Summer Days and Summer Nights (45 page)

“Actually, no,” I admit. “I'm kind of terrible. But I'm great with those mini ones.”

“Pop-A-Shot?”

“Exactly,” I say. “I'm insanely good at Pop-A-Shot.”

“And not very modest,” he points out, entirely straight-faced.

“Well,” I say with a shrug, “it's hard to be modest when you're as good as I am.”

He stretches out an arm, leaning against a shelf full of brightly packaged cookies. “Sounds like something to see,” he says, not quite looking at me. He has this way of ducking his head when he's talking to you so that it's hard to tell what he's thinking. It's maddening and intriguing and confusing all at once. In Spanish, I used to ask him questions just to watch him turn around, his pale eyes skipping from my forehead to my desk, never exactly meeting my gaze, and I would try to guess whether he liked me or was afraid of me or something else entirely.

For months and months, that's all there was between us: questions about verb conjugations and past perfect tenses,
hola
s and
muchas gracias
es and
adios
es. We didn't have any friends in common; it was hard to know if we had anything in common at all. It was a big school, and this was the first time I'd come across him, sitting there in Señor Mandelbaum's third-period Spanish class. But right away I wanted more of him.

He didn't make it easy. There was something oddly cagey and way too direct about him all at the same time. He was mostly quiet and overly polite, but then he could also be honest to a startling degree. I'd once asked him if there was something in my eye, and he turned around, looked at me carefully, and then shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said. “Eye goop.”

But the thing about Griffin was that he was also sort of jaw-droppingly beautiful. He had messy brown hair and a square jaw and those gorgeous gray-blue eyes, and with his ridiculous height—he was a good foot taller than me, his legs always jammed against the bottom of his desk in class—he could've passed for a surfer or a skier, some kind of impossibly rugged and dashing figure from a movie.

Except, for some reason, he managed to ruin it by wearing the same outfit pretty much every single day: khaki pants and a light-blue button-down shirt, a strange uniform of sorts that made him look like a Boy Scout or a Bible salesman or someone who worked in the world's most boring office.

Still, it wasn't enough to keep the girls from staring at him during lunch, which was the only other time I ever saw him. He generally kept to himself, eating with his headphones in, his eyes focused on his phone, which made it hard to tell whether he was just really good at ignoring the attention or he simply never noticed it.

There was something magnetic about him. Whenever I saw him, I had the completely unfamiliar urge to take him by the shoulders, plunk him down in a chair, and make him open up to me. He was a mystery that—for reasons I didn't quite understand—I felt desperate to solve. But there was only so much you could learn about someone in stilted Spanish. I was anxious for more time with him. And I wanted it to be in English.

Now, Griffin's eyes drift past me to the checkout lines, and I can't tell if he's running late or getting bored. But something about seeing him here, out of context—away from the familiar backdrop of the high school—makes me momentarily brave.

“Have you ever been to Hal's?” I ask, before I can think better of it.

“That bar on McKinley?”

“It's an arcade too. Maybe we should…” I pause for a second, hoping he'll pick up the thread, but he doesn't. He only scuffs his flip-flop against the shiny linoleum floor, and the thought hangs there between us, awkward and unfinished.

I've never done this before, whatever it is I'm trying to do here. I've never attempted to make the first move. And now I can't help feeling a pang of regret about all the times
I've
been the one to hesitate in this situation: staring too long at a text about hanging out, clearing my throat after the suggestion of a movie, pausing at the more formal invitation to a school dance. I wish now that I could take them back, all those extra seconds. Because this—this horrifying pause, this awful silence—is brutal.

I point to the bag of candy, which is lying flat in the bottom of the cart, and then I try one last time. “Maybe we should see who would win a real game…”

For a second, it seems certain he's going to say no. His face slips into a kind of blankness, and he looks unaccountably tense, and I steel myself, preparing to get rejected right here in aisle 8. But then something seems to settle in him, and he blinks a few times, his features softening.

