“Tchotchke!” Dad blurts.
“Nice one.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
I like these times with my dad. We don’t really talk that much, so the other ways we connect mean a lot to me. I guess we talked more when I was little. That was mostly me babbling and him listening, though. Dad used to take me to work with him sometimes. I loved watching him build greenhouses. The best part was right after a greenhouse was finished, before the plants went in. I remember standing in the middle of all that glass and light, feeling like I had my own magical kingdom. Then the plants would come in all around me and I totally felt connected to them. Those early experiences inspired my love for all that is green.
I take a deep, sniffing breath. “This corn smells so good!”
“Umm,” Dad goes, trying to figure out the next clue.
“I can’t wait for dinner!”
“You’re in a good mood.”
“I’m usually in a good mood.”
“True enough. But there’s something extra good about it today.”
Can he tell where my good mood is coming from? I hope not. It’s not something I could ever talk about with Dad. He’s left all of the boy-related discussions, including The Talk when I was eleven, up to Mom.
Jason and I have been seeing each other every day we can. He makes me feel alive in a way I always hoped was possible. Of course, we can only be together the way we want when no one else is around. We’ve seen a few kids from school, but they either already knew we were hanging out or didn’t care.
Oh, wait. Greg cares.
We were at work today when Greg came at me all like, “Did I see you with Jason at The Fountain last night?”
Greg knows that I know he saw me. If he has a point, he’s going to have to be more explicit.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Did you?”
“Unless that was someone else hiding out at a corner table with him, then I think I did, yeah.”
I go back to picking raspberries. I get to take two pints home today, so I want to concentrate on finding the biggest ones.
Greg’s like, “Uh, we’re having a conversation here?”
“Are we? I thought you were just telling me where I was last night. Thanks for the reminder, by the way.”
“You need to drop it.”
“Drop what?”
“Whatever it is you’re trying to do. He’s already with Erin.”
Okay. This is weird. Jason and Greg are friends. So why wouldn’t Jason tell Greg that he and Erin broke up?
I’m not going to be the one to break the news.
I go, “In case you haven’t noticed, Erin’s my best friend.”
“Yeah,” Greg went. “Right.”
I avoided him for the rest of the day.
How weird is it that you can be so happy and so frustrated at the same time? I just want to be with Jason for real. But no one can know what we really are.
My parents definitely can’t. They totally freaked when I stayed out late at the fireworks two weeks ago. They were doing the whole Waiting Up thing when I got home. It was actually the first time they ever had to wait up for me because I’d never missed curfew before. I thought they’d go easier on me since it was my first major offense. I was wrong. They said they were disappointed in me. They demanded to know who I’d been out with. I had told them that I was going to see the fireworks with Blake and Danielle and some other kids from One World, but when I wasn’t home by midnight my mom called Blake’s dad. I was grounded for a week. Plus, now I have a set 11:00 curfew, whereas before it was more flexible.
My parents know I hang out with Jason. It’s just that they think we’re only friends. At least, I think that’s what they think. They haven’t said anything about it. After I told Blake about the Fourth of July fiasco, he said he’d cover for me from now on. Blake’s the only one I can trust with the truth.
Hiding the truth has to end sometime, though. Every time I get a letter from Erin, my heart sinks. I’m dreading the day she finds out what’s really going on.
When I got her first letter, I put it on my desk and spent the rest of the day avoiding it. I chopped up watermelons and made juice. I went to work and picked nine pints of raspberries. I came home and took a nap in the hammock. I woke up all sweaty and cooled off in the outdoor shower my dad built last summer. We ate dinner out on the back porch. I got corn stuck in my teeth and had to floss after. When I got back up to my room, the letter was still waiting there for me to open it, all impatient.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “Keep your flap on.”
I knew I had to open the letter. I had to open it and read it and deal with what it said, even though it was going to be bad. What else would I expect Erin’s first letter after Jason broke up with her to be like? Sparkly rainbows and smiley faces?
