The Summer I Saved the World ... in 65 Days (3 page)

So. Here I am. Back to the idea. What if, for these sixty-five days, I do one good thing every single day that is meant to happen? By my meaning it to happen.
Sixty-five good things.

I'll have to have some ground rules.

Because everything in this world does.

They will have to be small, unnoticed things, but remarkable and amazing in their smallness and unnoticed-ness. Like planting the marigolds. They can't cost anything, because I have seven dollars in my wallet. And mostly they'll need to be anonymous.

No one can know it's me.

Nina Ross. Thirteen. Five foot one. Contacts or glasses, depending on the day. Medium-length straightish brown hair, and eyes that Matt used to call Nina green-a. Two beauty marks on my cheek, but I'm not really beautiful. Interesting-looking at best. Which is all right; I'll take interesting.

Speaking of. I hear a noise from my brother's room and walk across the hall. His door is open a sliver, so I peer through the crack. Headphones on. Drumming his fingers on his desk. Eyes closed.

“Matt?”

He doesn't hear my voice. Or if he does, he chooses to ignore me.

I stand there for a second, hoping he'll open his eyes; then I go back to my room.

In my closet, I find the poster board with my science project on the Florida Everglades and flip it over. I draw a wide, curving crescent, then a square for each
of the houses in our cul-de-sac. If you're standing in the street facing the houses, on the left end is Eli Bennett's, then my house, then Mrs. Chung's, then Jorie's. Next to Jorie is Mr. Dembrowski, then the Cantalonis, then the Millmans. The last house is empty, with a For Sale sign. The Dixons were foreclosed on last year after Mr. Dixon lost his job. The house is looking kind of creepy, with overgrown grass and weeds, bald dandelion stems, even a couple of loose shutters.

I turn the blank pages of my assignment notebook, then trace my finger around on the poster board. The way I've drawn it, the houses look like they're separate little squares floating in space.

Everything good I've ever done before has been because someone told me to do it. “Don't forget to bring in money for the holiday gift drive.” “Donate your unused school supplies—just drop them in the box by the office.” “Buy a T-shirt for charity.” “Add to the Thanksgiving food basket for a needy family.” Quick, easy.

Our front door slams. From my fake window, I see Matt get into his old Jeep and drive away.

There's a blotchy dark spot on the street where it was parked. Dad will be mad. He'll say,
It must be leaking oil
. Mom might look up from her laptop, tell Matt to get it fixed.
Wasn't the deal that you'd be more responsible, Matthew?
They'll focus on the
car
, how
something must be wrong with the
car
. Matt will stand there, silent, his face tight, and I'll be on the stairs, listening.

If Grandma was here, she'd look at the oil stain and wink at me. Come up with an ST about what we leave behind. How nothing is accidental. I'd get it in a second, then share a random thought with her, and she'd get that. In a second.

I don't say my random thoughts out loud anymore, because there's no one to get them. I've tried with Jorie, but she gives me strange looks. I didn't even try with the basketball group. People would think they're weird.
I'm
weird. What if I go through high school and, um, you know,
life
, without someone who gets me? Knows me?

I think about the love seat and wonder if there are any talking birds sitting on it today. Then I get that urgent sense again.
Do something
.

So much is not good.

I prop the poster board against a wall and close my assignment notebook.

Sixty-five things. I've already done the first one. What's another sixty-four?

I can't wait to get started.

D
ays two, three, and four, I clean up all the toys in the Cantalonis' yard, organizing them neatly by the side of their garage; put a Hershey's Kiss in the Millmans' mailbox; and snip a rose from my mother's garden (which she never looks at, so she won't know it's missing), tie a ribbon around it, and leave it on Mr. Dembrowski's doorstep.

On day five, I place a penny (heads up) in each of my neighbors' mailboxes to bring them good luck. And one in mine (so no one will suspect).

On day six, Mrs. Millman calls the police.

Which is not unusual. She called the police last month because she was convinced a repairman was hiding in the ducts in her attic. Before that she called them when she thought her miniature poodle, Beanie, had radon poisoning.

There's a police car parked in front of her house. “
Someone
has been sneaking around and
doing
things,” she says loudly to the officer, her arms crossed tightly. They're standing on the sidewalk, and I'm sitting in our hammock under the maple tree, my heart beating very fast.

“What kinds of things?” He pulls out a small notebook.

She stamps her foot. “Trespassing!”

I hadn't thought of it that way. I mean, I live here too.

“Anything missing from your home?” the officer asks.

“Not that I'm aware of.”

“Any locks tampered with? Forced entry?”

“No.”

“What, exactly, was trespassed, Mrs. Millman?”

“There was a Hershey's Kiss in my mailbox three days ago,” she says. “I didn't eat it. I have it in case you want to test for fingerprints, or poison. And yesterday, there was a penny!”

The officer lowers his sunglasses and raises his eyebrows.
“You called the police because a Hershey's Kiss and a penny were in your mailbox?”

“Yes, and
someone
moved all the toys in the Cantalonis' yard. Mrs. Cantaloni asked her boys, and they didn't do it. Plus there's the
situation
of Mrs. Chung's marigolds. Who planted them? It's a mystery.”

