The Summer I Learned to Fly (7 page)

The only thing remarkable about our exchange was that it was one of the first of this nature we’d ever had. I usually told Mom whatever she wanted to know. I didn’t have anything to hide from her, and I assumed she had nothing to hide from me. We told each other everything. We were alone, together. Or together, alone. Us against the world. That sort of crap.

But now I lived in a universe of silver cars and books of lists and boys who appeared in alleys at dusk. Hidden parks on hilltops. Girls in peasant skirts.

Everything was changing.

“Let’s try this again,” she said slowly as she unpacked a bag of groceries. Along with some ravioli from the shop, she had vegetables for a salad and a bottle of wine for herself. “What did you do today? Did you read a book? Watch old
reruns of
The Twilight Zone
? Shave your legs? Alphabetize your music collection?”

“I hung out with a friend.”

Her face lit up. I knew she worried that I didn’t spend enough time with people my own age. She’d pushed me not to drop soccer. To try summer camp. Join a club at school. I’d always said no, and the more she pushed the more irritated I’d become. Nobody likes to be worried over, or even worse, pitied, by her own mother.

Her euphoric look turned curious. “But I thought Georgia was in London, along with those other two girls.”

“They are.”

“So this is a new friend?”

“Yes.”

“Great. That’s just great. What’s her name?”

I hesitated. I could have said Sally, Susan. I could’ve said Emma, cutting it pretty close. But I didn’t see any reason why my new friendship with Emmett was something I had to lie about. She might not be thrilled about my having hiked up a dried-out hillside during fire season, but I couldn’t see why she’d object to my becoming friends with a boy.

“His name is Emmett.”

Mom continued chopping vegetables without missing a beat.

“And how do you know this boy?”

“I met him at the shop.… He’s a big fan of our cheese.”

I grabbed a peeler and went after the cucumbers. “He’s new to the area and I was just showing him around.”

“That’s nice, Birdie,” she said. “Really nice.” We continued
to fix dinner standing side by side. We ate, and then Mom went off to bed early like she did so often those days and I flipped through the channels on the TV.

I thought about Emmett. About how he’d said I was cool.

I was stretched out on the couch, not moving a muscle, and yet my heart began to get that elusive cardiovascular workout.

How could it be? I’d loved Nick for most of a year. I wasn’t a dreamer, so I had never really believed that Nick would or could love me back, that we’d live happily ever after in a kingdom of fresh pastas and cheese, but how he made me feel when I was near to him was something new to me. I’d thought it was something singular. Something specific to Nick, who smelled of the sea. And yet, that same rush had overtaken me as I’d reached the top of that climb and seen Emmett sprawled out on that grass.

Was I really that fickle? Was it really that easy for me to fall under the spell of another boy?

Well, at least I wasn’t like Georgia and Beatrice and Janice—I didn’t see every boy at school as a potential boyfriend. I didn’t cut out pictures of movie stars from magazines and tape them to my walls. I didn’t write my name out next to the name of some crush to see how they might look together at the top of a wedding invitation.

I was not boy crazy. Really, I wasn’t. But I was lonely, I guess. Mrs. Mutchnick had been right about me.

a face to unlock doors

I went to sleep with both of Emmett’s notes under my pillow. I’d tried to reshape them back into birds, but the best I could come up with was something resembling a snail. Had they been able to sprout wings again, I’d have kept them on my bedside table where I could look at them, his words hidden inside. But instead I flattened them, tried my best to smooth out their wrinkles, and placed them where I knew they’d be safe. I didn’t want to share them with Mom or anybody else.

If what I was attempting by sleeping on Emmett’s notes was to bring him closer to me, it failed. I went to work in the morning and took the trash out five times that day. No paper cranes. That evening I left a truffled sheep’s milk and a Dutch Edam with caraway seeds. Both were gone the next day, but no sign of, or from, Emmett Crane.

Seven days went by.

A week during which I began to question what, if
anything, was real about him. A week when Mom stayed out late on two different nights. A week spent patching things up with Nick. A week of dodging Swoozie’s questions about what was eating at me.

