Summer Days and Summer Nights (3 page)

“Sherlock Holmes?”

“Conan Doyle is too dry. I like Raymond Carver, Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley. I read every paperback they have here, during my noir phase.”

Gracie drew bubbles coming out of Idgy Pidgy's nose. “Eli,” she said, without looking at him, “do you actually think I saw something in the lake?”

“Possibly.”

She pushed on. “Or are you just humoring me so you have someone to hang out with?” It came out meaner than she'd meant it to, maybe because the answer mattered.

Eli cocked his head to one side, thinking, seeking an honest answer, like he was solving for
x
. “Maybe a little,” he said at last.

Gracie nodded. She liked that he hadn't pretended something different. “I'm okay with that.” She hopped down off the table. “You can be the stodgy veteran with a drinking problem, and I'm the loose cannon.”

“Can I wear a cheap suit?”

“Do you have a cheap suit?”

“No.”

“Then you can wear the same dumb madras shorts you always do.”

*   *   *

They rode their bicycles to every place there had ever been an Idgy Pidgy sighting, all the way up to Greater Spindle. Some spots were sunny, some shady, some off beaches, others off narrow spits of rock and sand. There was no pattern. When they got sick of Idgy Pidgy, they'd head over to the Fun Spot to play skee ball or mini golf. Eli was terrible at both, but he seemed perfectly happy to lose to Gracie regularly and to tidily record his miserable scores.

On the Friday before Labor Day, they ate lunch in front of the library—tomato sandwiches and cold corn on the cob that Gracie's mother had made earlier that week. A map of the US and Canada was spread out on the picnic table before them. The sun was heavy on their shoulders and Gracie felt sweaty and dull. She wanted to go to the lake, just to swim, not to look for Idgy Pidgy, but Eli claimed it was too hot to move.

“There's probably a barbecue somewhere,” she said, lying on the bench, toes digging in the dead grass beneath the table. “You really want to waste your last school-free Friday just looking at maps in the middle of town?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”

Gracie felt herself smiling. Her mother seemed to want to spend all of her time with Eric. Mosey and Lila lived practically next door to each other and had been best friends since they were five. It was nice to have someone prefer her company, even if it was Eli Cuddy.

She covered her eyes with her arm to block the sun. “Do we have anything to read?”

“I returned all my books.”

“Read me town names off the map.”

“Why?”

“You won't go swimming, and I like being read to.”

Eli cleared his throat. “Burgheim. Furdale. Saskatoon…”

Strung together, they sounded almost like a story.

*   *   *

Gracie thought about inviting Eli when she went to see the end-of-season fireworks up at Ohneka Beach the next night, with Lila and Mosey, but she wasn't quite sure how to explain all the time she'd been spending with him, and she thought she should sleep over at Mosey's place. She didn't want to feel completely left out when classes started. It was an investment in the school year. But when Monday came and there was no Eli walking the main road or at the DQ, she felt a little hollow.

“That kid gone?” Annalee asked as Gracie poked at the upended cone in her dish. She'd decided to try a cherry dip. It was just as disgusting as she remembered.

“Eli? Yeah. He went back to the city.”

“He seems all right,” said Annalee, taking the cup of ice cream from Gracie and tossing it in the trash.

“Mom wants you to come for dinner on Friday night,” Gracie said.

But she could admit that maybe Eli Cuddy was better than all right.

*   *   *

The next May, right before Memorial Day, Gracie went down to her cove at Little Spindle. She'd been, plenty of times, over the school year. She'd done her homework there until the air turned too cold for sitting still, then watched ice form on the edges of the water as winter set in. She'd nearly jumped out of her skin when a black birch snapped beneath the weight of the frost on its branches and fell into the shallows with a resigned groan. And on that last Friday in May, she made sure she was on the shore, skipping stones, just in case there was magic in the date or the Idgy Pidgy had a clock keeping time in its heart. Nothing happened.

She went by Youvenirs, but she'd been in the previous day to help Henny get ready for summer, so there was nothing left to do, and eventually she ended up at the Dairy Queen with an order of curly fries she didn't really want.

