Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (46 page)

“They
are
nice,” J.T. said, too fiercely. “Sorry. I’m kind of jumpy. I’m a wreck. I barely got any sleep at all.”

“I understand,” Summer said. J.T.’s nervousness was definitely catching. Was that a sign of some kind of brother-sister psychic link between them? If so, then Marquez must be related too, because she looked ready to crawl out of her skin.

“I’m not going to wait,” J.T. said suddenly. “Everyone’s here. I can’t stand here cooking ribs as if nothing is going on.”

Marquez muttered a woeful curse. J.T.’s parents were heading back toward them. Chess carried two sweating glasses of soda. Janet had a plate of what looked like some kind of finger food.

“Mom. Dad,” J.T. said. He looked as if he were about to go into shock.

“What?” Janet said. She peered at him in concern.

“We have to talk. All of us.”

“I…I can’t do this,” Marquez said suddenly. “I…look, I just remembered, I have to be at this place. This, um, place where I have to go.”

She turned and almost ran from the yard.

Summer had to fight an urge to go after her. J.T. looked stricken but determined. “That’s okay,” he said stiffly.

“J.T., what is going on?” his father asked. “Are you and Maria having some kind of a fight?”

“Maybe we should sit,” J.T. said, still rigid as a board. He marched over to the picnic table and sat. After a moment’s hesitation and an exchange of worried looks, his parents went over too.

I’m going to kill Marquez,
Summer decided. But the truth was, this really wasn’t about Marquez. With a horrible, sinking feeling, she sat down with the others.

“Mom, Dad,” J.T. began again. “I’m eighteen years old. I have a job. I have my own place.” It was a prepared speech, and it sounded like one. “I’m an adult. And I think I have a right to know the truth. About me. About who I am.”

Summer expected them to act shocked or puzzled or to ask him what he was talking about. Instead Janet just seemed to crumple a little. Her husband slowly lowered his face into his hands.

For a while no one spoke. Then J.T.’s father said, “Summer, I think this is sort of one of those family-only moments—”

“Summer
is
family,” J.T. said.

His father raised an eyebrow and looked troubled.

“Tell them, Summer,” J.T. commanded, still stiff and formal.

“I don’t think—” Summer began.

“Summer is my sister,” J.T. said.

“She’s what?” Janet said.

“My sister. She…” J.T. took a deep breath. “She had a brother named Jonathan. I think…we both think…that I
am
Jonathan.”

“Jonathan disappeared sixteen years ago,” Summer said. “We never…no one ever found…”

Summer waited for Janet to cry out her confession. But to her surprise, J.T.’s mother just reached over and put her hand gently on Summer’s arm.

“I’m terribly sorry for you,” she said. “I can only imagine what your parents must have gone through all these years.” She turned to J.T. “But sweetheart, you are not Summer’s brother.”

Diana stood under the eaves of Summer’s stilt house and called his name. No answer. She hadn’t really expected Diver to be there. It was early yet, though darkness had fallen. From downtown the music and mayhem of the Bacchanal drifted across the water.

“Diver!” she yelled one last time. No answer. He wasn’t there.

Diana couldn’t wait any longer. She ran up the lawn and around the side of the main house, then tumbled into her car and started the engine.

Maybe he was downtown. At the Bacch. Or else at the marina, where he did odd jobs. But did she have time to try to find him in the crowds? No. The call from the institute had been for her, anyway, not Diver. It was her fault, all her fault, not Diver’s.

Still, as the headlights pierced the darkness of the road, she wished he were with her.

She soon encountered the outer edge of the Bacchanal, parked cars lining the road on both sides, reducing it to a single lane. People were everywhere, streaming toward downtown, laughing, playing, some in fantastic homemade costumes, many already half drunk.

Diana honked the horn, but the people blocking her way took it as a joke. They raised a bottle of champagne in her direction, a toast.

Then he was there. Standing just to the side, as if he’d been waiting for her. Like a commuter, waiting for his ride to work.

Diana pulled up next to him. “I need you,” she said.

Diver climbed in beside her.

“It’s Lanessa,” Diana said tersely. “They called from the institute. She’s having some kind of breakdown. She won’t stop crying. I have to go there.”

“I’ll go with you,” Diver said.

“It’s my fault,” Diana said. They were deep in the revelers now, crawling along at a frustrating pace through a sprawling party. Masked faces peered into the car. Crude, good-natured invitations were shouted.

“It isn’t your fault,” Diver said.

“It is,” Diana insisted. “I’ve never missed a day when I was supposed to go. I didn’t go today, and Lanessa expected me. I didn’t go.” She chewed her thumbnail viciously and beat on the steering wheel. “This stupid party!”

“Diana—”

“Get out of my way, or I swear I’ll run you down!” Diana yelled out of her window.

The crowd parted enough to let the car through. Diver fell silent. Diana sped toward the highway on-ramp.

