The Summer Before Read online

  There was a pause, after which she said, "I'm going shopping with Kelly."

  "Great. I"ll meet you."

  "We, um, we don't know when we're getting together yet."

  I don't think I need to replay the entire conversation for you. You get the idea. That was the way sixth grade began. Laine didn't do anything horrible at first. In fact, it was more what she didn't do: She rarely called me, she didn't save a seat for me in the cafeteria, she didn't stop by with her books so we could do our homework together. And I noticed that none of the other girls did, either. I was on my own. But why? What had I done?

  Somewhere in all of this I began to realize that I didn't feel very well, and not long after that I was diagnosed with diabetes, which is a syndrome that has to do with your body's metabolism. My pancreas wasn't processing sugar properly, and that was affecting the amount of insulin in my body. If left untreated, I could get really sick. Luckily, diabetes, even an extreme case like mine tumed out to be, can be fairly well managed through diet, exercise, and injections of insulin. Still, I got off to a difficult start, including several stays in the hospital, and my parents were freaking out.

  It didn't help that not long before I was diagnosed, they'd found out that they couldn't have any more children, so they began to pay an awful lot of attention to the one they already had. Since that kid was sick, they morphed into these overprotective, super-vigilant people I barely recognized, who monitored every second of not just my meals and my doctor appointments but my life. And, somewhere along the line, they decided that they could protect me further by keeping my diagnosis a secret. I knew they meant well, but they had definitely not thought things through. When Freda Staples, a girl in one of the fifth grade classes that year, was diagnosed with leukemia, she and her parents talked to her classmates about it, and that class became very close-knit, and the kids were supportive of Freda as she went through her treatments.

  My parents had a different idea, one that I came to think of as the Silent Treatment. Tell no one. If no one knows what's going on, no one will treat you any differently. Wrong. It was a very, very bad idea. Since things had already soured between Laine and me, and as Laine became the ruler of the girls in our class, it did not help at all that I had to go to the school nurse frequently, or that I fainted in school a couple of times. But the very worst moment came one night when all the girls in my class (including me - they hadn't resorted to a total freeze-out) were at a slumber party, and Laine and I were sharing a bed. At some point during the night, I wet the bed. That happened sometimes, back when I was a diabetes newbie. But as you can imagine, it did nothing to help the situation with Laine and me. In fact, it was the beginning of the end.

  By the time sixth grade was finally over, we were officially enemies. And I was officially glad to get the news that we would be leaving New York City, since I was officially tired of spending every second of my life alone. How could a place called Stoneybrook be worse than my life in NYC?

  After people-watching in the park for a few more minutes, I tumed my attention once again to the giggling girls, gazing after them longingly, and finally headed back to our apartment. The aftemoon dragged on. I helped my mother clean out our storage space in the basement of the building. When we were finished, she dusted her hands off on her jeans and said, "A good job well done! Let's call your dad and ask him to meet us at Sal's for dinner. Doesn't that sound nice?"

  "Sure," I said. Sal's was a restaurant two blocks away where we frequently ate dinner. Anything would be better than another stultifying, friendless evening at home.

  At six-thirty, Mom and I were seated at a comer table in Sal's, waiting for Dad and having one of our arguments about my diet. I wanted to have a regular ginger ale (even though I knew better) and Mom was insisting I order a diet soda, which in fact she did for me when the waiter stopped by with his pad and pen. "A white wine spritzer for me, please, and a diet ginger ale for my daughter."

  "Mom!" I exclaimed.

  "Stacey. a regular soda is not an option, so I don't want to hear another word about it."

  "But I'm not a baby."

  "Then make adult decisions. You can't have all that sugar"

  I fumed in my seat for a while, and was just moments post-fume when my dad, who was sipping happily at the cocktail he'd ordered when he'd arrived, suddenly waved heartily in the direction of the door.

  I tumed around to see Laine and her parents entering Sal's, Mr. Cummings waving back to my dad.

  I dropped my head and groaned.

  "Hello, everyone," said Mrs. Cummings. She hurried to our table, hugged my mother, and patted my dad on the back. "Hi, Stacey."

  "Hi."

  The adults noticed that Laine and I gave each other the frostiest of greetings, eyes averted, barely audible "hellos" on our lips, but no one commented on it. A year ago if the Cummingses had unexpectedly walked into a restaurant where my parents and I were eating dinner, Mom and Dad would have asked them to join us. Now, though, Mom and Mrs. Cummings exchanged shrugs and raised eyebrows, and then Laine and her family were seated six tables away from us. I knew that the adults hoped Laine and I would reconcile before the move to Connecticut, but I didn't see that happening, not while Her Royal Meanness was still on her throne.

  Twenty minutes later, my father was paying our bill, and my mother was dragging me over to the Cummingses' table. Mom and Mrs. Cummings talked eamestly for a few moments, glancing once or twice at Laine and me, and then suddenly my mother grinned and exclaimed, "Oh, I think that's a wonderful idea! I'll call you about it tomorrow."

