Second Chance Summer (35 page)

Henry was already walking toward the parking lot, but he met my eye and raised his hand in a wave. I waved back, and felt myself watching, out of the corner of my eye, until he passed out of sight. Because I was facing the parking lot, I saw Warren and Wendy heading out, not holding hands, but walking awfully close together. I caught Warren’s eye for a moment, and he gave me a wide, happy smile, the kind that I’d never seen on my brother, who before this had seemed to specialize in the sardonic smirk.

I’d locked up the projector and screen and thanked Leland, who was yawning so enormously that I was just grateful he hadn’t fallen asleep during the movie. Gelsey ended up riding home with the Gardners, as my father’s back was hurting again, and he needed to stretch out across the backseat. I’d buckled myself into the passenger seat and turned around to look at him. In the fading light—my mother’s car lights would flare when a door was opened but then slowly dim, as though transitioning you to darkness—I saw how thin my father was, how his skin was stretched over his cheekbones.

“Did you like the movie, kid?” he asked, startling me. His eyes were closed, and I’d assumed he’d fallen asleep.

“I did,” I said as I turned to face him fully. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.

“I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen,” he said. “That’s how Ingrid Bergman was meant to be seen.” I laughed as my mother opened her door and my father gave me a wink. “Don’t tell your mother,” he added.

“Don’t tell me what?” my mom asked, smiling, as she started the car and pulled us out of the now mostly deserted parking lot.

“Just something about Ingrid Bergman,” my dad said, his voice sleepy, his eyes drifting closed again. I saw my mother glance back at him in the rearview mirror, her smile fading.

“Let’s go home,” she said in a voice that sounded like it was straining to be upbeat. “I think we’re all tired.” She’d pulled back out onto the road, and by the time we made it home, five minutes later, my father was totally asleep.

My parents had gone to bed as soon as we’d gotten back and my mother had collected Gelsey from next door. I’d noticed that, as they made their way up to their bedroom, my mother was now walking slightly behind my father, watching him carefully, like she was worried that he might fall backward. And as I noticed for the first time how slowly my dad was taking every step, how heavily he was leaning on the railing, it seemed like this might have actually been necessary.

I’d gotten ready for bed, but felt far too keyed-up to even try to go to sleep. When I’d heard a car pull into our driveway, I’d walked
out to the porch, where I saw Warren just sitting in the Land Cruiser, the engine off, looking straight ahead. When he saw me, he got out of the car and walked up to meet me on the porch steps. Technically, he walked. But there was something about him that made it seem more like floating.

“Taylor,” Warren said, smiling at me pleasantly, like I was someone he’d known, vaguely, many years before. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and trying not to grin. “How are
you
?”

“I’m good,” Warren said. He smiled again—that big, genuine smile that I was still getting used to. “Thanks so much for arranging it.”

“Sure,” I said, looking at him closely. I really wanted details, but this was so outside the realm of what my brother and I normally talked about that I had no idea how to even broach this subject. “Will you need me to arrange another one?”

My brother’s expression became slightly disdainful, and therefore much more familiar. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re going out tomorrow night. Miniature golfing.”

“Sounds fun,” I said, smiling, suddenly very impressed with Wendy and her ability to get my brother to do something that I knew, only a few days before, he would have scoffed at.

Warren started to head toward the door, then stopped and looked back at me. “Did you ever have a night that just… seemed to change everything?” he asked, sounding happy but a bit bewildered.
“And everything is different afterward?” I didn’t, and Warren must have seen this on my expression, because he shook his head as he opened the door. “Never mind,” he said. “Forget it. ’Night, Taylor.”

“’Night,” I called to him. And even after he’d gone inside, I stayed out on the porch for a few minutes, looking up at the stars above me and turning over Warren’s words in my mind.

But for now, I was at work. It was a cloudy, overcast, humid day—the kind that threatened rain, but never quite delivered it. It was chilly to boot, which meant that we’d had approximately three customers that morning, all of whom had either wanted coffee or hot chocolate, and all of whom had wanted to complain about the fact that this wasn’t summer weather.