“Waiting for your friend?” Annalee asked, as she sifted through her newspaper for the crossword.

“I'm just eating my fries.”

When she saw Eli, Gracie felt an embarrassing rush of relief. He was taller, a lot taller, but just as skinny, and damp, and serious looking as ever. Gracie didn't budge, her insides knotted up. Maybe he wouldn't want to hang out again.
That's fine,
she told herself. But he scanned the seats even before he went to the counter, and when he saw her, his pale face lit up like silver sparklers.

Annalee's laugh sounded suspiciously like a cackle.

“Hey!” he said, striding over. His legs seemed to reach all the way to his chin now. “I found something amazing. You want a Blizzard?”

And just like that, it was summer all over again.

SCALES

The something amazing was a dusty room in the basement of the library, packed with old vinyl record albums, a turntable, and a pile of headphones tucked into a nest of curly black cords.

“I'm so glad it's still here,” Eli said. “I found it right before Labor Day, and I was afraid someone would finally get around to clearing it out over the winter.”

Gracie felt a pang of guilt over not spending that last weekend with Eli, but she was also pleased he'd been waiting to show her this. “Does that thing work?” she asked, pointing to the column of stereo gear.

Eli flipped a couple of switches and red lights blinked on. “We are go.”

Gracie slid a record from the shelves and read the title:
Jackie Gleason: Music, Martinis, and Memories
. “What if I only want the music?”

“We could just listen to a third of it.”

They made a stack of records, competing to find the one with the weirdest cover—flying toasters, men on fire, barbarian princesses in metal bikinis—and listened to all of them, lying on the floor, big black headphones hugging their ears. Most of the music was awful, but a few albums were really good.
Bella Donna
had Stevie Nicks on the cover dressed like an angel tree-topper and holding a cockatoo, but they listened to it all the way through, twice, and when “Edge of Seventeen” came on, Gracie imagined herself rising out of the lake in a long white dress, flying through the woods, hair like a black banner behind her.

It wasn't until she was pedaling home, stomach growling for dinner, singing
Ooh baby ooh baby ooh,
that Gracie realized she and Eli hadn't talked about Idgy Pidgy once.

*   *   *

Though Gracie hadn't exactly been keeping Eli a secret from Mosey and Lila, she hadn't mentioned him, either. She just wasn't sure they'd get him. But one afternoon, when she and Eli were eating at Rottie's Red Hot, a horn blared from the lot, and when Gracie looked around, there was Mosey in her dad's Corolla, with Lila in the passenger seat.

“Don't you only have a learner's permit?” she asked, as Mosey and Lila squeezed in on the round benches.

“My parents don't care, if I'm just coming down to Little Spindle. And it means they don't have to drive me. Where have you been, anyway?” Mosey glanced pointedly at Eli.

“Nowhere. Youvenirs. The usual.”

Eli said nothing, just carefully parceled out ketchup into a lopsided steeple by his fries.

They ate. They talked about taking the train into the city to see a concert.

“How come your family doesn't stay at Greater Spindle?” Mosey asked.

Eli cocked his head to one side, giving the question his full consideration. “We've just always come here. I think they like the quiet.”

“I like it, too,” said Lila. “Not the lake so much, but it's nice in the summer, when Greater Spindle gets so crazy.”

Mosey popped a fry in her mouth. “The lake is haunted.”

“By what?” asked Eli, leaning forward.

“Some lady drowned her kids there.”

Lila rolled her eyes. “That's a complete lie.”

“
La Llorona,
” said Eli. “The weeping woman. There's legends like that all over the place.”

Great,
thought Gracie.
We can all start hunting ghosts together.

She tried to ignore the squirmy feeling in her gut. She'd told herself that she hadn't wanted to introduce Eli to Mosey and Lila because he was so odd, but now she wasn't sure. She loved Mosey and Lila, but she always felt a little alone around them, even when they were sitting together at a bonfire or huddled in the back row of the Spotlight watching a matinee. She didn't want to feel that way around Eli.

When Mosey and Lila headed back to Greater Spindle, Eli gathered up their plastic baskets on a tray and said, “That was fun.”

