Truest (3 page)

Silas and I each stepped out of the cab, closed our respective doors, and began to wash the outside of the car. “Start from the top down,” I instructed. No matter what I thought
about Silas Hart, it was a treat to watch his lean, strong frame as his long arms reached easily over the roof of the car to wash it. His height was going to be an asset in this job. “Sounds like it would be hard to sleep,” I said. The slippery, soapy lather smelled like cherry foam.

He laughed a little. “It's trippy. I'll be honest. Fairbanks has this summer solstice celebration, and the whole town stays out super late. We have a baseball game that starts at ten thirty at night, and we don't even use any artificial lights. Stores stay open later. Last year, a couple of my friends and I headed out to Cleary Summit, about twenty miles outside town, and stayed there for hours watching the sun. We camped out, and Beth did this long-exposure photography thing and ended up with a picture of the Chatanika River Valley with about a dozen suns in the background.”

I wondered if Beth was his girlfriend but couldn't think of how to ask.

The hose and high-pressure sprayer attachment I used to clean out the wheel wells made a loud, rhythmic trill against the metal, so I spoke louder when I asked, “So, what about winter then?”

“Winter is kind of a beast,” Silas admitted. “The temperature is moody, depending on where the wind is coming from. So it goes from just an average cold down to, like,
cold
-cold and back up again. And meanwhile, it's dark out and
purple
. The sun sets before school's out.
That
is a terrible feeling.” He laughed
a little. “I literally could not go running in daylight because the sun didn't come up until three hours after school started. I kinda hated it. Laurel
really
hated it.” Again, he looked as if he was going to say more. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, still undergoing some internal debate.

I remembered the Nikes peeking out from under his bed. “You run?” I asked, immediately regretting giving him the easy way out.

“What?” he asked, as if distracted. “Yeah, I love it. Like mother, like son, I guess. I run my best and hardest when I'm frustrated . . . which is why it's great to have
Laurel
as a sister. No one more frustrating than her.” He grinned at me, lips pursed mischievously, eyebrows raised—an oddly suggestive look, as if he'd just made some outrageous or even salacious proposal.

“I refuse to believe that until you meet Libby and Shea,” I said. “They're twelve and seven and watching us through the window right now.”

Silas looked over at the window and waved. My siblings ducked out of sight. I pictured them giggling on the floor.

“What are you doing after this? Wanna get lunch?” he asked, pushing his thick hair out of his eyes.

“Not really. Your moods are kind of giving me whiplash here,” I confessed.

“I'll behave. Promise.”

The afternoon stretched out before me, empty of friends and responsibilities. If I could just get through the day, I could
call Elliot and Trudy later on to catch up.

Silas held up three fingers—Scout's honor—squinting at the sun in his eyes. “I promise,” he repeated.

“You're annoying,” I said again.

“Is that a yes?”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Is
that
a yes?”

“Yes.”

We went to the Red Owl—which has technically been a SuperValu since before I was born, though no one in Green Lake calls it that—and bought pop and apples, along with a bag of cinnamon-roasted almonds and some sandwiches from the tiny deli section, then biked to the park that brushed up against the pointer finger of the town. We ate lunch on the swing set near the lake.

Just the sight of the playground made me ache for Trudy, who had accompanied me to these swings since the days when we'd buy Pop Rocks and magazines with our allowance money and listen to the carbonated candy fizzle on our tongues while we debated the merits of various teen stars. I smiled thinking of the Pop Rocks and how, when you'd crunch down on them, it sounded like all your teeth were breaking.

“My turn to ask the questions,” said Silas, polishing his apple on his shirt. “Tell me what you like to do.”

“I read a lot,” I said, my feet dragging in the sand beneath them as I bit into my apple—Gala, sweet.

“I knew it. Like what?” Silas grinned as he took a bite of his own.

“Kind of everything. Contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi.”

“Nice. Have you read C. S. Lewis's space trilogy?”

“Like a million times,” I said.

Silas's eyes grew wide with childlike excitement. “I'm making Laurel read it this summer!” he said, waving around the hand that held his apple. “He has total command of language. Gosh, such great alliteration. There's this part with all these
k
sounds . . . stops you like a king in the road.”