Lucy looked at me closely, clearly not ready to let me off the hook that easily. “Just because something didn’t happen with Henry,” she said, “doesn’t mean that you don’t
want
it to.”

I felt myself flush as I looked around for something to do and started straightening a stack of cups. “I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t, even though thoughts of Henry had kept me awake most of the night before. I had no idea what he wanted, and was just getting used to the idea that we could be friends. The possibility of more made my stomach clench, in a good way, but also in a real and scary way.

“Don’t know what?” Lucy asked, pushing herself up to sit on the counter, looking at me, waiting for my answer.

The cups were as straight as they were ever going to be, and I
shoved the stack away. “There’s a lot going on right now,” I said. I met her eyes and saw that she knew what I was talking about. “So I’m just not sure it’s the right time….”

Lucy shook her head. “There’s no such thing as a perfect moment,” she said with great authority. “Look at me and Brett.”

Brett was a new guy she had just started going out with, despite the fact that he was only in the Poconos for a week. I pushed myself up to sit on the counter and sat cross-legged facing her, increasing the number of health-code violations we were currently in violation of, glad that the topic had shifted away from me. “Maybe,” I said, in what I hoped was an offhand manner, “there’s someone here who already likes you and is going to be around for the whole summer. Possibly someone who likes card tricks?”

I watched her closely for her reaction, but Lucy just shook her head. “I get enough of that with Elliot,” she said. “No, thanks.”

“I don’t know,” I said as casually as I was able. “I don’t think Elliot’s so bad.”

Lucy shook her head. “He’s great,” she said, offhandedly. “But not exactly someone I want to date.”

“Why not?” I asked, and Lucy frowned for a second, as though considering this. But before she could answer, her phone beeped and she pulled it out of her pocket.

“Gotta go,” she said, smiling at the screen. “Are you okay here? Brett wants to hang out.”

I nodded as I slid off the counter, and Lucy followed suit. She slung her bag over her shoulder and was reaching for the door, when she stopped and looked back at me. “I’ll call you later,” she said. She looked around the deserted snack bar and added, “Think you can handle the crowd without me?”

I smiled at that. “I think I’ll be fine,” I said. “Have fun.” She waved and left, and I tried to fill the rest of the work shift by cleaning the ice machine and attempting to sort through what, exactly, I was feeling about Henry. I didn’t think I’d been imagining that something was going on last night, but in the cold light of day, I couldn’t be sure.

As soon as five rolled around, I locked up the snack bar and zipped a hooded sweatshirt over my cutoffs (I’d leaned my lesson as far as sweatshirts and overcast days went), feeling myself shiver. The wind had just started to pick up, tossing the tree branches violently. It was a truly miserable day, and I just hoped that there would be a fire going when I got home.

I biked to Henson’s to pick up some corn and tomatoes for dinner, per my mother’s request. At the register, I found myself hesitating over the bags of licorice. I’d been getting them for my dad whenever I’d gone in, even though he’d stopped asking for them. And when I’d gone in search of some chips the night before, I’d seen three of the licorice bags in the cabinet, shoved behind a box of
saltines. But somehow not bringing a bag for my father seemed like an admission of defeat.

“That too?” Dave Henson asked cheerfully, pointing to the licorice bag I’d picked up, and helping me make my decision.

“Sure,” I said, paying for my items and shoving them into my bag. “Thanks.”

“Get home safe, now,” Dave said, looking outside. “I think we’re about to get some weather.”

I waved good-bye to Dave and headed out as a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. I groaned and flipped the hood of my sweatshirt up just as the first drops of rain splattered on the road. Main Street wasn’t crowded—it seemed like the weather had kept people in, but those that were on the street either ducked under awnings or hustled to their cars. I knew the signs, and I hurried to my bike and dropped my bag in the basket. I was trying to decide if it made more sense to call home for a ride and duck under an awning, or just see how far I could get before the storm really hit. I had a feeling that if I called home for a ride because it was raining, I might never hear the end of it. But on the other hand…

The thunder sounded again, closer this time, and that decided it for me. So I’d get a little wet. I would certainly survive. And it would be better than Warren—not to mention my dad—mocking me for the rest of the summer. I climbed on my bike and headed down
Main Street, noticing that puddles were already starting to form on the pavement. As I pedaled through them, water splashed against my feet and bare legs, and I realized that this really had not been the day to wear shorts.

