Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, Page 2

  He was waiting. Gracie wished she’d planned this out better. Saying she believed in monsters felt sort of like showing someone the collection of stuffed animals she kept on her bed, like she was announcing, I’m still a little kid. I’m still afraid of things that can curl around your leg and drag you under.

  “You know the Loch Ness monster?” she blurted.

  Eli’s brow creased. “Not personally.”

  Gracie plunged ahead. “You think it could be real?”

  Eli closed his book carefully and studied her with very serious, very blue eyes, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening. His lashes were so blond they were almost silver. “Did you look through my library record?” he asked. “Because that’s a federal crime.”

  “What?” It was Gracie’s turn to scrutinize Eli. “No, I didn’t spy on you. I just asked you a question.”

  “Oh. Well. Good. Because I’m not totally sure it’s a crime anyway.”

  “What are you looking at that you’re so worried people will see? Porn?”

  “Volumes of it,” he said, in that same serious voice. “As much porn as I can get. The Little Spindle Library’s collection is small but thoughtfully curated.”

  Gracie snorted, and Eli’s mouth tugged up a little.

  “Okay, perv. Annalee said you might know something about Idgy Pidgy and that kind of stuff.”

  “Annalee?”

  Gracie bobbed her chin over to the booth by the window, where a nervous-looking man in a Hawaiian shirt had seated himself across from Annalee and was whispering something to her as he tore up a napkin. “This is her place.”

  “I like cryptozoology,” Eli said. Off her blank look, he continued, “Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. Ogopogo.”

  Gracie hesitated. “You think all of those are real?”

  “Not all of them. Statistically. But no one was sure the giant squid was real until they started washing up on beaches in New Zealand.”

  “Really?”

  Eli gave her a businesslike nod. “There’s a specimen at the Natural History Museum in London that’s twenty-eight feet long. They think that’s a small one.”

  “No shit,” Gracie breathed.

  Another precise nod. “No. Shit.”

  This time Gracie laughed outright. “Hold up,” she said, “I want a Blizzard. Don’t go anywhere.”

  He didn’t.

  * * *

  That summer took on a wavy, loopy, lazing shape for Gracie. Mornings she “worked” at Youvenirs, rearranging knickknacks in the windows and pointing the rare customer toward the register. At noon she’d meet up with Eli and they’d go to the library or ride bikes to her cove, though Eli thought another sighting there was unlikely.

  “Why would it come back here?” he asked as they stared out at the sun-dappled water.

  “It was here before. Maybe it likes the shade.”

  “Or maybe it was just passing through.”

  Most of the time they talked about Idgy Pidgy. Or at least that was where their conversations always started.

  “You could have just seen fish,” Eli said as they flipped through a book on North American myths, beneath an umbrella at Rottie’s Red Hot.

  “That would have to be some really big fish.”

  “Carp can grow to be over forty pounds.”

  She shook her head. “No. The scales were different.” Like jewels. Like a fan of abalone shells. Like clouds moving over water.

  “You know, every culture has its own set of megafauna. A giant blue crow has been spotted in Brazil.”

  “This wasn’t a blue crow. And ‘megafauna’ sounds like a band.”

  “Not a good band.”

  “I’d go see them.” Then Gracie shook her head. “Why do you eat that way?”

  Eli paused. “What way?”

  “Like you’re going to write an essay about every bite. You’re eating a cheeseburger, not defusing a bomb.”

  But Eli did everything that way—slowly, thoughtfully. He rode his bike that way. He wrote things down in his blue spiral notebook that way. He took what seemed like an hour to pick out something to eat at Rottie’s Red Hot when there were only five things on the menu, which never changed. It was weird, no doubt, and Gracie was glad her friends from school spent most of their summers around Greater Spindle so she didn’t have to try to explain any of it. But there was also something kind of nice about the way Eli took things so seriously, like he really gave everything his full attention.

  They compiled lists of Idgy Pidgy sightings. There had been less than twenty in the town’s history, dating back to the 1920s.

