Second Chance Summer (20 page)

“Thanks,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze. I knew I needed to get out of there, and as fast as possible. “I just have to… I’ll be right back.”

“Taylor?” I heard Elliot call after me, sounding puzzled, but I didn’t care. I speed-walked past the people who were now laughing at Bill Murray’s antics and headed straight for the parking lot. I’d just drive myself home, and in the morning, I would call Jillian and quit.

“Going somewhere?” I whipped around and saw Lucy standing by the Dumpsters, a garbage bag in her hand. She tossed the bag into the trash and then turned to face me, arms folded across her chest.

“No,” I stammered, wondering why I felt so caught out, since I was going to quit in the morning. “I just…”

“Because it would be a really shitty thing to do if you just left me and Elliot. Plus, isn’t your family here?” Lucy was staring right at me, as if daring me to deny any of this. I couldn’t help noticing that whenever she did decide to talk to me, it was generally to point out what a horrible person I was being. “But I’m sure that you were probably getting something from your car,” she continued, dropping the lid of the Dumpster and letting it fall with a bang. “Otherwise, it would be awful if you took off and left, with no explanation, when people were waiting for you.” Even in the dimness of the parking lot—
it was almost totally dark now—I could see the hurt in Lucy’s expression, and I knew what she meant, and that she was no longer talking about what was happening now.

“I…” I started, and it was like every word was a challenge, like speaking them was going through an obstacle course. “I did a really bad job,” I finally managed to say. “I don’t know how I can go back there.”

Lucy let out a long breath, and shook her head. “Taylor, it’s okay,” she said, and her voice was gentler than I’d heard it yet this summer. “Nobody cares. Nobody will even remember.” She gave me a small smile, and then turned and strolled back to the concession stand. I looked at my car for a moment, but leaving no longer seemed like it would make me feel any better. In fact, I had the distinct impression that it would make me feel worse.

So I turned and walked back to the concession stand, ducking through the employee entrance. Elliot was ringing someone up for two sodas and a popcorn, and he smiled when he saw me. I busied myself straightening the cups, but it didn’t seem like the customers even noticed me—never mind remembered me as the girl who thoroughly messed up the movie’s introduction.

Lucy met my eye across the concession stand, where she was manning the popcorn machine, and she gave me a small nod, almost imperceptible unless you were watching for it.

Half an hour later, we were locking up the snack bar, and all the people on the beach seemed to be having a good time. The picture had only slid out of focus twice so far, which Elliot told me was much better than Leland’s track record the previous summer.

Lucy had disappeared a few minutes before, and now emerged from the bathroom wearing a jean miniskirt and even more eyeliner than usual. “Wow,” Elliot said, as I yanked on the padlock to make sure it was clicked into place. “I mean, you know. Where are you, um… going?”

“Hot date,” Lucy said, as her phone beeped. She pulled it out and smiled so wide at what she saw, she flashed the dimple in her cheek. “I’ll see you guys,” she said, meeting my eye for a moment before she turned and headed toward the parking lot, and I registered that I had been included, for the first time, in this farewell.

Elliot was still staring after Lucy, his expression wistful, and I yanked on the lock once again, even though it was clearly secured. “Are you going to stay and watch the rest of the movie?” I asked, and he turned back to me, adjusting his glasses hurriedly.

“No,” he said. “I like to see a movie from the beginning. And I think I’ve missed too much.”

I held up my note cards. “I have the plot here if you want to be filled in. Straight from Wikipedia.”

Elliot gave me a faint smile at that. “Thanks anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow, Taylor.”

I nodded, and as I watched him go, realized that I would. That I was staying, that maybe for the first time ever, I hadn’t gone running away when things got hard.

I held my flip-flops in my hand as I picked my way across the beach, ducking low to try and avoid blocking people’s views. I reached my family’s blanket and settled down into the spot next to my dad. My mom was sitting toward the front of the blanket, her back to me, next to Gelsey, who was stretching while she watched. Warren’s book was forgotten next to him and he appeared utterly absorbed, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes glued to the screen. I dropped my shoes on the sand, and then sat down, brushing my hand over the blanket to make sure I hadn’t tracked any sand onto it. When I had run out of stalling techniques, I looked over at my dad, his face illuminated by the moonlight and by the flickering light from the screen. But it wasn’t judgmental or disappointed or any of the things I’d been afraid that I would see.

“You’ll get ’em next time, kid,” he said as he reached out and ruffled my hair. He nodded at the screen and smiled. “Have you seen this before? It’s pretty funny.” He turned back to the movie, laughing at the sight of Bill Murray strapped to the mast of a ship.

I leaned back against my hands and stretched out my legs in front of me, and turned my attention to the film. And by the time things were winding down, I was laughing out loud, along with everybody else.

chapter sixteen

“T
AYLOR
. R
ISE AND SHINE
. U
P AND
A
DAM
.”

I groaned, not only at my father’s bad joke—when I was younger I’d misunderstood the phrase “up and at ’em” and had asked my father who this “Adam” character was, to his lasting enjoyment—but because it was a Sunday morning, it was my day off, and I wanted to spend it sleeping in. “No,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Come on,” my father said, and I heard the rasp of metal on metal as he pushed open my curtains, the decorative rings sliding on the iron bar, and it suddenly got a lot brighter in my room. “Time to get up.”

“What?” I asked, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, not understanding what was happening. “No. Why?”

“Surprise,” he said, and then he tickled the bottoms of my feet, which were sticking out from under the sheet. I felt myself giggling uncontrollably—that had always been my most ticklish spot. I yanked my feet under the covers as I heard my father leave the room. “Meet you outside,” he called. “Five minutes.”

