Chapter 4: The Beginning of July

Before the End of August

We had to figure out if the tennis courts were still there too, so we went back to the silo the very next day. Lydia was obsessed with finding the tennis courts. 

“It’s like you expect to find a tennis bracelet belonging to a mobster’s wife strung in the grass,” Jenna teased her. We had propped our bikes up against the crumbling silo wall, and we were exploring the shallow field next to it, looking for traces where I thought the tennis court might be.

“It was just west of the silo, so it would have to be here. The ground is level enough.” I walked along what looked like an edge, and tripped halfway over something sticking out of the ground. “What is this?”

Jenna ran toward me but veered at the last second toward the opposite side of the clearing. “Thanks for the support,” I shouted at her.

“Look.” She was pointing down into the grass at her feet. A silver post protruded out of the ground, like the one I had tripped over. “There’s one here too. I bet this is where the net was!” 

Lydia stood halfway between us. “It’s definitely the right size. Now if only we knew if they used it for mob retreats…or addled inmates!” 

My internet searching the night before hadn’t produced anything new, just the same speculations from the original message board. No confirmed mob sightings, no person whose uncle had once been placed in an institution out this way, not even word of the new development encroaching over the little world we had found. 

From back here, we could just see the backs of the construction site houses, the long limbs of naked wood rising up, too perpendicular to the ground, a perfect contrast with the winding branches of the trees that surrounded us. 

We traced the edge of the tennis court and circled back around the silo, not ready to tread further into the woods. 

Tonight, we weren’t ready to stay too late. Before the sun sank behind the trees, we pulled our bikes back into the gravel road of the new development.

“Do you think anyone else knows about this place? Or is it just ours?” Jenna wondered, looking at the tire treads marking the road, unchanged since our first time walking the arched street. 

“I’m going to guess there’s a construction crew that knows about it.” Lydia looked across between the houses. “And at least one guy who likes Doritos.” She kicked at a chip bag on the ground at her feet, a shocking orange in the otherwise gray and green darkness. 

Jenna turned to look at one of the most complete houses in the row, one of the few that had walls, not just the tall beams of support with the wind whipping through. “Do you think that Ralphie’s brother knows about it?”

My insides lurched when she said Ralphie’s name, and I felt like the world contracted for a moment, but my hands held steady on my handlebars, and the gravel kept crunching beneath my feet. I let Lydia and Jenna speculate on either side of me.

“Why would he know about it?”

“He was always the guy who knew stuff before he left. Remember how he and Devi’s sister found that old abandoned bus and threw a party on it?” 

“Was he the one who got in trouble for making that storage closet into a nap room and charging people money to ditch classes in there?”

“I thought that was just a rumor. But I know for a fact that he figured out a way to house sit for that one house that sits over the pond, just so he could see Tracy McDonagan’s house on the other side of the lake.” 

“Ew, that’s kind of creepy.”

“No, she was into it. She finally just spray painted a note on a beach towel and held it up to get him to ask her out.” 

“I bet someone wishes that they could hold up a beach towel to get someone to ask her out.” Lydia punched my shoulder, and I jumped out of my own thoughts.

“Ha, ha.” I drew out each laugh sarcastically. “It’s not like we have time for anything to happen anyway. It’s July today, vacation tomorrow, college in a month and a half, and then I am only worried about staying friends with you. I don’t need to see everyone forever or to date anyone before I leave.”

“Aw, she loves us,” Jenna said in a syrupy voice as Lydia started making kissing noises. “She loves us even more than a dark-haired boy in a green baseball hat.” 

My cheeks flushed, and I was glad that the new subdivision had no street lights yet. We had just reached the secret entrance back onto the golf course path and were getting ready to get back on our bikes. 

“I’m just saying,” I talked toward Lydia, “that at least I know how to navigate the minefield of pre-college dating potential. Instead of making Devi run Box ragged while he secretly pines for someone else.” 

