Lost in the Sun (7 page)

“Wait,” I said, turning around on Doug in the doorway when what he said finally sank in. “What do you mean, the
two
of us? What about Aaron?”

Aaron was already in the kitchen, devouring a granola bar like he hadn't just gotten back from dinner. “I have lifeguarding,” he explained.

Lucky dog. “Well, I have to work at the store,” I said. But even I could hear in my voice what a giant baby I sounded like. “Mom needs me there.”

“You think Dad's going to buy that one?” Aaron asked as I joined him in the kitchen. He unzipped his backpack with one hand, still munching his granola bar, and pulled out a textbook, tucking it under his arm. “You think Mom's going to let you work just to get out of seeing him?”

I frowned. Probably not.

“I have to study,” Aaron said, pushing past me to get to the hall.

“It's Friday night,” I told him.

“Someone has to be the responsible one in the family,” Aaron replied just before he shut his door behind him.

“Glad it isn't me!” I called back. But if he heard me, he didn't bother to respond.

•   •   •

All that talk about being the responsible one was obviously garbage, because Aaron snuck out during the game against the Giants, right in the middle of the second inning. “Going out with a friend!” he told Mom as he slipped into his coat. He was out the door before she even got a chance to ask him any questions.

“Teenagers,” Mom grumbled at the closed front door. She turned to me and Doug, who was watching with us only because Mom was letting him have ice cream if he did (her attempts to turn him into a baseball fan like the rest of us never worked out too well). “When you two get to be teenagers, don't even think about pulling any stunts like that one,” she said, aiming her thumb toward the door. “Your brother knows his butt is toast when he comes home.”

“He's out with a
girl,
” Doug informed us, raising his eyebrows as he slurped up his ice cream. Doug had a disgusting habit of letting his ice cream melt into soup before he ate it. He claimed it tasted better that way. “I heard him on the phone. It's that
Clarisse
girl again.”

Mom sighed. “So it begins,” she said, mostly to herself.

•   •   •

Aaron got home a little before midnight. Mom was asleep—tuckered out, she said, from mentally cursing the Dodgers for losing to
those Giants
on a wild pitch. (“A wild pitch!” she kept shouting from the bathroom as she was brushing her teeth.) But I was still awake. I poked my head outside my bedroom door as he tiptoed down the hallway.

“Hey,” I whispered to him.

“Hey.” He seemed surprised to see me. “You're still awake.”

I shrugged. “Were you out with Clarisse?”

He didn't answer that. “You going to Dad's tomorrow?”

It was my turn not to answer. “Mom said she's going to kill you in the morning for not telling her where you were going.” I paused. “A
responsible
son probably would've asked first.”

He looked down the hall to Mom's closed bedroom door, like he was considering something, then shook his head. “Get some sleep, okay?” he said. He sounded real tired.

I figured if Aaron wanted to secretly date some girl, it was none of my business. I wasn't snoopy like Doug. I just hated when our mom was mad.

“'Kay,” I said, giving in. “You too.”

Aaron slugged me in the arm. “Good night, little brother.”

“Night, Aaron.”

Mom had already left for work by the time I woke up on Saturday morning. Dad was supposed to come by to pick us up at 10:30, but while Doug was in the bathroom at 10:15, I snuck out the door and hopped on my bike.

I decided to head over to Swim Beach, which is where Aaron worked as a lifeguard. Unfortunately, Giles, who was at the ticket office, wouldn't let me in even though he'd met me about a bajillion times.

“It's me,” I told him, “Trent. I'm Aaron's brother. You've met me.”

Giles went on chewing his gum. “Five bucks for a day pass,” he said. Aaron once told me that Giles was bitter because he'd dropped out of law school and now he was a fifty-year-old man who worked the ticket booth at Swim Beach. “Park your bike over there after you pay,” Giles told me, jerking his head toward the bike rack next to the booth.

“But I only want to talk to Aaron,” I argued. “I'm not going to go swimming. I shouldn't have to pay just to talk to my own brother.”

“Five bucks for a day pass,” Giles said again.

It was no use arguing with Giles, because he always won in the end anyway. He probably would've made a really good lawyer.

I handed over the single five-dollar bill I'd scrounged out of my piggy bank for breakfast money, got my neon-green wristband, and parked my bike in the rack. After that I was allowed inside the gate.

Swim Beach wasn't really a beach at all, since we didn't live on the ocean. It was just a stretch of Cedar Lake that was good for swimming, and years ago someone had hauled in a bunch of sand from somewhere and lined the shore with it, so if you squinted really hard, it sort of
felt
like a beach, except without waves or salt water or whales. There were lake fish, though, and sometimes they'd swim right up to you while you were in the water. Once when Doug was little, we told him they were piranhas, and he wouldn't go in the lake all summer. Mom was pretty mad about that. Anyway, this past summer Aaron worked there as a lifeguard every day, and now that school had started he was there on weekends until it got too cold for anyone to want to swim. He said it paid pretty well and was good practice for when he went to college at UC San Diego and could maybe lifeguard for real.

