I slumped down in the chair across from him and sighed, all the while aware that I wasn’t even managing to do the one thing my dad had asked of us—that is, stop hanging around the house.
On our first full day, it quickly became obvious that Warren and Gelsey and I had no idea what to do with ourselves. And so, the three of us spent the first two days simply following my dad from room to room, in case he wanted to bond or something. After the second straight day of this, we’d been sitting around the table on the screened-in porch while my father worked. Gelsey had her battered copy of Holding On to the Air, the ballerina Suzanne Farrell’s autobiography, I had my magazine, now with the spider-tainted cover removed, and Warren had a textbook in front of him. We were all reading, kind of—except every time my dad would glance up from his work, we would look up too, and Warren would smile unnaturally, all of us waiting for some cue, someone to tell us how to act. But it was becoming very clear to me that it was called quality time for a reason—by definition, it didn’t mean spending every waking minute together.
And in summers past, we’d certainly never spent much time inside unless it was raining. As its name implied, Lake Phoenix was a summer community on a lake, and the lake—and its beach—was pretty much the main attraction. There was also a pool, complete with a waterslide that I’d spent a lot of time at when I was younger, plus tennis courts and a golf course. It was like a strange combination of a country club and camp—except that it wasn’t at all fancy. There were no million-dollar houses or estates, but you did have to buy a membership to be able to go to the beach and pool. And because it was so far removed from everything, and such a small community, Lake Phoenix was incredibly safe, and I’d basically had free run of the place from when I was about seven. There was a bus for kids, the shuttle bus, that ran from the Recreation Center around to the pool and beach. But I’d taken it only rarely. Most of the time, I’d ridden my bike everywhere.
When we’d been up here before, my mother would spend her time either at the beach or playing tennis, my father would be working outside or playing golf, and my siblings and I were either at the tennis and golf lessons our parents had forced us to take, or at the beach or pool. We would all come back for dinner and eat together on the screened-in porch, everyone a little more tan than when we’d left that morning. But we’d never just stayed home, all day, when it was gorgeous and sunny out.
“Enough is enough,” my dad said, after he’d glanced up to find us all looking—and Warren still smiling—at him. “You three are driving me crazy.”
I looked at my brother, who shot me a questioning look back. I really wasn’t sure what my father was talking about—especially since I had been so careful not to do anything that might drive him crazy. “Um,” I finally said after a moment, when it became clear my siblings weren’t going to jump into the breach, “what are we doing?”
“You’re not doing anything,” he said, sounding aggravated. “And that’s the problem. I don’t need the three of you staring at me all day. It makes me feel like I’m in some kind of science experiment. Or—even worse—some kind of reality show.”
I saw Warren open his mouth to respond, but then close it again—further proof that none of us were acting like we normally did. I had never seen Warren back down from an argument.
“Look,” my dad said, his tone softening a little, “I appreciate what you are all trying to do. But while we still can, I would like to have as normal a summer as possible. Okay?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what a “normal” summer was. In a normal summer, or at least what they’d looked like over the last few years, we wouldn’t have been together.
“So,” Gelsey said, and I noticed she was sitting up a little straighter, a glint coming into her brown eyes, “what should we do with our time, then?”
“Whatever you want,” he said, spreading his hands open. “Just so long as it doesn’t involve just hanging around the house all day. It’s summer. Go have fun.”
That seemed to be all the impetus my sister needed. She bolted from the table and ran into the house, yelling for my mother, asking if they could do a barre. My father watched her go, smiling, then turned back to me and Warren, who still hadn’t moved.
“I mean it,” he said, waving us away with his hands. “In addition to this case, I have to start work on a very important project soon, and I’d like some peace to do it in.”
“Project?” Warren asked. “What kind?”
“Just a project,” my dad said vaguely, looking down at the papers in his hands.
“So,” Warren said, and I could tell he was trying a little too hard to sound casual, the way he always did when his feelings were hurt and he didn’t want to show it. “You don’t want us to spend time with you?”
“It’s not that,” my dad said, and he looked pained for a moment. “Of course I want to spend time with you. But this is just weird. Go enjoy your summers.” Warren took a breath, probably to ask my dad to qualify what, exactly, that meant. Maybe sensing this, my dad went on, “You can do whatever you want. I just want you to do something. Get a job. Read the collected works of Dickens. Learn to juggle. It doesn’t matter to me. Just stop lurking about, okay?”
I nodded, even though none of these seemed like actual possibilities for ways to spend my time. I’d never had a job, had zero interest in juggling, and had pretty much written off Dickens after freshman year English. He’d lost me from page one of A Tale of Two Cities, when I’d been unable to grasp how something could simultaneously be the best of times and the worst of times.