“For a blonde-haired girl in a pink baseball hat,” Jenna shouted, and Lydia faked a frown.

“Hey, my hat is pink!” 

“Just saying,” I said again and started pedaling fast down the path through the dark. 


I slowed down at the underpass to let Lydia and Jenna catch up, now sweating in the darkness, mosquitoes attracted to our sweet smell in the underpass's shadow.

“That is a very useful phrase,” Jenna pondered as we rode in sync, three across the long suburban road. 

“What is?”

“'Just saying,’ you can say anything and if you end it with that, it feels like it might be true. And maybe it is, or maybe it’s not.” 

“I like it,” I declared. “Because I am just saying, and what’s the harm in that?”

“Okay,” Jenna took the bait. “You and Ralphie would be cute together.” She grinned at me as we passed the library with its looming black doorways in the dark, kids’ handprint drawings ominous on the windows at night. “Just saying.” 

“I can play this game too,” Lydia jumped in. “Jenna, you would be better off at a job without that jerk. Just saying.” 

Jenna seemed hurt for a moment, then assented with a quick nod of her head. “That’s probably true.” 

“My turn.” I turned to Lydia. “Lydia, darling, the blonde hope of men across the grade levels, freshman through senior, athlete to geek, you would look really great if you dyed your hair. Just saying.” 

Lydia pulled off her hat and yanked her hair out of its ponytail. 

“Well, if you’re just saying, what do you think? A bit of blue like Jenna? Or go black to compete with Devi for Best Hair and make Box’s choice even more difficult?”

“I think he’s got it hard enough as it is,” Jenna laughed. “But you will always be too good for him. Or anyone. Just saying.” She turned toward me. “And you will always be too good for Ralphie, or whatever college boy comes next. Just saying. And I,” she paused dramatically, “I will always be too good for you two losers. Just saying.” 

She pedaled off laughing, and we pedaled behind her, leaving our laughter behind us on the soft night air, probably waking up neighbors, causing little girls to look out their windows and wonder when that would be them, out there in the night, saying words to her friends and the stars that would be true and beyond true and lies all at once. 

✷

After our night of honesty, we wouldn’t be back to the silo for nearly three weeks, the thick heat of July passing around us without a chance to explore the site again. 

First, I went on vacation with my family. We went every summer to a flock of cabins in the woods, each of my cousins’ families piling into the respective cabins around us, under the grand trees at the edge of Lake Wendabranch. My mom and her brothers had grown up going to the lake, and now we went too, for one week a summer, to jump between rafts in the chilly water, to swim like madness and scream like murder when one of the cousins threw seaweed on us while we swam. 

As kids, our sole focus was on the water. When could we swim? How long could we swim? Where did the goggles go? Who took my pool noodle? Why do we have to stop swimming? Now, most of us were teenagers, and the focus was the boats and the sun. When could we take the boat out? Why couldn’t we take it out by ourselves? Could we take it out sooner? And, be quiet, I’m laying in the sun. 

If we couldn’t take the boat out, we would each find a pier and lay in the sunshine listening to music and eating chips. We slept in the sun until our skin turned pink. We ate chips out of warm foil bags until our beach towels smelled like sour cream and onion. And at night, we would pile into someone’s cabin after dinner, watching outdated VHS tapes on the cabin TV or finding local cable channels playing sitcoms that our parents wouldn’t like. 

For all of the people around me at the lake, grandparents in for a day, parents in the room next door at night, siblings on couches and cousins a shout away, what I remember most about that summer were the still times between the chaos, when I lay by myself on the sticky reclining chair on the pier or on the floral print couch on the porch, or on my own bunk at night, staring up at the ceiling as I felt myself back in the lake’s waves again, falling asleep as I imagined the unfamiliar doors of my college dorm, amalgams of visits I had gone on and TV shows I had seen. 

College loomed ahead of me, and as packed as our week away was, I sensed the distance, for the first time, from my friends. Here, my cousins would be around for a long time, my grandparents kept us strung together, the all-important angels on top of our family Christmas tree, but my friends, no longer bound by our school or our suburb, felt tenuous, only being away on vacation for a week. 