“Yeah,” Gracie agreed, a bit too enthusiastically.

“Let's take bikes to Robin Ridge tomorrow.”

“Everyone?”

The furrow between Eli's brows appeared. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You and me.”

Everyone.

TEETH

Gracie couldn't pinpoint the moment Eli dried out, only the moment she noticed. They were lying on the floor of Mosey's bedroom, rain lashing at the windows.

She'd gotten her driver's license that summer, and her mom's boyfriend didn't mind loaning Gracie his truck once in a while so she could drive up to Greater Spindle. Gas money was harder to come by. There were better jobs in Greater Spindle, but none that were guaranteed to correspond with Gracie's mother's shifts, so Gracie was still working at Youvenirs, since she could get there on her bike.

It felt like Little Spindle was closing in on her, like she was standing on a shore that got narrower and narrower as the tide came in. People were talking about SATs and college applications and summer internships. Everything seemed to be speeding up, and everyone seemed to be gathering momentum, ready to go shooting off into the future on carefully plotted trajectories, while Gracie was still struggling to get her bearings.

When Gracie started to get that panicked feeling, she'd find Eli at the Dairy Queen or the library, and they'd go down to the “Hall of Records” and line up all of the Bowie albums, so they could look at his fragile, mysterious face, or they'd listen to
Emmett Otter's Jug-Band Christmas
while they tried to decipher all the clues on the cover of
Sgt. Pepper's
. She didn't know what she was going to do when the school year started.

They'd driven up to Greater Spindle in Eric's truck without much of a plan, radio up, windows down to save gas on air-conditioning, sweating against the plastic seats, but when the storm had rolled in they'd holed up at Mosey's to watch movies.

Lila and Mosey were up on the bed painting their toes and picking songs to play for each other, and Gracie was sprawled out on the carpet with Eli, listening to him read from some boring book about waterways. Gracie wasn't paying much attention. She was on her stomach, head on her arms, listening to the rain on the roof and the murmur of Eli's voice, and feeling okay for the first time in a while, as if someone had taken the hot knot of tension she always seemed to be carrying beneath her ribs and dunked it in cool water.

The thunder had been a near continuous rumble, and the air felt thick and electrical outside. Inside, the air-conditioning had raised goose bumps on Gracie's arms, but she was too lazy to get up to turn it down, or to ask for a sweater.

“Gracie,” Eli said, nudging her shoulder with his bare foot.

“Mmm?”

“Gracie.” She heard him move around, and when he spoke again, he had his head near hers and was whispering. “That cove you like doesn't have a name.”

“So?”

“All the little beaches and inlets have names, but not your cove.”

“So let's name it,” she mumbled.

“Stone … Crescent?”

She flopped on her back and looked up at the smattering of yellow stars stuck to Mosey's ceiling. “That's awful. It sounds like a housing development or a breakfast roll. How about Gracie's Archipelago?”

“It's not an archipelago.”

“Then something good. Something about Idgy Pidgy. Dragon Scale Cove, or the Serpentine.”

“It's not shaped like a serpent.”

“Beast Mouth Cove,” she said.

“
Beast Mouth?
Are you trying to keep people away?”

“Of course. Always. Silverback Beach.”

“Silverbacks are gorillas.”

“Silver Scales … Something that starts with an
s
.”

“Shoal,” he said.

“Perfect.”

“But it's not a shoal.”

“We can call it Eli's Last Stand when I drown you there. You're making this impossible.” She flipped back on her stomach and looked up at him. He was propped on his elbows, the book open before him. She'd had another suggestion on her lips, but it vanished like a fish slipping free of the line.

Mosey and Lila were talking in low murmurs, tinny music coming out of Lila's phone. Eli's T-shirt was stretched taut across his shoulders, and the light from the lamp by Mosey's bed had caught around his hair in a halo. She could smell the storm on him, like the lightning had followed him home, like he was made of the same dense rain clouds. His skin didn't look damp. It seemed to gleam. He had one finger on the page, holding his place, and Gracie had the urge to slide her fingers over his knuckles, his wrist, the fine blond hair on his forearm. She reared back slightly, trying to shake the thought from her head.