Chapter 5: The Middle of July

Before the End of August

The next day, I did something I wouldn’t have dreamed of two days before. Jenna and Lydia were both at work, but I had the day off. Still while the morning felt fresh and dewy, I rode my bike over to the silo myself: past the golf course, through the construction site, past the last two houses, to see the silo in its familiar half-light state, this time because the sun was growing stronger, not fading away. 

I pulled the silo door open, praying all the spiders had gone back to their hidey-holes during the daytime, and walked my bike into the silo, propping the door behind me. The round top of the silo let in morning light at an angle, holding onto the feeling of the sleepy night. I sat down on the low mound of grass and dirt at the center and lay back to look up, the roof making an imperfect circle above me from the crumbling walls. 

This was it. This was what I needed. A place to think that was focused, blocking out all of the rest that happened at ground level. No new house for a family of soon-to-be-four, no golfers on the course in their steady foursomes hoping to make a better score. No library with endless piles of books to be shelved, books that flew past me too quickly for me to read. No parents waiting with a chore to be done, not even any friends giving looks. And no Ralphie. 

Here, it was just me and I suddenly felt the edges of my body around me like someone had just drawn my outline on the ground in chalk. I lifted up my legs to cross them in the air, one over the other, and they looked unfamiliar in the morning light, perfectly smooth like a statue. I raised one hand above my eyes and placed the fingers to fill up the silo’s gaping top, feeling surprised that the arm leading out to it was my arm, that the fingers were my fingers. I dropped it back behind my head again. 

Birds swooped across the roof above me, and I caught glimpses of them as they went past. An airplane crossed in the other direction, distant in the sky, with its trail behind racing to keep up with the plane. I vaulted myself out of the silo and up into the air, taking a seat on the plane. Where was it going? West, southwest, I estimated, so I would be sitting on board a California-bound plane, a family going to Disney, an aspiring actor going back after a trip home for a funeral, a businessman in first class who clinked the ice in his glass and crushed some between his teeth, anxious to keep moving. I was never myself in these fantasies, never going as myself to do something I might do. I was the actor, the chomping businessman, the daughter thrilled to visit Disney for the first time. 

I fell back into myself as the plane passed beyond the silo wall. I was here, with the silo ground beneath my back, my hair spreading out through the grass, my legs propped up below me and my fingers now tugging at the long grasses to my side. I was here for now, but not for long. I would leave for college. Jenna and Lydia would too. Ralphie and Box and Devi would all be gone. Our booth at Sparky’s would be occupied by new teenagers who didn’t know us and didn’t care that we had sat there first, a transient legacy in a booth that didn’t mean anything once we were gone. 

We should have hung out somewhere that would last, that would live on forever. Like an art museum. Or the Taj Mahal. I knew then that Sparky’s might not last, no matter how good the fries were. And if it lasted, they would probably redo their booths someday, no matter how sacred the red sticky plastic was. And if they didn’t redo the booths and we returned, as elderly folks with canes and walkers, the booth would not be as vibrant as it was for us then. It could never be as vibrant after this summer, after we were gone, after our worlds had expanded over that next hill. Everything behind us would look different when we came back again. 

The sun peeked over the silo wall, flooding it with light, the lines mapped along the wall confidently jutting up into blue space and dropping off. They didn’t have the rest of the map yet either. 

✷

As I pulled my bike out onto the gravel road, I realized that we had never been here in the daytime. There might be people here now, construction crews or couples coming to look at their future home. This was more unsettling than the idea of being all alone, the daylight revealing my trespass to anyone who might be nearby. 

I had no choice but to walk my bike back down the revealing gravel road, the sun beating down on me like a spotlight for anyone who might peek out of the skeleton houses as I went by. Rounding the last cul-de-sac, I had the feeling that someone was watching me, and I walked faster toward our secret exit back to the golf course path. Just as I got near to the trees, I heard a shout from one of the houses.

I paused at the treeline, thinking I was caught, until I heard another voice shouting back. Two people were yelling at each other inside the house that Jenna had leaned into on our second night. I quickly pulled my bike into the shadows of the trees, pausing cautiously to see if it would continue. 

It had to be a construction crew, I told myself at first. But if it was, where was their truck? How did they get here? The voices continued, one woman, one man, raised, though I couldn’t tell what they were saying. More shouting, the man’s voice sounding gravely and harsh, but the woman sounding much more angry. Suddenly a car started and pulled out from behind the house where it had been blocked by a stack of stray beams. 