“Okay,” he says finally. “How about tomorrow?”

*   *   *

That night as I brush my teeth, my little sister, Meg—eleven years old and my constant shadow—leans against the door of the bathroom we share.

“So,” she says, batting her eyelashes in an overly dreamy sort of way. “Is it a date?”

I consider this for a moment, then spit into the sink.

“I don't think so,” I tell her.

*   *   *

I'm a million miles away the next morning, thinking about the moment when Griffin will pull into the camp parking lot later, thinking about the dress I stashed in the staff bathroom so that I won't have to wear my grubby uniform again, thinking about the way my heart lifted when I spotted him yesterday—thinking about pretty much anything except for the game of freeze tag happening around me, where a couple dozen six- and seven-year-olds are running around the soccer field, stumbling and wobbling and tripping over themselves like miniature drunks—when someone lets out a sharp cry.

I snap back immediately, scanning the field until I find Noah, who is crouched on the ground, his knees tucked up beneath him, his hands over his ears, his head curled down so that only a mop of reddish hair is showing.

Beside him, a small girl named Sadie Smith is staring with wide eyes. “All I did was tag him,” she says quickly, blinking up at me.

I give her a pat on the shoulder, trying to be reassuring. “It's fine,” I tell her. “Go tag someone else.”

But she remains there, her eyes fixed on Noah, who is rocking now. I turn around to see that they're all watching. It's impossible to tell who's been frozen and who's still free, because each and every one of them is standing stock-still.

Over near the school buildings, which the day camp borrows during the summer, I spot Grace, one of the junior counselors, carrying over the midday snack: a giant box of Popsicles, which leave everyone tie-dyed and sugar-happy but are always the highlight of the day.

“Snack time,” I call out, and just like that, they're off, sprinting across the field to meet Grace, with more energy than they've shown during any of the games this morning.

Once we're alone, I sit down on the grass beside Noah, who lets out a soft moan but doesn't otherwise acknowledge me. It's been about a month now, and I've learned this is the best tactic. At first, when this kind of thing happened, I would try to talk to him, or reason with him, or soothe him in some way. Once, I even tried to take his hand, which turned out to be the worst possible thing I could've done. He wrenched it away from me, then promptly began to wail.

Now I peek under his arms, which are clasped around his knees, to where his face is hidden. His cheeks are pink from the heat, and his mouth is screwed up to one side, and there's a single tear leaking from his right eye, which breaks my heart a little.

“Hey, Noah,” I say softly, and he stiffens.

I sit back again, picking a few blades of dry grass, then letting them scatter in the breeze from the nearby lake. In the distance, the other campers are running around with their Popsicles, their chins sticky and their shirts already stained. On the blacktop, the older kids are playing basketball, the sound of the ball steady as a drumbeat.

On the first day of camp, Mr. Hamill, the director—a middle-aged man who worked as a gym teacher for most of the year and was never without a whistle around his neck—had asked me to arrive an hour early. It was my third summer as a counselor, and I assumed I was getting a promotion. When I'd started working here a few years earlier, it was mostly just because I needed a way to earn some extra spending money. I'd loved going to camp as a kid, and it seemed a better alternative than bagging groceries or scooping ice cream or any of the other jobs that might consider hiring a fourteen-year-old whose only résumé item was babysitting.

But now, after a couple years of corralling kids and pressing on Band-Aids, leading wildly off-key songs and supervising glitter usage during craft time, I'd come to genuinely enjoy it. Still, everyone knew it was easier to work with the older kids, who tended to be more self-sufficient, less likely to burst into tears or wander off or forget to put on sunscreen. So I hoped that might be where I was headed this summer.

Instead, it turned out Mr. Hamill wanted to tell me about Noah.

“Listen, Annie,” he said in a thick Chicago accent that wasn't often heard this far out in the suburbs. “We're gonna try something out this summer. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.”