“You wear your heart on your face,” Swoozie told me over a game of gin rummy. She came to the house to hang out with me on the first of the two nights that week that Mom was “working late.”

“And your face tells me something is amiss in Birdland.”

“I’m just tired.” I was growing. I was a teenager. Wasn’t I supposed to be tired? Wasn’t it my right?

In the middle of that week Fletcher Melcher stopped by the shop. I saw him through the window and shifted into panic mode, grabbing a sponge and frantically wiping an already spotless countertop.

“Belcher alert!” I shouted, but Nick and Swoozie ignored me.

He didn’t stick his nose in the air for a whiff or check any temperatures. He’d come to drop off a list of the health department’s updated codes. His visit lasted only a minute, but he greeted everyone warmly, as if he were a kindly small-town mayor and not the evil villain of Euclid Avenue.

I retreated to Nick’s pasta corner.

“Don’t trust the nice-guy routine,” I said under my breath. “He must be plotting something.”

But Nick wouldn’t play, and as I watched the Belcher leave, I felt a little let down.

I sulked as Nick layered lasagnas. We’d cut back on fresh pastas because they weren’t selling as quickly as Mom had
hoped, so we made meals we could freeze. Things you could throw in the oven and have ready to serve in under an hour. Food for working families. At my suggestion we’d tried out a recipe for macaroni and cheese, and it was a hit.

“It’s Becca’s birthday,” Nick told me. “And I have absolutely no idea what to get her.”

I started beating the eggs for our next project—spinach pasta sheets we’d stuff with ricotta and basil. I pretended not to hear him.

“Drew,” Nick said. “This is me, pleading with you. I need your help. I need the advice of a girl. Girls know what other girls want. You’re a girl. And you have great taste. And you’re smart. So help me out.”

I was flattered to be seen this way by Nick. I didn’t understand girls. Yes, I was one, but all I knew was what
I’d
want.
I’d
want that leather jacket. But more than that, I’d want my boyfriend to know it was what I wanted. I’d want to know that he knew me well enough to figure it out on his own.

“Do you have any ideas?” I asked.

“Only one, but it’s stupid.”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, she hates that I don’t wear a helmet. So I thought maybe I’d buy one for each of us, like, matching helmets. Then she could stop wearing the fugly one she took from her brother, and I’d sacrifice half the reason I love my Vespa and cover up when I ride. You know, to make her happy.”

I sat next to him on the pasta stool and didn’t say anything.

“See? I told you it was a stupid idea.”

“Nick. That’s the least stupid idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He shot me a beautiful grin.

The more days that went by, the more I scolded myself for getting that fluttery feeling about Emmett on the couch that night. I’d let my guard down.

While she packed a bag with my dinner, Mom told me she had to stay late at work for the third time in eight days. I’d already taken out the last of the day’s trash and the extra cheese and bread. The front doors were locked. Swoozie had left early for a doctor’s appointment. Nick and Becca had ridden off in their his and hers helmets.

“What do you have left to do?” I asked, gesturing around the shop. It was immaculate. Counters cleaned, floors swept, cases closed.

“Birdie,” she said with exasperation, like I was a toddler on my hundredth
why
question of the day. “I have a crazy amount of paperwork to do. Bills to pay. Ledgers to balance.”

“You aren’t going anywhere?”

“Just to my desk.”

“You aren’t going out in a silver car?”

This flew from my mouth before I stopped to think, and the minute it was out there in the space between us I wished I could pull it back in.

“Whatever do you mean?” she said carefully.

“Nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

I leaned over and hugged her. This caught her off guard, and it took a beat before she wrapped her arms around me. I held on to her tighter than I had in a long time. I squeezed her, hoping that it might somehow undo the conversation I’d started, because I didn’t want to know.

I wanted to believe she’d be at her desk tonight. Paying bills. Balancing ledgers. So I held her like I did when I was younger, when that was all it took for everything to be right in the world.

“It was nothing,” I said again, and I took my dinner-in-a-bag and rode home on my bike.

