Summerlost (6 page)

19.

That night at work none of the Hellfarts came by and I sold thirty-three programs, which made me so pleased that I bought myself a lemon tart at the end of the night when they went on sale for half price.

Miles waited up so he could tell me that he had sucked his way through an entire Fireball. “Mom saw,” he said. “So it's documented.”

“What will you do with your life now?”

“Uncle Nick told me that when he was my age he could put one Fireball in each cheek,” Miles said. “And suck on them until they were both gone.”

“That's insanity,” I said.

“It's awesome,” Miles said.

I ate Leo's mom's lasagna for dinner.

And when I went upstairs, there was something on my windowsill again.

It was a purple toothbrush. It wasn't in a package but the bristles weren't dirty.

Just like the screwdriver, the toothbrush was about the size and weight of something that Ben would have liked.

A dark shape flew past the window.

Maybe the birds are bringing them
, I thought, as the breeze moved through the room.
Sometimes Mom opens the windows in the evenings to let the air in.

I imagined the birds landing, black and swooped, on the windowsill. Looking around my room without me there to say,
Go away.

The birds were like ghosts. Coming and going.

I'd never seen a ghost.

But some people believed they saw Lisette Chamberlain's ghost in the tunnels.

I had a weird thought.
What if Lisette Chamberlain's ghost is leaving things?

I slowly turned around and looked at the door of the room I'd chosen. Purple. Purple was Lisette's favorite color. And I had chosen this room, even though purple was not
my
favorite color.

And our initials were the same, but in reverse. Cedar Lee, Lisette Chamberlain.

CL-LC.

You've been hanging out in too many cemeteries
, I told myself.
Giving too many tours about people who are gone. And watching too many shows about people being buried alive
.

Birds or ghosts. Neither one made it easy to sleep.

But when I did, my brain kept dreaming about things I should save up for with my money from work. What if I bought
boxes and boxes of Fireballs for Miles? What if I bought an entire set of silver spoons for Ben to flip back and forth? Or a brand-new baseball mitt for my father? I didn't dream about anything for my mom. Or for
me.

ACT II

1.

One of the Hellfarts got a job selling concessions a few days later.

His name was Cory.

All the girls our age liked him except for me. Maddy and Samantha laughed at everything he said, even though nothing he said was funny.

“I need the money to get shocks for my bike,” Cory told everyone when he first started. “This is the only place in town that will hire kids our age.”

It was like he had to make sure we knew he was too cool for this job.

Cory had connections, according to Maddy.

“His dad knows
everyone
,” she said.

When Cory walked by, I made
vrrt-vrrt
sounds, like he was farting with every step. I did it when he was too far away to hear. Every time I did it I kept a straight face and Leo would turn red from trying not to laugh. Leo thought I was funny. Like it was one of my main characteristics. It felt great.

It also felt great when Gary got mad at Cory for not wearing his peasant hat during part of his first shift. “You're in
England
!” he told Cory. “One more stunt like that and I'll fire you.”

“I guess Cory's dad doesn't know Gary,” I said to Samantha, and she laughed too. So maybe more than one person thought I was funny.

2.

Leo and I were
vrrt-vrrt
ing past the concession stand when he stopped all of a sudden and grabbed my arm. “
Look
,” he said. “Right over there. Daniel Alexander.”

Daniel Alexander was the man who had founded the Summerlost Festival almost fifty years ago. He knew everything about the festival and was still involved with running it. Every now and then he came across the courtyard and if you were close enough to say hi to him he would always say hi back. To anyone, even though he was famous. He actually reminded me of Leo, the way his face lit up.

Leo had said hi to Daniel Alexander five times.

I had said hi to him zero times.

“This way,” Leo said. “Today's the day.”

“The day I finally talk to him?” I said. “Or the day you ask if you can interview him about Lisette Chamberlain?”

“The day you talk to him,” Leo said.

“I can't believe you're such a chicken about this,” I told Leo. “It's almost like you're scared of him.”

“Oh, I'm definitely scared of him.”

“But he's so nice.”

“Exactly,” Leo said. “It's worse when nice people get mad at you. And he'll be mad if he finds out I'm giving a tour about his friend.”

“But he could probably tell you so much.”

“Shut up,” Leo said. “He's
right there
.”

And he was. Daniel Alexander had stopped near us to look at the signboard with the day's Summerlost Festival activities on it. I could already see people around the courtyard turning his way, preparing to swarm. Now was our chance.

“Hi,” I said, and I must have said it loud, because Daniel Alexander jumped when he turned around, and his purple drink went all over my skirt and blouse.

“Oh
no
,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Is that wine?” Leo asked.

That made Daniel Alexander laugh his wonderful laugh and more people looked in our direction. Including Cory the Hellfart. Including Gary. Oh no.

“Heavens, no,” Daniel Alexander said. “It's my special health drink. I have it every morning. Tastes awful, but it's supposed to keep me young.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to me. “But I'm afraid the berries in it probably stain terribly.” He blinked. “Well. Nothing to worry about, my
dear. You go down to the costume shop and they'll fix you right up. Ask for Meg.”

I hesitated. Hadn't Gary said something about making sure to stay on Meg's good side? And wouldn't my showing up in a stained costume be a bad thing?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gary moving our way.

I could let Gary get mad at me or take my chances with the unknown.

“
Go
,” Leo whispered.

3.

