The Summer I Saved the World ... in 65 Days (8 page)

E
li comes to pick up Thomas but doesn't say where he was. He seems angry and brushes past me. Maybe I shouldn't ask questions, but I can't help it.

“Are you okay?”

He flashes me a look, then goes over to the sofa and gently shakes Thomas's shoulder.

I follow him. “I mean, your mom was worried.”

He turns around. He looks sweaty, and his elbow has a raw scrape on it, like it just stopped bleeding a few minutes ago. “I'm
fine
.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He grabs the cape and scoops up Thomas, who is groggy. “
Yeah
. I am. Okay?”

“Sure.” I glance at his elbow, and I'm sure he sees.

Eli walks to the door, Thomas in his arms. Eli looks like a dad at that moment, Thomas's head on his shoulder, a little hand clutching Eli's white T-shirt, legs dangling by Eli's waist. I realize how much I like this about Eli. How good he is with Thomas. How protective. The big brother everyone needs.

“You don't have to worry about me,” Eli says sharply. “
Okay?
”

I untie the pillowcase and slide it off Thomas's neck. “Okay.”

“Thanks for watching him.”

“No problem.”

I watch Eli walk toward his house, carrying Thomas and the cape, like he's trying to hold it all together. He definitely needs someone to worry about him.

My house feels lonely without Thomas sleeping on the sofa. I get one of my summer reading books,
The Alchemist
, read the first five pages, and become thoroughly confused. I hear Matt's door open. I didn't even know he was home.

He comes bounding down the stairs, takes off his headphones. “Hey. What's up?”

“Nothing.” I put the book down. “Everything.”

Surprise. He sits next to me on the sofa.

“You look the way you looked when your goldfish died,” he says.

“I do?”

He points to the book. “I remember this. Never understood it.”

“Oh, great.”

“Hey, I owe you a card game, don't I?”

“Don't you have to go somewhere? Work?”

“In a half hour.” Matt goes into the kitchen, grabs a deck from the drawer, and then comes back and starts shuffling it. Fast and neat, like a pro.

“When did you get so good at shuffling?”

He shrugs, starts dealing. “War?”

“Okay. I'm going to beat you this time.”

He laughs, and in about fifteen minutes, I'm down to a couple of twos and fours and one lonely king.

“I don't get how you always win,” I groan. “Do you have some secret strategy?”

He stretches his arms out, wiggles his fingers. “I'm just lucky.”

A few more cards, one last war, and we're done.

“That was the fastest game of war ever,” I say. I search Matt's face. This is the first time we've played since Grandma died. Doesn't he remember what happened?

Hard to tell. These days, he keeps everything inside.

He shuffles the deck. “You know how to play poker?”

“Uh-uh. No one ever showed me.”

“
What?
That has to change.”

He deals, puts the rest of the deck on the table, turns the top card over. “We'll play open hand. So, what you want to do is look for things like pairs, straights.”

“I have two queens.”

“That's pretty good.”

“Wait. What do you have? Did I possibly beat you, for once in my life?”

He looks at his cards, smiles. “Yeah. You did. Not bad for someone who's never played poker before.” Matt glances at the clock. “Oh, man, I gotta go.” He stands, looks at me for a long second.

“What?”

“This was fun.” I think he's going to say something else, but he's out the door. In the Jeep. Evaporated.

The pool closes at seven. Where does he go after? Please tell me it's nothing like when he got in trouble at school.

Later, when Mom and Dad come in and spread out at the table, I sit down with them. Other parents might get it, that maybe I want to talk. That maybe this is a small yet momentous gesture from their teenage child.
Hello, I'm here
. But they barely look up. Just a few scattered words.

Dad: “Everything okay?”

Mom: “Your hair's getting long. You could use a trim.”

“So how's the case going?” I ask them.

“Just … one … sec,” Dad says, flipping through a legal pad. Then to Mom: “We have to go after the Florida property.”

“Of course.”

“Heck, Bermuda too,” Dad says, and laughs.

Mom nods. “Not that we'll get it.”

I pour myself some lemonade and move to a stool at the island. “Matt taught me how to play poker. Wanna play when you're done?”

Dad hands a file to Mom. “Sure, in a bit.”

“You're done reading this?” Mom asks him.

“Pokerrr,” I say, swirling my lemonade as I spin on the stool.

Dad smiles. “You used to spin like that when you were little and didn't like what we were having for dinner.”

Mom writes something. “Nina, honey, just a minute—”

“Oh, am I interrupting the lawyer show?”

She takes off her reading glasses, looks at me. Finally.

“We're not ignoring you; we're just so preoccupied. The media are all over this case. You wouldn't believe what's been going on. It's incredibly exciting—the kind of case I've wanted all these years.”

“It's like being on top of a mountain,” Dad says.

Yeah.

Mom crosses her legs, starts speed-talking, making up for lost time. “How's the art class? How are your friends from the basketball team? Jorie's good? We'll have lunch when this is all wrapped up, okay? You'll catch me up.” She's tapping her fingernails on the table. “We can go to the mall. You can get some cute new outfits for school.”

“People don't wear
outfits
, Mom.”

She gives me a quick smile. “You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

She picks up her phone. “Matt didn't text me back.”

“He's eighteen. What do you expect?” Dad shrugs. “He'll be away at college next month. Get used to it.”

Mom stands and stretches her arms overhead. I don't know how she even spots this, being so
preoccupied
and all, but she creases her brows and her lips pinch into a thin line. “Why is that out?”

The sewing basket is on the counter. Big mistake.