I put the bag in the fridge and ate a bowl of cereal instead. I was too lazy to boil water and too sick of pasta to face whatever she’d given me. I changed into my pajamas while it was still light and I put some of Mom’s music on the downstairs stereo. Nothing was on TV. I scanned the bookshelf for something to read. I wished that I could draw or paint or do something, anything, well enough that I could lose myself in it and forget everything else. I turned the music up louder, but not so loud that I didn’t hear the knock at the door.

Other than the fear of fire and the larger fear of nuclear war that was always in the background, we were pretty carefree around my house. Mom didn’t lecture me about safety. She trusted me, trusted the universe enough to let me stay home alone and ride my bike wherever I wanted and not have to account in detail for my time away from her. I could say I showed a friend around town, for example, without being given the third degree.

However, when home alone I was to keep the front door
locked. I was not to open it to anyone. Packages could wait for delivery until the next day or sit out on the doorstep. Nothing was for sale that I needed to buy. No petition required my signature.

Standing there listening to the second round of gentle knocking, I couldn’t remember a single time anyone had come to the house while I was home alone. I’d never been put to the test until now.

Round three.

And then a whisper: “Robin?”

There was only one person who would say my name like that. I unlocked the door.

He stood under the porch light.

“Hi,” he said. There was something apologetic in his posture. At least, that was how I decided to take it. He was sorry for disappearing from my life for a week.

“Hi.”

He smiled and brushed his black hair out of his eyes.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked.

He wiped his feet on our doormat. He’d have won Mom over with that single gesture.

He looked around the living room, standing still as if waiting to hear whether anyone else was in the house.

“I’m alone,” I said.

“I saw that your mom’s still at the shop, so, you know, I figured I’d find you here by yourself.”

She’s at work
, I thought.
Just like she said
.

He still didn’t move. He was listening to the music, a record of Irish folk songs I had playing only because that’s
what was already on the stereo. Mom loved this record. I’d roll my eyes at her whenever she put it on.
Again, Mom?

But here I was, listening to it. Having that music on was like having Mom at home. It was the sound of not being alone.

I wished I had something else playing. Something cooler. Something Georgia would have had on when a boy stopped by to see her. And I really, really,
really
wished I hadn’t already put on my pajamas. Flannel, old-man style, with pictures of sheep jumping over clouds.

“Do you like this music?” he asked.

I wondered if this was a trick question, but decided to go with the truth. “It’s okay.”

“Well, then I’ve got someone you have to meet. What are you doing tomorrow?”

I walked over to the couch and sat down. He sat across from me in the corduroy armchair. Dad’s favorite chair.

He wore tan pants with no holes in the knees. A button-down shirt over a gray T-shirt. Almost as if he’d dressed for the occasion. He was rosy. Pink. Maybe he was nervous. Or winded from the walk over here; I’d never seen him with a bike.

The cut on his cheek had healed a bit, and I noticed for the first time a softness about him. He wasn’t beautiful like Nick, but there was a sweet, almost cartoonish humor to his look. He had a face you’d throw away the rules for. A face to unlock doors.

“I’m supposed to go to the shop, but …” I picked up a cushion and put it in my lap. It was doing nothing to help
hide my hideous pajamas. I turned it over a few times and then put it back down again. “How did you know where I live, anyway?”

“I’ve been following you.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have opened the door
.

He leaned forward and grinned. “Robin. I’m kidding. I knew your address from the inside of your backpack.
If Lost, Please Return to Drew Solo: One Forty-Six Mount Pleasant Drive
.”

Right. My backpack.

“There’s a phone number in there too,” I said. “You could have called.”
You didn’t have to wait a whole week
.

“I could have,” he said. “But then maybe you’d never have invited me over.”

I thought of the bag in the refrigerator.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’m pretty much always hungry.”

I led him into the kitchen.

The paper bag held linguini, fresh pesto, and a wedge of Reggiano. Mom didn’t believe in pregrating cheese. We always shaved it fresh over our hot plates.