  “We should cross reference them with Loch Ness and Ogopogo sightings,” said Eli. “See if there’s a pattern. Then we can figure out when we should surveil the lake.”

  “Surveil,” Gracie said, doodling a sea serpent in the margin of Eli’s list. “Like police. We can set up a perimeter.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “It’s what they do on cop shows. Set up a perimeter. Lock down the perp.”

  “No TV, remember?” Eli’s parents had a “no screens” policy. He used the computers at the library, but at home it was no Internet, no cell phone, no television. Apparently, they were vegetarians, too, and Eli liked to eat all the meat he could when they left him to his own devices. The closest he got to vegetables was french fries. Gracie sometimes wondered if he was poor in a way that she wasn’t. He never seemed short of money for the arcade or hot pretzels, but he always wore the same clothes and always seemed hungry. People with money didn’t summer in Little Spindle. But people without money didn’t summer at all. Gracie wasn’t really sure she wanted to know. She liked that they didn’t talk about their parents or school.

  Now she picked up Eli’s notebook and asked, “How can we surveil if you don’t know proper police procedure?”

  “All the good detectives are in books.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Conan Doyle is too dry. I like Raymond Carver, Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley. I read every paperback they have here, during my noir phase.”

  Gracie drew bubbles coming out of Idgy Pidgy’s nose. “Eli,” she said, without looking at him, “do you actually think I saw something in the lake?”

  “Possibly.”

  She pushed on. “Or are you just humoring me so you have someone to hang out with?” It came out meaner than she’d meant it to, maybe because the answer mattered.

  Eli cocked his head to one side, thinking, seeking an honest answer, like he was solving for x. “Maybe a little,” he said at last.

  Gracie nodded. She liked that he hadn’t pretended something different. “I’m okay with that.” She hopped down off the table. “You can be the stodgy veteran with a drinking problem, and I’m the loose cannon.”

  “Can I wear a cheap suit?”

  “Do you have a cheap suit?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can wear the same dumb madras shorts you always do.”

  * * *

  They rode their bicycles to every place there had ever been an Idgy Pidgy sighting, all the way up to Greater Spindle. Some spots were sunny, some shady, some off beaches, others off narrow spits of rock and sand. There was no pattern. When they got sick of Idgy Pidgy, they’d head over to the Fun Spot to play skee ball or mini golf. Eli was terrible at both, but he seemed perfectly happy to lose to Gracie regularly and to tidily record his miserable scores.

  On the Friday before Labor Day, they ate lunch in front of the library—tomato sandwiches and cold corn on the cob that Gracie’s mother had made earlier that week. A map of the US and Canada was spread out on the picnic table before them. The sun was heavy on their shoulders and Gracie felt sweaty and dull. She wanted to go to the lake, just to swim, not to look for Idgy Pidgy, but Eli claimed it was too hot to move.

  “There’s probably a barbecue somewhere,” she said, lying on the bench, toes digging in the dead grass beneath the table. “You really want to waste your last school-free Friday
just looking at maps in the middle of town?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”

  Gracie felt herself smiling. Her mother seemed to want to spend all of her time with Eric. Mosey and Lila lived practically next door to each other and had been best friends since they were five. It was nice to have someone prefer her company, even if it was Eli Cuddy.

  She covered her eyes with her arm to block the sun. “Do we have anything to read?”

  “I returned all my books.”

  “Read me town names off the map.”

  “Why?”

  “You won’t go swimming, and I like being read to.”

  Eli cleared his throat. “Burgheim. Furdale. Saskatoon…”

  Strung together, they sounded almost like a story.

  * * *

  Gracie thought about inviting Eli when she went to see the end-of-season fireworks up at Ohneka Beach the next night, with Lila and Mosey, but she wasn’t quite sure how to explain all the time she’d been spending with him, and she thought she should sleep over at Mosey’s place. She didn’t want to feel completely left out when classes started. It was an investment in the school year. But when Monday came and there was no Eli walking the main road or at the DQ, she felt a little hollow.

