Summer at Willow Lake (18 page)

Lolly beamed at him. “Yep, that’s me.”

While she put away the supplies, Connor said, “Listen, Dad, why don’t you go on home. You want me to help you?”

“Hell, no.” Terry looked glum. “I think I know my way home after all this time.”

“Home” for Terry Davis was the year-round caretaker’s cottage at the edge of the camp. It had the advantage of being on the premises, so he didn’t have to drive to it. That was one worry Connor wouldn’t have tonight. His dad already had a DUI, and another one would land him in jail.

“You want me to come with you?” Connor offered.

“Hell, no,” his dad said again. He seemed ticked off now, and stomped out of the infirmary without another word, slamming the door behind him.

Connor didn’t move. Neither did Lolly. He didn’t look at her, but felt her nearby, waiting. Breathing softly. And all of a sudden, it was too much—her kindness, her complete acceptance of the situation, her refusal to make a big deal of something so huge that it was ruling his life. Connor felt the humiliating burn of tears in his throat and eyes, and knew he was about to lose it. “I need to go,” he mumbled, groping for the door handle.

“Okay” was all she said.

There was a world of meaning in her “okay.” Connor was pretty sure she knew he realized that. She was Lolly, after all. Even though they were only summer friends, she understood him better than anyone else in his life, maybe even himself. The notion made him drop his hand. He’d conquered his emotions. Four years of living with Mel had taught him to do that. Never show emotion, because some asshole is bound to make you regret it.

I hate this, he thought. I hate it when my dad drinks.

“Know what I feel like doing?” he asked Lolly all of a sudden.

“Putting your fist through a wall?” she suggested.

He couldn’t help flashing a rueful grin. God, she
did
know him. Then the grin faded and words he’d never dare utter to another soul came out before he could even stop them. “I wish the bastard would stop,” he said. “I wish he’d just get sober and be himself. If he did that, I wouldn’t care what else he did with his life. He can play cribbage and build birdhouses all day, for all I care, just so long as he quits drinking.”

“Maybe he will one day,” she said, not at all perturbed by what he’d said. “My grandmother Lightsey—that’s my mom’s mom—is an alcoholic, but she doesn’t drink now and she goes to these special meetings at her church. My mom acts like it’s this big family secret, but I don’t know why that is. I’m proud of my grandmother for getting better.”

He couldn’t decide whether or not he was glad she’d told him that. On the one hand, it gave him hope that maybe his dad would change. On the other hand, it seemed so unlikely that his father would simply make up his mind to quit drinking and go to meetings that Connor felt like a fool, wishing it could happen.

“I don’t know why your grandparents keep him on,” Connor muttered. “It’s not like he’s this totally reliable worker.”

She frowned behind her glasses. “He never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“God, Connor, you should let him tell it. Or my granddad. Your grandfather and mine were in the Korean War together. Your grandfather saved my grandfather’s life.”

Connor had never known his grandfather, whose name had been Edward Davis. “I knew he’d been killed in Korea when my dad was a baby, but that’s all my dad ever said.”

“You ought to ask my granddad. There’s this whole big story about how they were fighting in something called the Walled City, and your grandfather saved a whole platoon, my granddad included. So when my granddad got back from the war, he made a promise that he’d always look after your grandfather’s family, no matter what.”

Even if Edward Davis’s son grew up to be a drunk, Connor thought. Yet somehow, Lolly’s story made him feel marginally better.

“So anyway,” she said, in her semi-annoying, bossy way, “you should ask my granddad to tell you the story.”

“I might,” he said.

They were quiet for a long time after that. Then he crossed to the supply cabinet and slid open a white enamel drawer. “I was thinking of piercing my ear.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Now he let out an actual laugh. She was so funny when she got all formal like that. “I was just thinking I’m going to pierce my ear.”

“You’re completely insane.”

“You don’t think I’d dare?” In the drawer, he found a lancet in a sterile packet. “This ought to work.” He started to rip the packet open with his teeth.

“Wait.” She looked wild-eyed with fright now, her glasses comically askew on her face. “Don’t be stupid, Connor. You don’t need any more holes in your head than you already have.”

