A Summer of Sundays (11 page)

Across the table, Emma and May looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“Guess what I did, Sunday,” Bo said. He scooped a pile of rice and beans onto his fork but it plopped back onto his plate before reaching his mouth.

Henry broke in, spewing bits of rice onto the table. “We made paper airplanes and then … and then we set them on fire,” Henry said. “They went
whoosh
!”

Mom’s fork dropped to her plate with a tinny clank. “You what?”

CJ knocked Henry hard with his elbow.

“Ouch! Mom, CJ hit me.”

“Sunday,” Emma said, “could you pass the rice? You’re hogging it all.”

“Henry,” Bo whined, “I was gonna tell Sunday, and then you cut in.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Boys, stop,” Dad warned.

“Can someone take me driving tonight?” May asked. “I think I should get used to driving in the dark.”

“Just a second, May.” Mom’s stare was fixed on CJ. “What is this about fire?”

CJ, both cheeks stuffed, shrugged. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “We were just playing around.”

Mom took a sip of her water. “Playing around? After dinner, you will scrub every toilet until all thought of playing around with fire is removed from your mind.”

“Ah, Mom,” CJ whined, “I won’t do it again.”

Henry wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “CJ, does that mean we can’t try and melt some of my army guys tonight like you promised?”

Mom closed her eyes. “I think you need to start on the toilets now, CJ.”

My brother picked up his plate and slumped off to the kitchen. “It was just an idea. It’s not like I actually—”

“Go!”

And that pretty much signaled the end of dinner. After we all cleaned up, I took my ice cream sandwich out on the porch and sat on the steps. The night was warm, the crickets were starting up their songs, and, one by one, the fireflies blinked in the dark. I licked a drip of ice cream and looked out over the field toward Ben Folger’s house. A single light shone out from an upstairs window.

I popped the last piece of soft chocolate cookie and vanilla ice cream in my mouth and stood up. At almost the same time, the light in the window flicked off.

I wondered how to befriend someone like Ben Folger.

And if I even should.

Though I had
The Life and Death of Birds
waiting on my nightstand, I found myself completely sucked into the manuscript, reading until my eyes burned.

Just as I was about to flip off the light, Bo turned the doorknob and came into my room.

“Can I sleep in your room, Sunday?” he asked.

“Sure.” I flung back the covers, and he tucked in next to me.

“Tell me more of that story,” he said through a yawn.

I yawned, too, and flicked off the lamp. “I’ll try my best to remember it all, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You know how I told you that the girl, Lilly, and the boy, Mark, became friends?”

“Yeah. But you never said how.”

“Well, her dad gave her some money to buy food at the store. But when she got there, she saw a pen and tablet of paper that she wanted so bad she could hardly stand it.”

“Like the time I needed to buy that orange car at the toy store, so I cried and cried and cried.”

“Sort of. Anyway, she loved to write poems and write about her day and she thought it would be wonderful to write it all down on that pretty ivory-colored paper with
that black-ink pen. So she bought a few of the supplies her dad wanted and spent the rest on that pen and paper. Then she went home.”

“Uh-oh, did her dad get mad?”

“Oh, yeah. He was so mad he started throwing stuff and saying all kinds of terrible things. But then who should show up but Mark. He knocked on the door and said that Lilly had forgotten her other bag of groceries. She must have dropped her list because everything they needed was inside the brown paper bag.”

“So he told a lie?” Bo sounded amazed.

“Yeah, I guess he did. But he did it because he wanted to help her. Protect her in a way.”

“Then what happened?”

“They were best friends. Eventually she moved in with her aunt and uncle because her dad went to jail.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me, too. She told him how she wanted to be something big when she grew up. Something that would take her away from their little town. Mark said he’d like to stay right where he was and have a family and a dog and maybe work in a bookstore.

“They stuck together for the most part. Mark was quiet and didn’t have too many friends. Everyone loved Lilly, but she liked spending most of her time with Mark. In the fall, they went to the same school and things were pretty
much the same. They did everything together. Then one winter, Mark got really sick.”

“Did he throw up?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Probably. Anyway, he got really sick and went to the hospital. Every night, Lilly would write a story for him. Sometimes they were short little stories, and other times she would write longer ones, adding a bit to them every day. Then, after school, she would walk to the hospital and sit in his room and read to him.”

“Would you write me a story every day if I was in the hospital?”

I didn’t like thinking of Bo in the hospital. “I’m not a good writer. But I’d come and read to you every day.”

“Okay.”

“Finally Mark got better and went home. And you know what the very first thing that they did together was?”

“They ate ice cream?”

“Nope. They went down to the creek where they first met and talked and talked and talked.”

“I would’ve had ice cream.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t consider Jude my best friend since I hadn’t known him that long, but I thought it would be exciting to meet somewhere and talk. Maybe we’d eat ice cream, too, though it would probably be organic and taste like gerbil food.

Bo yawned, then nudged me a little with his shoulder. “Then what happened?”

I answered his yawn and closed my eyes. “Why don’t I tell you the rest another time?”

Bo didn’t object, and within seconds the room was filled with his gentle breaths. I thought back on the chapter, smiling to myself as I remembered the last sentence: “But no matter what happened throughout each and every day, whether they fought like siblings or spent the day in laughter, Lilly always awoke the next morning with a single yellow daisy sitting on her windowsill.”

