The Summer I Learned to Fly (8 page)

I put water on to boil, took out some silverware and a cloth napkin, and set him a place at the counter. I’d never cooked for anyone other than Mom, and I was nervous.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I ate already.”

“So did I. You don’t see that stopping me.” It wasn’t that the cornflakes had filled me up, it was that when nervous, like a rat, I tended to lose my appetite.

He picked up his fork and twirled it between his fingers.

“Robin, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

This sounded serious. I knew the saying about a watched pot never boiling, but I stared at it anyway.

“It’s about Hum,” he said. “I don’t know if you know this about rats, but they should have at least one other rat, a rat to attach themselves to, or else they get lonely.”

Hum needed a friend? That was all he wanted to tell me?

Emmett might have thought he knew everything about rats, but he didn’t understand that Hum was different. Hum didn’t need another rat, because he had me.

“I take him everywhere. He’s never alone.”

This statement didn’t account for the fact that, at that moment, Hum was very much alone in my room. He wasn’t allowed in the kitchen when we were cooking or eating. It was one of the rare occasions when Mom’s rules actually made some sense.

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” he said. He leaned back in his stool, almost tipping over. “That cage you take him everywhere in—it’s too small. Rats need room to roam.”

I put the pasta into the water, which had finally decided to boil. I spun around with a wooden spoon in my hand.

“Is that why you came here tonight? To lecture me about how to take care of my own pet?”

“No, I came here tonight because I like you.”

Were there any sayings about watching a pot of water
already
boiling? Because that was what I did. I turned my back to Emmett and stared at the water. I stirred the pasta. It had only a minute more to cook. Not nearly enough time to regain my composure.

“I like you too,” I said in a smaller voice than I’d
intended. I meant it, but I wasn’t sure I sounded like I did. I was wandering into unfamiliar territory.

At school, with my classmates and friends, I had to decode the hidden meaning of words, to search for what Ms. Bethel in our English class called
intentionality
. There was what people said, and then there was what they were thinking. Take that first lunch at Antonio’s when Georgia said
Shut up
, when what she really meant was
Say more
.

One thing I knew for sure was that boys never came out and told girls they liked them, and girls certainly never told this to the boys.

“Good,” he said. “I’m glad we got that settled.”

I drained the pasta and grated the cheese over it. I slid the plate in front of him. For some reason I felt totally at ease. Even my sheep pajamas seemed less a crime against humanity.

“So will you blow off work and spend the day with me tomorrow?”

“Of course,” I said.

“All right!” He put up his hand for a high five and then caught my hand midslap and squeezed it tight. It was friendly. It lasted only a second. And it was the single most romantic moment of my life.

the stolen child

Emmett left only minutes before Mom returned. I felt like I’d dodged a bullet, though I wasn’t sure exactly what the bullet was. Beyond unlocking the door, I hadn’t done anything wrong, and anyway, I assumed the unlocking-the-door rule pertained to people I didn’t know.

I knew Emmett Crane. Even if there were still things I didn’t know about him, those were mere details. I knew him.

When I heard the front door open and Mom’s footsteps on the stairs I flipped off my bedroom light. I wasn’t in bed yet, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth or washed my face, but I didn’t want to make small talk about balancing ledgers or what I had or hadn’t watched on TV, and I certainly didn’t want to talk about silver cars. I didn’t want to break the magic spell of my night. This night belonged to me.

Just as she reached the top of the stairs I made a dive for
my bed—the early decision to change into those awful pajamas came back to save me—and my head hit the pillow just as my door creaked open.

“Birdie?”

I played statue.

She stood there adjusting to the darkness of my room. She was looking for the shape of me. Making sure that I was still there.

“Love you madly,” she whispered.

Emmett showed up at eleven the next day. I watched from my bedroom window, and when I saw him round the corner I raced down the stairs and undid the lock.

I’d dressed all wrong. There he stood in long surf shorts, flip-flops, and a tank top, and I was wearing jeans and sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt. Mom was a big believer in air-conditioning. I had no idea how warm it was out in the real world.