“If that’s the case, then one more won’t matter.” He paused, digging in his pocket for the small silver hoop earring he’d been carrying around for weeks, trying to get up the nerve to go for it. Mary Lou Carruthers, who’d had a crush on him since second grade, had given it to him last year. The hoop was attached to a black plastic card. He pried it off and set it on the counter.

“You can’t be serious,” Lolly said. Her cheeks were bright red.

“Serious as a heart attack,” he said.

“You’ll get an infection. Your ear will fall off.”

“Bullshit. People pierce their ears all the time.”

“At the doctor’s, or they get it done by a professional.”

“Or they get some smart-alecky girl to do it.”

“No way,” she said, taking a step back and shaking her head. She no longer wore her hair in brown pigtails, but had it in some kind of knot held with a cloth-covered elastic. Stray locks sprang free, curling around her face.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

“We could both get expelled.”

“Only if we get caught. We’re not going to get caught, Lolly.” He opened the lancet and leaned toward the mirror. Shit. This wasn’t as simple as he’d thought. If he poked the lancet through his ear, what would stop it from poking a hole in his skull? And once it was through, was there going to be blood? And how the heck did you get the earring in?

In the mirror, he saw Lolly watching him. All right, no backing down. He’d give it a swift poke and hope for the best. He took a breath and held it. Caught himself squeezing his eyes shut. No, that wouldn’t do. He had to see what he was doing.

Behind him, he heard a snapping sound and almost dropped the lancet. It was Lolly, putting on a pair of rubber surgical gloves. “All right, Boy Wonder,” she said. “Don’t blame me if your ear turns black and falls off.”

FISHING ON WILLOW LAKE

Willow Lake is an abundant source of delicious trout. The limit is three trout per licensed sportsman. Over and above that, catch and release is required.

Twelve

“C
ome on, lazy Daisy! Rise and shine.”

When Daisy heard that phony, cheerful note in her dad’s voice, she knew it couldn’t mean anything good. He was outside the bunkhouse she shared with him and Max, and it was still dark. She heard his footstep on the porch, heard the door creak open. “Daze?” he cajoled. “Come on, kiddo. It’s time.”

“No,” she moaned very softly, burying her head under the pillow. Couldn’t he see that it was not even the crack of dawn? Not even the
pre
crack. What in the world made people so eager to wake up early? Maybe if she didn’t respond, he would give up and go away.

No such luck. The tapping became more insistent and the screen door creaked on its hinges as he opened it. Oh, crap, thought Daisy. He’s coming in. He’s not giving up on me.

“Crap,” she muttered aloud, the lovely numbness of sleep now driven completely out of her. Forcing herself awake, she crept out of bed and picked a path around piles of clothes strewn about, books and decks of cards, soda cans and food wrappers.

“Daisy?” he said again, a hulking silhouette in the doorway.

“I’m up, Dad. Geez. Don’t make so much noise.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait right outside.”

“Great.”

“Don’t be long.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The last thing she wanted to do was to go on some sort of predawn outing with her dad. Fishing, ugh. He’d been after her ever since they got here to do all this stupid family-bonding stuff, and very quickly, she had run out of ways to avoid him. There were few places to hide at Camp Kioga without getting lost in the forest or attacked by mosquitoes.

She and her cousins, Olivia and Dare, had stayed up late last night playing whist with Freddy. Whist was a card game that was dangerously close to bridge. If she ever learned bridge, Daisy would know she had officially turned into the dork of the century. Whist. If her dad had told her what actually awaited her here at Camp Kioga, she would have asked somebody to shoot her, which was preferable to the slow, lingering death-by-boredom that the summer was in danger of becoming.

She had believed the stories Dad and her grandparents told about Camp Kioga, where the fun never stopped. Cluelessly, she had not questioned the picture they drew of an idyllic private retreat by a pristine lake. It hadn’t occurred to her that once she got here, she would need to find something—besides work—to actually
do
at the idyllic private retreat.