The highway was an eerie driving experience, even though Diana was used to it. The dark, nearly empty ribbon of road leaped across vast tracts of water, touching down briefly at a bright point of land before leaping into the darkness again.

“The whole year, I never missed my day at the institute,” Diana said. “Even when I was really depressed, even when I was thinking I was going to kill myself, I always made it. Lots of weeks that was the only reason I didn’t swallow a bunch of pills. I knew I had to go because there were these kids, and they were so much more screwed up than I was.”

“More screwed up than you,” Diver echoed, nodding thoughtfully and looking out the window.

“I guess I always figured helping them would help me. I mean, it was selfish, really. That’s why I never told anyone else about it. I didn’t want people thinking I was trying to be some kind of plaster saint, when I knew I was just doing it for myself.”

“So why didn’t you go today?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been feeling…ever since Ross died. I don’t know.”

“Lost,” Diver said.

Diana stared at him. She nodded slowly.

“Like you don’t know who you are anymore,” Diver said. He was still gazing off into the dark night. “You used to have a meaning. Hating Ross. Hating Adam.”

“Hating myself is more like it,” Diana said bitterly.

“Kind of the same thing,” Diver said.

Diana turned off the highway, shooting down the off-ramp at twice the speed limit. The institute was dark but for a few muted lights behind shaded windows. The cars of the overnight staff were parked in a little knot to one side, clustered under a streetlight for safety.

The housemother led Diana and Diver straight to Lanessa. “She started about five hours ago, just sobbing,” she said. “All she would say was that she had been bad. Then we figured out she was distraught because you hadn’t come today. I think she feels she’s being punished.” It was not an accusation, but Diana didn’t need any help to feel terrible.

They found Lanessa in her room, curled up with her thumb in her mouth. She was convulsing with dry sobs.

Diana rushed to her and lifted the little girl’s head onto her lap. “I’m sorry, Lanessa, I’m so, so sorry.”

But Lanessa didn’t react.

“Come on, Lanessa, I’m sorry I didn’t come today. I…I don’t know what happened. I just wasn’t feeling right, I guess. Come on, honey, come on.” She stroked the little girl’s hair. “Did you think I didn’t like you anymore? Is that it?”

Lanessa shook her head.

“Did you think I was mad at you?” No response. “That’s it, isn’t it? You thought I was angry at you?”

Finally Lanessa nodded.

“Sweetheart, I wasn’t angry at you. Not at all. I could never be angry at you.” Diana remembered the details of Lanessa’s case. For Lanessa, having someone angry at her had not just been a reason to pout. Anger had been followed by terror and pain. An adult’s anger had nearly killed her.

“Lanessa, I was angry, but not at you,” Diana said. “I was just mad at the world, and all these different things. But not at you.”

“I don’t think she understands the difference,” Diver said. “The people who hurt her, they were just mad at the world, too. Just like the people who hurt you, Diana.”

“And you?” Diana said to him.

“Yes,” he said tersely.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Diana asked him. “What’s
she
supposed to do?” she continued, stroking the child’s head.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He looked troubled, agitated, uncertain.

“And here I thought you were all-wise,” Diana said sarcastically. She could feel Lanessa pulling away from her. “Lanessa, no, it’s all right, this doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Of course it does,” Diver nearly shouted.

Diana was stunned. She had never seen Diver upset. It didn’t even seem possible that he could shout.

“Of course it has to do with her,” Diver said more quietly. “It has to do with everyone. Everyone gets hurt. Everyone has bad things happen to them, and then everyone wants to hurt those who hurt them. Till pretty soon every single person on earth is either being hurt or hurting someone else. It’s insane.”

“So what’s your brilliant solution?” Diana demanded. “You want us all to forgive and forget? You think Lanessa should maybe just forgive her parents for what they did? That’s what you want?”

“No,” Diver said. “I want the people who hurt Lanessa to burn in hell, that’s what I want. And the ones who hurt you, and the ones who hurt me. That’s what I want.” He clenched his fist in the air, as if choking a person visible only to him. “I want them to cry. I want to see them suffer.”

Diana shrank away, shielding Lanessa with her arms. But Lanessa was not afraid. She was watching Diver with bright, glittering eyes.

He took several deep breaths. “But I figured out after a while that I couldn’t spend my life punishing everyone who deserved to be punished.”

“So you just forgive them?” Diana said.

He shrugged. “I guess so. Not because they deserve to be forgiven. They don’t. It’s just that when you go around hating people and wanting to hurt them…You just can’t do that. That isn’t life. You forgive so you can live.” He sat down on the bed, rested his head in his hands, and stared at some remembered scene only he could see.

After a while Diana said, “I didn’t know you could talk that much, Diver.”

“I don’t usually,” he said, a little sheepish.

“You know what I’ve been feeling for the last couple of days?” Diana asked him. “I’ve been mad because Ross died. I was angry because he escaped, in a way, before I could hurt him.”

