Summer People, page 11
At breakfast, Christmas, exhausted and sweaty, returned from her run to see her father sitting at the table in a collared shirt and khakis.
“Why are you dressed up?” she asked between gulps of water.
“I got a job,” he answered.
“What?” Christmas asked, genuinely surprised.
“At Home Depot.”
“As a senior greeter?” Christmas said.
“Not nice,” her father said. He rose and carried his empty bowl to the sink.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be funny. But why?” Christmas asked. “Is everything okay? What are you—”
“Gets me out of the house,” he said, shrugging. “Your mom says Home Depot is my hangout anyway. Might as well get paid.” He moved toward the doorway, reminding Christmas of a gentle, awkward crane. “I have to get going. There’s oatmeal on the stove.”
“Mom up?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Well, have a good day at your new job,” Christmas called after him.
Before heading out to her own job, Christmas shoveled down some oatmeal and then went quietly downstairs, to the ground-level room she’d been sitting in the night before. She stood looking out the sliding glass door for a moment before stepping outside, her eyes scanning the ground. Maybe she’d see raccoon scat, or even something to indicate a larger animal.
Instead, a few feet from the door, she saw a cigarette butt. She crouched and read the word Parliament in blue letters around the cigarette’s base.
Had it been Cash? He was one of the few people she knew who smoked cigarettes. Was he spying on her?
Suddenly self-conscious, Christmas stood and turned, as though aware she was being watched at that moment. But save for the birds, chipmunks, and squirrels, Christmas was alone.
21
That day, the kids at camp seemed extra bratty, and the activities—making dream catchers and collecting interesting rocks—tedious.
By the afternoon, Shelley, who was also in a bad mood—although that seemed to be her default setting—looked up at Christmas and said, in a severe tone, “If your friend doesn’t want the job, you need to let me know. I need to hire someone else if she’s not coming back.”
“She’s just sick,” Christmas spluttered, annoyed with herself for feeling like she was responsible and annoyed with Lexi for putting her in this position. “She’ll definitely be here tomorrow.” Christmas wished she could take that back as soon as she said it; she had no idea what Lexi’s intentions were.
It was with lead feet that Christmas, then, forced herself to bike over to the Hansens’ after work. She longed to avoid a confrontation, to try and dispense with the hard work by sending a “We okay?” or “Feeling better?” text, clinging to the off chance that Lexi would respond with an “All good. See you tomorrow!” But Christmas knew that the time for texting was past. Plus, she couldn’t stand the nervous dread much longer, the bad, bubbly feeling she’d had throughout her since that night on the dock.
She needed to know what was up. And whether or not whatever was broken could be fixed.
Christmas dropped her bike on the front lawn and approached the door. Though she often let herself right in at the Hansens’ when Lexi was in town, she knocked, tentatively, and then, when no one came to the door, a little louder. Eventually she heard padding feet and Mrs. Hansen pulled open the door.
“Hi there, Christmas,” she said. The comfortably built Mrs. Hansen was not usually an excitable person—at least on the surface—but Christmas could see Lexi’s grandmother’s eyes lighting up behind her cat’s-eye frames. “She’s up in her room.”
“Thanks,” Christmas said, heading toward the stairs.
When Christmas got to the landing, she saw Lexi standing at her door, watching glumly.
“Hey,” she said, and then turned and went into her room. Christmas followed.
Though Lexi’s room was vacant most of the year, her grandparents left it alone, so it served as a time capsule, a museum of obsessions from summers past. Christmas took in the half-joking shrine to Harry Styles and scores of hand-woven friendship bracelets from a few summers earlier. On the Bert-and-Ernie style twin beds, pink bedspreads were evidence of the year the girls had decided they wanted all things in millennial pink; face masks that looked like animal snouts from the first pandemic summer; a collection of crystals and gemstones from the summer they wanted to be geologists. This year, Christmas noted, Lexi hadn’t really unpacked. The two duffel bags on the floor by the dresser looked half-exploded, or like garbage that raccoons had gotten into. The narrow bed on the right—the one that Christmas usually slept in—was covered with more clothes, as well as various chargers and devices.