I biked on, getting soaked as I rode. The thunder was getting ever closer, so loud that I found myself jumping slightly whenever it sounded, my hands tightening on the handlebars. As I stopped for a moment to brush some of the rain off my face and fix the bag in the basket, I saw a flash of lightning in the distance.

“Crap,” I muttered, pulling my hood up higher and looking down at my bike for a second, taking in the fact that it was pretty much made of metal. I was fairly sure the rubber of the tires would keep me from getting electrocuted, but it wasn’t something that I was dying to field-test. I was soaked through to the skin, and I could see the droplets rolling off my bare legs. The rain was coming down in sheets now, so hard that I could barely see the road in front of me. But it somehow seemed that I was getting wetter standing still than I had when I was in motion. Wiping my wet hands on my even wetter sweatshirt, I swung my leg back over the bike when someone skidded up next to me.

“Taylor?” I turned and saw Henry on his own bike, looking almost as drenched as I was, though not quite—he was wearing a baseball cap that seemed to be keeping some of the rain off his face.

“Hey,” I said, momentarily grateful that I had my hood up, since
I could only imagine how bad my hair looked. But a second later, the reality hit.
I had my hood up.
I probably looked like a half-drowned elf.

“This is intense,” he said. He was practically yelling to be heard above the sound of the rain and wind.

“I know,” I called back. I felt myself smile, realizing how ridiculous we probably looked—two people, standing still in a rainstorm, having a conversation on the side of the road.

“Ready?” he asked, and I nodded, standing up on my pedals and starting to bike against the wind. The rain was starting to come down sideways, and the wind was blowing so hard that I was having trouble keeping my bike upright. It kept wobbling, and I kept having to put a foot down to steady myself. Because of this, Henry had ridden on ahead of me, though he would always stop and wait for me to catch up. I thought this was what was happening when I reached him and he was stopped, a foot resting on the ground. I biked on ahead, figuring that he would be right beside me, but after a few seconds, I turned and saw that he was still stopped.

“You okay?” I yelled over the rain, thinking that this was really not the day to have mechanical problems.

“Yeah,” he called back. “But this is insane. I think we should just wait out the storm. It’s not going to continue like this.”

“No, but…” I shivered. I didn’t even need a fire any longer; all I wanted was a shower so hot that it would steam up the bathroom
mirror in seconds, and I planned to stand under it until our tiny hot-water heater ran out. I looked back to the direction of Main Street, which was the only place any shelter could really be found. But the thought of biking all the way back there, and then having to go home, was not exactly appealing.

“Come on,” Henry called. He looked both ways, then biked across the street. Confused, I watched as he got off his bike and started wheeling it up a driveway.

“Henry!” I called across the street, “what are you doing?” I couldn’t tell if he heard me, but at any rate, he just kept wheeling his bike. I didn’t understand what was going on, but it appeared like he, at least, had some sort of plan, so I checked for oncoming traffic before riding across as well.

As soon as I made it onto the driveway, the tree cover cut down on a little bit of the rain. I looked around for Henry and saw that he was rolling his bike toward a house, I now realized, that was very familiar. I squinted through the rain to see the sign, and sure enough, we were at Maryanne’s Happy Hours—also known as Henry’s old house. The driveway was empty and the house was dark, so at least it seemed like Maryanne wouldn’t be chasing us off her property. I walked my bike past the house, following Henry around to the back. By the time I reached it, Henry had stopped where the woods began, and leaned his bike against a tree. I did as well, noticing that when I stepped into the woods, the denseness of the trees really did
begin to provide some shelter from the rain. I just wasn’t sure that it had been worth stopping for. I was about to say this to Henry when I saw that he was walking into the woods. And that’s when I saw what he was heading toward—the treehouse.