Song of Summer (11 page)

It's chaotic, to say the least. Kids, families, and middle-aged white ladies are everywhere. In fact, everybody's white. I think there are three brown people in the whole place. It's always a culture shock, coming from the city, where I am often the lightest-skinned person in the room, to coming out here to the country and being the darkest. I don't think a single one of my friends from home even has blue eyes.

There are a million little tents with candles and fudge and pottery and photographs and knickknacks and everything has hearts or checks or plaid. It smells like sweat and sun and kettle corn. Robin obviously loves it.

Every time she sees something she likes, her whole body changes. She goes up on her toes and stretches out her neck like happiness is trying to lift her off the ground. When she likes one particular thing, she taps on my arm and shows it to me—a cream-and-sugar set, a beaded bracelet, a blown-glass paperweight. “Nice,” I sign, unable to suppress a smile. She doesn't buy anything, and she doesn't expect me to buy anything for her, she just wants me to see it. Crowds aren't really my thing, and crafts aren't really my bag, but she just glows. I'd come here every day if I could watch her like this.

One booth is entirely full of photographs, and I browse through a bin of pictures of Amish country. I imagine my life without my phone, without my videophone, without my bike… I wonder how the deaf Amish live. Robin's hand slips out of mine after a few minutes. I glance up briefly and she just holds up a finger, telling me to wait, before she slips into the crowd.

I decide to buy a photograph that was taken from the same overlook where we had our picnic. This one was taken in the winter—in the snow, before the lake had frozen over. The sparkling snow contrasts with evergreen trees and the distant bright blue expanse of the lake. For once, I have something to show her instead of the other way around. The only problem is I can't find her. When I finally spot her, she looks like she belongs to the booth she's in. A white guy with dreadlocks and a modal T-shirt is nodding in rhythm from his spot in the booth, which sells handmade instruments.

She's playing a kind of flute or something. It's copper and it's held out in front of her, more like a clarinet than a flute. I've never seen anything like it. Her fingers are flying and people in the crowded aisles are stopping to listen. A little boy grabs his sister and they dance around in a circle. People start clapping in unison and the man who owns the booth starts to tap one of his drums with a little wooden mallet. Somebody grabs wooden spoons off the display case and smacks them between his hand and his knee, like a hillbilly from a movie.

Robin's eyes are focused down, on her fingers, but her smiling eyes flick up to the crowd from time to time. The wind blows her ponytail and her face is pink from sun and people watching. Finally, with a flourish, she finishes the song. The crowd breaks into applause, the little kids run back into the crowd, and the man with the spoons starts to inspect them like he might buy them.

Laughing, her eyes find mine. They are twinkling and crinkling and sparkling. More than the motorcycle. More than the picnic. More than me. The guy from the booth taps her on the shoulder and she turns to him, still laughing. She gives the flute back and he pushes it into her hands, trying to convince her to buy it. She shakes her head, ponytail swinging.

I pull the pad out of my pocket. “How much?” I write on it, and start to walk over. I intend to buy it for her. I really do. I could buy anything for her. But I shove the paper in my pocket. I don't want to buy my replacement.

Robin

“No really, I can't afford it.”

I hand the pennywhistle back to the guy. A handmade pennywhistle? Awesomeness “instrumentified,” but costing way more than a penny, and I need to keep my money for the Dread Pirate Martin. Maybe at the end of the summer, I'll have enough left over for a beautiful handmade pennywhistle, which I have already christened Francis Flute. From
Midsummer Night's Dream
. Obviously. I look up to see Carter stepping across the aisle to me, hands in the air, parting the crowd like Moses parted the Red Sea. “Deaf applause” he called it on the hill, but something is wrong. He's got that gun-to-his-back forced smile again.

I smile at him. “Thank you! Thank you!” I sign to my nonexistent audience, and when I look at him again, he's smiling. Real smiling.

He shows me a picture he bought that was taken from the overlook. I've never seen it in winter—the park is closed then. “Beautiful,” I sign.

He nods.

I check my phone. Yup, it's been an hour. I wipe off my sweaty hand and take his, weaving through the crowd. His hands are strong, but not farmer strong and not football strong. They're strong in a classical pianist way. Or a surgeon. I pull him into a little booth and take out my waitressing pad.

