Are she and D the only two people at work today?

I imagine D slumped behind the register in the empty store while Starla sits out in the downpour, scheming up her next revenge tactic while also secretly hoping that D will stride out into the thunderstorm and sweep her up into an Epic-worthy embrace. Although on a glance, Starla’s arms appear stronger than D’s.

Later, Judith drops me off at a dark house. I hang up my wet Windbreaker and scan the fridge. Nothing. Nothing is on the stove or in the oven, either. Is it my imagination or has Roy been slacking on his duties lately? Last week, we ate bread-crumbed fried mozzarella sticks three nights in a row.

A voice from nowhere says, “We’ll order pizza.”

“Mom?”

She’s in the living room, all knotted up in Granny Morse’s armchair. Something is wrong. For one thing, her hair looks terrible, and Mom never has bad hair days. At any given moment, Beth Ann Morse’s hair is reliably clean, conditioned, blown dry, and anti-frizzled. As a walking advertisement for Style to Go, her good grooming is practically mandatory.

“Did you forget your rain hat?”

“I had to rush home.” She shakes out a tissue and honks into it.

“Why?” It’s not cold, but Mom has the afghan wrapped around her shoulders. “Are you sick?”

“Doesn’t something feel different to you?”

I look around. Except for the fact that we are standing in gloom, everything looks the same. Is Mom protesting my poor cleanup of last week? No, she’s waiting for me to notice something else.

“Roy’s gone,” she says, as if it were the most obvious thing. “He moved out.”

I walk into the living room and snap on the lamp. Now I see that it’s not just her hair. Other parts of Mom are looking bad, too. Her red-rimmed eyes, her rain-speckled shirt, the coral lipstick that hit only the general concept of her lips.

“What happened?”

“Beats me! A rough patch is normal in any relationship!” She blows her nose for emphasis. “How could I know Roy was so restless? He wouldn’t even let me give him a ride to the bus station. He said the road was calling him.”

Of course Roy would have to turn good-bye into country music. But Mom’s sad mood is real enough.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.”

She waves me off. “You never liked Roy.”

“Well, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.”

“Get us a large, with anything but mushroom, okay? There’s money in my wallet.”

I try to think of a comforting quote. “A roving heart gathers no affection.”

Sadly, Mom has never been receptive to a Bartlett, no matter how fitting. “And order us a salad, too.”

“Okay.” Suddenly I remember back to my wish that Roy would just leave. I am not superstitious by nature, but the coincidence sends a twinge of guilt through me. “So I’ll be in my room,” I say, “if you want to talk or something? I won’t lock the door.”

She nods. Her head droops like her battery is dying. I snap off the lamp. I figure the internal soundtrack to Mom’s life, most likely a mellow, acoustic guitar, sounds better in the dark.

 

 

 

“MY HAIRSTYLES NOTEBOOK is missing.”

The kids look up from their bowls of breakfast ice cream.

“Are you sure?” asks Evan. “When was the last time you saw it?”

I calculate back. I hadn’t been using the notebook since last week, when I started reading
Dunces.
Then on my Saturday trip to the library, my favorite librarian, Miss Kitamura, had presented me with a book called
Obasan.

“I’ve been holding it especially for you, Irene, since you’re my best reader,” she said. As hairstylishly unpromising as it had looked, I accepted it, my dilemma being that Miss Kitamura is Japanese and
Obasan
is by a Japanese author, and to refuse to take it seemed a personal snub against Miss Kitamura, who had helped strategize my Golden Bookworm victory with her many excellent recommendations.