Twenty Boy Summer (7 page)

ten

Frankie snores lightly beneath her yellow quilt, and I am consumed with thoughts of Matt. Of the first kiss. The shooting stars. The stolen looks over the family dinner table. Texting me quotes from his favorite books in the middle of the night. His hand brushing my cheek when no one was watching. The smell of his skin as he leaned in front of me to pay for our ice cream that last day at Custard's.

If I'd known he was going to die, my last words to him would have meant something. They certainly wouldn't have been my out-of-tune attempt at singing that old Grateful Dead song he loved so much. No, I would have told him how I felt about him, straight out. No more flirting, wild-eyed whispers in the grass outside. I would have looked at him harder to ensure his image was permanently seared in my mind. I'd have asked him a million more things so I could remember what mattered
before
I got in the car on the way home from Custard's. Because
after,
nothing mattered.

We didn't even have a chance to label it. Whatever it was we'd become in the last month before his death will remain a mystery. I could never ask out loud. I wondered alone in my bed at night what would happen if he met someone else at Cornell, or if Frankie freaked out about us and he decided it wasn't worth it. But when you're in the middle of being in love with someone, you just don't stop to ask, "Matt, listen, if you die before you tell your sister about us, should
I
tell her? And by the way, is there even an 'us' to tell about?"

When it happens, you're totally unprepared, fragmented and lost, looking for the hidden meaning in every little thing. I've replayed the events of that day a hundred thousand times, looking for clues. An alternate ending. The butterfly effect.

If Frankie and I hadn't wanted ice cream that stupid day, he'd still be alive.

If I hadn't gotten his heart all worked up kissing him every night since my birthday, he'd still be alive.

If I'd never been born, he'd still be alive.

If I could find the butterfly that flapped its wings before we got into the car that day, I would crush it.

"Can't sleep?"

Aunt Jayne startles me from the dark corner of the deck where I've wandered absently with my ghosts.

"I didn't think anyone else was awake," I say, catching my breath. "Sorry, I didn't mean to -- I'll just --"

"Anna, don't go." Jayne shakes her head. "It's okay. I was just -- remembering."

"Me, too." I immediately want to take it back, run into the house, and dive under my bed. "I mean, you know, the stories and everything."

Aunt Jayne nods, the pale light of the moon falling around her hair like a halo, casting her in a faint blue glow.

"Sit with me." She pushes out a chair with her foot. It reminds me of the old Jayne, the one who treated me more like a friend than a little kid. Before everything happened, she used to lie in the sun with us, trading iced tea for a bit of girl time. Of course, the gossip wasn't as good back then. Frankie was still a virgin. Blue frosting didn't make me cry. I wasn't keeping secrets about one best friend from the other.

We sit for a few minutes, listening to the gentle rhythm of the waves against the shore.
Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh.
They seem slower in the dark, but louder.

"Frankie and Matt used to walk up and down this beach looking for sea glass," she tells me. "It was a contest they had."

"They used to bring some back for me. I still have it, actually."

"Right, I remember the jars. Matt used to make things out of it, too. Frankie's red glass bracelet. And the blue one he used to wear around his neck -- do you remember?"

Rising. Falling.

I blink back tears and nod. "I don't know what happened to it," Jayne says. "I've tried to find it so many times -- I'm convinced he just took it with him."

I reach up and touch the spot above my collarbone where I sometimes feel the weight of the missing necklace, as though Matt had given it to me like he joked about.
Nope, still not there.
It was probably dragged off in the wreckage of the car with the loose CDs, the one sneaker, some overdue library books, and our ice-cream spoons -- all the little bits and pieces left at the end of a whole entire life.

"Anna." Jayne breaks the spell of the evening tide. "Can I ask you something in confidence?"

"Okay." I'm not entirely sure where this is going. "I know I wasn't myself tonight, and I'm sorry. Sometimes I just can't predict what's going to set me off. I'm working on it, truly. But is Frankie -- how is
she
? Really?"