I found Aaron right away. He wasn't hard to spot, because he was one of only three people wearing a bright red hoodie that said
LIFEGUARD
on the back. I walked over to the lifeguard stand where he was sitting, watching the water. Since I hadn't known I was going to end up at Swim Beach when I'd hopped on my bike, I wasn't wearing my
bathing suit or flip-flops, so I had to walk slowly so not too much sand would catch in my sneakers.

“Hey,” I called up when I reached the bottom of the stand.

Aaron flicked his eyes down at me, then quick back to the water. He took his job very seriously. “Trent,” he called back, like he was super disappointed in me. A really nice welcome for his little brother. “Why aren't you with Dad?”

I checked the imaginary watch on my wrist. “Just missed him,” I said. “So sad.”

Aaron sighed. I could tell he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to do, as the big brother, in this situation. But I knew he didn't have a whole lot of options. It wasn't like he was going to ditch his job to wrestle me into his car and drive me all the way to Dad's house, kicking and screaming.

“You're going to have to see him sometime, Trent,” he said at last.

“Not if I can help it,” I replied.

Aaron continued to stare at the water. I stared too.

This was the first summer Aaron had lifeguarded, and he'd gotten really tan. You could hardly even tell he was related to Doug and me. He was muscly, too. I bet all sorts of girls at school were in love with him, even before they found out he was funny.

“What time is it?” he asked me, eyes still on the water.

I checked my imaginary watch again. “Probably, like, ten forty-five,” I told him.

“I'm on bathroom duty at eleven,” he said, “and then I get a break. Want to hang out with me then?”

“Sure,” I said. And then I left him to his job, because Aaron didn't like to chat too much when he was on the stand.

Since I didn't have a towel to sit on the sand, I found a seat over by the snack stand. The tables weren't too crowded today, since the summer was over.

“Hey, Trent!” the girl at the snack stand, Melinda, called over to me. I turned to look at her, and she checked to make sure her boss wasn't looking and then tossed me a bag of chips. She smiled and held a finger to her lips, like I should keep it a secret.

Thanks,
I mouthed. She nodded. At least
someone
here was nicer than Giles.

While I munched on my chips and waited for Aaron, I watched the swimmers in the lake. It was mostly little kids, but there were some parents with them, too. They all stayed in the area that was marked off by buoys. There was a floating platform you could swim to if you felt like it, and some girls about my age (but the ones who would never talk to me, ever) were hogging it, lying on top sunbathing and shooing away the little kids who wanted to dive off the edge.

Far in the distance, way beyond the buoys in the larger part of the lake, was a tiny island, just big enough for about a hundred trees. Sometimes I thought about what it would be like to swim all the way to the island. What you'd find there, besides the trees. Aaron said sometimes the lifeguards went there in their off time to explore, even though they weren't supposed to, but I liked to imagine that the island was one of the few places on earth that no human being had ever set foot on. We could see it, but it was still completely unexplored. A mystery.

Aaron came and got me before he had to do bathrooms, and I went with him to the cleaning shed, where we picked up the mop and the bucket and the other supplies. Aaron strapped on a pair of thick purple gloves and went inside the men's room first, and I set up the yellow
CL
EANING IN PROGRESS
sign outside and talked to him through the open door.

“Did you have to rescue anyone today?” I asked Aaron through the doorway. I had to speak loudly, because of the sloshing and water running.

“No,” Aaron called back. “Thank goodness.”

So far Aaron hadn't had to rescue anyone. He'd had a few times, he said, when he'd had to leap into the water because it looked like someone was in distress, but they'd all been false alarms, except for once when another lifeguard got to the person before him and Aaron didn't have to do CPR or anything.

I know Aaron didn't actually want to need to save anyone, because that would be incredibly scary. But I always secretly hoped that he would. Because, for one thing, I knew that he could do it. Aaron was an amazing swimmer, and he'd aced his CPR class, too. And for another, well, I know it didn't actually work that way, but I couldn't help thinking that if Aaron saved somebody's life, maybe it would even things out with me and Jared.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Thank goodness.”

While Aaron was in the women's room, I had to shoo away three moms with little kids, because apparently having a little kid who's screaming that he's about to pee himself makes you incapable of
reading big yellow signs. They just ended up using the men's room, which I didn't tell Aaron in case they messed it up and he'd have to clean it again.

After cleaning the bathrooms, it was Aaron's break. We went to the snack stand, where Melinda tried desperately to give us free nachos, even though Aaron insisted he didn't want to ruin his appetite for lunch. In the end, I got the nachos, because I didn't care about my appetite, but Aaron made me refuse the free soda.

“I think Melinda has a crush on you,” I told Aaron when I was pretty sure she was out of earshot.

He flicked a chip at me, so I ended up with cheese on my shoulder. “You're the one with the free nachos,” he said. “Maybe she likes
you.
” But I noticed his cheeks had gone a little pink. “Anyway, she has a boyfriend.”

I wiped the cheese off my sleeve with a napkin. “She could have a boyfriend and still have a crush on you,” I said. I knew about this stuff from TV.