I smiled at him, a little skeptically.

“What?” he asked, eyes wide and beatific, and I burst out laughing.

“I've just never heard anyone talk affectionately about plosives.”

Another grin from him. That same walloping one that made me stagger. It was wide and warm and in his eyes as much as on his lips. It was playful and had just the smallest hint of mischief. The gulf between this boy and the one who'd been so cold the day before spread wider, confusing me.

“So, you read,” he said. “What else?”

“I also have this weird penchant for Australian authors.”

“No, I mean, what else do you like to
do?
”

Oh. That.

“Mmm, I don't know,” I said, munching on my apple, trying to appear thoughtful—but really, frantically searching for a response. I hated questions like this; while they gave definition to other people, they reminded me that my outline was fuzzy and gray. What
did
I like to do? I didn't play sports or music, didn't follow fashion, had no crazy obsessions, wasn't extreme in any way. Around town I was known as “Pastor Beck's daughter” or “Elliot Thomas's girlfriend.” Stories were my one real love, and Silas had just asked what else I did besides read.

I stretched to fill in my own embarrassing blanks: “Um, I listen to the radio. Avoid thinking about college. Con people into telling me their secrets.”

“How do you do that?”

“With my long eyelashes,” I said, batting them at him. “Now spill your guts.”

He laughed, then looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You know, you're all right.”

“I'm so glad I have your approval,” I said, half annoyed that he was allowed to issue this verdict and half grateful it was—sort of—positive. “Daily validation, check! So, what about you?”

“Oh, I write,” he said, tossing his apple core toward a garbage bin about fifteen feet away. It went in easily. “Yesssss.”

“Epic adventures of danger and daring?” I teased, glad to
redirect the focus onto him as I opened the bag of almonds. He let me shake some into his open palm.

“Nah, I'm no good.”

The humility shocked me.

“I'm a seventeen-year-old poet; what do you expect? My poems are shit.”

“Favorite poet?” I asked.

“Billy Collins,” he said. “Though when I read his stuff, I want to light myself on fire.”

“I guess I should be happy I stand on the
reader
side of literature,” I said, savoring the sugary crunch in my mouth. “The
writer
side sounds like masochism.”

He looked at me, eyes wide in understanding. “Absolutely. Why do you avoid thinking about college?”

“I guess I don't know what to do with my life,” I said. Then, before he could ask any more questions, I held up the bag of nuts. “Actually, I just had an epiphany. I think I'm gonna major in almonds.”

“You're such a dork,” he said—and there was that grin again.

That evening was a perfect Minnesota June night, cool and breezy, and Cedar Street was quiet except for the sound of Jody Perkins riding his lawn mower home from the bar. We waved to each other as I wondered what Tru was doing that moment at camp. Probably trying to corral middle schoolers into quieting
down in the cabin. I wondered how Trudy was handling living with a herd of young females all summer—especially with Ami Nissweller along for the ride. Ami, a self-proclaimed chess nerd and a bit of a hanger-on, had always annoyed Tru, who, when finding out that Ami would be working at Camp Summit too, announced, “She's checkmated me!”

I called Elliot's cell from my front steps that night as the sun streaked the sky with pink. He answered, either on or near a tractor, the sound of the motor a thunderous drone.

“I miss you,” I said, trying to speak loud enough for him to hear over the noise.

“What's that?”

“
I miss you
,” I said louder, hoping my siblings wouldn't hear me from inside. “
I spent the day with the new kid, and he's really annoying—but he was too good at detailing to not—
”

“—West? Are you still there?”

“I'M STILL HERE!” I almost bellowed, cupping my hands around my phone, my voice only slightly quieter than a shout. “CAN YOU HEAR—”

“—West? I'm going to have to call you later.”

“
OKAY
,” I roared. “
I MISS YOU.
”

“What's that?”

I hung up. It was useless.

When I tried calling Trudy, the call went straight to voice mail.

This is the story of my summer, I thought.