Lying in my bunk one afternoon, after everyone else had gone for another circle around the lake, I found myself holding on to each memory, as closely as I could, inspecting each schedule I could remember from the start of high school, each path I had taken since my freshman year. I waved my toes in the air above me, tracing the swooping pattern of the curtain’s shadow from the top bunk. Jenna and me, starting together in gym class where we only knew each other. Lydia close by, since second period Spanish, where we all waited to see if the first-year teacher would make it to year number two. (He didn’t.) Meeting Box, adding Devi, watching Eduardo flirt with every girl in our class before he and Cocoa started going out, our first times at Sparky’s for fries and milkshakes and our most recent. 

My mind paused over Ralphie, as if I were grabbing up every memory that had spilled across the floor as fast as I could, like a dazed grocer in a cartoon after a roadrunner comes through, onions and apples and potatoes bouncing down a street and I was trying to grab them all at once. But at Ralphie, I stopped, not ready to pick that up just yet. 

You’d look good together. Just saying. You are too good for him. Just saying. The pressure of being the central character crushed me. Who cared if we looked good together? Who cared if someone was better than the other, as if that could even be measured, provided someone isn’t a complete jerk? Ralphie’s dark hair floated in front of my mind, and I had the sensation once again that I had had at the party, of Ralphie’s voice floating over my shoulder. Just saying. 

I jumped out of bed, refusing to stay here with my thoughts, unable to find my college daydream with this face circling before me. I would go back out to the lake. I would play with my younger cousins. I would launch them up in the water and I wouldn’t put seaweed on their heads and I would even pull them around in the slow old raft shaped like a duck because that was what they wanted and I was a good older cousin and a good person. Just saying.

✷

When I got back from vacation, it felt at first as if a million years had gone by. The first leg of the reading program was done at the library, and the hands plastered across the windows had been pulled down. Helping hands around the world was complete. Next up, taking a train to education station, and the kids had begun coloring train cars for every book they read, filling up our windows now with red and green boxcars. 

Jenna had left the night shifts for good, switching to an earlier shift that made her more stressed about getting to sleep but less sad. It was a good trade-off. Lydia continued filling us in on pool drama, and we got so accustomed to the regular updates that we had a theme song and everything. Pool drama, pool pool drama, the people at the pool have drama drama drama, and who wants to hear it? Me!

Eduardo had caught Levi eating his sandwiches, and he tried to get him back by spreading toothpaste on one of them instead of mayonnaise. But Levi thought the weird flavor just came from it sitting near the old cake in the fridge, so he kept on eating them even after Eduardo told him that hardened mayo was actually toothpaste.

Cocoa continued to drive them all mad with her long legs getting tanner and tanner every day. Lydia had heard this complaint specifically several times from Eduardo on days when he got extra mopey and forgot that Lydia didn’t care. Eduardo had also seemed to think that sandwiches and Cocoa’s dismissal of him were related, and didn’t understand why she wasn’t more impressed by his clever toothpaste trick. When Lydia was bored at the desk, she would ask Eduardo about his plans to get Lydia back. They seemed to rotate between: (1) watch the pool really closely and save a drowning child, should that opportunity arise and all of the actual lifeguards fail in their duties; (2) wait until she and Peter broke up…or Peter died; or (3) trick Peter into eating a toothpaste sandwich. 

Lydia had recounted all of these to us on different occasions, but when it was time for pool drama gossip time in mid-July, she quieted us dramatically with a spin and clamp of her hand and announced Eduardo’s newest plan. 

“Eduardo will win Cocoa back…through music.”

Jenna and I looked at each other, confused. “Does Eduardo play music? Or is this like a play-a-famous-song-over-a-loudspeaker move?” 

“He does play. Apparently he was in a band with Zachary in middle school, and he thinks that he can bring the band back together to play at the summer festival, and that is what will win Cocoa back.”