No. More like dark clouds and torrential downpour. And I really didn’t want to be stuck in the storm.
But I already was. So I took the letter over to my bed and sat down and forced myself to read it. I could not have felt worse for Erin. My heart hurt for her. She sounded miserable, describing how Jason wrote her this two-page letter about how it’s him, not her. He told her that she’s great and all, but he didn’t think they were the right people for each other. He thought she would be happier with someone else. Which obviously meant that
he
would be happier with someone else.
“Like that’s ever going to happen!” Erin wrote. “How am I supposed to trust anyone ever again?”
She had a point. As far as Erin knew, everything was going great with Jason up until he dumped her. Plus, she had no idea I was involved. Which is the worst part of all.
A few days later, I got another letter. That one was different. Erin told me about this boy Lee and how they hung out at a dance her camp had with the boys’ camp from across the lake. And how these two camps have activities together every week and she can’t wait for the next one, which is movie night.
The letter never mentioned Jason.
Erin’s letters just got happier from there. They’ve been filled with more exciting news about camp and Lee and how much fun she’s having. She just sounds like a totally different person. If she’s still upset about Jason breaking up with her, she’s really good at hiding it. It seems like she’s swept up in the whole summer camp- romance thing with Lee and the intensity of it has obliterated the pain of Jason dumping her.
Now that she has Lee, I think we can finally tell her about us.
Jason doesn’t agree.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says.
“We can’t put it off forever,” I say. “If she finds out we hid this from her, it’s just going to make her angrier.”
“I get what you’re saying, but I already broke up with her in a letter. I don’t think another letter with more bad news is the way to go. We should wait until she gets back so we can tell her in person.”
Jason rows some more. We’re taking the rowboat out on the lake. I’m terrified. I never agreed to let Jason teach me how to swim, but he’s doing our first lesson anyway. When I heard it didn’t involve actually getting wet, I said okay. The point of this lesson is for me to start trusting the water. Jason says that’s the first step in learning how to swim. He says that if you can’t trust the water, you’ll never let go.
The boat rocks back and forth a little. I grip the sides like we’re going under.
“Don’t worry,” Jason says.
“I’m not,” I go, still gripping.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go. You’re totally safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Come on. Would I promise to protect you if I couldn’t guarantee your safety one hundred percent?”
“No?”
“Correct.”
We go out really far on the lake. Or at least it feels far.
“Okay, now . . .” Jason stops rowing. We probably look like tiny dots from my house, floating on the calm water in the middle of everything.
“Take a deep breath,” Jason goes.
I take a shallow breath. I’m too nervous to inhale more air than that.
“Just breathe,” he says quietly.
I try to. After a few minutes, my stress level goes from a ten-plus to about an eight.
I manage to look around without moving too much. It’s really pretty out here. And it’s cooler, which is a definite bonus. It’s like we’re in our own private world. Like when I’d stand in the middle of those new greenhouses when I was little, looking up into the sky.
Jason’s like, “Sshhh!”
“I didn’t say anything,” I whisper.
“What’s that sound?” he whispers back, all serious.
“What—”
“Wait!”
We listen. All I hear is a mourning dove. They have a really specific hooing sound that always relaxes me. My stress level goes down to a seven.
“You mean the mourning dove?” I go.
“No, it’s . . .” Jason leans over the water. I grip the sides of the boat again. “It’s the water. Hear it?”
“Not really.”
“It’s saying, ‘Lani, be one with me,’” Jason goes in a burbly voice.
“Shut up!” I let go of the boat for two seconds to swat him. “You speak Water?”
“Of course. It’s an integral part of lifeguard training.”
I roll my eyes. He’s such a dork.
Jason still thinks the joke is funny. “The water wants to connect with you.”
“As long as I can do that from up here in the boat, I’m good.”
“You can put your hand in.”
