Umbrella Summer (12 page)

The instant I woke up Sunday morning, my
brain reminded me it was Jared's birthday. I stretched my feet out so they were straining tippy-toe straight, and I reached my arms to the very edges of my bed, fingers pointed, to make sure I was feeling okay. And it turned out I was. No headache, no earache, no sore throat, no stomach troubles. So I got up, dug through my laundry hamper until I found my favorite outfit—my yellow tiger T-shirt and the shorts with the flower
for a pocket—and I got dressed. Then I padded into the hallway.

It was still early morning, with the sunlight just thinking about edging its way into the sky, and as far as I could tell, I was the first person up. I tiptoed down the stairs and opened our front door to get the newspaper off the porch where the paper boy threw it every Sunday.

Just as I was scooping up the paper, I noticed a small white envelope propped up between two slats, about five inches from my foot.

I picked it up.

 

Miss Annie Richards

 

That's what it said on the envelope. I didn't know who it was from, but I figured it was all right to go ahead and open it, since it had my name on it.

There was a folded-up letter in there, and something else small and flat—I couldn't tell what it was. I went for the letter first.

I poked my fingers inside the envelope and took out the flat thing, then laid it in my hand. It looked just like a Junior Sunbird badge, the same size as a lid on an olive jar, with stiff purple fabric and yellow thread all around the outside. Only it wasn't an official badge—I could tell Mrs. Harper had made it herself on her sewing machine, because the letters on the inside were a little bit more lopsided than normal, and they spelled out “Apology Badge.”

I ran my thumb across it as I walked back inside with the newspaper.

Four whole badges.

Fifteen minutes later I was sitting at the table with
the newspaper folded up in front of me when Dad came down the stairs. He rubbed his eyes when he saw me.

I pushed his mug across the table toward him. It was filled up with coffee, fresh and steaming, just the way Mom had showed me how to make it the night before. I'd put in the perfect amount of milk that he liked, too, until it was the same color as the inside of an almond. “Good morning, Dad,” I said. “Care to read with me?”

Dad blinked once. Then twice. Then he smiled a twitch of a smile and sat down in the chair next to me. “I'd love to,” he said.

And that morning, for the first time since Jared died, Dad and I read the newspaper together, the whole thing. While we were starting up the crossword puzzle, Dad leaned over and squeezed me tight into a sideways hug. “I've missed this, Moonbeam,” he said, his voice tissue-paper soft. “Thank you.”

We stayed in that hug for a bit, and that plus the Moonbeam made me feel warm all over.

“Twenty-six across is ‘llama,'” I told him.

After a while Mom came into the kitchen, and she smiled at us and said, “The coffee turned out okay, then?” I nodded. I could tell by the way her eyes were shiny-wet in the corners that her brain had reminded her about Jared's birthday too. But Dad poured her a cup of coffee and she sat at the table and helped us with the crossword and we ate breakfast together. When we were finished eating, I told Mom and Dad I had something to show them. Me and Tommy's surprise.

“At Lippy's,” I said. “I think you'll like it.”

When we got down to the store, sure enough, there was Tommy, putting up our flyer on the bulletin board just like he'd promised. He stuck it right in the center, with a thumbtack in each corner. It wasn't as big as a movie poster, just regular flyer size on plain white paper, but it had giant letters at the top that said “Happy Birthday, Jared!” so I knew lots of people would notice it. Tommy stepped back so we could all read it.

Then we'd left lots of blank lines under that, so other people could add their own ideas. Dad scratched his head for a bit while he read our list, and then he picked up the pen that Tommy had hung from the bulletin board by a string, and he wrote “Play baseball
in the park.” Mr. L. came outside and added his own too, which was “Make up silly knock-knock jokes.” Mom took a long time thinking about hers, but finally she put down “Be extra kind to the people you love,” and then she gave me a kiss on the forehead.

We stayed there a long time, looking at the list, and watched while people came by and added things. And everyone had nice things to say about Jared.

When we were getting ready to leave, I went to find Tommy inside the store. He was opening up a package of Ding-Dongs.

“They got damaged,” he told me.

I was starting to notice that when Tommy was around, it was only things made of chocolate that got damaged, but all I said was “Jared's birthday turned out pretty good, I think.”

“Me too,” he said. He held out the Ding-Dongs. “Want one?”

“Thanks.” I grabbed one out of the package. “Well, see ya,” I said.

“Hey, Annie?”

I turned around.

Tommy was looking down at his shoes. “I still miss Jared,” he said.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Me too.”

“But…well, you're not too terrible to hang out with or anything.”

I took another bite of Ding-Dong. “You're pretty okay too,” I said.

When we got back home, there was a leaf
stuck under the front door. And sure enough, when I checked the answering machine, there was a message from Rebecca.

“We're back from church!” It was all loud hollering. “Come on over as soon as you get this! I have to show you something important!”

I heaved Dr. Young's dictionary off my bookshelf so I could return it to him, and then I went to the garage and put on all my gear—helmet, elbow pads, kneepads, ankle bandages. Then I looked at my bike,
sitting in the corner by Dad's car.

Walking would be the safest thing.

But biking would be quicker.

I dumped the dictionary in the front basket, took a deep deep breath, and swung my leg over my bicycle. And I headed down the street to Rebecca's.

Dr. Young answered the door. Before he could even say anything at all, I asked him a question.

“I don't have Ebola, do I?”

Dr. Young scratched his chin and thought about it. “Most likely not,” he said.

“That's what I thought. Because some of the symptoms fit, but not most of them.”

He looked at me, and it was a serious look but not the dead-brother one this time. This one was more gladness behind the eyes. “You know something, Annie? You could grow up to be a very good doctor one day.”