It backed out of the driveway and pulled back toward my hiding spot in the forest. Through the back window of the rusted red car, I could see the dark ponytail of a woman driving. A man came running out of the house to try to cut her off, and for a moment he jumped in front of the car before she could drive away. Then she swerved around him, and I was left standing by myself in the trees with my bike, the man facing me for a moment before he spun around toward the car and paced after it down the gravel, yelling obscenities as it drove away. 

I had been frozen, watching the argument, watching her leave, but the moment he turned to follow the car, I took my chance, dragging my bike the rest of the way through the path and pedaling as hard as I could down the golf course path, not checking once to see if he was behind me, if he had seen me or followed me out to the golf course. I did not stop pedaling until I came up on the other side of the underpass, until the library was in my sights, until I was firmly back in the world of shelving books and planning for college and my mom’s warm banana bread waiting on the counter for me when I got home. 

✷

I didn’t tell Jenna or Lydia what happened. I would, but not right away. The alarming end to my time would just prompt questions about why I was out there in the first place, time that I wanted to myself, questions that I preferred to leave unanswered. I still didn’t have answers on my own. What I knew was that I didn’t know. Didn’t know what I wanted, didn’t know how things would change. What I also knew was that things would change, just as the construction site had now shapeshifted in my mind since seeing the argument there. My map of the world that I held onto, our squarely defined neighborhood, would change just as soon as college invaded our lives. 

What I didn’t expect was how quickly it changed after my morning at the silo. 

All incoming freshmen were invited to an orientation weekend, to come to the school, get your bearings, meet a few classmates, and make a judgment about the cafeteria based on the best they could give you for two days. It had been on the calendar since I had confirmed my choice last winter, but I had been avoiding it, minimizing it as less than forty-eight hours in a new place, nothing that could change me too much until school really started at the end of August. 

My mom and I pulled into the campus parking lot on Friday evening, just in time for the welcome dinner. I was enrolled in the honors school, so the dinner was a smaller event, and for many of my future classmates, some who would become my friends, it was the only time I saw them with their parents until graduation four years later.

We ate at a table with another mother and daughter, both with the same long flowing hair, bangs pinned up into a bumpy crown at the top of their heads. The mother loved to say her daughter’s name dramatically, talking for her while her daughter looked bored. 

“Olivia is just thrilled to be here.” Olivia searched for more rolls in the basket. “Olivia can’t wait to get started on classes this fall.” Olivia picked around the capers on her plate. “Olivia’s high school teachers just loved her.” Olivia had locked her eyes on a broad-shouldered boy with chestnut curls the next table over. “Olivia is an excellent student.” The boy responded with a single head nod, cool and calm. 

Olivia suddenly began engaging with our table, looking for a reason to laugh, to shake her long hair at the boy who was now paying attention. “Wow, Mom, you are really talking me up. Too bad you haven’t found a way to enroll here yourself.” Mother and daughter feigned laughter together, both shaking their long hair in rhythm, carrying on like that until the dinner was over.

At the student-only mixer following dinner, Olivia and the broad-shouldered boy found each other instantly, and I trailed behind her, the only person I knew at this school so far. The mixer was a sort of truth or dare bingo, and I looked for a way to find someone other than Olivia and Scott, the broad-shouldered boy who hadn’t introduced himself to me but who I overheard putting a lot of sauce on his name as he said it to Olivia. 

In the course of the next hour, I met a Dylan who raised chickens, a Raphael who had already interned at Cirque Du Soleil, a Lisa who had good taste in music, and a Julia who was willing to eat a bag of chips while doing a headstand, though I got the feeling she would have done it without being dared. 

As I laughed with Lisa about Julia’s next choice to finish the bag of chips with a chipotle dip (no dare required), I felt the newness around me. No Lydia. No Jenna. Just a room full of strangers and my mom, back at her hotel room, waiting for us to finish up for the night. I saw the map creeping up the sides of the silo and suddenly felt as if I were on the broken part, where the brick had crumbled away, losing the lines of the map, not quite reaching the sky. 

I grabbed one of the chips and swiped it in the hot sauce. Julia jumped in and cheered me on, grabbing my hand and raising it in the air in triumph as I finished. 

That night, I shared a room with Floradora, an honors college student who really just wanted to study fashion design in New York, but who had to do this first. I bumped into Dana in the hallway and fumbled starting a conversation before she turned and pointed to the phone up to her ear, talking to a boyfriend back home, I guessed. 