Lexi herself looked a bit unkempt in gray sweatpants and a ragged-looking T-shirt. She sat on her bed while Christmas, unsure of where to put herself, slid down against the wall next to the dresser until she was on the floor, her knees pulled into her chest.
She wondered if Lexi really had been sick, and a feeling of guilt immediately replaced the surge of hope she experienced.
“Do you have . . . like a cold or something?” Christmas asked weakly.
Lexi gave Christmas a withering look. “I’m fine,” she said, as though Christmas was the stupidest person in the world. Her phone buzzed beside her on the bed and Christmas waited, watching her, as Lexi responded to a text. When she was finished, she put the phone facedown and rolled her eyes. “What?” she asked, snootily.
Christmas hunched her shoulders. She wished she hadn’t come.
“I’m not sure why you’re so mad at me,” Christmas said into her knees.
“I’m not mad at you,” Lexi snapped.
Christmas couldn’t bring herself to ask the follow-up question—then why are you treating me like this?—because she realized, with an acute pain, that she might not truly want to hear the answer.
They sat in silence. Lexi’s phone vibrated, but she didn’t pick it up. Instead, she continued to stare, bored and blankly, at a space in the center of the floor.
“I guess . . . I’m not sure what happened,” Christmas tried. “I was so excited for you to come. And I thought we had fun skiing the other day. And then, I know the stuff—that finding Lemy like that—was upsetting, but—”
“It was more than upsetting, Christmas,” Lexi interrupted archly. “You just don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
“He was gay-bashed, Christmas.”
Christmas nodded. After a beat, she said, “That might be true. The cops said—”
“Don’t give me that. You’re just as bad as the rest of them. That’s why I’m upset.” Lexi made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “I’m disappointed. Disappointed in you.”
Christmas swallowed, hard. Her mouth was dry, and her throat felt as though it were constricting. Why hadn’t she stopped at home? She could have had a big glass of water or taken a cool shower. She should have collected herself before this difficult situation.
She realized, dimly, that she hadn’t let herself go home because she would have lost her nerve, that on some level, she’d known this would happen, and she had to force herself to come, unthinkingly, or she wouldn’t have come at all.
Christmas wished she could stick her head out the window, or better yet, make a dash for the door, run out of the house, jump right into the lake and swim home.
Instead, she hugged her legs more tightly and swallowed dryly again. “I know you don’t want to be here,” she said, her voice wobbly. “Maybe you have cooler friends in Pennsylvania, but I thought—”
“You’re right. I don’t want to be here,” Lexi interrupted. “The only reason I am here this year is because my grandparents threatened to take my mother to court if she didn’t bring me. Once I turn eighteen in August, I swear. Fuck this place.”
Christmas closed her eyes and then opened them again, Lexi’s words clicking into place in her mind. She no longer felt as though she would cry. Instead, she felt a searing, painful clarity. She put her palms to the floor and rose, slowly. “All right,” she said. “Fuck this place? All right.” She rolled her neck twice, but she didn’t feel embarrassed. “Well, fuck you, Lexi. You think you’re so much better . . .” She laughed, bitterly. “As if you’re not white trash. Fine, you’re also Dominican,” Christmas said, waving a hand in the air. “’Cause your dad’s a real prince, too, isn’t he? I’d be really proud of him if I were you,” Christmas sneered. “You’re not better than anyone from Sweet Lake. You’re not better than your mother or grandparents. Or me.” She shook her head. “Have a great summer, hot shot,” Christmas said. She left the room.
“Christmas,” Lexi’s called after her in a thin, annoyed voice. “Christmas, wait.”
But Christmas couldn’t wait. Mrs. Hansen, in the kitchen, asked, “Everything okay, honey?” But Christmas didn’t stop. She let herself out the front door and got on her bike and rode the short way to her house, where she dumped her bike in the driveway.
