A Summer of Sundays (28 page)

Now I was just plain angry. “JUDE! You come out here. You’re being a big old baby.”

Nothing again. “Fine!” I yelled, and stomped through the grass and down the sidewalk toward home. I guess he wouldn’t be helping us today.

Mom, Dad, Miss Jenny, my brothers, and I decorated the rest of the morning. We hung balloons on the outside of the refinished door, wound streamers around the cleaned stone banisters, and set up long tables on the grass.

Though I had been in the library on and off throughout the weeks that Dad worked on remodeling, it still took my breath away when I stepped inside. The floors and stairs shone glossy in the light that poured in through the cleaned, trimmed windows. I walked among the shelves, letting my fingers run along the colorful spines. I noticed that there was a new copy of
The Life and Death of Birds
. It was because of Lee Wren that I was finally going to mean something. I smiled and slid it back in place.

I walked to the circulation desk, where Mom was placing a large jar of jelly beans with a
GUESS HOW MANY?
sign, and Bo was taping balloons every which way. Above the desk hung the newly framed picture of Lee Wren. Now that I knew her story, her smile seemed mischievous, and in the sparkle of her eye I could picture the girl serving coffee and eggs and toast at a diner in New York City. But there was something I hadn’t noticed until now. Her hands rested on her lap, her fingers wrapped around a bright and cheery daisy.

A daisy that Ben had given her.

Maybe he’d stood off to the side when they took the picture. Maybe the smile was not so mischievous after all, but meant for him. I tried to ignore the thorn of guilt that pricked me in the chest.

“Sunday, could you arrange the flowers?” Mom asked. “I brought over all the vases that I could find in the house.
It needs to look bright and cheery tomorrow, so put them everywhere.”

She slid two large boxes of flowers over to me and pointed to a table in the corner that was filled with vases of every kind. As I began to arrange the flowers, I felt Lee Wren’s gaze on my back.

Was her picture one of the ones that followed you wherever you were in the room? I turned and looked. Her eyes were definitely on me. The guilt I had tried to stuff away returned. Would she really mind? Did it matter that she minded? I shook my head and turned back to the flowers, placing a daisy in each vase. She would like that.

But the manuscript and the tapes and the letters and her husband. Would she like all that being brought into the open?

“Sunday,” Mom said. “I know I keep asking, but are you okay? Did something happen with you and Jude?”

Jude. I had managed to forget about him for most of the morning. Now he and Lee Wren and Ben Folger were coming at me from all sides.

“Oh, I think he’s mad at me. It’ll be fine, though.”

Mom pulled a few stray leaves from one of the arrangements. “Anything you want to talk about?”

I shrugged. It would be nice to talk to her about everything, but I …

“Mom!” Bo yelled. “Can I have a snack?”

“Yeah, me too, me too!”

I sighed and watched her walk over to the boys. I couldn’t talk to her. Besides, everyone would know everything tomorrow. “It’s fine,” I said halfheartedly, knowing she couldn’t hear me.

“Sunday,” she called back to me, “once you’re done with the flowers, why don’t you fold these brochures in half and put them in this basket. They’re just for people to see the ‘before’ pictures of the library so they know all that your dad, and everyone, did.”

“Okay,” I said, and then went back to arranging flowers.

The decorating was finished by lunchtime, and then it was on to the baking.

“We’ll bake the cookies and brownies and cakes today, and then tomorrow I’ll throw the appetizers in the oven and the Crock-Pot,” Mom said. I slathered another celery stick with peanut butter and lined it with raisins.

“Can you put a few more raisins on that one, Sunday?” Henry asked. “I love raisins.”

CJ picked his off and tossed them onto Henry’s plate. “Have mine. I hate raisins. They look like rat poop.”

Bo giggled and popped one in his mouth. “Look! I’m eating rat poop, I’m eating rat poop.”

Mom sighed. “Really, CJ? Do you have to get them started?”

He crunched down on the celery, a look of satisfaction on his face.