The next day, we ate subpar pancakes and trooped between buildings, getting a mini-lecture in timeliness from a short woman who was ten minutes late to her session. We looked over our class schedules one last time and tried to switch out of the short woman’s lecture course. Lisa and I made bets on how quickly Olivia and Scott would start making out, and Julia guessed that they both still had significant others back home. 

That afternoon, at the final session full of ominous warnings of college days gone by, my mom and I packed up into our car to make the trip home. In the parking lot, Julia waved wildly from a few rows away. She started shouting something at me. I rolled my windows down as she ran over. 

“Who said it would be by 3 p.m.? Was it you?” She was breathless. 

“It was Lisa,” I replied. “Wait, did you actually see it?” 

“My mom and I turned a corner and there they were in the doorway, right in the middle of everything.” Julia was laughing and leaning on the car window ledge.

I pulled a five dollar bill out of my wallet. “If you see Lisa tonight, give this to her from me.” 

Julia grabbed the money, waving to my mom. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. D.!” She ran back to her car, and we started the drive home.

“What was that all about?” my mom asked. 

I told her about the bet, about Olivia and her inevitable lock on Scott. She listened to me talk about the truth-or-dare session, the fashionista, the classes we had tried to get out of. 

“That seemed to go well,” she nodded in approval. “How appropriate that their names are Julia and Lisa. It looks like J and L will live on in college!”

She meant it as a comfort, a next wave of friendship that would keep me company as I entered these hallowed halls. But it struck me cold, my mind whirring with betrayals of those significant letters of my alphabet, scrawled on folders along with my own initial for years past. 

I pulled my pillow up from the back seat, curling into the corner of the car. “Yeah,” I responded noncommittally, “they seem fine.”

✷

I didn’t tell Jenna and Lydia about Julia and Lisa. I glossed over them, omitting their names and merging their stories into the rest of the weekend. I did tell them about Olivia and Scott, and Lydia roared at them kissing on day two after meeting, in the doorway of a very public place. 

“I am so ready for college drama.” She flipped between hangers on the rack in front of her. “I am so over pool drama.” Jenna and I began chanting our theme song, now in a slow mournful dirge, our response when Lydia was frustrated with Eduardo, Cocoa, and the Peacock boys. 

We were on the first floor of the department store, looking for a better sweater for Lydia to wear in the chilly air-conditioned offices at the pool. 

“I swear that Cocoa is trying to drive Eduardo crazy. Did you know that she has Peter drop off her lunch at the desk? And if I’m not there, Eduardo has to sign for it and put it in the fridge himself.” 

Jenna held up a dark blue sweater with broad white bands stretching across it. “What about this one?”

Lydia wrinkled her nose. “Too athletic.”

“I think she just needs to go to college too. Get some new competition, new hearts to mess with.” I held up a red sweater and Lydia shook her head again.

“Maybe, but she and Peter seem pretty tight. She swears they’re going to make it.” 

“Peter is really nice, but it’s hard for me to imagine Cocoa not ditching him for a new guy in college.” 

Lydia was now trying on a purple sweater that had a gradient into white. “I bet that she’ll leave him the minute she goes to her orientation weekend and meets her own college Scott.” 

“She can either be his Olivia or fight his Olivia. Either way, she’d probably be happy about it.” 

Lydia had decided on the purple, and we left the store and walked into the main section of the mall. White floors glowed up at us, and skylights let in patches of the outside. Fake vines hung between the skylights, and a water feature bubbled below us as older women sat around the edge with their shopping bags, checking receipts and lists of items in their hands. 

We found a booth at the food court in the corner, one where we could look out at anyone who came through, and Jenna volunteered to pick up our food, large paper plates of stir-fried noodles, extra meat for Lydia, extra veggies for me. Lydia was peeking into her bag, examining her purple sweater. 

“Lydia,” I leaned forward, hoping I could get her advice. “There’s something I need to tell you.” 

She looked away from the sweatshirt sleeve up at me, excited. “Oh my gosh, are you dating Ralphie?”

“What? No, it’s not that.” 

“Jenna is dating that guy from her work? I’m dating Box? Oh my gosh, am I dating Ralphie?” She threw her hands on her chest, wild-eyed. 

“No, listen to me.” I tried again. “I went back to the construction site. By myself.”

Lydia didn’t seem mad. I continued. 

“It was fine. I just needed to think and it was a nice day and you were both working…”

Lydia waved off my concerns. “No one cares that you went back without us you dork, it’s not like we own it.”