  “That kid gone?” Annalee asked as Gracie poked at the upended cone in her dish. She’d decided to try a cherry dip. It was just as disgusting as she remembered.

  “Eli? Yeah. He went back to the city.”

  “He seems all right,” said Annalee, taking the cup of ice cream from Gracie and tossing it in the trash.

  “Mom wants you to come for dinner on Friday night,” Gracie said.

  But she could admit that maybe Eli Cuddy was better than all right.

  * * *

  The next May, right before Memorial Day, Gracie went down to her cove at Little Spindle. She’d been, plenty of times, over the school year. She’d done her homework there until the air turned too cold for sitting still, then watched ice form on the edges of the water as winter set in. She’d nearly jumped out of her skin when a black birch snapped beneath the weight of the frost on its branches and fell into the shallows with a resigned groan. And on that last Friday in May, she made sure she was on the shore, skipping stones, just in case there was magic in the date or the Idgy Pidgy had a clock keeping time in its heart. Nothing happened.

  She went by Youvenirs, but she’d been in the previous day to help Henny get ready for summer, so there was nothing left to do, and eventually she ended up at the Dairy Queen with an order of curly fries she didn’t really want.

  “Waiting for your friend?” Annalee asked, as she sifted through her newspaper for the crossword.

  “I’m just eating my fries.”

  When she saw Eli, Gracie felt an embarrassing rush of relief. He was taller, a lot taller, but just as skinny, and damp, and serious looking as ever. Gracie didn’t budge, her insides knotted up. Maybe he wouldn’t want to hang out again. That’s fine, she told herself. But he scanned the seats even before he went to the counter, and when he saw her, his pale face lit up like silver sparklers.

  Annalee’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a cackle.

  “Hey!” he said, striding over. His legs seemed to reach all the way to his chin now. “I found something amazing. You want a Blizzard?”

  And just like that, it was summer all over again.

  SCALES

  The something amazing was a dusty room in the basement of the library, packed with old vinyl record albums, a turntable, and a pile of headphones tucked into a nest of curly black cords.

  “I’m so glad it’s still here,” Eli said. “I found it right before Labor Day, and I was afraid someone would finally get around to clearing it out over the winter.”

  Gracie felt a pang of guilt over not spending that last weekend with Eli, but she was also pleased he’d been waiting to show her this. “Does that thing work?” she asked, pointing to the column of stereo gear.

  Eli flipped a couple of switches and red lights blinked on. “We are go.”

  Gracie slid a record from the shelves and read the title: Jackie Gleason: Music, Martinis, and Memories. “What if I only want the music?”

  “We could just listen to a third of it.”

  They made a stack of records, competing to find the one with the weirdest cover—flying toasters, men on fire, barbarian princesses in metal bikinis—and listened to all of them, lying on the floor, big black headphones hugging their ears. Most of the music was awful, but a few albums were really good. Bella Donna had Stevie Nicks on the cover dressed like an angel tree-topper and holding a cockatoo, but they listened to it all the way through, twice, and when “Edge of Seventeen” came on, Gracie imagined herself rising out of the lake in a long white dress, flying through the woods, hair like a black banner behind her.

  It wasn’t until she was pedaling home, stomach growling for dinner, singing Ooh baby ooh baby ooh, that Gracie realized she and Eli hadn’t talked about Idgy Pidgy once.

  * * *

  Though Gracie hadn’t exactly been keeping Eli a secret from Mosey and Lila, she hadn’t mentioned him, either. She just wasn’t sure they’d get him. But one afternoon, when she and Eli were eating at Rottie’s Red Hot, a horn blared from the lot, and when Gracie looked around, there was Mosey in her dad’s Corolla, with Lila in the passenger seat.

  “Don’t you only have a learner’s permit?” she asked, as Mosey and Lila squeezed in on the round benches.

  “My parents don’t care, if I’m just coming down to Little Spindle. And it means they don’t have to drive me. Where have you been, anyway?” Mosey glanced pointedly at Eli.