That is why we ended up going to the summer festival. That is how Lydia started playing her violin in public. That is how Jenna learned she could sing. And that is how I ended up filming the first few lines of the Yellowcard song they were trying to cover along with the whole fight that interrupted it.

After two practice sessions in Eduardo’s garage, Eduardo declared them good enough to perform. Zachary declared them good enough to win, thinking it was a battle of the bands competition (it wasn’t), but Eduardo took that to mean winning back Cocoa, and he slapped a high five in exuberant solidarity. 

The music stage was across the street from the rides, the main part of the fair that I had been to before. A half-hearted Ferris wheel spun near the football fields. An arcade shooting game squawked at the corner as you waited in line to buy tickets. Hot dogs were three tickets. The Tilt-A-Whirl was six. The Ferris wheel was five, but you had to wait in line and it only went around once. For the three of us, every dollar we spent meant more hours in our cold offices, libraries, and stores, so we carefully converted some of our money into a sheet of tickets, just enough for a hot dog and ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl each. 

The performance would be that night, and the band had plenty of time to get amped up on shooting games and face paint, Eduardo particularly fiery after seeing Cocoa carrying a large plush daisy, won for her by Peter. 

The band went on at 6:15 p.m., just a little too early to be cool, since alcohol wouldn’t be served until 7 p.m. At 6 p.m., I wished Jenna and Lydia luck, and slid into one of the front rows with my handheld camera, determined to capture the masterpiece we were about to witness. 

The first few minutes of my footage are confused, as I zoom in and out, waiting for the band to come on stage. A man in the front row across from me takes a bite out of an out-of-focus turkey leg. The camera whips around when someone shouts my name, and Cocoa enters, Peter at her side, trailed by three boys that I can only imagine are the Peacocks from the pool. Devi rushes up to me and jumps into the seat, leaning into the way of the camera with a grimacing grin, as if she was caught unprepared for the camera, something that had surely never happened to her then, and I still doubt has happened to her now. The Peacocks squeeze in behind the turkey leg eater, and Ralphie and Box slide in the side of our row, sneaking in with contraband snacks from the Walgreens down the street. The camera cuts. 

We sat there for a few minutes waiting for the band, Devi and I teasing Box about needing snacks everywhere he went, him defending himself by whipping a licorice string in front of Devi’s face. “If you hate it so much, why are you eating all of them?” She snapped her teeth forward and caught the string midair as he tried to hit her face with them. She bit off a chunk. “If you’re going to hit me in the face with them, I guess I’ll eat some.” 

The Peacocks watched us, flirting and snacks from rival teenagers they didn’t know, and I felt them stir over my shoulder, pointing at the turkey eater and prodding each other in our direction, Levi flipping Cocoa’s ponytail and her turning around to tell him to knock it off. 

We heard rummaging backstage, and the camera clicks back into life, the definite events back in play, not just my memories of licorice and Devi’s hair cascading over the back of a silver folding chair. Lydia slides out from behind the curtain, violin in hand, spotting me and giving me a quick wave with the bow as she finds her place. Jenna walks on stage, not looking like her normal self. She is determined, but not confident. Behind them, Zachary sits behind a drum kit, and Eduardo struts out holding his guitar. He spots Cocoa in the row beside Peter, not unexpected—he is just glad she’s there, and Zachary counts them off. 

It’s a shame because those first few bars are good. Jenna nails the verse, and I think she would have found her confidence by the chorus. Lydia’s entrance is heavenly. As the camera pans between the two of them, we catch glimpses of Zachary bouncing and mumbling along to the song, and Eduardo alternating between eyes-closed crooning and straight-on stares at Cocoa, obviously doing this for her. 

