Second Chance Summer (39 page)

Fourteen people—and a dog—were probably a few too many for our dock, but we all crowded on and had more or less settled by the time the next firework shot up into the sky, almost directly above us.

I ended up toward the back of the dock, sitting near the chair my mother had carried down for my dad. I glanced behind me, to see if Henry was coming over from his house, but so far, no sign of him. I had no idea how long the work at the bakery would take, and all he’d told me about my surprise was that it would happen after the fireworks. But after checking for him a few times, I let myself just relax and enjoy the show. And maybe it was that I hadn’t seen a fireworks display on the Fourth in a few years (I’d been out of the country or trying to learn to speak another language), but it seemed
pretty impressive. Certainly more so than I remembered from the last time we were up here to watch them.

I tipped my head back and just watched the bursts of color and light that were taking over the sky, reflecting on the water below. After a series of particularly spectacular ones, the group on the dock clapped, and the dog raced toward me at full speed.

“Sorry,” Davy, who’d been holding him, said as he turned back to me. I grabbed the dog before he fell into the water—we weren’t sure of Murphy’s swimming abilities—and picked him up. As I did, I noticed that he was trembling violently. “I don’t think he likes the noise.”

“I’ll bring him inside,” I said, pushing myself up to standing.

“Thanks, kid,” my dad said, giving the dog’s dangling paw a squeeze as we passed. “He probably doesn’t understand what’s happening. Poor thing must think he stumbled into a war zone.”

“Actually,” I heard Wendy say from farther up the dock, “dogs’ ears are amazingly sensitive. So what we’re hearing is being amplified ten or twenty times for him.”

I walked up to the house, feeling the dog flinch in my arms whenever a firework exploded. And I realized my father was probably right—if you had nobody to tell you we were only celebrating, you could easily think that the world was coming to an end. I dropped him inside the house, where he immediately fled down the hall to my room. Maybe it was because I had a bedskirt, but I’d
noticed that the dog tended to hide under there whenever it was thunderstorming. It was, apparently, his safe place.

As I started to head down the hill again, I realized that the sound of fireworks had stopped—I’d missed the finale. And sure enough, I saw the group on the dock begin to stand and make their way up the hill. I continued down, figuring that I would probably be needed to help and not wanting to risk my mother’s wrath a second time.

Fifteen minutes later, I had helped my mom clean up, said my good-byes to everyone, thanked people for coming, and promised to call Lucy later and tell her what Henry’s surprise had been about. My father, exhausted, had gone right to bed, with Warren helping him up the stairs.

“I guess that’s it,” my mom said, as she picked the last abandoned plate up off the lawn and looked around, as though making sure that everything was in order. Gelsey was still on the lawn, darting from one citronella candle to the other, blowing them out. “Gels,” she yelled to my sister, “bedtime!”

In the light left by the last candle, I watched as my sister dropped into a low arabesque, her leg almost parallel above her. “Five minutes!” she called back, her voice slightly muffled.

My mother nodded and turned back to me. “And not too late for you,” she said. I nodded as well, feeling myself smile. I’d received a text mid-cleanup from Henry, asking me to meet him on the dock
in twenty minutes for my surprise. Even though I had no idea what we’d be doing or how long we’d be out, my curfew, such as it was, had gotten very relaxed over the summer. All my mother had asked was that I come in at a reasonable hour, and quietly.

I set out for the dock a little early, which was when I noticed that Henry was also walking toward the dock, the white of his shirt bright against the darkness of the night. “Hey,” I called, and Henry stopped and turned around, smiling when he saw me.

“Hi there,” he said. Taking advantage of the darkness, and the fact that his brother wasn’t around to make gagging sounds at us, I slid my arms around his neck and kissed him. He kissed me back, hugging me hard and lifting me off my feet for just a second, which he seemed to like to do occasionally, if just to remind me that he was now taller than I was.

“You missed the show,” I said, when we broke apart after a moment.

“Did I?” he asked, his tone strangely neutral. “Too bad.”

“So?” I asked, looking around. “My surprise?”