I tried to keep my eyes shut, and attempted to return to the dream that now seemed very far away—but I knew it was futile. Between the light streaming into the room and the tickling, I was now wide awake. I opened my eyes, sat up, and checked my watch. It was nine a.m. So much for a day off.

I had gone back to work yesterday following the movie debacle, and it had been fine—Lucy continued to be slightly more cordial to me, and nobody brought up how terrible I had been. But I was still happy to have a day away from the site of my most recent humiliation, and had planned on spending it sleeping until noon, and then maybe sunbathing out on the dock while reading a magazine. But that was clearly not going to happen.

Ten minutes later, I walked through the kitchen, glancing briefly at the calendar as I went, looking at the days that had been crossed off, a little unable to believe that it was June already. My dad was on the porch, pacing around, and he appeared entirely too awake for how early it was, especially considering that he’d been sleeping in lately, and usually hadn’t been up when I’d left for work.

“What’s the surprise?” I asked, as I joined him on the porch and looked around. I saw nothing except my father and the cars in the driveway. I was slowly getting the feeling that I’d been duped.

“Well,” my dad said, rubbing his hands together and smiling. I noticed that his clothing had relaxed very slightly—rather than a button-down shirt, he was wearing a polo shirt with his khakis, and
ancient boat shoes. “It’s not so much of a surprise, per se. It’s more of an outing.”

I looked at him. “An outing.”

“You got it,” he said. “We’re going to get breakfast.” He looked at me, clearly waiting for a reaction, but all I was thinking was that it was very early, and I was awake when I didn’t want to be, and had been promised a surprise. “You need a good breakfast,” he said in his best persuade-the-jury voice. “It might be a big day.” When I still didn’t move, he smiled at me. “My treat,” he added.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting across from my father at the Pocono Coffee Shop, aka the diner, at a table by the window. The diner did not seem to have changed at all in the time I’d been gone. It was wood-paneled, with red booths covered with cracked leather. The cream on the tables was in squeezy syrup bottles, something that had provided endless entertainment for me and Warren when we were younger. There were framed pictures of Lake Phoenix though the ages covering the walls, and the one next to us showed a beauty pageant of some sort, girls with forties hair and sashes across their bathing suits, smiling at the camera as they lined up along the beach, all in high, stacked heels.

“What looks good?” my father said as he opened his large, plastic-covered menu. I opened mine as well, and saw that nothing on the menu seemed different since I’d last seen it, even though I was pretty sure that in the past five years, there had been some important
discoveries about cholesterol and saturated fats. But maybe the management figured that adding healthier options would hurt their reputation—after all, the sign by the door read
WALK IN. ROLL OUT
.

“Everything looks good,” I said honestly, my eyes scanning down all the egg-and-meat combination options. I had been running so late for work every day this week, I’d usually been eating a granola bar as I drove.

“You folks set?” A middle-aged waitress, glasses on a chain around her neck, approached our table, her pencil already poised above her order pad. She was wearing a name tag on her red uniform T-shirt that read
ANGELA
.

My father ordered a short stack of the blueberry pancakes and a side of bacon, and I got what I’d always ordered, the Pocono Omelet, which was distinguished by the fact that it mostly contained eggs and different kinds of meat and cheese, without any vegetables whatsoever.

Angela nodded and wrote down our order as she walked away. And I looked across the table at my dad and felt suddenly on the spot.

It wasn’t that my father and I had never eaten together, just the two of us. We had certainly gotten ice cream together more times than I could count. But it was rare for it to be just the two of us at a meal, and, frankly, to have his undivided attention at all—no siblings, no BlackBerry constantly buzzing. I wondered if this was
the time to do what I’d been thinking about ever since I’d gone with him to the hospital—the moment that I should tell him I loved him. But just as I thought this, Angela reappeared with her coffeepot and poured cups for both of us, and I felt that the opportunity had passed.

My dad took a sip of his coffee and made a face after he swallowed, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows at me. “Wow,” he said, deadpan. “So I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for the next week or so.”

“Strong?” I asked. I squeezed some cream into it and stirred in some sugar as my dad nodded. I liked coffee, as long as I could get it to taste as little like coffee as possible. I took a tentative sip, and even with my additions, could taste how strong the coffee was. “Well, now I’m awake,” I said, adding in some more cream, partially to make it less strong and partially because the squeezy bottle just made it fun.

Silence fell between us for a moment, and I found myself racking my brain for conversation topics. I glanced down at my paper placemat and saw that it was printed with ads for local businesses, and in the center was something billed as the
Diner’s De-Lite!
It had a word scramble, a Sudoku puzzle, and a five-question quiz. I looked at the quiz more closely and realized it wasn’t asking trivia questions. Instead, it was called
The Dish!
and was a list of personal questions—What did you want to be when you grew up? What’s your
favorite food? What’s your best memory? Where’s your favorite place to travel? It seemed like it was a get-to-know-your-table-companion game. Or maybe you were supposed to guess the answers for the other person and compare—there weren’t any instructions.

I looked up and saw that my dad was also reading his placemat. “What do you think?” he asked, nodding down at it. “Should we give it a whirl?”

By the time our food arrived, we’d solved the word scramble and the Sudoku puzzle. My dad dug into his pancakes as I took a bite of my omelet. I tried to concentrate on the cheese-and-meat extravaganza I was currently experiencing, but my glance kept returning to the five-question quiz. As I read the questions again, I realized I didn’t know any of my father’s answers. And even though he was sitting across from me, adding more syrup to his blueberry waffles and tapping his coffee cup for a refill, I knew—even though I hated to know it—that at some point, some point soon, he wouldn’t be around to ask. So I needed to find out his answers to these questions—which seemed somehow both utterly trivial and incredibly important.