She walked down the lawn and out onto the dock, hardly noticing the stupid algae as she dove out, swimming, hard and far, stopping only when she was in the middle of the dark lake. Panting, she floated on her back, her ears filling with water, only her face breaking through the surface, like an iceberg, she thought. Like an iceberg on this terrible, hot planet, she wished she would simply melt away, and she could almost feel it, first her edges and then the rest of her, dissolving and disappearing, yes, giving up the fight.
22
Life without Lexi: this was the refrain in Christmas’s brain as she ran the next day.
She was tired, having woken during the night to the cracking and popping of fireworks over the lake in the predawn hours, startling noises that felt somehow consistent with her mood, the eerily quiet darkness jolted through with intermittent rage. She lay in bed listening, thinking of Lexi’s scowl, the contempt on her face, the bite in her words.
It might have been her ADHD, or some sort of knee-jerk coping mechanism, but as she ran, she was grateful to find that the wound felt almost cauterized. Her break with Lexi still hurt, but in a new and different way. It was a matter-of-fact, predictable ache. The worst had happened. The other shoe had dropped. There was nothing more, it would seem, for her to really worry about.
When she got back from her run, a text was waiting from Shelley. Lexi had quit. Did Christmas have another friend interested in starting right away?
Christmas texted Rory:
Do you want a job? The day camp needs someone, 9:30-3:30 Monday through Thursday, starting today.
He texted almost immediately: Awesome!
Despite the weight on her heart, Christmas smiled down at her phone.
She liked him more than anyone else she’d ever liked before. She had gone out with a guy named Marshall for a while, and though Marshall was nice-looking and sweet, she’d really only dated him because she was so flattered that he liked her and sort of didn’t want to disappoint him. She’d found kissing him interesting, but not exciting, which pretty much encapsulated the whole dating experience for her so far. They’d parted ways amicably. There’d been someone else too, a little more recently, but Christmas dismissed him from her mind, the way you dismiss a proposal that is simply out of the question. That kiss, or encounter, or whatever, had been a total fluke. A mistake.
But this, with Rory. This was something new.
Getting ready for work, Christmas thought about him, reviewing the things he’d said and how he’d said them, wondering how he perceived her, what he’d been doing since they last saw each other, and whether or not he thought about her as much as she was thinking about him. She imagined kissing him, spending the summer wrapped around each other in the woods by the old bridge, or even on the couch in the den. She imagined the two of them deciding to be serious; she imagined going with him to Brooklyn and visiting him at Cornell.
As she descended the steps to the classrooms in the basement of town hall, Christmas wondered if she should have warned Rory that Shelley could be a bit abrasive. Too late, though: he was already there. Shelley was giving him a rundown of responsibilities while he nodded and smiled. Christmas waved and went to stow her stuff before joining the two of them, just as Shelley wrapped up her introduction.
“Is this one gonna show up?” Shelley asked Christmas, gesturing at Rory.
“I guess you’ll have to ask him,” Christmas said awkwardly, unsure of herself when it came to banter with authority figures.
“I’ll definitely be here,” Rory assured them both. “I’m happy to have a job. Plus,” he said, shrugging adorably, “kids really like me.”
“Hmmm,” Shelley said, moving off, clipboard in hand. “Let’s hope so, because here comes a batch now.”
The kids did like Rory—he seemed to have an endless supply of knock-knock jokes—and he dove into the day’s pet-rock project with enthusiasm and apparent expertise.
The morning, though hot—the AC was apparently already on the fritz—went quickly. With the kids parked in front of a video, Rory swept up scraps of yarn while Christmas scraped Elmer’s glue off the tabletops, thinking of Lexi, but also remembering her own words, her nastiness about Lexi’s parents.
“Hey,” Rory said, nudging her with his elbow. “You okay?”
“Oh,” Christmas said. “Yeah. Just thinking. Just hot.”