“I just hung out at the silo, but then, when I was going back to the golf course path…” I told her about the couple, the fight, the car, the man standing in the middle of the gravel road, looking perfectly in my direction before he turned and I pedaled away. 

Lydia’s eyes were wide. “Did you tell anyone?” 

I shook my head. “Who would I tell? I didn’t want to risk someone finding out about the silo.”

“That’s really bad. What if he had seen you there all alone?”

“I know,” I whispered back.

Jenna walked up with three plates of noodles on one orange tray and set them in front of us. She narrated each item as she set it down. “Extra veggies, extra meat, fork, fork, chopsticks, napkins.” 

Jenna slid back into the booth, and Lydia motioned to me. “Tell her.”

I did. At first, Jenna seemed a little hurt that I had gone to the silo without them. But then she heard the rest and looked worried, then perplexed. She started chewing on the tines of her plastic fork, wiggling it between her teeth as she thought. Finally, she spoke.

“I heard a rumor at work. Jay told me.” Lydia and I looked at each other. Jay who she had been trying to avoid, Jay who we had decided was no good, Jay was still around at Jenna’s work? “Jay told me that he knew some guys who were using an abandoned construction site to party and that one guy was even living there for a little bit, selling drugs out of one of the houses. He made it seem like they weren’t there anymore, but I don’t know. They still could be. They could have been there during the day.”

Lydia and I were worried, now splitting our fears between concerns about the construction site and about Jenna still hanging out with Jay. 

I chose my question carefully. “When did he tell you this?” 

“A few weeks ago. But we hadn’t been back, so I figured I could just let it go. I didn’t know you would go by yourself.” 

Now it was Lydia’s turn to question. She waved me off. “Whatever, she survived. She’s fine. Since when are you talking to Jay again? I thought that idiot was on the night shift and you were avoiding him.” 

“I was avoiding him, but he switched to the day shift a few weeks ago, right around when I did. I still see him sometimes, and he told me that. But I didn’t want you guys to worry so I didn’t bring it up.”

We sat together for a moment in silence. Lydia broke it. “Well, now I feel stupid. Turns out I’m the only one who doesn’t have a secret.”

Jenna nudged her elbow encouragingly. “Now you have something to work on at the pool!”

Lydia rolled her eyes and picked up another piece of chicken on her fork. “Don’t remind me. My secret at the pool is that I pretend to like people even though they are insufferable.”

“You could be lying about not having a secret,” I offered. “You could have more secrets than either of us, and you’re just better at keeping them.” Lydia liked this option. 

“Like, when we went to the carnival, how do we know you didn’t get the number of the turkey leg guy in the front row. He was sitting awfully close to the stage.” 

Jenna jumped in. “Or, when you went on that ‘scholarship trip’ last spring, how do we know you are actually headed downstate for school? You could have been visiting the FBI to get started in their training program.”

Lydia, halfway through a bite of noodles, thrust her fork at Jenna but looked at me. “Oh, I like her secret better. You gotta start working on a better one.” 

We ate our way through our noodles, pitching possible secrets for Lydia. She had met Ashton Kutcher when she was in L.A. last summer and they were in a secret relationship. She had actually grown up in England, and she had an accent she was hiding. Her job at the pool was just a cover for some espionage work she was doing on behalf of— 

“Of who?” She laughed. “Who could possibly care what goes on at the pool?”

“On behalf of our high school teachers, probably. They need eyes and ears on the summer drama, even after we are gone.” 

We made our way out of the mall and into the parking lot. “I will have plenty to report to them after the party this weekend,” Lydia said as we dropped our bags in the back of Jenna’s car.

“Is Eduardo coming?” 

“Yep, everyone will be there. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but Cocoa managed to invite every person who has some drama they want to finish before the end of the summer.”

“Knowing Cocoa, that was intentional.” 

We drove home and the talk dwindled off, Jenna driving and Lydia in the passenger seat. I sat behind them, watching out the window as the backs of houses passed by on the highway, abandoned play sets sitting in corners of yards, beach towels hung out to dry and grills just getting started up for dinner. These homes were each like the construction site houses once, and I could picture them, stripped down, no flowers, no siding, no exterior walls at all, just empty gaps between beams yawning for life to be poured into them. 

I remembered the feeling of pedaling away from the site as fast as I could. But then my mind drifted to the silo, to the map ever-creeping up its walls, to the imperfect ring of sky above me as I watched the planes go past. Would I stop going to the silo just because I had to pass the construction site to get there? Could we make it back if we went together? I wanted to find out. 

✷