I look into Jayne's earnest face and think about Johan. I think about all the glitter eye shadow, in-room cigarettes, failing grades, and slamming doors, and wonder how Jayne can really ask. Maybe she wants to hear a yes -- permission to go on not noticing anything. But the severity of her face, the lines across her forehead and around her mouth, her knuckles white over her mug -- she's a blind woman seeking sight. Somewhere in the back of my head, I hear Dad, far away and sad.

As long as you're around, Red and Jayne don't really have to worry about Frankie -- you're doing it for them.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Jayne says. "I hope I'm not pushing. I just worry about you guys. Frankie doesn't talk to me like she used to. My own daughter is a stranger to me."

"Me, too." My mouth is off doing its own thing again while my brain is half asleep.
Stupid mouth.
"I mean --"

"Tell me." Jayne's hand is suddenly firm on my arm. "It's okay." She looks into my eyes and gives me that moment, that one chance to tell her exactly how it is, how different Frankie's become, her faraway mind trips, Johan, the twenty boys, A.A., the frosting-covered first kiss, the promise, how I can't stop thinking about Matt --
everything.
I want so badly to tell her -- the broken mother who after all this time might finally be able to fix all of us.

"Frankie's -- she's managing okay," I say, wanting to kick myself. All the things I could have shared, and that's what comes out.
Managing okay,
like I'm evaluating her performance at the office.

"No," Jayne says, pulling her hand back. "She isn't. None of us is. Level with me, Anna."

A combo punch of weird emotions rushes through me -- a fierce and loyal need to protect Frankie, guilt over my inability to tell Jayne the truth, and a lingering anger that no one seems to know or care about what
I
lost.

"Aunt Jayne, listen." I'm almost flippant, as though spoon-feeding these observations to my best friend's mom is too much effort. "Frankie's still here. She's not suicidal or on drugs. She can still laugh at things most of the time. But she's not the same."

"Anna, I didn't mean to --"

"Come on, you've seen her. All makeup and attitude. And she's not exactly an honor roll student these days. And look at what happened at dinner with you guys! Frankie knows he's gone, Aunt Jayne. He's just gone, that's it, and nothing will bring him back."

I'm shaking. My hand flies up to cover my mouth almost as soon as the words escape it; the weight of what I said suddenly pressing in on me. Mean, hurtful things I never should have said. I am officially the number one worst person in the universe, and Jayne's frozen, confused face is all the punishment I can bear.

But then -- a deep sniffle.

A smile.

A look.

An openmouthed grin.

Right here on the back deck in Zanzibar Bay, in the middle of the black night, the ocean our only witness, I vomited out the ugly truth and Aunt Jayne...
laughed.

"Anna," she says, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve, "that is the first time anyone has been completely honest with me since my son died."

"Oh my God, Aunt Jayne, I'm so sorry. I don't know where that came from." I get up to hug her, hoping to shield my scarlet face from her eyes.

"Mmm-hmm." She hugs me back. "And I didn't even shatter!"

I pull away from her and drop into my seat, still shaking inside from my outburst and her unexpected reaction. She watches me and sips her tea, a lifetime of sadness behind her eyes -- Matt's lifetime. But she's still smiling.

"Anna, you miss him."

"All the time. I still can't believe he's gone." The words come out in a whoosh, tasting funny in my mouth. No matter how many times I say them, they still feel like a garbled, impossible language. My chest hurts, and I have to hold my breath to keep from inhaling a deep sob.

"He was more than your best friend."

I nod absently, forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting that I'm talking to Jayne and not my journal.

"I -- I mean, he was like a brother to me. You know, like Frankie. Well, she's the sister. I mean --"

Jayne reaches for my hands across the table, shaking her head softly. "Sweetheart, when you say Matt's name, you have the same look in your eyes that he'd get whenever he'd say yours." Her voice breaks up at the end, but her hands are warm and firm.

What look?
I want to ask, but the butterflies are back, mixed with a sadness that seems to stick and slow their wings as they climb into my throat. Beyond our corner on the deck, the ocean sighs, waiting for my response.

Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh.

"Frankie doesn't know," I say, though I'm not sure what I want her to do with this information. Tell Frankie? Keep my secret? My head and heart are entangled. I haven't really said anything, yet Jayne and I have just shared more about Matt than I've shared with anyone -- my own mother included.

