The Big Summer Read online

  My father had me in his arms and sprinted through the fiery hallway, thundering down the stairs and dashing out onto the front lawn. He put me facedown on the grass and told me that he would be back as soon as he could; he was just going to get Mom. Then he said that he loved me.

  Coughing and rubbing at my burning eyes, I watched him sprint up the steps and disappear inside to look for my mother. And then I watched as the fire won the battle against our house and the roof collapsed, sending sparks shooting up into the sky.

  As debris started raining down around me, I pressed my face back near the cool earth. A piece of burning wood landed on the back of my leg. I still have the scar.

  And though it makes me sad to think of them, and I wish desperately that things had been different, I’m still grateful every single day for Aunt Nellie. Without her, I don’t know where I’d be.

  I tore my eyes away from the photograph and continued up the stairs to my bedroom. There, I awaited the fumes sure to waft up from the kitchen as my wonderful aunt tried unsuccessfully to make dinner.

  . . .

  To call the lasagna burnt would be a euphemism. It was crusty and dry and tasted of … charcoal.

  We ate in silence, not for lack of conversation, but for the fact that both our jaws were working furiously to grind the brittle noodles into something we could swallow.

  I waited for a lapse between crunches to begin the most important sales pitch of my life. “Um, Aunt Nellie, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “You don’t like the lasagna, huh?”

  “Well, no,” I told her. “But there’s something else.”

  She drained half of her glass of cola, discreetly pushing her plate away. “Shoot, kiddo.”

  “Remember that thing that happened a few weeks back at Jessie Stuart’s party?”

  Her smile faltered. “Of course.”

  I tried to hide the shudder that raced up my spine at the memory. “That was … bad, right?”

  She nodded.

  “But it wasn’t just bad all of a sudden,” I told her. “Things have been bad at school for … a while. And I’ve always, you know, stayed quiet about it and accepted it as something that couldn’t change. I kept my mouth shut.”

  Aunt Nellie put a cool hand on my arm and shook her head. “Why didn’t you talk to me about any of this?”

  “I am now,” I offered weakly. “And that’s kinda what I want to talk to you about. After the party, I decided that enough was enough. I’m ready to make a change.”

  “Will, honey … I had no idea.”

  “I don’t want to make you feel bad. I—” I took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I want to move to New Jersey.”

  Aunt Nellie blinked a few times. “You … what?”

  “Not forever,” I added. “Just for the summer. There’s this little beach town I found online called Seaside City. I want one summer to be different. I want to reinvent myself a little.” I gave her my most innocent smile and hoped for the best.

  “Hmm,” she mused. I couldn’t believe it; she was actually entertaining the thought.

  “I did a ton of research, Aunt Nellie. I even found us an apartment for a really good price!”

  She smiled at that. “Really? You found an apartment on your own?”

  I nodded. “I even talked a few times to the landlord and bargained down the price.”

  “You’re really something else, kiddo.” She laughed. “You’re actually serious about this?”

  “Totally,” I replied. “And I have a list of all the things I need to do over the summer. By the end, hopefully things will be better.”

  She chewed on her lower lip (probably resorting to autocannibalism after the failed lasagna) and scratched at her chin. I held my breath, waiting for her answer.

  “Will,” she said finally, “I expect you to get a job, because you’ll be contributing to the rent. I would like a printed list of the activities offered at the local community center. I’m not going to just sit around and do nothing while you’re out reinventing. And—”

  “Wait … is that a yes?”

  She looked me straight in the eyes. “And … I’m bringing my armchair. Do we have a deal?”

  I grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, Aunt Nellie, I think we do.” The Big Summer was about to begin.

  Chapter 2

  The Most Awful People Ever

  I was never the most sociable of people. Take, for example, the time I kicked all the other kids out of the sandbox because they refused to outline a blueprint for the necessary sewage system before beginning construction of our sand city. Or the time in second grade that I threw up on this girl’s hair when our teacher asked us to pick homework partners.

  Though, looking back, I can definitely see a change in my social life after my parents died. On the outside, I became a follower, an introvert, and a loser. I went with the flow and rarely fought back. Inside, I was broken and screaming.

  After years of living for the benefit of others, the final straw fell like an anvil onto my humped, camel-like back. It is a story of legendary proportions and one that requires us to travel back three weeks earlier …

  School was nearly out, the weather was warming, and the gut-churning stress of finals was felt by all. I had already witnessed a handful of emotional meltdowns and full-blown panic attacks in the halls of my high school.

  “Fucking polyatomic ions!” one boy shrieked, clutching at his tear-stained notes as I passed by. I shook my head sympathetically, pushing through the doors to the cafeteria and scanning the room for my friends.

  There were five of them: Jordan, Matt, Tyler, Sean, and Adam. And they look way too similar to one another to go into full descriptions. Besides, you’ve probably seen their kind before. They were the typical six-pack-having, bicep-flexing, girl-chasing sport junkies that every school has the extreme misfortune of counting among its numbers.