Henry smiled and took my hand. “At the dock,” he said. We were walking down together when I heard a noise behind me and turned to see my sister was still on the lawn. I was about to say something, remind her to go inside, when I saw her shaking a sparkler out of the box. As I watched, it suddenly burst into flame, and Gelsey held it up as she danced her way back toward the house,
big traveling leaps and a series of small
chine
turns, the sparker leaving streaks of light behind her until she rounded the corner of the house, her light still burning brightly behind her.

It turned out there was a good reason that Henry had told me my surprise was down at the dock. It was a boat.

“More than a boat,” he said. He’d assembled everything down at the dock, and had turned on the Coleman lantern that he was now holding up to give us some light. Tied up to the dock, bobbing in the water, was a rowboat. It was lined with sleeping bags and it looked surprisingly cozy—something I’d never thought a boat could really be.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, as I climbed down the dock ladder and stepped carefully into the boat, which immediately pitched from side to side, and for one heart-stopping moment, seemed like it was going to turn over. I knew that the Crosbys had a few kayaks, but I was pretty sure I would have noticed the rowboat at our dock.

“Borrowed it from one of Dad’s best customers,” he said. “I’m giving him a coffee cake tomorrow to thank him. But we have to get going.”

“Okay,” I said, completely confused about what the rush was, but settling myself onto the front bench. Henry took the back, and started to row us across the lake with surprising skill. I turned to
face him, and pulled my knees up to my chest as I just enjoyed the ride, the way we skimmed fast over the lake until we were far enough from the dock that it appeared tiny.

Henry stopped rowing and hooked the oars over the sides. Then he pulled out his phone to check the time, the light of his screen unexpectedly bright. “Okay,” he said. “Almost time.”

I looked around. We were in the middle of the lake; I couldn’t see what we were almost on time for. “Henry?” I asked.

He smiled, and turned off the lantern. He lowered himself onto the floor of the rowboat, on the sleeping bags, and gestured for me to do the same. I did, crawling up to meet him. When I was next to him, he lay back down and I followed, ducking under his arm and finding my spot. We rocked in the boat for a moment, the only sound that of the water lapping against the sides and the cicadas humming all around us. He leaned down and kissed me quickly, then traced his finger down my cheek and smiled at me. “Ready for your surprise?” he asked.

“I am,” I said, looking around, wondering if I was missing something. “But—” Just as I started to say this, I heard the
hiss
of another firework being let off. And then, right above us, a firework exploded, huge and golden, seeming to take up the whole sky. “What is this?” I asked, looking up at him, but only briefly, as more fireworks were coming, one right after another.

“I go to school with one of the guys who works for this company,”
he said. “And he agreed to delay a couple, so that we could get a really good spot to see them.”

“This is amazing,” I murmured, looking straight up above me into the night sky, watching it get overtaken by bursts of color and light. I had never before seen fireworks lying in a boat and looking up at them, but I knew as I watched them above me, that it would be now the only way I would ever want to see them. “Thank you,” I said, still not quite able to believe that Henry had arranged this—a private fireworks show, just for us. I stretched up and kissed him, and behind my closed lids, I could still see the flashes of light as the display continued in the sky above us.

After a few more fireworks, the show ended, and Henry and I clapped from the boat, even though we knew that nobody would be able to hear us. And even though watching the fireworks had been the whole reason for taking the boat out, it was so nice, just drifting there, that neither of us seemed to feel any need to go back right away. We unzipped one of the sleeping bags and slipped into it, as it was starting to get a little chilly, not to mention damp, out on the lake.

We kissed until my lips were numb and my heart was racing, and we were both out of breath, and then our kisses changed to ones that were more lingering and softer, and then, when we were taking a small break to get our breath back, we just started talking, as we drifted across the lake, the sky huge and star-filled above us.

Maybe it was because it was dark, or because we weren’t looking
right at each other, or because it was just what happens when you’re lying in a rowboat with someone. But we started talking about much more serious things than we had yet talked about. I told him what had happened with my mother, and how seeing her about to cry had scared me so much. He told me about how he worried about Davy, especially since he would be leaving for college in a year and wouldn’t be there to take care of him. And I told him what I hadn’t said out loud yet, but had been thinking for the last few weeks—that I knew my father was getting worse, and I was terrified about what was going to come.