"I know she doesn't," Jayne says. "She wouldn't be able to keep a secret like that from me." I think about Johan, but dismiss it. This is my secret, not Frankie's.

"Aunt Jayne, I --"

"I can't sleep, either." Frankie startles us in her frog pajamas, pulling the sliding door shut behind her. "What are you guys talking about?"

An arrow of fear shoots straight up my spine, pushing me to my feet.

"It's, um, it's nothing, Frank. I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to wake you." I study her face for an indication that she overheard something, but I see only sleepy eyes and sideways bed-hair sticking to the pink sheet lines across her cheek.

"Well, I'm awake now," she says, pulling up a chair next to her mom. Jayne downs the rest of her tea and wipes her mouth with her hand, letting out a long sigh like the ocean. "Do-over?" she asks Frankie, point-blank.

Frankie nods and rests her head on Jayne's shoulder. "All morning I was waiting for a breakdown," Jayne says. "But by the time we got here, and I was unpacking and getting the house ready, I really thought I'd be okay."

"Me, too," Frankie says.

"When I went up to my room after you stormed up to the attic, I figured we'd all be packing up and heading home tomorrow morning."

"And now?" Frankie asks.

Aunt Jayne reaches into the front pocket of her cardigan. "I think your brother wants us to stay. I found this in the back of the linen closet while digging around for a box of tissues."

She holds out her palm, displaying a faded metal car the size of a peanut shell. Her eyes well up as she rubs the red paint with her thumb, but then she smiles.

"He was always losing these things," she says, running it along the edge of the table. "Half the time Dad would slip on them and nearly break his neck. Remember?"

Frankie smiles. "But how do you know it's his? Other people rent this place."

"Look." Jayne turns the car wheels up, revealing the plain metal undercarriage and two tiny letters in black marker:
M.P.

Frankie gasps, reaching for the toy.

"See?" Jayne says, stroking Frankie's cheek with her knuckles. "He wants us to stay."

It sounds crazy, but things like this happen all the time. For me, it's the pennies. Whenever we'd pass a penny on the sidewalk, Matt wouldn't touch it. "Let someone else have a lucky day," he'd say. I used to tease him and tell him that someday when he got to the great beyond, there'd be a room stuffed full of all the pennies he'd left for other people.

Now I find pennies everywhere. Not just on the sidewalk -- which I leave alone, as he would have wanted -- but in the strangest places. One in the shower. A few more in my shoes -- that seems to be a favorite spot. Just yesterday, one dropped out of a book I brought. I put them in my pockets and drop them on the sidewalk the next chance I get. Let someone else have a lucky day, I say.

Jayne takes the car from Frankie and slides it back into her pocket, smiling. Is Aunt Jayne making her way back to us from the secluded island she'd been marooned on by Matt's death? I can never be certain. Just like at dinner, a smile can turn into a code five freak-out as quickly as a storm can break over a ship.

But for now, she seems okay.

The three of us sit at the dark table, retreating into our own silent memories until our breathing unites us with the waves against the shore.
Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh.
Many minutes pass this way, and as I look from Frankie to Jayne and back out to the water, I don't want it to end.

When the silence finally breaks, it's Jayne, jumping up from the chair and grabbing our hands.

"Come on, girls," she says. "Follow me."

Frankie and I follow her down to the beach, squealing as the icy water hits our toes. Jayne jumps back and lies down in the sand, just clear of the tide.

We stand above her, unsure whether we should join in or call for Uncle Red. Suddenly she's flapping her arms like a flipped-over butterfly stuck in the sand, and all we can do is laugh.

"Sand angels," she says, as though it's perfectly normal for a grown woman to run down to the beach at three in the morning to make them. "Come on."

We lie on either side of her and flap our arms and legs as hard as we can, tears streaking our cheeks, though from laughing or crying we can no longer tell.

"Do you think he sees them?" Jayne rolls over and asks after we've made three angels above the tide.

"If he does," Frankie says, "he's probably wondering why the women in this family are so certifiably nuts."

The women in this family.
For now, I'm one of them. Not the neighbor kid. Not a barnacle. But a woman in this family, running back to the house in a fit of slumber party giggles, freezing cold with sand in my hair.