“I needed to sew something today,” I say lightly, then get up and return it to the cabinet. It's gone. But
still, Erica Fine doesn't look fine. She makes a fist. Her polished red nails dig into her skin. Ow.

“Every time I see that thing,” she says, “that floral print
basket
, there's my mother, in her dull print dress, sitting in her armchair,
sewing
.”

I want to say,
What's wrong with that?
But I pretty much know Mom's answer.

Here it is.

She imitates Grandma's voice. “Every girl should know how to sew, Erica.” She plunks back into her chair. “Who knows where I'd be if I'd listened to her.”

Dad glances at Mom, then turns to me. “What were you sewing?”

“Just something.”

He smiles. “I think it's nice that you can sew. Not many girls do that anymore.”

Mom takes a sip of water, then sets the bottle down hard. It tips over, and water floods their papers.

“Oh, that's just great!” she yells.

I run for the paper towels.

Dad blots the papers with one hand. He puts the other hand on Mom's arm. “Are you okay?”

“Absolutely fine.”

“Erica, when this case is over, we should take my brother up on his offer to use their cabin. Get away for a few days.”

Mom balls up the paper towels, throws them out. “I can't think about that right now.”

They look at each other, and I suddenly feel like I should leave. “I guess I'll go upstairs.”

Mom pats me on the arm. Dad blows me a kiss.

They were never big huggers, like Jorie's parents. At least I used to get a bedtime story—Dad reading in funny voices, Mom brushing the tangles from my hair. But I grew up, and things happen. Things change.

In my room, I start to lower the shade, then stop to study Mr. Dembrowski's house. It looks the same.

The houses in the cul-de-sac are mostly dark. A few lights on in scattered rooms, the blue flicker from a TV. That big tree by the Millmans' swaying in the night breeze. A piece of paper blowing around in the Cantalonis' yard. Shirts from the dry cleaner's hanging in a plastic bag on Jorie's front door.

Then I see a flash of light from the Dixon house.

Someone's in there?

The realtor? Burglars? … The
kumiho
?

The light seems to move around a little, then goes out. I watch for a few minutes, my heart racing. The Dixon house stays dark.

When I can finally tear myself from the window, I do an online search for “
kumiho
.” The word literally means “nine-tailed fox.” There are different versions of the Korean legend. Most say a
kumiho
is a fox that
has lived for a thousand years, has nine tails, and can turn into a beautiful but evil woman. Sometimes a
kumiho
tricks a man into marriage. Or they lurk in the forest, eating men's livers.

Nice. I hope that isn't a bedtime story for kids in Korea.

Nowhere, however, does it say that a
kumiho
has the power to turn on a light in a vacant house.

I
n art the next day, we finish our abstract clay pieces so they can get fired. Abstract is good; no one has to guess what mine is. Then we have to find a partner. Which is an awful thing that teachers do. Are they unable to see how this goes? The people who know each other pair up in a second (Amber and Chase, the two girls I knew in junior high), and then there are random floaters avoiding each other.

I'm a floater.

Swallow. Look around. Brief moment of panic. Then, relief. Sariah and I make eye contact. Which is helpful,
because the assignment is to draw each other's eye. Hers are dark brown and make me think of a chocolate fountain. I'm glad to see that she has normal piercings, just on her earlobes.

Sariah and I face each other, desk to desk, holding our sketchpads. In less than ten minutes, she has drawn my eye in complete detail, including the lid and lashes.

“How'd you do that so fast?” I ask. I'm still on the outline. Sariah doesn't even have a pupil yet.

She shrugs.

“You're good,” I say.

“Thanks.”

“That's really what my eye looks like?”

She nods, still filling in the sketch.

She's drawn an eye that's almond-shaped and lazy, with long lashes and little flecks where the green is. Maybe there is something about me that is actually sort of beautiful.

Time for the break. I start cleaning up my supplies. One of my pencils rolls off the desk and across the floor, like it's running away. A boot stops it. Chase picks it up, holds it out.

There's this odd second when we look at each other and he's holding one end of the pencil and I'm holding the other.

I tuck the pencil into my bag. “Thanks.”

Chase smiles. He has a chipped front tooth. “
De nada
.”

Small thing. But big, too.

Today, Sariah and I sit on the risers in the commons.

I feel very short. “How tall are you?”

She smiles down with a mouth full of silver braces. “Five eight.”

Jorie hasn't noticed I'm not there. A guy with long plaid shorts grabs her water bottle and throws it to another guy. She tries to get it (jumping high so her shirt goes up and her bare tan stomach shows), but they're tossing it around. She sits down and crosses her arms and pretends to pout; then the plaid guy brings it to her. Pouting works, at least for Jorie. He kneels in front of her, like he's asking for forgiveness. I can hear her laugh all the way over here as she ruffles his hair.

Wait. What about Eli? Why is she flirting with that guy? I don't get her sometimes.

“So, anyway,” I say, and turn to Sariah. She's unwrapping a cookie and taking miniature bites around the edges.

I find out she went to a different junior high. She dances. Giggles a lot. She collects frogs, little glass and plastic and metal figurines. “I have a hundred and two,” she says.

“Wow. That's a lot of frogs.”

“Uh-huh. I have two whole frog shelves in my room.” She brushes cookie crumbs from her fingers. “Did you know frogs don't drink water but they absorb it through their skin?”

“I didn't know that.” I laugh and sort of poke her. “This is getting weird.”

But she's completely serious. “Frogs are fascinating. Some scientists think frog juice can cure diseases.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Frog juice?”