  I waited until we were outside and halfway down the block before I said, "What's a wonderful idea?"

  My mother's face took on a look of extravagant innocence. "Huh?" she said, as though she had no short-term memory whatsoever. "Oh, nothing." And then she mumbled something about a benefit dinner. "For the, um, dentists..."

  I let the subject drop. But a very unpleasant sensation was creeping over me, as if I were standing at the edge of the subway platform and had just realized someone was behind me, hands out, ready to push.

  Addressee Unknown.

  I looked down at those words, printed accusingly in red ink on the formerly flawless envelope, and thought about what they meant. Addressee - a very, very impersonal way of referring to the person to whom a letter was addressed. Unknown - unidentified, mysterious, unheard of, nameless, anonymous.

  Any way you put those two words together and applied them to my father, the result was less than desirable. He was a strange person to whom a piece of mail - my letter - had been addressed. A nameless person. An unheard-of person. And so he hadn't received the letter, and Addressee Unknown had been stamped - rather harshly, it appeared to me - over his address, which I had written so carefully in my best cursive.

  The letter was bundled in with the other mail I pulled out of our box on a hot Wednesday aftemoon, and even though I had written a perfectly nice note to my father, and even though I had remembered a stamp, and my handwriting was lovely and legible, I looked down at the glaring red Addressee Unknown and I felt ashamed.

  I knew Dad hadn't retumed the letter himself. Addressee Unknown meant it had never reached him, that he had moved on, which was certainly not my fault. But why couldn't I have a father I could keep track of? Why did writing to him have to be such a drama?

  I stuffed the letter in the back pocket of my shorts and told myself that my father knew how to get in touch with me, if he was interested. He and Mom must be in some sort of contact. It would have been far worse if Dad had actually received the letter and then had sent it back unopened. But he hadn't received it. He didn't know I'd written to him.

  My thoughts didn't console me. I felt like a deflated balloon.

  "Kristy? What's that?" David Michael was at our front door, watching suspiciously as I crossed our lawn, Louie at my heels.

  "What's what?"

  "That thing you're hiding in your pocket."

  "What are you, a detective?"
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  David Michael brightened. "A detective! Hey! I like that. I could be a detective this summer. I'll start with the mystery of you. What's in your pocket?"

  I laughed. "You're very persistent. That's a good quality for a detective."

  "Thanks. What did you hide in your pocket?"

  "Something private."

  "What is it?"

  "If I tell you it won't be private."

  "But a good detective -" David Michael started to say, when (thank heaven) I saw Mary Anne's front door open and she waved to us from her porch.

  "Hi, Mary Anne!" I called, drowning out my brother.

  Mary Anne, dressed in a yellow-and-white outfit, complete with yellow ribbons at the ends of her braids, jogged into our yard and sat on the front stoop, squeezing between David Michael and me. Louie rested his head on her knees. "Kristy," she said, "if a person fell down the stairs -"

  "What person?" I interrupted.

  "Oh, maybe a four-year-old girl."

  "You mean like Claire Pike?"

  "Well -"

  "Mary Anne, nothing is going to happen when we sit at the Pikes' tomorrow. I promise."

  "How can you promise that? How do you know what will happen? Anything could happen!"

  The last time Mary Anne and I had spoken, she had asked me if I knew what to do if a smoke detector suddenly went off. "What's the protocol?" she said. She actually used the word protocol. The day before that, she had said, "What if we were baby-sitting and we heard a funny noise? Outside? After dark?"

  I dragged my brain back to the present. "Well, of course, I don't know exactly what's going to happen. But I've baby-sat for David Michael a million times -"

  "Not really a million," spoke up my brother.

  "- and nothing dire has ever happened?"

  "I skinned my knee that one moming."

  "But what," said Mary Anne, "would you do if he fell down the stairs?"

  "It would depend on how badly he was hurt."

  "Once I fell down the stairs and I just got up at the bottom and kept on going," said David Michael.

  "They were carpeted stairs," I informed Mary Anne, "and he only fell down about three steps. So you see what I mean? It all depends. Anyway, like I said, I don't think anyone is going to fall down the stairs while we're baby-sitting."

  "Just because a thing hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it will never happen."

  I sighed. I was glad Mr. Spier had given Mary Anne permission to sit and all, but her questions were starting to worry me. And annoy me. I was about to tell Mary Anne that perhaps she would feel better if she focused on something positive, such as dreaming up activities with which we could entertain the Pike kids the next evening, when she leaned around behind me and said, "What's that in your pocket?"

  "Why is everyone so interested in my pocket all of a sudden?" I asked crossly.

  "Because there's something in it and you won't let us see it!" replied David Michael.

  "Hey, you know what we're going to do tonight?" I said to Mary Anne, desperate to change the subject.