Dad strolled into the kitchen, May behind him, looking pale and nervous. “Well, May and I are off to her driver’s test. We’ll be back in about an hour or two with a new driver in the family.”

“Hopefully not,” CJ whispered.

Mom knocked him on the shoulder, then went and kissed my sister on the cheek. “You’ll do fine, sweetheart. Just relax and try your best.”

May nodded, and I watched as her bottom lip trembled..

“Good luck,” I said. She was going to need a whole lot of luck or maybe a driving instructor who was blind and didn’t mind getting whiplash.

May glared at CJ, then turned to me and smiled. “Thanks, Sunday.”

“We’ll be back,” Dad said, and they disappeared out the front door.

I thought I heard Mom mutter “She’s going to need a miracle” as they backed out of the driveway, but I wasn’t sure.

“Should we make a sign for May when she comes back?” Bo asked, licking the peanut butter out of his celery stick.

“That would be really nice, Bo,” Mom said. “Go find some paper and you can make her one.”

Bo hopped down from his chair, licked his fingers, and ran off. “I’ll make her the bestest sign ever.”

“Wash your hands!” Mom called after him.

Mom set to work baking, and the kitchen turned into a hurricane of flour, sugar, oil, eggs, and butter.

As she popped a tray of cookies into the oven, CJ, Bo, and Henry tumbled through the kitchen.

“I’m going to hang up the signs I made,” Bo said. He clutched a stack of papers and proudly held up one with a large A written on it. “All the letters spell out ‘Congratulations May on Getting Your Driver’s License.’ CJ helped me spell it out.”

CJ rummaged in the kitchen drawer, pulling out a roll of clear tape, a box of nails, and a hammer. “Yep. Now we’re going to hang them up.” He held the hammer and the nails behind his back while Mom busied herself with stirring a humongous bowl of thick, black brownie batter.

“Looks great, Bo,” I said. “Where are you going to put them?” I handed him and Henry oatmeal cookies from the cooling rack.

“On the porch.”

They started out of the kitchen when Mom said, not
turning from the counter, “I know you are not about to take that hammer and those nails outside, CJ.”

“But Mom, tape never works. And don’t you want May to see what we made for her? You know, her brothers supporting her and stuff like that.”

Nice. I was impressed with CJ’s attempt, appealing to my mom’s yearning for brotherly and sisterly affection. Still, I doubted that she had forgotten when CJ had built a fort around Henry, Bo, and himself. It took two hours to pry out enough nails to get them free.

“I think that May will see the signs just fine without the hammer and nails,” Mom said. “You better hurry, though. They’ll probably be back soon.”

When the last batch of brownies sat steaming on the cooling rack, next to the dozens of cookies, two cakes, and a few loaves of apple bread, and I had washed the spatula for the last time, I filled up a glass with lemonade and walked out onto the front porch and down the stairs. The pages they had hung flapped in the breeze.

In multicolored marker and big, bold letters, the sign read: I HOPE YOU DIDN’T FLUNK, MAY!!

I smiled. That’s what Bo got for trusting CJ to help him spell. Taking a sip of my lemonade, I turned my gaze to Ben’s house across the field and then quickly away, hoping he’d understand what I was going to do.

I still needed to arrange the letters, cassette tapes, and
the manuscript for tomorrow. Then I needed to pick out an outfit, and I was thinking that I should practice a little speech. With my brothers off somewhere, Emma at the high school, and May and Dad still gone, I’d have time to get everything ready without being interrupted. I managed to slip by Mom, who was stacking cookies, covering brownies, and wrapping up the loaves of bread, and snuck up to my room, closing the door gently behind me. I immediately went on a search in my closet for something to wear for the big announcement. Unfortunately I had packed mainly shorts, T-shirts, and tank tops but was pleased to find a skirt and top still stuffed in my suitcase. Mom probably tucked them inside just in case. I didn’t have any shoes other than the old sneakers on my feet, but newspapers and TV cameras usually only took pictures or filmed you from the waist up.