The officer taps his pen on the notebook. Thomas Bennett chooses this moment to rush out of his house in his underwear, his cape flying behind him. He runs around the sidewalk and pokes the plastic sword into Mrs. Millman's calf.

“Whoa.” The officer pulls him away. “Take it easy, there, Batman.”

“I'm not Batman! Batman doesn't have a sword!” Thomas shouts.

“Thomas!”

That would be Eli.

Thomas takes off toward the empty Dixon house. He runs through the weeds that used to be their front lawn, and around the back. Eli dashes after him, and a minute later, Eli is carrying Thomas on his shoulders, with Thomas whipping the sword through the air. Eli's hands are securely around Thomas's ankles, and he's walking kind of springy, so Thomas is bouncing a little with each step. And giggling. Thomas's hair is long, over his ears and almost into his eyes. Eli puts him down on their driveway.

“Mrs. Millman,” the police officer is saying, “there's no crime that I can detect. I'll check around your house, but it doesn't sound like there's anything here for me to put into a report.”

Mrs. Millman straightens her flowered skirt. “
Something
is going on. You'll see. And when I call you the next time, believe me, it'll be more than Hershey's Kisses!”

“Okay.” The officer closes his notebook. “I'll just take a look around.”

He goes toward the back of the Millmans' house, then walks through the Cantalonis' backyard, and Mr. Dembrowski's. The rose is still on his front step. Looking very wilted.

“Lemonhead?”

I look up to see Eli standing next to the hammock, holding out a box.

My throat is suddenly very dry, and I reach out my hand. He pours two into my palm.

“Crazy, huh?” Eli says.

“Yeah,” I breathe.

“How are ya, Neen?”

This is what I want to say:
When did you get so tall, and do you remember writing your name twenty-three times in chalk on my driveway with a backward
E
when we were six?

But I say, “I'm fine.”

He sits on the grass, and we both watch Mrs. Millman pacing in front of her house, talking excitedly on her phone.

“I think if I was Mr. Millman, I'd take a lot of business trips,” Eli jokes.

I smile.

Thomas leaps out from the bushes in between my house and the Bennetts'. “I'm beating the bad guys!” he yells, thrashing his sword. “The crinimals!”

“Criminals,” Eli corrects him, but Thomas is off again. Eli stands. “I hope he grows out of this underwear-and-cape stage by the time he goes to school. Or else he won't make a lot of friends.”

“Or maybe he will,” I say, laughing. “I'd want to be friends with a superhero.”

Eli shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”

He goes after Thomas. The officer gets into his car and sits there for a while with the motor running, then drives away. Mrs. Millman stomps back into her house as Mrs. Cantaloni speeds off in her minivan with her boys in their baseball gear, buckled in. I haven't seen Mrs. Chung since I planted her marigolds. Everyone's windows are shut, front doors are closed, garage doors are down. My parents had dinner with a client and got home so late last night, I didn't even see them.

I feel something, someone, near me, behind the hammock, and I whip my head around. Thomas is
slithering on the ground, propelling himself with his elbows.

“The policeman didn't get the crinimals,” he pants. “It's up to me!” He jumps up and leans close to my face. I smell his little-boy sweat—sweet, like fresh-cut grass. His nose grazes my cheek as he whispers, “And guess what? I have a magic coin!”

He opens his fist to show me a penny.

O
n her way to work, Jorie's mom drops us at entrance fourteen of the high school's west building, which is connected to the east building by an environmentally friendly atrium. The school is bigger than some colleges. I am terrified to actually go here.

Jorie talked nonstop during the ride, asking if I could see the pimple on her chin under the cover-up and saying first days are
so
hard and she's
so
glad she has me, but then, we're not inside two seconds when she spots this girl in her summer school class—the blow-off Intro to Computers One—and runs to catch
up with her. The girl has one of those names that's also a place. Savannah or Dakota or Antarctica. She and Jorie are both wearing crop tops.

I'm in art with the rebellious, darkish people. A couple of guys in combat boots and black jeans with little chains hanging from the belt loops. A girl in a black T-shirt with skulls on it. A lot of black clothes here. Scary.

When we were still in junior high and went to the orientation for high school, they kept advising us to take a summer school class so we'd get used to life here and meet kids from the other junior highs. I chose art because I like to draw, even though my drawings never turn out as I imagine they're going to.

As I head toward the back of the room, a heavy girl with ripped black-and-white-striped tights and blue jean shorts turns around and stares at me with the kind of look that says
Who are you, and what are you doing here?
Then this spike-haired guy next to her does it too. Like her stare is contagious.

Oookay. Maybe I didn't think this through. This does not feel like the place where I'll meet new people. I take a seat in the last row, feeling like I glow in the dark with my normal white T-shirt. I see two girls I recognize from junior high, but they're sitting close, talking. There's one quiet girl (not wearing black), but she doesn't look my way.
For the first half hour, we talk about what we're going to do for the next eight weeks. Then we start our color wheels. My primaries turn out fine, but I have a serious mixing issue when it comes to the secondary colors. The teacher, Ms. Quinlan, who looks like she used to be rebellious and darkish when she was in high school, stops at my desk. She has ten piercings on her ears, plus stubby chewed fingernails.