The stairwell down to the costume shop smelled old, like my dad's elementary school, which he showed us once when we went to Portland. The floor at the bottom was speckly linoleum. The ceiling felt low and the lights hummed.

I walked past doors that said
WIGS
and
MAKEUP
and kept on going toward the end of the hall and the sign that said
COSTUMES
. Every sound I made seemed to echo. I tried to make sure my sandals didn't squish or slap.

When I got to the costume shop doorway, no one looked up. So I stood looking in. Rows and rows of clothes on racks, all around the room. Shelves at the back. Sewing machines and ironing boards and long tables with chairs. A mini-fridge near the door. Four or five college-aged women and men moving around doing different things. One woman sitting at a computer in the corner. And an older Asian lady with short white hair sitting at one of the tables using a tape measure. She had glasses on a chain around her neck, and she wore a black apron over her blouse and pants.

She was the one who looked up first. “Can I help you?”

“I'm looking for Meg,” I said.

“That's me.”

“Daniel Alexander said to come see you,” I said. “About my costume. He spilled his drink on it.”

“Of course he did,” Meg said. “Wait here. I'll find you something to wear.”

She came back out with an outfit that was completely different from the white peasant blouses and patterned floral skirts. It was a deep green dress with a full skirt and ribbons woven through it.

“You can tell Gary he'll have to live with it for today,” she said. “I don't have any concessions costumes left in your size. This was from the children's act in the Greenshow, years ago.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Come back tomorrow and I'll have the other one washed for you. I don't want you taking it home and doing it wrong and getting the stain set in for good.”

“Okay,” I said again. I resisted the urge to spin around and see what the skirt would do. The dress felt old but it didn't smell that way. And then I had an interesting thought.
If Meg had been making costumes for so many years, maybe she knew Lisette Chamberlain.

“You're a Lee, aren't you,” Meg said. “Ralph and Naomi Carter are your grandparents.”

“Yes.” I felt surprised even though I shouldn't. My grandparents had lived in Iron Creek for years and my mom grew up here and the town wasn't that big.

“I heard you bought a house here,” she said.

I nodded. “The old Wainwright house.”

“Ah,” she said. “That's a house with some skeletons.”

I must have looked taken aback because Meg said, “I didn't mean that literally. It's a nice house. And I bet your mom is doing a lot of work fixing it up.”

“She is,” I said. “She's building a deck.”

“Good for her,” Meg said. “What's your name?”

“Cedar.”

“And you're working for Gary.”

“Yes.”

“We could use someone to help out in the costume shop too.” Meg gestured around her at the shop, the people working in it. “We've got a lot of extra projects this summer. But we've already hired everyone we have the budget to hire. I don't imagine you're a juvenile delinquent who needs community service hours.”

“No.”

“I didn't think so,” she said. “Bring that dress back tomorrow.”

4.

“Nice,” Leo said when he saw me. “Are you supposed to be a princess or something?”

“Obviously,” I said.

“Wow.”

“They didn't have anything else in my size,” I explained.

“So how was it in the costume shop?”

“Fine,” I said. “Meg was pretty nice, actually. Maybe she's only scary to Gary.”

“I guess it kind of makes sense that you guys get along,” Leo said.

“Why?”

“She's Korean.”

I stared at him.

“Like, she has Korean ancestry,” he said, as if I only needed him to explain.

“
I
don't have Korean ancestry,” I said. “Just because Meg and I aren't all white doesn't mean we automatically have things in common. That's a stupid thing to say.”

I'd had stuff like this happen to me before. Iron Creek was a small town and even in our bigger town I'd had things said to
me, usually not meant to be mean, usually just because people are stupid.

And sometimes people asked me if I was adopted, which I extra hated. I had straight dark hair like my dad's and my eyes were the same color as his. It felt like I didn't belong to my mom because I didn't look like her to people who weren't looking closely enough. Because if you do, you see that my mom and I actually look a lot alike even though she has blond hair and blue eyes.

I hated that Leo had said what he did.

“I'm sorry,” Leo said. “I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to—”

I could tell he
was
really sorry because, for the first time since I'd known him—even when the Hellfarts were bugging him—he looked pale. And for the first time since I'd known him he didn't know what to say.

But I was still mad.

Right then Cory walked past and knocked off Leo's hat. “Better let your
girlfriend
get back to work,” he said. I hated his stupid light eyebrows and his sunburny skin.

Leo bent down and picked up his hat. A lady came by and asked him for a program. He sold it to her without any accent at all.

I watched Leo and I realized that he also knew how it felt to be different. To want big things in a very small town. To get made fun of. He wasn't as different as I was. But he also
wasn't one of those lucky people who fit in all the time. And I thought of the first time I worked with him, what I'd seen. He did like the world—that was the thing about him that I liked the best—but the world didn't
always
like him back.

“Do people think we're going out?” I asked Leo.

He looked (mostly) relieved at the change in subject. “Most people don't,” he said. “I've been telling people that we're cousins so that they won't think it's so weird that we're always together.”

I groaned. “Leo, that's a terrible idea,” I said. “People will think we're
cousins
who are
dating.
”

“That's disgusting,” Leo said.

“I know,” I told him. “Plus, we don't even look alike. Why would you say that?”

“We
do
look alike,” he insisted. “A lot alike. We're both short. We both have dark hair and freckles. And our eyebrows are the same.”

“They are?” Did mine look devilish too?