  “Nowhere. Youvenirs. The usual.”

  Eli said nothing, just carefully parceled out ketchup into a lopsided steeple by his fries.

  They ate. They talked about taking the train into the city to see a concert.

  “How come your family doesn’t stay at Greater Spindle?” Mosey asked.

  Eli cocked his head to one side, giving the question his full consideration. “We’ve just always come here. I think they like the quiet.”

  “I like it, too,” said Lila. “Not the lake so much, but it’s nice in the summer, when Greater Spindle gets so crazy.”

  Mosey popped a fry in her mouth. “The lake is haunted.”

  “By what?” asked Eli, leaning forward.

  “Some lady drowned her kids there.”

  Lila rolled her eyes. “That’s a complete lie.”

  “La Llorona,” said Eli. “The weeping woman. There’s legends like that all over the place.”

  Great, thought Gracie. We can all start hunting ghosts together.

  She tried to ignore the squirmy feeling in her gut. She’d told herself that she hadn’t wanted to introduce Eli to Mosey and Lila because he was so odd, but now she wasn’t sure. She loved Mosey and Lila, but she always felt a little alone around them, even when they were sitting together at a bonfire or huddled in the back row of the Spotlight watching a matinee. She didn’t want to feel that way around Eli.

  When Mosey and Lila headed back to Greater Spindle, Eli gathered up their plastic baskets on a tray and said, “That was fun.”

  “Yeah,” Gracie agreed, a bit too enthusiastically.

  “Let’s take bikes to Robin Ridge tomorrow.”

  “Everyone?”

  The furrow between Eli’s brows appeared. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You and me.”

  Everyone.

  TEETH

  Gracie couldn’t pinpoint the moment Eli dried out, only the moment she noticed. They were lying on the floor of Mosey’s bedroom, rain lashing at the windows.

  She’d gotten her driver’s license that summer, and her mom’s boyfriend didn’t mind loaning Gracie his truck once in a while so she could drive up to Greater Spindle. Gas money was harder to come by. There were better jobs in Greater Spindle, but none that were guaranteed to correspond with Gracie’s mother’s shifts, so Gracie was still working at Youvenirs, s
ince she could get there on her bike.

  It felt like Little Spindle was closing in on her, like she was standing on a shore that got narrower and narrower as the tide came in. People were talking about SATs and college applications and summer internships. Everything seemed to be speeding up, and everyone seemed to be gathering momentum, ready to go shooting off into the future on carefully plotted trajectories, while Gracie was still struggling to get her bearings.

  When Gracie started to get that panicked feeling, she’d find Eli at the Dairy Queen or the library, and they’d go down to the “Hall of Records” and line up all of the Bowie albums, so they could look at his fragile, mysterious face, or they’d listen to Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas while they tried to decipher all the clues on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s. She didn’t know what she was going to do when the school year started.

  They’d driven up to Greater Spindle in Eric’s truck without much of a plan, radio up, windows down to save gas on air-conditioning, sweating against the plastic seats, but when the storm had rolled in they’d holed up at Mosey’s to watch movies.

  Lila and Mosey were up on the bed painting their toes and picking songs to play for each other, and Gracie was sprawled out on the carpet with Eli, listening to him read from some boring book about waterways. Gracie wasn’t paying much attention. She was on her stomach, head on her arms, listening to the rain on the roof and the murmur of Eli’s voice, and feeling okay for the first time in a while, as if someone had taken the hot knot of tension she always seemed to be carrying beneath her ribs and dunked it in cool water.

  The thunder had been a near continuous rumble, and the air felt thick and electrical outside. Inside, the air-conditioning had raised goose bumps on Gracie’s arms, but she was too lazy to get up to turn it down, or to ask for a sweater.

  “Gracie,” Eli said, nudging her shoulder with his bare foot.

  “Mmm?”

  “Gracie.” She heard him move around, and when he spoke again, he had his head near hers and was whispering. “That cove you like doesn’t have a name.”

  “So?”

  “All the little beaches and inlets have names, but not your cove.”