I set the outfit out on the old stool. Now to gather everything together. The letters still sat on my dresser from the night before, but when I lifted up the mattress, my heart dropped to my feet.

The story was gone.

I lifted the mattress up higher.

Nothing.

I swept my hand underneath, my fingertips searching for a corner of paper. “No, no, no, no, no.”

And then I remembered how I had just set the
manuscript on the floor, next to my bed, last night. I flopped onto the mattress, peered down, and gasped.

The pages of the manuscript were flipped upside down, scattered among a rainbow of colored markers.

Bo!

I scrambled for the pages. How could he? What was I going to do now? Even after I had been so careful, my brother had managed to ruin the only thing that was going to help me stand out. He’d ruined everything!

I stacked the papers together, angry tears spilling down my cheeks.

“They’re here! They’re back!” Bo shouted. Bo. The person who destroyed my chance at being recognized. My anger flared up fiercer than ever.

I stomped out of my room, down the stairs, and out the front door.

“She passed,” Dad said, his voice showing his surprise. “I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”

I ignored my sister’s outstretched hand as she showed off her license, and ran up to my brother. “Bo!” I yelled. “How could you?”

He had May around the waist and was asking, “Do you like my sign?”

My sister gave a confused smile. “Um, I think?”

I grabbed Bo by the arm and pulled him off her. “I said, ‘How could you do that?’ ”

“Ouch, Sunday. That hurts.” He looked up at me, the smile slowly disappearing from his face.

“What is this about, Sunday?” Mom asked. Her eyebrows were knit together and her arms folded.

I pointed up at the porch, where some of the pages had blown away. Now the sign read: YOU FLUNK MAY! “Great,” I said, running up to the porch and pulling down the remaining pages. “Where did the rest of them go?”

Bo shrugged and looked around. “I don’t know.”

“We should’ve used the nails,” CJ said, shaking his head.

Henry tossed the keys into the air and tried to catch them. “I saw some blow away.”

I ran my hands through my hair and turned on Bo again. “How could you, Bo? How could you take the one thing that mattered most to me and completely ruin it?”

“I-I-” he stuttered.

I held up the papers. “You don’t understand how important these were. They were going to make me special, and now—” My cheeks burned. “Now they’re ruined. You ruined them. Just like you always do. Just like everyone always does!” I stared hard at him. “I … I don’t ever want to see you again!” Then I pushed past everyone and ran back into the house and up the stairs to my room. I slammed the door and locked it, flopping onto my bed and burying my face in the pillow.

All the dreams I had had for tomorrow were crumbling
around me. Sure, I could still give the reporters the rest of the manuscript and the tapes and the letters. But now it was incomplete and some of the pages were colored on.

There was a soft knock on my door. “Sunday?” Mom called.

“Go away!” I yelled. “Just leave me alone.”

“I don’t know what this is about, but Bo is crying hysterically, and you need to apologize to him.”

I sat up, my eyes stinging. “Apologize to him? He’s the one that took something of mine, something more important to me than …”

“Than what, Sunday?” Mom yelled. “Than your brother? There is nothing more important than your family.”

“You don’t understand! Now, just go away.”

“Fine, I’ll leave you alone for now. But when you come downstairs you will be apologizing to him. He’s still young, and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

I waited until her footsteps disappeared before I got up off my bed and went to the window.

“Sunday?” Bo said from outside my door. He sniffled.

“Go away, Bo. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“But I didn’t mean to draw on your papers.”

“Go away. And! Leave! Me! Alone!”

IT WAS
almost time for the play. After trying to get out of going altogether, I threw something on, stomped down the stairs, and plopped onto the couch.

“Sunday,” Mom said. “I think you have something to say to Bo.”

My brother peeked out from behind her, his nose and eyes red. He swiped a hand across his face, bringing a disgusting booger-slime across his cheek.

“Sorry,” I said, the word oozing with insincerity. I wasn’t sorry. He’s the one that needed to be sorry.