He lifted his sunglasses and checked me out. His look said it all. I ran back upstairs to change.

“To be fair,” I called from my bedroom, “you didn’t say where we were going.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything about going skiing,” he called back. “Or ice fishing.”

I put a bathing suit on under a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I hadn’t been anywhere near the beach all summer. It was a crime. I loved the beach, though there wasn’t much fun in going alone.

I checked myself in the mirror. I was pasty. I missed the
girl with the raw peeling nose from summers before Mom started the shop, when she’d take me and a few towels, a bucket and shovel, and a magazine or two and we’d spend the whole day by the surf.

I ran down the stairs to meet Emmett, and it wasn’t until he mirrored my expression back to me that I realized I was grinning from ear to ear.

“What?”

I couldn’t come out and say
I’m happy, really happy, for the first time in a long while
. “Nothing.”

“Okay then.” He shrugged.

He followed me into the kitchen, where I grabbed some fruit and cheese. He’d brought a backpack too, and we filled his with the food, leaving room in mine for towels, water, and Hum.

Emmett motioned for me to lead the way and he closed the front door behind us.

I always went to lifeguard station 21, where the beach was the widest and the water the calmest. It was the only beach I knew, and I could do the fifteen-minute walk there with my eyes closed. First you had to turn left out the front door, which I did, just as Emmett turned to the right.

We stopped, spun around, and faced each other. It was funny, the choreography of a sitcom. We were both so sure we were in sync we assumed words didn’t need to be spoken.

“This way.” He waved me toward him.

“Really?” I shot him my most skeptical look.

“I promise.”

I shrugged. “Okay then.”

I walked toward him and he reached out. I thought he was about to put his arm around me, but instead he gave me a friendly shove and we were on our way.

The walk to Emmett’s beach took almost twice as long as the walk to mine, but I held back from pointing this out. I was working on not having to be right all the time. It was the by-product of being an only child, I guessed. In my house there was my room, my stuff, my clothes—I didn’t have to share anything, not even ideas and opinions.

I was stubborn. Mom had been telling me so since I was old enough to understand and then reject the label, which of course meant I was being stubborn about being stubborn. She said I inherited this from my father. It was right there on his List of Biggest Flaws in capital letters:
STUBBORNNESS
.

Emmett’s beach required that we scramble down some rocks just around the northern bend of a cove. The first thing I noticed was that there wasn’t a lifeguard station. I was a good swimmer, maybe even an excellent swimmer, but that didn’t mean I didn’t need a lifeguard. I believed nobody was above the law of the ocean.

We jumped down from the last rocks onto a small stretch of white sand that backed up to a steep cliff. It was a secret spot of beach, the kind nobody knows about. Nobody except for a group of kids gathered around a table built from two tree stumps spanned by an old surfboard. They were those elusive older, wiser teens. The ones who at school would never give a seventh grader the time of day.

“Emmett!” one shouted. Emmett gave a friendly wave and led me toward them.

Someone had a guitar. But the music stopped as we approached.

“Hey, guys,” Emmett said. “This is Robin.”

“Robin!” they shouted in unison. I’d never had a group shout my name in unison, never mind that Robin wasn’t my name anymore. This day already felt like it was happening to somebody else, so the name suited me just fine.

The guitarist returned to his playing and singing and the others returned to listening and Emmett leaned over toward me and pointed.

“Jasper, Christian, Molly, Deirdre.”

Three were smoking cigarettes. Two had tattoos. Molly had a ring in her upper lip.

“And the person I really wanted to you meet,” he whispered as he pointed to the guitarist, “is Finn.”

Finn was older. He had a beard, for one thing. Strawberry-colored and shaggy. He wore a wool cap over his strawberry hair. His guitar was covered in stickers and his fingers were filled with silver rings.

The song sounded familiar. Like a lullaby, something someone had sung to me once, though Mom wasn’t much of a singer.