I release my grip on the boat and stretch my fingers down toward the water. I dip my hand in.
“Ooh,” I say.
“Feels nice, right?”
“Yeah.” I picture what it would be like to swim in the lake, surrounded by all that smooth, cool water. I can almost imagine it. What I can’t imagine is how I’ll ever have the courage to get past my fear.
27
This is the
hottest day ever. It’s about a hundred and twenty in the shade. If I had to work today, I’d probably pass out from heatstroke. All I want to do is sit on the couch with the fan in front of my face and read my new book.
But that’s not happening. What’s happening is that I have to go help Mom in the garden. She’s making me. I tried to argue that reading is an important skill, so I should get to stay inside. Mom argued back that facing the world is also an important skill, so I should help her in the garden unless I want my 11:00 curfew moved to dinnertime. She’s been crazy strict ever since the Fourth of July incident. I swear, she’s never letting that go.
I put on a huge straw hat. I slide the porch door open. A wall of hot humidity immediately slams into me. I can hardly breathe. The sun is relentless. It’s funny how I used to make fun of Mom’s schlumpy gardening hats. Now I totally wear them.
Mom’s straw hat is even bigger than mine. It has ridiculous felt vegetables all around the rim. I am completely mortified. Good thing the garden is out back where no one can see us.
We work in silence. It’s too hot to talk. But even with the oppressive heat, I feel like I have to talk about Jason or I’ll explode.
“Can I ask you something?” I go. “Hypothetically?”
“Great idea. It’ll help take our minds off this heat.”
“I told you it was too hot!”
“Oh, it’s broiling. But the garden can’t be ignored.”
“So back to my question. Say you’re . . . at the green market. And someone—”
“You’re coming with me this weekend, right?”
“I’m there.” Sometimes I help Mom at the green market, where she sells her vegetables (including tomatoes, even though they’re technically fruit). The whole town goes crazy over Mom’s tomatoes. She could seriously rule one of those hokey vegetable competitions if we had any around here. I can picture her holding up a giant trophy with a gold-plated tomato on top, which is only a slightly less mortifying image than Mom in her vegetable gardening hat.
“Anyway,” I go, “say you’re at the green market and someone comes up to you and they want the best tomatoes you have. So you sell them, like, five of your best ones.” I pull at a stubborn weed that’s not budging. It must be a fellow Taurus. “But then later, someone else comes over and says that they heard how you sold your best tomatoes to so-and-so, but they deserve the tomatoes more because they
really
love tomatoes. And that other person hardly ever eats tomatoes. She’ll probably let the tomatoes go bad.”
Mom puts down her trowel. “But I already sold the tomatoes.”
“True, but this other person thinks they deserve them more.”
“Well, too bad, they’re already gone.”
This isn’t coming out right. I can’t talk about Jason by actually talking about Jason, so I thought up this tomato analogy. Somehow, it made more sense in my head.
Mom looks at me. “You think I should get the tomatoes back? That person’s probably home by now.”
“No.” I finally pull the stubborn weed out with a final decisive yank. “It’s stupid. Forget it.” I’m not even sure what I’m trying to ask anymore.
The backs of my knees are all sweaty. I stand up to stretch my legs.
“They both have a right to those tomatoes,” Mom says, “even if one of them likes tomatoes more.”
“Forget the tomatoes. Okay, like . . . say a friend of yours has a pet. A dog. And every time you go over, the dog gets all happy because he obviously likes you more. Maybe the dog is allergic to your friend and really shouldn’t be living there in the first place. So your friend gives you the dog because she knows he’ll be much happier with you.”
“What kind of dog is it?”
“He’s a . . . French bulldog. So you assume everything is going to be fine from now on, but then your friend gets mad at you because you have her dog.”
“That she gave me.”
“Yeah. But now she’s mad at you for taking him and she wants him back. What would you do?”
“I guess it would depend on how attached to the dog I was.”