And even though I'd never thought of that before, I sort of liked it. “Well”—I held out the dictionary—“anyway, I just wanted to give this back. Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

“You're welcome. Did it come in handy?”

I nodded. “I found a word for your wall,” I told him.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Instead of that old one.
Despondent
. I found a better one.” I pointed to where I'd marked it with a Post-it.

Dr. Young opened to the right page and scrolled his finger across the word I'd highlighted with purple marker.
“Radiant,”
he said, and then he looked up at me. “That's a good word, Annie.”

“It's from a book,” I told him. “
Charlotte's Web
.” The dictionary said it could mean either “glowing brightly” or “emanating great joy, love, or health.” “It's not…” I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked up at him. “I'm not sure I'm ‘radiant'
yet
,” I said, “but maybe one day I will be.”

“Annie,” Dr. Young said, shutting the dictionary, “I think you are very close to radiant.” And that might've been just about the nicest thing anyone ever told me.

Rebecca raced out onto the porch then, plowing
right into her dad in the doorway. “There you are!” she shouted. She was wearing her bike helmet. “Come on! We're going to Doug's!”

“Doug's?” I said as Rebecca yanked me off the porch. But she didn't explain, just hopped on her bike and motioned for me to follow her. We pedaled fast as cougars the whole way.

Doug was waiting for us when we got there, and he was wearing his bike helmet too, but he wasn't on his bike. He was standing in the middle of his yard, and there were pool noodles everywhere, sticking out of the ground like tent poles, and balanced between chairs, and hanging down from the branches of the elm tree.

“What happened to your yard?” I asked him.

“It's an obstacle course!” Rebecca hollered. “We made it!”

I whacked down my kickstand and put both my feet firm on the ground. “But I don't want to do an obstacle course,” I said, and I hoped I was being extra glary at Doug while I said it. “I
told
you. Obstacle courses are—”

“It's not dangerous,” Doug said. “Not this one. We got pillows.” He pointed to a giant pile of them under the tree.

“And duct tape!” Rebecca shouted, pulling a roll out of her bike basket.

I took turns staring at both of them. They were acting nuttier than pecan pie. “Huh?”

“It's called pillow races,” Doug told me. “Me and Rebecca made it up. So you could play.”

“Yeah!” Rebecca nodded her head up and down all excited. “The rule is you can only race if you're wearing pillows! And bike helmets!”

“Well…” I looked around the yard, at all the pool noodles everywhere. It must've taken them forever to set it up. “What if I just watch you guys play?”

“Nope,” Doug said, and he shook his head. “That's not how it works.”

That's when Doug and Rebecca strapped the pillows to me with duct tape, one in front and one in back. Then they strapped pillows to each other, too.

And even though I felt stranger than a green
flamingo, I had to admit the obstacle course looked pretty fun.

“Okay!” Rebecca shouted, her arms poofed out to her sides because of the pillows. “I got the stopwatch! Annie goes first!”

“Where's the start?” I asked.

Doug punched himself twice in the belly where his pillow was, and it made a nice low thudding sound. “Over on the porch,” he said. “You have to slide down two steps on your butt, and then you cross over to that chair”—he pointed—“and do a ninja leap. And then we'll tell you the rest as you go.”

“Got it.” I waddled over to the porch.

I had just plopped myself down on the second-to-last step when I felt something scrunch in the back pocket of my shorts. I wrestled my arm through the pillows until I reached my pocket, and I pulled the thing out.

It was a folded-up piece of paper with the word
INDESTRUCTIBLE
underlined three times.

“What's that!” Rebecca shouted from across the yard.

I looked at the paper in my hand for a second, and then I looked up at Rebecca and Doug, waiting for me under the elm tree like two giant grinning marshmallows. And then, without even thinking twice about it, I ripped my will in half.

“Nothing!” I shouted back.

“You ready?” Doug asked. Rebecca's thumb was hovering over the stopwatch.

“Yup!” I cried, dumping the pieces of my will on Doug's porch. “I'm gonna win, too! The slowest racer's a”—I tried to think of a really good word from the word wall—“rabble-rouser!”

Rebecca laughed at that. “Trundle bed!” she hollered.

“Halitosis!” I screeched.

“Needle-nose pliers!”
Doug wailed.

Then Rebecca shouted at me that she was starting the timer, so I was
off
!

And somehow, while I was busy sliding and leaping and dancing and dodging, my brain managed to figure something out.

Maybe it only took one person to open an umbrella and stick it up in the air to block out the rain, but it took a whole lot of people to close it. And even though I was pretty sure I still had a few more inches to go, I knew that once my umbrella was all the way closed, I was going to keep it like that for a long time.

Because as it turned out, I sure did like the sunshine.

Many thanks are due to Dr. Daniel Danila and Dr. Patrick Kemper for their expert medical advice, and to Minna Balbas and Janine O'Malley for putting me in touch with them.

I owe countless cups of coffee to each of my fellow “Longstockings”—Kathryne Alfred, Coe Booth, Daphne Grab, Lisa Greenwald, Jenny Han, Caroline Hickey, and Siobhan Vivian—for their constant encouragement and brilliant advice. And I thank my lucky stars for Beth Potter and Salem Whalen, good friends with great ideas, and for Melissa Sassin, whose late-night pep talks proved even more effective than mint chip ice cream. Thanks to Dad, whose uncanny knowledge of obscure diseases finally came in handy, and to Mom, of course, for being Mom.

Last but not least, I am filled with gratitude for Stephen Barbara, who is almost certainly the world's best agent, and to the ever-patient Jill Santopolo, editor extraordinaire.