  "No. What?"

  "We're going to sit outside after dark and watch for meteors. All of us. Mom, Charlie, Sam, David Michael, and me. Won't that be cool? " For one brief instant I thought of asking Mary Anne to join us, but I was looking forward to a family evening, just the five of us Thomases.

  "Ooh, good idea," said Mary Anne. "I saw a meteor the other night. It was amazing. This flash of light that streaked across the sky so fast I almost wasn't sure I'd seen it. But I knew I had."

  "Meteors are magic," David Michael commented dreamily, and then ruined the moment by casually reaching for my back pocket.

  I brushed his hand away. "I'm going to surprise Mom," I announced. "l'm going to make us a special dinner. We can have a picnic supper before we look for meteors."

  By the time Mom came home from work, and Charlie and Sam came home from wherever they'd been that aftemoon, I had spread a blue-and-white checked cloth over the picnic table in our backyard and had set the table with our plastic plates, the ones with seashells and sea horses on them. Very beachy and summery. Now I was standing in the kitchen, making hamburger patties.

  "Can you be our grill master?" I asked Charlie. "We're going to have hot dogs and hamburgers. And maybe someone could make a salad...."

  "Someone?" said Mom.

  "Well, you know. Not me."

  Mom laughed. "I'll be glad to make a salad. While I do that, would you set another place at the table, Kristy?"

  "Another? But I already set five," I said, glancing out the window at the table as if maybe I'd made a counting error.

  "Watson's on his way over."

  "Watson?" And just like that, the hungry feeling in my stomach was replaced by a sick one. "l thought we were going to have a family night," I said miserably.

  Mom started to answer me - opened her mouth and then closed it - but changed her mind about whatever she was going to say.

  I glared at her. "He is not part of our family!"

  Mom gave me a look that plainly said, "I didn't say he was."

  "Maybe he could be part of our family," suggested David Michael, clasping his hands together.

  "Kristy?" said Mom. "Another place, please?"

  I didn't answer her.

  Mom sighed and set out the salad bowl.

  I stomped off to my room. When I heard a car in the driveway, I peeked out my window. Watson emerged from a gleaming station wagon. A sticker on the rear bumper read PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT. An honor roll student. That must have been his daughter, Karen, since his son, Andrew, was only three years old. But Karen had just graduated from kindergarten. What kind of school had honor roll kindergarten students? A fancy private one, that was what kind. Rich Watson with his big old mansion and his children in private school.

  Since Watson couldn't see me, I made a hideous face out the window at him before slumping back onto my bed.

  "Kristy!" Mom called a few minutes later.

  "WHAT?"

  "Watson's here. Would you please come downstairs?"

  I chose not to answer her, but I did retum to the kitchen. There was Watson, sitting at the table with David Michael. I was pleased to observe, once again, that Watson was getting bald. Mom would never fall for an old bald guy, I told myself, even though I knew perfectly well that Watson wasn't actually old, just sort of thin-haired. In fact, he was approximately Mom's age.

  I studied Watson from the doorway of the kitchen and tried to tally up the things that were in his favor and the things that were not. In his favor, he seemed to be a good father to Karen and Andrew, despite having divorced their mother. Karen and Andrew spent weekends at his house, and he went to all their school programs and parent-teacher conferences (according to my mother). Not in his favor was that he was a stuck-up millionaire snob with gobs of money to throw around like a huge show-off. And that he had an enormous Charlie Brown-type bald head. And the fact that he was dating Mom. And the fact that he had shown up with a box from the most expensive bakery in Stoneybrook. And the fact that he was, at that very moment, explaining the designated hitter rule to David Michael, who looked rapt.

  Watson glanced up and caught sight of me in the doorway. "Hey, Kristy!" he said heartily. "Ready for those meteors?" Watson always managed to sound like a dad on an old-timey television show.

  I shrugged.

  Mom hurried inside, having taken the salad to the picnic table. I looked out the window and could see that the table was now set for six.

  "Dinner's ready!" Mom announced.

  Watson walked ahead of us, carrying the bakery box.

  I watched my brothers and Watson hover around the table, trying to decide where to sit. When Watson finally sat at one end, I grabbed the spot at the other end, on the same side, so he'd be hard to see, and therefore less apt to spoil my meal. Charlie plopped down beside me, Mom sat across from Watson, and Sam and David Michael sat jammed together next to her.

  Watson waited until e
veryone was happily scarfing up their food before he said, "I had a thought."

  Just one? I wanted to ask.

  "Next Saturday," he continued, "l'm going to need a sitter for Karen and Andrew. I was wondering if you'd be available, Kristy."

  I didn't hesitate before replying, "Nope."

  "Kristy..." said Mom wamingly.

  "What?" I asked brightly, smiling at her from the other end of the table.

  Mom shook her head.

  "Um," said Watson. He paused. "You mean, you aren't able to baby-sit, or you don't want to?"