FOR THE
next few days, Jude and I worked a little at the library each morning, helping stain or sand or sweep or wipe something down. In the afternoons, we talked to people in town to see if they could’ve written the manuscript. We had zero luck. The barber had never set foot in the library, the real estate agent didn’t have enough time for reading or writing, and the two teachers we met said that they loved to read and would love to have an author come to their school if we knew of any.

It was time to think of other options.

“Hey,” Jude said one afternoon. “Why don’t we try and bake a huge chocolate chip cookie—one big enough to be written about in the newspaper?”

It wound up burning to a crispy black circle and setting off the fire alarm. Another time, I tried to jump rope for an entire afternoon. I had to quit after fifteen minutes to stop CJ from spray-painting his initials on the side of
the garage. But the old house across the field kept grabbing at my attention, and as time passed, I thought how silly I was to run away.

Ben Folger was the answer, and Jude was just going to have to be okay with that.

The next morning I looked out the window and found Jude sitting on the porch with Henry. A plate of donuts sat between them. Butters wagged her tail, watching for crumbs. “What time did you get up?” I called down.

Jude jumped at the sound of my voice and looked up. “Oh, hey, Sunday! Your dad got donuts.”

Henry held up fingers covered in chocolate. “Look!”

“I see,” I said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

I slipped on my shorts and a T-shirt, then jammed my feet into my sneakers and grabbed my backpack, a notebook, and a pen that I hoped worked.

I was going to do some snooping about Ben Folger. Maybe he was in the newspaper a long time ago or someone in town knew more about him.

Downstairs, I caught Bo carefully eating the frosting off of every single donut. Mom looked up from her computer and smacked his hand gently as he reached for another. “No way, mister. You decapitate another one and you’ll find yourself eating a plateful of broccoli for lunch.
Your dad must have been out of his mind to think that two dozen donuts were a good idea.”

Bo slumped down, crossed his arms, and stuck out his lip in a pitiful pout. When Mom wasn’t looking, I handed him half of a donut and winked. He grinned and scrunched up his face, trying to wink back, though it was more of an exaggerated squint. I picked out a chocolate-covered donut that only had a single finger swipe through the top and joined Henry and Jude on the porch.

“Hey.”

Jude licked off his fingers. “Hey.”

“I didn’t think that donuts were on the food pyramid,” I said.

Jude shrugged and took the last bite of donut that Henry held out to him. “Sure they are. Under breads and sugars. I’m just helping make the pyramid complete.”

I dropped my backpack and sat down. The morning was crisp and clear with only a few clouds floating across the blue sky. Two squirrels taunted Butters from their post on a nearby branch.

Henry crawled onto Jude’s lap and leaned his head against his shoulder. Jude looked at me and smiled like he’d just won the lottery and had his picture in the
New York Times
. Henry must not have slept well if he was already tired. That, or the sugar just hadn’t kicked in.

“Pony ride!” Henry yelled, suddenly sitting up straight and clapping his hands.

And … cue sugar craziness.

Jude got his legs moving, and Henry bounced up and down on his knee.

“Now he’s never gonna leave you alone,” I said, taking a bite of my donut. The chocolate was melting between my fingers and I licked away the sweet stickiness.

“I don’t mind.”

I shrugged. “Is your mom at work already?”

“Yeah.”
Bounce, bounce, bounce
. “She goes into the bank early on Mondays. Wally dropped me off a little bit ago.”

“And how was that?”

Jude shrugged and continued to bounce my giggling brother. “Same as always. Trying to be my best friend.”

“You could give him a chance, you know.”

He stopped and glared at me. “Yeah, maybe when you start liking your family.”

“Sunday likes us,” Henry said, and nudged Jude to continue. “Keep bouncing.”

Jude started back up again. I decided to drop the subject. It wasn’t worth it. Being completely forgotten by your family was way different. “Hey, do you know where there’s a computer I can use? I want to look up something on the Internet.”

Jude’s leg stopped bouncing, and he set Henry on the ground. “You don’t have one here?”

“We do, but it’s my mom’s and she’s using it right now. At the library we might get stuck stacking books or sweeping and I want to do more investigating.”

Jude got up and brushed off his shorts. “We can go to my house then.”

“Can I come? Can I come? Can I come?” Henry jumped up and down in front of us.

“Not right now, Henry,” I said. “We have to do something by ourselves. But we’ll be back later, okay?’

He plopped himself down on the stairs and stuck out his lower lip. Butters sat herself conveniently next to his cheek, licking at his face and hands.

Jude bent down. “Hey, Henry? Why don’t we go inside and get another donut? How does that sound?”

Henry looked up, brown eyes sparkling. “Okay.” He stood and grabbed for Jude’s hand.

“Hurry up,” I called after him.

Mom came to the door with Bo trailing behind her, a circle of chocolate around his mouth. “Emma, where are you going?”

“That’s Sunday, Mommy,” Bo said, and laughed.

“Sorry, Sunday. Where are you going, sweetie?”

“Just over to Jude’s house for a bit. Is that all right?”

Bo pushed through the door. “I’ll come, too.”

“No,” I said a little too loudly. It was nice having Bo as my shadow some of the time, but not right now, not when I was trying to learn more about Ben Folger.