“What are you doing after high school?” I write.

He pauses. “I don't know,” he writes, then signs. He points at me. “You?”

Tour to coffee shops and colleges, playing my guitar.

I hesitate. “I don't know either,” I write, then sign, copying his earlier movements. We leave the booth and I weave us through the crowd so we're not too late.

He squeezes my hand and I look up at him. “Where… ?” he signs with his left hand, mouthing the word.

“You'll see,” I say. He nods.

The crowd disperses, and there it is in all its glory: the hospital's pie booth.

You want a boy to stay at a craft fair? Take him to the pie booth. A lesson learned from too many years of Trent.

I look back at Carter. His eyes are saucerlike, and with good reason. There are fruit pies and meringues and coolers with cream pies to be bought by the slice or the pie.

“A slice of coconut cream?” I write. We were playing favorites over text yesterday and he said that was his favorite.

“Just one?” he signs, eyes gleaming.

I nod, a mock-serious look on my face, and point to a big sign that proclaims, “Buy a slice and help the hospital! Buy too many and the hospital will help you!”

Carter laughs, signing, “Just one,” in agreement.

I turn to the booth. Mrs. Kelso is standing, waiting for me to order.

“Hi, Robin,” she says. Her son graduated last year, and he was in Westwinds, the select choir, with me.

“Hi, Mrs. Kelso,” I say.

“How're things down at the Grape Country Dairy?” she asks.

“Good, good.”

“You get into some fancy music school yet?”

I shake my head. “Not yet…” I don't know if school is really for me. I want to give it a year or two.

“Well you will. Who's this with you?” Her round face smiles up at Carter, and then she raises her eyebrows at me like I have some explaining to do, bringing an Italian model into Westfield.

I look back at Carter. He waves. “This is Carter,” I say, and sign. I practiced this particular phrase last night, along with my numbers. “He's my friend, here for the summer.”

Carter looks at me, shocked. Sure beats “Please,” “Thank you,” “Yes,” and “No.” I shoot him a proud grin, wiggling my eyebrows, and look back to Mrs. Kelso. She looks worried.

“Oh, honey, I'm sorry… We don't have any Braille menus.”

What?

“Um, he doesn't… he doesn't need a Braille menu,” I say. My hands don't move. Thank God Carter can't hear this conversation. I flash a nervous smile at him and turn back to Mrs. Kelso. “He's deaf, not blind. He can… he can read. And… well, you don't have menus anyway. You just have pies. He can see which pie he wants.”

“Oh! Right. That's silly of me. I'm sorry,” Mrs. Kelso says. She turns to Carter. “HI, DEAR!” she yells. The whole crowd turns to look at us. “WHAT KIND OF PIE DO YOU WANT?”

Carter calmly points to the pie he wants—coconut cream meringue—and steps back to look at me. He points at me and gestures for me to order as he hides a little smile. I'm turning bright red.

“Sorry,” I sign to him. He shrugs, the little smile still teasing me. He's acting like this is nothing out of the ordinary. And he really can't lie. I don't know if I could ever get used to this. It's… embarrassing. “I'll… I'll have cherry,” I say. July is peak cherry season.

“How nice of you to take him out,” Mrs. Kelso says as she gets our pie, like he's a puppy or a child or something.

“I'm not taking him out,” I say, taking the pie and nodding at Carter who's pulling a folded piece of paper out of his wallet.

“How much?” it says. He slides it toward her.

“He's taking me out.”

Mrs. Kelso looks up at him, astonished. “Four dollars,” she says.

Carter opens his Italian leather wallet and slides a five across the counter.

“Keep it,” he signs, and mouths. Mrs. Kelso smiles her thanks and arranges the money in the cash box.

We take our slices to the playground by the church and Jenni materializes out of the crowd, sitting on the grass beside us. She doesn't have pie, but she did manage to scrounge up a funnel cake somewhere. I'll have to get one of those before we leave.

“Everybody's talking about him,” she says.

“I thought you had a yard sale,” I say.

“Fine. Everybody's talking about him at our yard sale.”

