Amy Doan - The Summer List

Casey interrupted. “The skating rink. Tough clue, Mom.”

“I don’t think she wants the clues to be hard. I don’t think that’s the point this time.”

Casey pressed her bright cheek against the side of her wine cooler. “She was good, I’ll give her that. Acting as surprised as me when your letter showed up. Talking me into how great it’d be if you came and I should at least give it a chance, how hard it must have been for you to reach out after all this time...” She broke off. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I picked up the sheet of blue stationery from the coffee table. Until half an hour ago Casey had thought I’d sent it. And I noticed something that I hadn’t the first time. “My” letter had a tracery of lines in it. Casey had crumpled it up, too. Maybe Alex even had to fish the balled-up letter from the garbage. I couldn’t blame Casey; I’d resisted, too. But it hurt.

“She outsmarted us,” I said.

“Those handwriting samples we did junior year...” Casey said.

“Sophomore year.”

“Was it? Anyway, I can’t even deal with that part right now, the idea of her holing up in her studio, plotting this twisted fiesta when I thought she was painting. She was up there copying our handwriting while I was down here reading Lemony Snicket with Elle, totally oblivious.”

“She thought we needed an activity,” I said. “Like toddlers.”

“This says it all.” Casey picked up the manila envelope and punched the word Girls , denting the paper.

I nodded, though I knew Casey was getting worked up for reasons that had nothing to do with being treated like a child.

The scavenger hunts Alex masterminded when we were in high school weren’t just party games to keep us entertained. Maybe they’d started off that way. But they’d become something else, and the final prize, for both of us, had been the end of our friendship. Alex couldn’t make that right with an apology and ten bad poems.

We sipped our drinks. Casey petted Jett with her foot and I read Alex’s list.

Most of the items were in town. Walking distance, even. The only item that would take some effort was the last one.

Not that we were doing it.

The grandfather clock struck eight and after the final, resounding bong it felt even quieter than before.

“So I get that she wants us to make up,” I said. “But why now?”

Casey shook her head, focusing on a spot in the air above my head. She whispered something.

I tapped her knee, then, startled by the familiarity of the gesture, pulled my hand back. “Did you say no?”

Casey cleared her throat. “I said, ‘I know.’” She shook her head as if to reset her thoughts. “I know why she’s doing it now.”

“Why?”

She smiled, but her eyes were glazed. Jett whimpered and snuffled into her lap.

“Because you have your little girl?” I said.

She shook her head.

“Then it’s...because we’re thirty-five? Or I am, and you will be in August. And thirty-five is, I don’t know, the age you miraculously become older and wiser and able to get over the past according to your mom?”

“No.”

“So tell me.”

Casey’s hand trembled as she set her drink down. She shook her head again. Then, so fast I hardly knew what was happening, she was gone. Out the front door. Barefoot, launching herself into the cold night.

I waited five minutes. Ten. Long enough to feel the cool air coming in through the open door. I reread Alex’s list, trying to find clues between the clues. Why now, Alex? The answer tried to burrow into my thoughts, but I couldn’t latch onto it.

Jett whimpered, her nose pointed at the front door.

“Should we go after her, Jetty?”

She thumped her tail, and then ran to the door, where I clipped on her leash. At the last second I returned for the clue list.

6

Messy

Even before I saw Casey’s green sweatshirt in the light of the gazebo, I knew that’s where she’d be.

We’d dreamed away so many hours under its rotting roof, every morning before school and after every party.

The bright gazebo looked like a stage in the shadowy park, which was otherwise lit only by one weak streetlamp. Casey sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the lower wall with her eyes closed. “Sorry about that,” she said, not opening them.

“It’s okay. Jett was worried, though.”

Casey held out her hand and let Jett snuffle into it. “I’m sorry, Jett. Your mom’s old friend is crazy.”

“No. It’s been a crazy day.”

I looked around. In my time the small park by Casey’s house had been scrubby and neglected, but now it was spruced up. The grass was groomed and there was a red play structure on one of those rubbery black surfaces that kept kids from breaking their arms when they plummeted off the monkey bars.

The gazebo had been fixed up, too, repaired and painted a glossy white.

The upper wall of the gazebo was plain white lattice, curving into a domed roof. But the lower wall had always been special, even when it was falling apart. I knelt so I could examine the mosaic running around the bottom. It was whole again, a fantastical lake scene for small children to enjoy, built at their eye level. Swimmers, fish, swaying underwater plants, and the imaginary friendly water creature everyone called Messy. Loch Ness had Nessie, Lake Tahoe had Tessie, and we had Messy.

I crawled along the floor, running my hand on the cold tiles. “They did a good job on this.”

“What? Oh, shit, I forgot. Are you okay being here?”

“Sure. It’s beautiful.”

A brass plaque by the steps stated that the gazebo was built in 1945 in memory of Lieutenant Rupert Collier II, who had died in Normandy during World War II. A shinier plaque below said the gazebo had been “restored in 2012 thanks to a generous gift from the Coeur-de-Lune Historical Society in honor of William T. Christie.”

My dad. I’d sent checks to the Historical Society on his birthday every year. I’d donated an extra-large sum on what would have been his eightieth, four years ago.

“They had an artist out of Truckee do it,” Casey said. “She spent months matching colors. So many tiles were missing.”

“I wonder why.”

“Some hooligans had been prying them off.”

“How terrible.”

She smiled, wiping her shiny cheek with her sleeve.

“Did you give her the tiles?” I said.

“I sneaked over in the dark and left them in a shoebox.”

“And she used them?”

“All fifty-seven.”

Fifty-seven blue tiles. Casey had counted them, and remembered.

Fifty-seven nights, sitting here in the dark, picking off loose tiles, talking over whatever we’d done that evening. As innocent and free and unaware of time as the creatures swimming in the mosaic.

“I want to see it in daylight,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to see the old tiles against the new, in daylight. So I can decide if this so-called artist matched them up right. My dad would’ve wanted me to make sure. Will you show me, tomorrow?”

“You mean it? You actually want to stay?”

I nodded. “I’m here. I’ll take your mom’s dare, for a while at least. I’m in if you are.”

“But you always picked Truth and I always picked Dare,” she said.

“I know. But say we did give it a try. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You know whatever my mom has planned for us at the end of this, this...whatever this is...is going to be nuts. She hasn’t changed.”

“I still want to try it.”

“Why, though? It’s not so you can see what they did with your donations.”

I shrugged, touching the cold, thin line of new grout between the restored tiles. “Jett likes the fresh air. And I need to check on the house.”