The camera doesn’t catch what started the fight, but suddenly Cocoa’s chair tumbles forward into my view, right as Jenna is picking up in the chorus. Peter reaches out to grab Cocoa, and I pan over to the Peacocks together, fighting each other, fighting the man with the turkey leg, fighting the security guard who comes running down the aisle. The camera drops right as Box and Ralphie shove their contraband snacks into their pockets, an unnecessary instinct from getting caught at the movie theater before, and it all goes black as we hear Devi laughing and the band stumbling to a stop. 

Eduardo’s plan failed. The Peacocks started a fight with a stranger, and Eduardo’s magic music enchantment fell apart, and he would have to go back to trying to trick Peter into eating a toothpaste sandwich. 

✷

We took the long way around leaving the carnival, diverting away from the main pathway, and walking along the backside of the rides, the long stretch behind the tents where the power cords wrapped through. Ahead of the group, Devi found a way to get more of Box’s licorice, and Ralphie fell behind the rest, in lockstep with me. 

“Were you impressed by their song?” I asked him. 

“You know, I never thought I was that musical, but something tells me I could handle a performance like that.” 

“Hey, I heard that,” Lydia yelled over her shoulder. “You could not!” 

“I didn’t mean you! I meant…” Ralphie waved her off, but Lydia had already lost interest, catching up to Box, as we reentered the flow of the carnival. 

The Ferris wheel gate swung open to let people off, and Ralphie and I were cut off from the rest as the elderly couples and parents with children flooded between us and everyone else. Ralphie got a bit ahead and paused for me near the entrance to the kiddie coaster. 

“I think we lost them.” I stood on my tiptoes, looking ahead through the crowd. Lost them like I wanted to or I didn’t, I wondered.

Ralphie was looking at me, laughing. “What’s so funny?’

“You’re just doing so much work to see, what, three inches higher?” 

“Not all of us are human stepladders.” I looked up at his face, head tilted. 

“Next,” called the carnival worker at the gate to the kiddie coaster. “Are you guys riding?”

I began to shake my head, but Ralphie pulled out a booklet of tickets. “Wanna go? My brother gave me these, and I’ve got to use them up.” 

“Sure, I don’t love rollercoasters though.” 

“This one won’t be too bad.”

We climbed onto the seats at the very back, where you were supposed to get the most whip, the rumors said. The yellow train, painted with markings of a python, began to move. 

“Here we go,” Ralphie said. Seeing my nervous face, he looked down. “Don’t worry, I’m sure they can stop it if you need to.”

The python chugged forward at a sluggish pace. 

“Is this it?” I whispered. 

“Maybe?” He returned my look of confusion. Suddenly the python jolted forward. The little boys at the front of the train screamed, and I caught a scream in my throat as well.

The snake wound around several times, climbed a hill and sank down again, and then slammed to a stop at last at the platform. I felt Ralphie’s hand, warm next to mine on the seat beside us, for a second, before the safety bar unclicked in front of us, and he lifted his hand away to pull himself out of the seat.

“Well, how did you like that rollercoaster experience?” We were walking back into the crowd, past a line of parents and kids now waiting to get on the python. 

“It was actually okay,” I started to say, when suddenly arms were wrapped around my shoulders and Lydia was behind me, giving me a hug around my back. 

“Where did you go?” she squealed, “We lost you, and we saw the Peacocks get kicked out of the whole place! It was amazing. They must have done something else because the security guy literally said, ‘You’re never coming back here again,’ and then Levi said, ‘Fine,’ and tried to spit on him but he missed and it just went down his chin. I can’t believe it, he’s going to be so mad at work.” 

I turned to explain to Ralphie who the Peacocks were, a name that hadn’t been mentioned earlier, but he was talking to Box on the other side of me, and Jenna and Lydia were pulling me off in their direction. We waved goodbye to Box and Ralphie, I shouted thanks for the rollercoaster, locking eyes with Ralphie for a second, and then we were gone, walking back down the long streets away from the carnival so that Lydia could get her violin home safely, so that Jenna could get sleep before her early shift, and so I could go back to my bedroom, stare at my ceiling, and wonder what I had just done.

✷