Aaron didn't say anything to that.

“Does she know about Clarisse?” I asked.

“What?” Aaron said, all innocent.

“Your
girlfriend,
” I told him. “Everyone knows, Aaron. It's not a secret.”

“Oh.” Aaron shook his head. “Uh, no. Probably not.” And then he wouldn't talk about Melinda or Clarisse anymore.

When we were finished eating, Aaron said that as long as I was visiting, he might as well see if he could take an early lunch, so he got
one of the other lifeguards to cover for him and ended up with a full extra hour of break. He told me he was going to use that time to take me out in one of the rowboats and work on my rowing. I was terrible at rowing, because I didn't have nearly as much upper-arm strength as Aaron, but I liked the movement of it. Dip the oars, swipe through the water, up, across, repeat. It felt like good hard work, not like cleaning counters at Kitch'N'Thingz or counting money or something wussy like that. There was something about it, when the lake was still and you were far enough from the shrieking children that you could pretend you couldn't hear them, that made you feel calm and sweaty at the same time.

“Can we row to the island?” I asked Aaron.

He thought about it. “Sure,” he said. “But just around in a loop. No getting off, because my boss'll get mad.”

“Okay.” That was fine with me.

We rowed around the island, a slow circle. Aaron made me do most of the work while he studied how I held the oars. Occasionally he'd give me pointers, and I'd correct my grip. We were on the far side of the island, blocked completely from Swim Beach by the trees, when Aaron decided to say something.

“You've got to stop being so hard on Dad,” he said.

I nearly started choking at that one. “
I'm
hard on
him
?” I asked. Maybe all that tanning had gotten to Aaron's brain.

“Weren't you guys supposed to practice your championship egg racing this weekend?” Aaron said, by way of an answer. “It seemed like Dad was looking forward to it.”

“It's not that hard to keep an egg on a spoon,” I replied. “You just, like, don't drop it.”

Aaron looked into the water, at the ripples from the oar as they grew into larger and larger circles. “I just think you could bother to show up to dinner sometimes,” he said. “Dad misses you when you're not there.”

“Fat chance,” I told him. “Dad doesn't care about anyone but himself.”

You know what Dad said to me, after Jared? He said, “Well, it happened, I guess. And there's nothing you can do about it now. No use thinking about it.”

I didn't listen to anything Dad had to say anymore.

“Watch your thumb, there,” Aaron told me, pointing. “You're going to get blisters.”

“I already have blisters,” I muttered, but I moved my thumb anyway.

When we'd made a full circle around the island, Aaron said we should probably start heading back, so I rowed us the whole way to shore, all by myself. I didn't mind, because it meant I got to watch the island as we left it, getting smaller and smaller, more and more mysterious.

Once we reached the shore, Aaron hopped out of the boat without hardly making a splash and dragged me back in. I managed to lurch out onto the sand without getting my sneakers wet, and then I hauled up the front end, with my arms straining like they might burst, and Aaron picked up the back end, like it was the easiest thing he'd ever lifted in his life, and together we walked the boat back to the rack and slid it into the bottom slot.

“I'll tie it up later,” Aaron told me. He glanced over at the lifeguarding stand, where his boss, Zoey, was waving him over. Zoey had graduated high school last year, but she acted younger than the other lifeguards half the time, that's what Aaron said about her. “I gotta get back to the stand. You heading out?”

“Yeah.” It didn't make much sense for me to spend the rest of the afternoon at Swim Beach, even if I had paid five dollars for a day pass. “I'll see you later. Dodgers are playing the Giants at seven.”

“You should call Dad,” Aaron said.

I stuck my hands into my back pockets. “I probably won't,” I replied.

Aaron glanced at the lifeguard stand, then he turned back to me. “This was kind of nice,” he told me.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then he slugged me in the shoulder. “Don't make a habit of it, little brother.” And he raced off to the lifeguard stand, kicking up sand with the back of his wet flips as he went.

•   •   •

Mom was clearly surprised to see me when she walked in the front door that evening.

“Trent!” she cried, clutching her chest like she'd thought I was some sort of robber. “What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at your father's.”

I clicked off ESPN. “I sort of, um, missed him,” I said.

She tossed her purse onto the couch and flopped down next to me. “Oh, Trent,” she said. She felt my forehead with the back of her
hand like she thought I might have some sort of fever. “What's going on with you two?”

I shrugged. “I hate him.”

Mom nodded at that, like it was a perfectly normal thing to hate your father. “Okay,” she said. “But he's still your dad. Growing boys need their fathers. It's, like, science.” She peeked into the kitchen. “Are your brothers here too?”

“Doug's spending quality time with Dad like a good little boy,” I said. “And Aaron's out. He didn't tell me where he was going. Probably with Clarisse.” I nodded back toward the TV. “Game's on in ten,” I said. “Want me to heat up two potpies?”

Mom bit her lip for a second. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Sounds good. Let me just make a phone call.” Then she dug her phone out of her purse and started dialing, walking toward her room to talk.