Warren and Gelsey, in contrast, had no such problems figuring out what to do. Gelsey was going to do a barre with my mother every day, working on her technique so that she didn’t fall too far behind in her ballet training. My mom had also gone over to the Lake Phoenix Recreation Center and somehow convinced the people running it to let Gelsey use one of their rooms—when it was empty and the seniors weren’t using it for yoga—to practice in a few times a week. And as a compromise with my mother, Gelsey had also agreed to take tennis lessons. Warren had blissfully thrown himself into reading what seemed like his entire freshman course-load, and could usually be found on the porch or the dock, merrily highlighting away. The whole situation was yet another reminder of my siblings’ exceptionalism—as ever, they had something to do, the thing they’d always done, the thing that they seemed to know from birth that they were best at. Which left me, as usual, alone and far behind as they pursued their paths to greatness.
So for the past five days, I had mostly been wandering around and feeling in the way. I had never been so aware of just how small the house was, and how few places there were to hide in it. And ever since the two embarrassing Henry encounters, I was avoiding both the dock and the woods, and had pretty much stopped going outside, except for my nightly excursion to take the trash out to the bearbox (which had somehow become my job) and shoo away the dog who seemed to have no intention of leaving. My mother had also reported that when she’d stopped by to bring a planter of geraniums to Henry’s mother, she wasn’t there, but that a blond girl, around my age, had answered the door.
I had tried very hard not to think about this too much, and certainly wasn’t letting it bother me. After all, what did I care if Henry had a girlfriend? But it somehow, retroactively, made those two encounters with him even more humiliating, and I had been careful to avoid looking at the house next door, not letting myself wonder if he was home.
As I sat at the table now and watched my dad flip through his papers, I started to get the claustrophobic feeling that I was getting more and more lately—like I needed to get out but had absolutely nowhere to go.
“How are you doing on that?” my father asked, and I noticed him trying to read my crossword puzzle upside down.
“I’m stuck on this one,” I said, tapping my finger on the empty boxes. “A thirteen-letter word for ‘change.’”
“Hmm,” he said. He leaned back in his chair, frowning, t
hen shook his head. “I’ve got nothing,” he said. “But maybe it’ll come to me. I’ll keep you informed.” He pushed himself back from the table and stood up. “I’m going to run some errands in town, kid,” he said. “Want to come?”
“Sure,” I said, automatically. It definitely sounded like more fun than pointlessly surfing the Internet, which was what had pretty much been on my afternoon agenda now that trailing behind my father was no longer an accepted option. I headed inside to get my shoes.
When I met him out on the driveway, my dad was standing by the driver’s side and tossing the Land Cruiser keys in his hand. I walked across the gravel, feeling the rocks through the thin rubber of my flip-flops, and stopped in front of the hood.
“All set?” my father asked.
“Sure,” I said slowly, adjusting the canvas bag over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but think about the pill bottles that were lined up on the kitchen counter. I had no idea what they were for—or what the side effects were. My dad hadn’t driven, as far as I knew, since the morning we left, when he showed up to get me and took me for bagels. “Do you want me to drive?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know how to phrase the question I wanted to ask. My father waved this away and started to open the door. “I mean… ,” I started. I could feel my heart beating fast. Criticizing my father—or questioning his judgment—was something I had absolutely no experience doing. “Is it okay for you to be driving?” I said it quickly, just trying to get the words out.
The sentence hung between us for a moment and when my father looked across the hood at me, his expression told me that I had overstepped. “I’m fine,” he said a little shortly. He pulled open the driver’s side door, and I walked around the hood to the passenger side, feeling my face get hot.
We drove in silence down our street for several minutes before I broke in. “So what are these errands?” I asked. I could hear how my voice was unnaturally cheery, not really sounding like me, and I realized it was probably the vocal equivalent of Warren’s strained smile.
“Well,” my father said, and I could tell by the way he glanced over at me with a quick smile before rolling to a stop at a stop sign, that he’d gotten past my comment and wanted to move on as well, “your mother has requested some fresh corn for dinner tonight. I need to pick up the mail. And…” He paused for a moment, then looked back at the road. “I thought you might want to stop by the Clubhouse. Maybe apply for a job.”
“Oh,” I said. “A job.” I looked out the window, feeling embarrassment wash over me. So he’d noticed that, unlike Warren and Gelsey, I had no talents to occupy my time with. Unfortunately, I also had no work experience—I’d spent the most recent summers doing things like service projects, language immersions, and going to camps in which I had to dissect things.
“You certainly don’t have to,” he said as we got closer to Lake Phoenix’s main street—called, creatively, Main Street. “It was just a thought.”
I nodded, and as my dad made the right turn onto Main and swung into a parking spot, I turned over his words in my head. I knew I couldn’t just keep hanging out at home with nothing to do. And, frankly, I didn’t see many other options. “Okay,” I said, shouldering my bag as we got out of the car. I shut my door and I tipped my head toward the Clubhouse building, where the Lake Phoenix administrative offices were. “I’ll give it a shot.”
My father smiled at me. “That’s my girl,” he said. I smiled back, but even as I did, I could feel an immediate, almost panicky reaction. I wanted to freeze this moment, keep it from moving on, dip it in amber somehow. But just as I thought this, my dad was already looking away, starting to walk up the street. “Shall we reconnoiter in thirty?” he asked.