Diver nodded. “Been there.”

For a while none of them said anything. Even Lanessa was quiet, her sobbing stilled. “Can we go see Jerry?” she asked at last.

“Oh, sweetheart, Jerry is asleep now,” Diana said. “We should let him sleep.”

“No, he’s up,” Diver said wearily. “He’d like to see Lanessa. As a matter of fact, he’s waiting in the tank for us to go see him. He thinks maybe Lanessa would like to see him catch his Frisbee.”

Diana smiled at him. “Diver, you may be very smart about certain things—smarter than I am—but you
cannot
really communicate with animals.”

Diver laughed. “Of course I know I can’t communicate with animals, Diana. I’m not crazy.”

Naturally, when they arrived at the tank, Jerry was up. He was waiting patiently by the side, amusing himself by tossing a Frisbee up in the air, as Diana was not really very surprised to see.

J.T. was not Jonathan. That single fact occupied Summer’s entire mind. J.T. was not Jonathan.

The little boy in her dreams really was dead. The brother she had never met, but whose tragedy had shadowed her entire life, was not suddenly going to turn up in a big, happily-ever-after ending.

She had left J.T. at his parents’ house, the three of them crying and laughing and retelling the story of how J.T. had come to be suspicious, and the story of why J.T. was not the biological child of his parents.

Summer had been crying too, but for different reasons. She left with a gaping feeling of loneliness, no longer anything like a part of their lives, and had walked back into town. She never had gotten any barbecue. But the Bacchanal had opened its arms to greet her, drawing her into the crowds, squeezing her in, carrying her along in the shrill high spirits.

Someone handed her a paper cup, and she drank its contents without thinking. Some kind of punch. She winced at the sweetness.

J.T. was not her brother. She was surprised by how much it disturbed her. She hadn’t ever really absorbed the possibility that he might be, until suddenly he wasn’t. She told herself this was good, that she hadn’t wanted to believe, because if J.T. had been Jonathan, then all the laws of probability had to be rewritten, and the impossible would have been possible, and miracles would have popped up in the fabric of ordinary life.

No, that wasn’t true. She
had
wanted to believe. She’d wanted to believe in miraculous happy endings. She’d wanted to believe in improbable things…that long-lost brothers would be found, that true loves would not be lost at the end of the summer.

And yet J.T. was not her brother. And Seth was not even here. He was off working with his grandfather. Just a taste of the endless stream of excuses she could expect in the future, after they each went to their separate homes. He would be in Eau Claire. She would be in Bloomington. How many times would they make dates and then break them because something had come up? Sorry, Summer, I know I said I would come, but the weather…this job I have to do…this exam I have to study for…I can’t borrow the car….

In the back of her mind, Summer knew she was being unfair. Seth wasn’t like that. If Seth said he would do something, he could be relied on.

“Yeah,” she muttered darkly, “like I could rely on him to be here tonight.”

The crowd carried her toward music, two live bands pounding out competing covers of everything from salsa to punk, all at terrific volume. Everyone was dancing, and, without meaning to, so was Summer, rising and falling as dictated by the crush of bodies. A feeling of dizziness crept over her.

Then she saw Marquez atop a bench, dancing with someone Summer didn’t know, someone Marquez probably didn’t know, either. Her brown curls were flying. Her face was beaded with sweat.

Summer pushed her way through the crowd, ignoring various calls of “Hey, baby” and “Come on, dance with me.” She grabbed Marquez’s shorts by the pocket and yanked.

Marquez looked down, annoyed, then, recognizing Summer, gave her a rueful smile. She climbed down.

“You mad at me?” Marquez yelled in Summer’s ear.

“What, for leaving me when you swore you wouldn’t?” Summer said sarcastically. “Why would I be mad?”

“Don’t be,” Marquez pleaded. “Come on, it’s the Bacch. Party and forget it.”

“He’s not Jonathan,” Summer said.

This got Marquez’s attention. She looked concerned. “He’s okay, right?”

“Do you care?”

“Jeez, Summer, look, I never said I was good at this stuff. I don’t deal with people’s problems very well, all right? So I’m selfish. So I’m superficial. I don’t care. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t just sit there and watch. Either way it was going to be bad. If he
was
Jonathan, then probably J.T. would have lost the only family he’s known. If he wasn’t, then you…your brother was…”

Summer nodded. “Yeah, I know,” she said, her eyes filling with tears again. “I guess I had started to buy into it. I mean, what if? What if Jonathan never died? Wouldn’t it be the greatest thing on earth to be able to go to my parents and say, guess what? Your son didn’t die in a gutter somewhere. He wasn’t killed. Here he is! He’s alive! No more sadness. Happy days are here again.” There was more bitterness in her own voice than she had ever heard there before. “The world basically sucks, have I ever mentioned that?”