I tuned into
August Arms
through my phone while my mom herded my siblings to bed inside. Dad was still gone; apparently, he'd come home for lunch, but then advanced like a knight back into the dark world to fight sin and sadness.

I felt laden with loneliness. The summer had only just started.

But then, Sullivan Knox's voice punctured the night. The host of
August Arms
had one of those deep, slightly overbearing radio voices that could fill any space. It was husky and articulate, and it used clever inflection to add depth to every story. I loved it best at night, when the world seemed smaller and it was easier to convince myself that Sully and I were having a conversation: curious people talking of curious things, things that were so
other
from anything Green Lake had to offer, anything
I
had to offer. So, even though I could listen online at any time, I always tried to listen to the live show when it aired each night. Elliot thought it was silly—and Trudy too, a little—and, heck, maybe even I did. But not enough to change.

August Arms
usually centered its stories on a theme, which lasted an evening or a week or sometimes a month, and tonight's common thread was secrecy: an architect who led three separate lives; Arthur Dimmesdale from
The Scarlet Letter;
and the Sacrament of Penance.

As usual, each story was fascinating—but tonight they were heavy too, just like the pressing scent of the blooming crab apple trees on our street. I couldn't help but think of Silas from
earlier that day: how he'd cut his answer short when I'd asked why they'd moved, the peculiar way his voice had sounded when he said Laurel had “
really
hated” the polar twilight, as if those two words were the title page for an entire novel. What was he not telling me?

With
August Arms
as my sound track, alone on my porch, I embraced my inner stalker and looked each of the Hart twins up online. Neither of them had high privacy settings, so I was able to see quite a bit. Silas's social media looked exactly as I'd expected: he had lots of friends and was tagged in about a million photos, which I looked through one by one. Silas crossing the finish line at a cross-country meet, Silas in a row of guys all in tuxedos, Silas and Laurel blowing out candles on identical cakes that said, “Happy 17th!”

I even found the time-lapse photo of the midnight sun he had mentioned briefly. Beth Öster, the photographer,
was
his girlfriend and had a stark beauty afforded by her low-bridged nose, dark hair, rosy cheeks, and unexpectedly blue eyes that peeked out from under a parka hood. She had tagged each sun as a different friend. Silas was the sun beside her sun.

When I looked up Laurel, though, it was a different story. There was still a good sample of friends and photos, but she'd obviously not been online much in the past year. People had been posting things like “When are you coming back to school?” and “Hope you're okay—call me!” and “I miss you” quite a bit in December and January—but those posts had
dwindled in the past six months. She must be sick, I thought. But why would that be a secret? Her pictures were mostly from dance performances—Laurel in tap shoes, Laurel in a red Latin dress, Laurel in ballet slippers as Odette from
Swan
Lake. They'd all been uploaded years ago.

My phone rang. “Hey!” I said, glad Elliot had called back.

“Hey!” he said. “Sorry about before. I just put the tractor away.”

“It's okay. How was your day? When can I see you?”

“Come over.”

“What? Right now?”

“Yeah!” he said. “Your show's over, right?”

“Yeah. But it's pretty late.”

“My parents won't care.”

“Mine will,” I complained. I didn't mention that I was also a little worried about what might happen, um,
physically
if I went over there so late. I hated myself for asking, “How about tomorrow?”

“I'm lifting with the team tomorrow night from six to eight. I can stop at your place on my way into the weight room.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice small with loneliness and longing.

“How was detailing with the asshole today?” Elliot asked.

“He's annoying.”

“Good.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said, laughing a little.

Elliot's grin was obvious—even over the phone. “You know what I mean.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah. I do.”

When our family car finally crept down Cedar and parked in the driveway, I said good night to Elliot. Dad emerged, his whole body showing signs of deep fatigue. He smiled when he saw me on the porch. “Wanna chat?” I asked softly, patting the space beside me.

“In the morning, okay, Wink? Spent the morning with Jim Roberts and tonight at the hospital with the Talcotts. My head's about to explode.”

“Yeah,” I said, disappointed. “Okay. Sleep well.”

I stared through the screen door after my dad as he trudged off toward his dark bedroom.