“You two,” Shelley said, waving a clipboard at them. “Justine’s mom is picking her up early. And with the twins absent, I can handle the group if you’d like to take your lunch break together.”
“Awesome,” Rory said quickly, leaving Christmas to look at her feet and wonder if there were a class or something that they offered in Brooklyn that taught young people how to interact confidently with adults. “Thanks, Shelley,” he added, smiling.
“Half an hour,” Shelley said, glancing at the wall clock. “Be back by twelve thirty.”
They grabbed their sandwiches and ascended the stairs to sit at the picnic tables in the field next to the parking lot. Settled in the shade, Christmas inhaled deeply, liking the summer smell of the hot asphalt.
“What do you think so far?” Christmas asked. “Are you glad you took the job?”
“For sure,” Rory said. “It’s easy, right? And it makes my mom happy. She was harassing me about finding something to do. She started generating these long lists of house repairs and when I’d say I didn’t know how to do what she wanted, she kept insisting I could just watch YouTube videos to figure it out.”
“Are you handy?” Christmas asked.
“Not at all,” Rory said, biting into his bagel. “I can fix a bike, but that’s about it. Hey, did you run already today?” he asked, chewing.
“I did,” Christmas said. “I go most mornings.” She looked at her own sandwich. She wasn’t hungry; it was a side effect of her medicine, she knew. She forced herself to take a bite and then added, “I saw one of Shelley’s peacocks. Over past the old railroad stop. It made this incredible noise—scared me half to death.”
Rory smiled. “She keeps peacocks? That’s cool.” When Christmas nodded he said, “I guess you probably encounter a lot of animals on your runs.”
“Yeah. Wild turkeys and vultures, possum. I saw a coyote once. But mostly it’s just deer and dogs. I was chased by a dog one time.”
“What happened?”
“I was going along and then it came running up at me—snarling and snapping. I was terrified. I kicked him, right in the mouth. I didn’t feel good about it—I mean I love animals, but it was a him-or-me moment. He sort of backed up and he looked like he was ready for round two, but the owner came running out, screaming and hollering, and grabbed the dog and then the dog bit him—it was a scene. I carry pepper spray usually, but I didn’t have it that day.” Christmas shuddered, remembering. “The whole thing was pretty horrible, to tell the truth. I really thought for a minute that I was gonna die. Like, I thought, I’m gonna be mauled by this dog. But then, I don’t know, it was like a reflex to protect myself.”
“You’re a fighter,” Rory said. “That’s what you found out that day.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Christmas said.
Christmas noticed Mr. Ford’s shiny gold pickup pulling into the lot.
“So, did you send off that water sample yet?” Rory asked.
Christmas cringed. Being reminded of a looming task, feeling as though she had something important to do that she’d neglected: these were depressingly familiar old friends. “I forgot all about it,” she admitted. “I don’t know, I guess I set the kit down somewhere at home and . . . out of sight, out of mind?” She shook her head. “If I don’t write things down or take a note in my phone, I usually don’t remember to do them.”
She was going to say more, but was distracted by Mr. Ford, who was getting out of his truck and carrying a bunch of those cardboard tubes that hold plans and blueprints. Rory said something reassuring and she took another bite of her sandwich.
Mr. Ford, noticing them, waved. She hoped he would just keep walking, but being the friendly type of guy he was, he approached the picnic table.
“Chrissy,” Mr. Ford said, nodding. He turned to Rory. “You’re Naomi’s boy?”
“Yeah,” Rory said. “Hi. I’m Rory Gold-Kelly.”
“Rory Gold-Kelly,” Mr. Ford repeated, and Christmas heard just a note of amused sarcasm in his voice. She had never heard Rory’s full name, and it sounded beautiful, musical, to her. “You and your mom enjoying the house this summer?”
Rory nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“And you,” Mr. Ford said. “I heard about what you did. You and that friend of yours deserve medals.” He beamed at Christmas.