I nodded. “Okay…”

“It's a new camper,” he continued, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “He's, uh, on the spectrum. You know. He has autism. So I just wanted to give you a heads up, since it might be a challenge. He's not all that verbal, for one thing, but I guess they're working on that. And he's pretty active. Apparently, they tried a special-needs camp last year, but it didn't keep him busy enough. It sounds like he has a lot of energy.”

“So he'll be in my group?”

“Yeah, he's six, so he's one of yours. The idea is to be patient, but also get him involved as much as possible, you know? I figure we'll give it a try, as long as it's okay with you, and basically just see how it goes.”

“Okay,” I said brightly, because that's what I do. I smile, and I nod, and I give it my best shot. That's always how it's been. If my friends are fighting, I'm the one who tries to smooth it over. If someone is mad at me, I walk around with a pit in my stomach until we've managed to sort things out. If somebody asks me a favor, or gives me a challenge, or needs something from me, the answer is always yes.

And if the kids at camp aren't having fun, it feels like I'm failing.

Which is what makes Noah so tough. I've spoken to his mom enough over the last month to know that he just needs time. But sitting here on the warm grass, watching his shoulders shake—it's almost too much to bear. And worse than that is the feeling that no matter what I try, I just can't seem to reach him.

The thing is, I'm good with these kids. I know that Emerson is allergic to peanuts and to save a red Popsicle for Connell. I know that Sullivan will always want to play kickball when given the choice, and that Ellis likes to sit on my lap after lunch. Caroline keeps a stuffed rabbit in her backpack, and Will wears his lucky astronaut socks every day. Georgia sings under her breath when she's nervous, and Elisabeth lights up when you compliment her on her cartwheels.

There's a key to every lock, a trick that works for every kid.

Every kid except Noah.

We sit there for a long time. The other campers head into the gym for a game of dodgeball, led by one of the junior counselors, and the sun drifts higher in the flat, white sky. But still Noah remains hunched on the ground, curled into himself like a pill bug. Every once in a while I reach over and give his shoulder a pat, which makes him flinch.

Finally, just before pickup—almost as if he's been keeping track—he lifts his head.

“You okay?” I ask, but he doesn't say anything. His eyes are focused on the school building, where the other kids are lining up to go home.

When he still doesn't answer, I say, “I promise we'll play a different game tomorrow.” I don't know if it was freeze tag that set him off, or if it was an unexpected hand on his back, or if it was just the sun and the grass and the day all around him. It could have been anything. It feels horrible not to know exactly what.

But still I keep talking, sounding desperate even to myself. “We'll try capture the flag,” I promise, even though each day we attempt a new game, and each day it ends this same way. “Or red light, green light. Or follow the leader! I think you'd really like follow the leader…”

Noah doesn't say anything. He simply stands up, his face entirely blank, then brushes the grass off his knees and walks toward the parking lot.

It's not much, but I take it as a yes. And I follow him.

*   *   *

At the end of every day, there's the chaos of pickup time: a half hour of attempting to direct traffic and shepherd kids as mothers glare at the cars in front of them and nannies shout for their charges not to forget their lunch boxes and counselors do their best to make sure nobody gets hit by a slow-moving minivan.

Today, I'm in charge of keeping things running on time, which basically means standing in the middle of it all and hoping I don't get clipped by a side mirror. It's only 2:07, and already more than half the kids have been whisked away. The rest are sitting cross-legged under the trees in front of the entrance to the school, digging through their backpacks or trading woven bracelets or tossing things at the junior counselors.

We're right on schedule, but I still can't help glancing at my watch. Griffin is supposed to be picking me up at 2:30, and though everyone is usually gone by twenty after, that still leaves me only a few minutes to change. I've brought my favorite outfit, a pale-yellow sundress that's probably a bit much for a trip to an arcade. But there's no way I'll be wearing my sweaty camp clothes when I see him again. Not this time.

By 2:18, there are three kids left: a pair of eight-year-old identical twins who match right down to their orange sneakers, and Noah, who is sitting with his back to the parking lot, tapping intently on the trunk of a tree.