The gaps in our conversation got longer and longer, and I finally closed my eyes and rested my head against Henry’s chest, feeling warm and secure in his arms, surrounded by the soft flannel of the sleeping bag, with the boat rocking me gently back and forth. I felt myself yawn, and a moment later, I heard Henry echo me, and even though I’d had trouble sleeping all summer, I could feel myself falling into sleep, right there in Henry’s arms, under the stars.

It was starting to get light out by the time we woke up and rowed back to the dock. I’d woken up to find that I had a series of mosquito bites on my neck—pretty much the only piece of me that had been out of the sleeping bag—while Henry had gotten about five on his hand. At first, I’d been incredibly embarrassed that I’d fallen asleep, wiping my mouth quickly, just hoping that I hadn’t drooled on him by accident, hoping that my breath wasn’t terrible. I’d never slept
next to anyone (unless Lucy on my trundle bed counted, and I had a feeling that it didn’t) and was worried that I’d accidentally kicked him, or muttered in my sleep, or something.

But if I had, Henry didn’t mention it and didn’t seem bothered. I pulled the sleeping bag around my shoulders as I sat next to him on the back beam while he rowed us home. Henry had a faint crease mark along the side of his face, from where he’d slept on the sleeping bag’s seam, and his hair was sticking up in little tufts all over. And for some reason, this made him look even cuter than he normally did.

We tied up the boat and took the equipment out of it, moving quickly. Mr. Crosby normally left for the bakery a little before six, and Henry wanted to get inside so that he could pretend he’d been sleeping there the whole time.

“Thank you for my surprise,” I said, trying with all my might to resist the urge to scratch at the mosquito bites on my neck.

“Of course,” he said, leaning down and kissing me quickly. “I’ll call you later?”

I felt myself smile, and as I stretched up to kiss him again, I found I no longer cared if my breath was terrible.

I walked up the yard and around the side of the house, humming the tune that Warren had gotten stuck in my head. I was about to head inside when I stopped short—my dad was sitting at the table on the screened-in porch, a mug of coffee in front of him.

I swallowed hard and climbed the porch steps, feeling my face get hot. “Hi,” I murmured, trying to smooth my hair down, knowing exactly what this looked like.

My father was wearing his familiar blue pinstripe pajamas, with a plaid robe over them. He shook his head at me as he took a sip of his coffee, but there was something in his expression that let me know just how much he was enjoying this. “Late night?” he asked.

“Kind of,” I said, feeling myself blushing harder than ever. “Um, Henry took me out in a rowboat to see some fireworks, and then we kind of fell asleep.” Just hearing it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded.

My dad shook his head. “If I had a dime for every time I’d heard that excuse,” he said gravely, making me laugh. He arched an eyebrow at me, and I recognized the pun expression, even on my father’s much thinner face. “I’m afraid that excuse isn’t going to
float
,” he said, as I groaned, and took the seat next to him. “It’s kind of an either-
oar
situation. And if it doesn’t
hold water
…”

“Enough,” I said, laughing. I looked at him as he lifted the mug with both hands and took another sip. “Why are you up so early?”

He faced the back of the screened porch, the side that looked out to the water. “Wanted to watch the sunrise,” he said. I looked in that direction as well, and we sat in silence for a moment. “I should probably be lecturing you,” he said, glancing over at me. “But…” He trailed off and smiled at me, shrugging. He pointed outside, where
the whole sky was turning the palest shade of pink, the color of Gelsey’s pointe shoes. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he asked, his voice not more than a whisper.

I had to clear my throat before I could speak again. “It is,” I murmured.

“I don’t know how many of these I’ve missed, or just taken for granted,” he said, his eyes on the lake. “And I told myself I was going to get up for one every morning. But I have to tell you, kid,” he said, looking over at me, “I’m just so tired.”

And as he said it, I realized that he did look exhausted, and in a way that I’d never seen before. There were deep lines in his face I didn’t recognize, and bags underneath his eyes. It looked like the kind of tired that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t come close to making up for, the kind of tired that went down to your bones.