Except the funny thing was, she wasn’t that bored. Thank God her older cousins had a sense of humor. Olivia in particular seemed sensitive to the fact that Daisy’s family situation currently sucked in the extreme. It was slightly encouraging that Olivia had survived her own parents’ divorce and seemed to be okay with it. And when Daisy’s boredom and frustration started to seem unbearable, she had a few tricks up her sleeve, those tricks consisting of a carton of cigarettes stashed under her bed, a bag of weed and even a small, red-gold chunk of hashish from Lebanon. One of the benefits of going to a high school with an international student body was that many of her friends had diplomatic immunity, and they took advantage of it.

Thinking of her friends back in the city, she gave a restless sigh. She missed hanging out with kids her age. Yet at the same time, now that senior year was coming up, she noticed a slight bit of relief. Her friends were all so focused and driven. A number of them had known exactly what they wanted to do with themselves since kindergarten. They’d all set their sights on an Ivy League college or the Julliard School, or some incredible place overseas like the Sorbonne. In the face of her friends’ talent and ambition, Daisy felt like a complete phony. Sure, her grades were all right, she went to one of the best high schools in the country, she played piano and guitar and lacrosse. But even with all that, she was drifting. She didn’t know where she wanted her life to go. She’d overheard her mom—a high-powered, type A international lawyer—tell her grandmother that Daisy was like her father. This was not a compliment. Although her father was really talented at being a landscape architect, the family’s affluence sure as heck didn’t come from that. It was family money and her mother’s giant salary that financed the Upper East Side co-op and the private schools. Yet for all that, her parents still couldn’t manage to stay happy with each other.

Maybe if I was more focused, they would stay together,
she thought.
Maybe if I got some horrible disease, they wouldn’t split this family apart.
The ideas swirled through her head like so much useless dust. Deep down, she knew there was no point in trying to force them together. She’d just go on doing her thing. She had a stack of college catalogs and brochures. This summer, she was supposed to figure out where she was going to apply to college.

Daisy bent forward at the waist to tug a brush through her hair. She used a cloth-covered band to make a ponytail and finished dressing in a pair of jersey shorts with Pink written across the butt, a tank top and a hooded school lacrosse-team sweatshirt. Shoving her feet into flip-flops, she stood and automatically grabbed for her iPod. Then, regretfully, she set it down. Although her dad claimed he knew what he was doing, a little warning voice in her head advised her to leave the thing at home. If she drowned it, her music source for the summer would be gone, completely, and then she really would have to shoot herself.

As she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she felt grateful that there was no mirror over the sink, no mirror anywhere. The sight of herself was bound to be depressing. Casting a last envious look at her cozy bunk, she stepped outside into the quiet darkness and stood on the stoop. An oppressive fog shrouded the camp.

A cigarette pack lay under the stoop next to the old Mason jar she used as an ashtray. Although anybody with half a brain knew how stupid it was to smoke, Daisy did it anyway. Smoking was so forbidden, so incredibly, shockingly
bad
that of course she had to do it. Smoking was considered worse than sex or recreational drugs. Therefore, it was the perfect thing to do in order to drive her parents crazy.

And of course, that was Daisy’s mission—to drive them crazy. Because God knew, they had been doing it to her for years.

Yet her dad never told her to quit. Didn’t he understand that she wanted him to
order
her to quit, so she could fight with him and tell him no and rail at him that it was her life, and her lungs, and her health, and she could do what she wanted with them, and then he would point out that she was still his daughter, and her health was very much his concern, and if she didn’t quit, he was going to make her. That was all he had to do. She would fight with him, and then she would quit.

“‘Good morning, Merry Sunshine,’” her dad sang, dredging up the song from her childhood, “‘and how are you today?’”

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to stop singing,” she grumbled.

“You don’t have a hundred bucks.”

“Shows how much you know. Nana told Olivia to pay me in cash, every Friday. I’ve made almost six hundred bucks so far.”

Her dad gave a low whistle. “You got it, then. I won’t sing a note. Not even to say good-morning to my best girl.”

She knew he wouldn’t make her pay up. He never made her do anything. “Besides,” she pointed out, “in case you haven’t noticed, the sun is not even up yet, so technically, it’s not morning.”