  The six of us had been friends forever. And back in middle school, they were semi-decent guys. Now they were cool guys who put way too much emphasis on acting cool to actually be cool. For some reason, they had kept me around. I remained at their side even as they climbed the social ladder and excelled in sports and went after every girl at school—that is, every girl above a C-cup.

  And yet for reasons many of us find unfathomable, the girls ate it up.

  So while they shone bright as Christmas trees in the eyes of the student body, I was in the shadows behind them, thumping my palm against the side of a flashlight as the batteries died. Disturbingly, I always pretended that I was okay with that.

  “Yo, faggot, over here!” Jordan called, waving his hand. I could see the others sniggering. As I wove in between a few tables, holding the red plastic tray close to my chest, I shook my head good-naturedly and rolled my eyes, going along with the joke.

  “Very funny,” I said as I slid into the bench, not revealing that I didn’t find it very funny at all.

  Matt snorted. “Jordan, you should be like a comedian, bro!”

  “Totally,” Tyler agreed. They fist-bumped. I mentally gagged.

  “Guys, I’m not being some dumb-ass comedian. I’m gonna get out of this shithole on a football scholarship, and next time you see me, I’ll be on your TV screens, making ten million a year,” Jordan told us.

  Sean laughed. “You better invite me to some of those sweet after-parties. Those NFL players are drowning in pussy.”

  “Says the kid who got dumped by Amy Brownstein.” Jordan chuckled. The others laughed. I was a robot parrot.

  “Because you flunked that math test,” Tyler added.

  Matt shuddered. “Dude, what the hell did you see in her? She’s a total loser. And she’s got no tits. She dumped you because of a stupid test. She’s not gonna do any better than you, looking like she does.”

  “I don’t know,” Se
an muttered. “Those glasses really did it for me. Besides, Mr. Robinson was a total prick for failing me.”

  That got me mad, because Mr. Robinson was a really nice guy and an excellent teacher. And who was Sean to be talking about him like that? “Well, I mean, it’s not his fault that you got the wrong answers.”

  I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth. Who was I to be telling Sean off? They didn’t need me, but I needed them; without them, I was friendless.

  They all turned to stare at me vacantly, surprised that I had spoken up against them.

  Sean looked pissed. “What did you just say to me?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered quickly, trying to cover up my mistake.

  “Good,” he replied. “Besides, it’s not my fault the guy can’t teach.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  And then I shut up for the rest of lunch, quietly munching on my turkey sandwich and side salad. I contemplated, as I ate, how it was possible that I was eating fairly healthily and still wore a few extra pounds around the middle, while the likes of Jordan could manage bulging arms as he devoured a cheeseburger and fries. Seriously, I could see that guy’s whole vascular system through his skin!

  “Hello, Earth to Willy!” Tyler jeered, using the nickname he knew I loathed with the white-hot energy of a thousand collapsing nuclear power plants.

  “What?” I asked stupidly, and they laughed.

  “Can you help us out or what?” Matt asked.

  Jordan rolled his eyes. “About the party tonight. Jessie Stuart’s party.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “I didn’t know she was having a party tonight.”

  For some reason, they all found that absolutely hilarious. I’m telling you, I was the awkward sixth wheel to a pack of brain-dead hyenas!

  “Yeah, it’s gonna be totally sick. We were wondering if you could cover for us?”

  “Cover for you?”

  Jordan nodded. “You know, academically.”

  “We need you to take care of our history essays,” Tyler explained. “They’re due on Monday, and, like, this party is really important.”

  “I—”

  “It’s not like you had any big plans tonight anyways, right?” Sean asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  Adam shook his head at Sean. “Come on, man.”

  “What? It’s true.”

  The end-of-term history essays were a thousand words each, meant to be detailed with extensive referencing and credited photos. Doing five more of them would take me days! If they thought I was going to just give up my whole weekend so they could go drown their few brain cells in alcohol, they were totally and absolutely—

  “Okay,” I said. “I mean, if you really need help.”

  “We so need help,” Jordan replied, clapping a huge football-catching hand on my shoulder. He grinned the grin that broke hearts and dropped panties, and then he turned his focus back to the friends that really mattered to him.

  “It’s really cool of you to be doing this,” Adam said, smiling at me. My heart fluttered a bit, and I cursed the blush that colored my cheeks. So maybe not all of my friends were complete nincompoops. Maybe Adam was better than the others, sweeter and gentler. And maybe, just maybe, I had fantasies of running hand-in-hand into the sunset with him.

  I should probably explain. I’ve known that I was different since I was a little kid. At the time, I wasn’t familiar with the word “gay”. All I knew was that I wasn’t the sporty type and that I liked to wear costumes and dance around my house. I knew that the other boys thought that girls were cute and I didn’t. I never fit in with any of my classmates, and they teased me for it.

  As we began to pick up a new vocabulary, words like “pussy” and “faggot” were hurled at me on a daily basis. I blamed myself for being different, knowing without question that it was wrong to be the way that I was.