“Finn’s a busker,” Emmett said into my ear. I liked the way it sounded even if I didn’t know what it meant. “He’s from Ireland. He sounds like what you were playing last night, but maybe even better, don’t you think?”

I nodded. It wasn’t just the music, it was the cliffs, the secrecy, the danger I felt near strangers, the warmth of Emmett’s breath in my ear—all of it made me want to lose myself in that song.

I listened. He closed his eyes as he sang.

“Come away, human child!

To the water and the wild

With a faerie hand in hand
,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

It hit me what was familiar about Finn’s song. I didn’t recognize the tune; I knew the words. They were from a poem by William Butler Yeats.

From Dad’s Book of Lists, Favorite Poets:
Shel Silverstein, W. B. Yeats
.

I hadn’t heard of Yeats, so one day when things were slow at the shop I’d gone to the library and checked out a collection of his poems. These words were from the one that spoke to me. It was called “The Stolen Child.”

Finn stopped. There was a pause and then a round of applause.

“Okay, ladies and gents,” Finn said. “Enough from me. Go on about yourselves. Enjoy the day.”

He put the guitar away in its case. Jasper, or maybe it was Christian, took Molly, the girl with the ring in her lip, by the hand. They ran into the ocean and fell over backward into the waves. She was wearing cutoff jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt. He had on cargo shorts and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. They came up for air and he grabbed her around the waist. Laughter rolled from the ocean back up to where I stood next to Emmett, wondering what I was doing here.

I would never be that girl. I would never swim where there was nobody certified to rescue me from an undertow. I’d never jump into any body of water fully clothed. I doubted that any boy would ever take my hand like that, run beside me, and then pull me toward him into the waves, laughing, grabbing on tighter.

“That’s a good one,” Emmett said to Finn. “Top stuff.”

“Thanks, little man.” Finn squatted down, placing his guitar in its case. He looked up at Emmett, squinting into the sun. “I wonder, though—it might be a tad dark? Not sure it’s what folks want to hear when they’re shopping for diapers and frozen pizzas.”

“Dark is good,” Emmett said. “Sad is good. It makes people want to do better.”

Finn smiled and finished latching the case. He slung a knitted bag over his shoulder and held his hand out to me. “Robin. It’s a pleasure.”

He did a little bow then turned to leave. Emmett and I sat down at the surfboard table and watched him scramble up the rocks and disappear. The others were all in the ocean or down at the water’s edge. I reached into the sand and buried the cigarette butts they’d dropped right where they’d been standing. Some were still smoldering.

“I wish I had a talent like Finn’s,” Emmett said. “It’s better than money. Or a house. Or a car. Or anything, really. If you’ve got a talent, if there’s something you can do and do it well, all the other stuff will follow.”

I didn’t want to point out the holes in Finn’s knit bag and in his shirt, that it hardly seemed his talent held the door open for great things, but I understood Emmett’s
point. I wished for that too, for something spectacular about me.

“Where do you know all these people from?” I asked.

“Around.”

I recognized this as the kind of answer you give when you’re avoiding the question. I recognized it because I’d just started trying this kind of answer out on Mom.

But why was he avoiding
my
question? What was he hiding?

I decided to go with something he wouldn’t mind my asking. “What’s a busker?” I said.

“Someone who sings for money.”

“Isn’t that a singer?”

“I guess it’s someone who sings for money on the streets. Or in front of the supermarket, which is where Finn tends to do his busking.”

“Which supermarket?”

“The Safeway.”

We never went to the Safeway anymore. Between what we took home from the shop, Fireside Liquor, and Greenblatt’s Grocery two blocks west on Euclid, we covered all the bases. I suddenly missed the aisles of frozen desserts and the cheap plastic toys stacked next to the flu and cold medicines. That was how long it had been since I remembered being there with my mom—since I was young enough to bargain for some crappy toy while pink with fever.

“So that’s what he does with his talent? He stands outside the Safeway and sings for spare change?”

“That’s what he does
now
,” Emmett said. “The Safeway is
a temporary stop. He travels the world on that spare change. He’s just earning enough here so he can keep moving on.”