“And speaking of yard sale, how is the macramé selling?”

She sighs. “Fine? I sold three bracelets and five keychains.”

“Nice!”

“Here—give me that,” she says, gesturing to the pad of paper.

I laugh and slide it across the grass to her. She writes, “Everybody's talking about you,” and shows it to Carter.

He shrugs and smiles easily. “Comes with the territory,” he writes. “I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not like everybody else.”

“Who?” I write, and circle her “everybody.”

“Kari, Ana, Callie…”

Whoa. That's, like, upper-echelon people. Yeah, small towns have popular kids, too. There are a lot of factors that go into the deciding of Westfieldian popular kids—looks, music, money, sports, brains—no one thing is more important than the others. And, of course, you have to be friends or frenemies of all the other popular kids.

“Whoa. Popular kids,” I write for Carter's benefit. A thought strikes me. “Do you have popular kids at your school?”

He shrugs. “I don't know,” he writes.

“That means yes,” Jenni says, grinning. Carter looks at me and shakes his head, but we all know the truth here. Of course he's one of the popular kids. It would be impossible to look like that and NOT be a popular kid. Of course, Jenni's gorgeous and she's not really a popular kid. But that's small towns for you: everybody remembers when you ate crayons.

“What are they saying?” I ask.

“Good stuff!” Jenni writes enthusiastically. “He's so hot, blah-blah-blah… Callie wanted his number.”

Carter gives her a look. “You didn't give it to her, did you?” he writes.

“Of course not!” The sun is bouncing off of Jenni's hair, and her teeth are gleaming at him. “I don't even have your number.”

“Good,” Carter writes. “Next time just tell them I'm off-limits.”

“Why?” Jenni writes. “You got a girlfriend back in New York you're not telling us about?”

I give her a look.

Carter shakes his head. “NO!” he signs emphatically at me.

“Then why?” Jenni asks.

He takes up the pen and looks at me. “I'm interested in someone else.”

Carter

Jenni raises her eyebrows and pokes Robin in the leg, and Robin rolls her eyes and smiles into her slice of pie. The red of the cherries makes her lips even redder and her tongue sneaks out between her smile to clean them off. Her eyes glance into mine and I shrug. It's true, after all. I am interested in someone else.

After pie, Jenni pretends that she has to go back to her yard sale. I follow my nose and Robin follows me to a shish kebab place. The booth is sponsored by a therapeutic riding stable for the handicapped, and they're pretty excited to meet me. A few people know a couple words in ASL, and we chat long enough for them to find out that I'm from the city and don't know too much about horses. The shish kebabs, though, are tremendous. I make sure they know that.

Weaving in and among the booths, we look at stained glass, doll clothes, pottery, wooden signs… In New York this would only be for, like, middle-aged women. Here? Seems like three or four entire towns came. I spot a few people our age, and they're staring at us. I wonder if Robin's popular. She talked like she wasn't, but how couldn't she be? She's so funny and confident and interesting. And beautiful. She picks up a delicate piece of glassware and my eyes wander from her long, dark eyelashes to her rose-colored lips, down the curve of her neck and I look away, over the crowd.

Glancing behind, I see that the instrument booth Robin loved is behind us. Making sure that she's engrossed in the glass, I turn to the booth and take a card off his counter. “Asaph the Flutecrafter,” it says, with his website and street address. He looks at me and I hold the card up. “Thanks,” I mouth. I put the card in my pocket.

He nods. “You're welcome,” his mouth says.

I rejoin Robin and she looks up at me.

“Pretty,” she signs, and points to the glass.

“You want it?” I sign.

She shakes her head and places it back on its stand.

“You sure?” I write.

“Yes,” she signs

“Okay,” I sign. I look at her again—she doesn't seem to linger over the glass or even miss it as she walks away. Instead, her eyes find Asaph the Flutecrafter's booth. The dreadlocks guy (Asaph, I guess) catches her eye and holds out the flute to tempt her. She shakes her head and smiles. We walk through the aisles one last time and I can almost see her pine for the flute. I feel guilty for not buying it for her.
You took a card,
I tell myself.
Just wait until she knows you better.