I glanced down at my watch. Back home, I almost never wore one, because I always had my phone with me. But aside from a few awkward text exchanges with acquaintances that I’d resorted to in extreme loneliness, my cell had been quiet. And since I hadn’t felt I needed constant proof that nobody was calling me, I’d taken to leaving it in my room, which meant that I needed some other way to tell the time. “Thirty,” I echoed. “Sure.” My dad gave me a nod before walking up the street to Henson’s Produce, no doubt on a mission to get my mother her corn.
I turned and headed toward the Clubhouse building, wishing that I’d straightened myself up a little more that morning. I was wearing what had, after only a few days, become my de facto summer uniform—cutoff jean shorts and a tank top. I was worried that this outfit, coupled with the fact that I had never held a job before, might seriously impair my chances of getting hired. But as I stood in front of the wood-paneled building, with the painted Lake Phoenix design (a phoenix rising from the lake, water dripping from its wings while the sun rose—or set—behind it) on the window, I realized that there was nothing to do but to give it a try. So I straightened my shoulders and pulled open the door.
Fifteen minutes later, I had a job. I stepped back out into the sunlight, blinking at it before I slipped my sunglasses back on, feeling a little bit dazed. I now had three white Lake Phoenix employee T-shirts (the cost of which would come out of my first paycheck), an employee handbook, and instructions to show up for work at the beach in three days. Jillian, the woman who was in charge of the hiring, had told me repeatedly, even as she looked over my application and scrolled through the options on her computer, that I was much too late in the application process to expect anything great—or, for that matter, anything at all.
The Lake Phoenix administrative offices were bigger than I’d expected—I’d never spent much time in the Clubhouse, except for when we’d occasionally gone for brunch on Sundays, Warren and I staying put for what felt like hours before getting permission to leave and running for the beach. I finally located the employment office, which placed the teenagers of the summer community in jobs around Lake Phoenix—lifeguarding, working at the beach or pool snack bar, teaching seniors yoga. Most of the kids I had known had gotten their first job—usually doing something low on the seniority ladder, which always seemed to mean cleaning bathrooms—at fourteen, and the jobs got better the older you got. If I’d continued to come to Lake Phoenix in the summers, I probably would have had my first job years ago. Instead, the “work experience” section of my application had been embarrassingly empty.
But Jillian had finally come up with a job—there was an opening at the beach. The job description had been very general, which was slightly worrying to me, but Jillian said that since I didn’t have lifeguard training or much sailing experience, it would most likely be at the snack bar. And since she hadn’t mentioned that cleaning bathrooms was in any way a job requirement, I’d accepted. I’d filled out my payroll and tax forms, and had gone from having no plans for the summer to discovering that employment comes with T-shirts.
Now, standing out in the early afternoon heat of Main Street, I realized I had some time to kill before I had to meet my father. I stopped into the tiny Lake Phoenix library, renewed my card, and checked out three paperback mysteries. I was tempted just to hang out there for a bit, soaking up the air conditioning, but also wanted a chance to wander up Main Street.
Lake Phoenix’s commercial district was pretty small, just the length of one street. There wasn’t even a movie theater. To see movies, you had to drive twenty minutes to the next town, Mountain-view, and the Outpost, a combination movie theater/miniature golf course/arcade that we’d gone to whenever it had rained. But Lake Phoenix only had a single stoplight, a gas station, and handful of stores. There was The Humble Pie, and next to it, Henson’s Produce. There was Sweet Baby Jane’s, the ice cream parlor where Gelsey had never ordered anything except a strawberry shake, and a hardware store. There was the Pocono Coffee Shop, which everyone always just called “the diner,” and a store, Give Me A Sign, that specialized in personalized signs for houses.
As I continued up the street, I found myself automatically noticing the new stores, every time one didn’t fit with what I expected to be there—but then I would also find tha
t I couldn’t remember what had been there before. A pet store/dog grooming parlor, Doggone It!, was definitely new, but looked pretty empty, except for a redhaired girl behind the counter, turning the pages of a magazine. I had made it almost to the end of Main Street when I found myself in front of another new store, Borrowed Thyme. It looked like it was a bakery—there were loaves of bread stacked in a display in one of the plate-glass windows, and a beautiful layer cake in the other. My stomach rumbled just looking at them, and I was peering past the cake to see farther into the shop when I became aware of someone clearing their throat behind me. I turned and saw a peeved-looking older man, wearing an overlarge Phillies baseball cap and a scowl.
“Going in?” he barked, nodding at the door that I now realized I was blocking.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” I pulled the door open, holding it for the man, who grunted in response as he made his way inside. I was about to just close the door and head back to meet my dad when curiosity got the best of me. Also, I could feel the air conditioning from the doorway and smell that wonderful bakery smell—freshly baked bread and buttercream icing. I stepped inside, letting the door slam behind me.
It was cool and darker inside, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust after the brightness of the street. I could see, as things came into focus, two small wooden tables with matching chairs by the windows, and a glass-topped counter that ran almost the width of the shop. Pastries and cookies were displayed beneath it, and behind the counter was a baker’s rack stacked with the bread that I had been able to smell from the street. My stomach grumbled again, and I started thinking that maybe I would get something small, just to tide me over until lunch.