  “Faggot” was the nickname assigned to me by the only group of guys who would actually associate with me in middle school. They needed help with art projects and math homework and I needed friends. It was the not-so-perfect solution to all my problems.

  Learning to accept myself was a struggle that I had to face on my own. I wished and prayed, as so many do, that I could miraculously be turned straight. I told myself that one day I would fall in love with a woman and we would get married and have kids and live happily ever after.

  But no amount of denial could change the way that I felt the first time I found myself in a high school locker room. And even the constant abuse I suffered at the hands of my friends couldn’t crush my feelings for Adam.

  “Hello?” Adam said, bringing me back to reality. “Is everything okay?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I muttered. “Uh, yeah … I don’t mind doing the essays at all.”

  He grinned enormously. “Thanks, bro! We all really owe you for this one.”

  “No problem,” I replied.

  I managed to make it through the rest of the day. I say “managed” because, as anyone who has ever spent a day in high school knows, managing is often the best you can do.

  One highlight of the rest of my day was when I received texts from my dear friends with brief, unpunctuated explanations of their essay topics. It seemed like I would not only be investigating the life of Sir Winston Churchill, but also the military strategy of the Cuban Missile Crisis among other things. Fun.

  Usually the final bell on a Friday afternoon was a sign of freedom, telling me in its shrill and abrupt trilling that I had earned forty-eight hours of relaxation.

  This time, it seemed to be yelling at me, reminding me that this weekend was not my own. As I shouldered my way through the swarms of people who thought the end of the day was a great time to chat with their friends in the center of the hallway, I did take a grim sense of satisfaction in the fact that I would at the very least complete my own essay before working on my friends’. This made me feel as though I valued myself more than them.

  I don’t know if that was true.

  . . .

  Needless to say, I started with my friends’ essays.

  Being the proactive learner that I was, my essay was already outlined with a rough draft of the first two paragraphs. The way I figured it, if I could get the five other essays out of the way, I could spend the rest of the weekend on mine.

  Aunt Nellie was a saint; she brought me berries, nuts, and cheese cubes to snack on (“It’s brain food,” she said) and made me a plate of ooey-gooey pizza pockets for dinner.

  Of course, she thought I was just swamped with work of my own. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was being an academic slave to my friends.

  At around nine thirty, she knocked on my door and slipped into the room. “Hey, Will.”

  “Hi,” I muttered distractedly, sitting in that weird position everyone eventually settles into when stuck in a swivel-chair for extended periods of time.

  “I’m about to do a movie marathon, if you want to join.”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I really should get this work done.”

  She sighed. “I know. I just wish you’d get out of the house sometimes. School’s important, but so is being a teenager.”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Nellie. Promise.”

  “Okay, kiddo,” she said sadly. “I’m downstairs if you need me, okay?”

  “All right.”

  I continued flipping back and forth between the five essays for the next fifteen minutes, trying to get my brain to work. But after a long week, a long day, and hours of writing already behind me, it was hard.

  Stealing a look around, as if my friends were lurking in the closet ready to jump out at me if I got distracted, I clicked open a new tab and logged onto Facebook.

  The immediacy with which kids my age felt the need to share their every move was dumbfounding … but there it was. They had complete disre
gard for any future repercussions of what they were posting. Yet I watched as Jessie Stuart’s party unfolded before my eyes.

  Her parents were totally loaded, and her parties were legendary (not that I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending, of course). In every picture, a red plastic cup could be found, its contents evident in the dumb expressions worn by the guests in various stages of inebriation.

  Jordan, Matt, Tyler, and Sean were in quite a few of the pictures, having a grand old time. The center of attention, as usual, they acted as coat racks for the girls that draped themselves across their limbs.

  The onset of summer proved incentive enough for my friends to have ditched their shirts and put on a show for all who would watch, guns blazing.

  I was ejected from my vaguely voyeuristic spying session by my cell phone ringing. Fumbling with the buttons, I pressed the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Willy!” Jordan thundered into my ear. “Get over here!”

  “What?”

  Matt’s muffled voice cut in, “Are you talking to Will? Let me say hi.”

  “Matt says hi, Will,” Jordan told me. “Now get your ass over here.”

  Was Jordan actually inviting me to the party? He had to have had a bottle of tequila running on an IV for this to actually be happening. His brain was surely swimming in a pool of alcohol and female saliva.

  “Jordan, you’re incredibly drunk, and you’re inviting me to come to the party. You know that’s not my thing. I have to finish your essays.”

  “Screw the essays!” Tyler shouted. Great. I was on speakerphone.

  “Yeah,” Sean added, “you can do them tomorrow.”

  I shook my head, forgetting for a moment that they couldn’t see me. “I’m going to pass, you guys.”

  “Don’t be gay, man. Get your skinny ass down here or I’m gonna come over to your goddamn house and drag it over here myself.” Jordan’s tone grew angry; he was losing patience.

  I didn’t particularly want to go to the party. It wasn’t because drinking didn’t appeal to me (even though I had never tried it before), and it wasn’t because I was totally against dancing and having fun … I just wasn’t comfortable with the people who would be there.