Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

It was the blood that was the problem, Marcus realized. Gar-rett was covered with blood and Marcus wasn’t. His mind skipped beyond explaining the course of events, beyond being sent home, beyond being found guilty of assault, and sent to a juvenile detention center until his eighteenth birthday. It skipped to this: They all think I’m just like her.

“Marcus,” Beth said. “What have you done?”

“I punched him,” Marcus said.

“Mom, you don’t know what happened…” Winnie said.

Beth didn’t seem to hear. She helped Garrett up and led him to the bathroom where she dabbed at his face with a wet towel. So much blood, but thankfully not much actual damage-a swollen nose, maybe, and by the morning, a black eye. Winnie crowded into the bathroom with Beth and Garrett, crying now, because this was all her fault.

“We were just sleeping, ” Winnie said. “And Garrett barged into my room and started beating Marcus up.”

“Garrett beat Marcus up?” Beth said. “Looks to me like it was the other way around. Just look at your brother! Look at his face. ”

Back in Winnie’s room, Marcus sat on a clean part of Winnie’s bed holding a wad of Kleenex to the gash on his foot. They all think I’m just like her.

“Garrett started it,” Winnie said. “He kicked Marcus in the chest, twice, really hard. He came into my room, he pulled Marcus onto the floor and then he kicked him!”

There were splotches of blood now on Beth’s bathrobe. “Gar-rett?”

Garrett inspected his face in the mirror. It looked like someone else’s face.

“Garrett attacked Marcus in his sleep, like a coward, ” Winnie said. “So Marcus hit him back. Marcus only hit him once.” Winnie had seen in Marcus’s eyes, though, the possibility of more, and it frightened her. She ripped off a long piece of toilet paper and blew her nose. This was all her fault.

Garrett touched his eyelid. He had a sharp headache.

“Garrett should mind his own fucking business!” Winnie said. She wasn’t sure yet if her mother realized she had broken a lamp. Every piece of furniture in Horizon had, like, seventy-five years of history behind it, and so her mother would blame that on her, too.

Garrett raised his eyes to meet Beth’s gaze. He had no words.

“I don’t know what to do,” Beth said. “I don’t know how to fix this.” She wasn’t crying but her voice was so defeated that it was worse than crying.

Marcus stood in the doorway of the bathroom. His voice was gravelly. “You’ve been wanting to kick me like that since the first day here,” he said to Garrett. “And I’ve been wanting to punch you for wanting to kick me. Because I, myself, have done nothing wrong. I am not a criminal. All I did was show up. Because your father invited me. Arch Newton invited me.”

Everyone was quiet. Beth opened the medicine cabinet and hunted for bandages. God, how she wished she could just keep the kids separated-locked in their own rooms like jail cells, like cages at the zoo. This is too much! she wanted to shout, loud enough so that Arch could hear her. This is too much for me to deal with alone!

“It doesn’t matter what happened,” she said. “I want you kids to get along. For my sake. This is the hardest summer any of us will ever have. The name-calling has to stop. The fighting is unacceptable. If Arch were here… frankly, I can’t imagine what he would think.”

“If Dad were here,” Garrett said, “none of this would be happening.”

“Well, he’s not here,” Beth said. “He’s not here and so we have to deal as best we can without him. We have to deal. ”

Winnie glared at Garrett. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? God, I could kill you!”

“Winnie!” Beth said.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett said. He was suddenly exhausted, and his longing for Piper was worse than ever. He wouldn’t be surprised if she never wanted to see him again. He was a mean, evil person and his head hurt. And his foot hurt from where he’d kicked Marcus, like maybe he’d broken a toe against Marcus’s chest.

“I’m sorry, too,” Marcus said. He snatched a bandage for his foot. They all think I’m just like her. He limped back to his room, thinking what he was really sorry about was that he would never get to touch Winnie again, never get to hold her while she slept.

Winnie went back to her room to sweep up the pieces of the lamp. Sniffling, because this was her fault.

Beth put ointment and a small bandage on the cut under Gar-rett’s eye. “Oh, Garrett,” she said. When she first walked into Winnie’s bedroom and saw Garrett bleeding and Marcus looming over him, she thought… well, she thought Marcus had attacked him, and her instincts were to protect her son. But now, she faced a feeling ten times worse: her son was the bully. Her own child was bringing this pain down on his own head.

Garrett missed his girlfriend. Then he missed his father. Then he missed himself-the happy, good-natured person he used to be. He couldn’t even thank his mother for nursing his wounds. He hobbled back to his bedroom; outside, the wind groaned. He deserved to die in his sleep.

Garrett spent the next few days hiding in his room, emerging only for meals. His right eye was swollen shut and mottled purple and green, and his mother, taking pity on him, bought him a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol for the pain. Marcus had a lump on his windpipe and a bruise the size of an egg on his chest. Winnie had broken an antique lamp-the only valuable thing in the whole house if you believed what Beth said. Horizon took on a cautious hush, like a hospital where everyone suffered from hurt feelings.

By the time Garrett’s face resumed its normal shape and color, it was the fifteenth. He woke up on that morning in a panic. He didn’t know when or how Piper was arriving on-island, and he certainly couldn’t ask David. He considered staking out the house on his bike, but that was psycho, and since he was finished with psycho behavior, he decided his only alternative was to sit home and wait.

Which was pure torture, a hell unimaginable-far, far worse than waiting for Piper when she was off-island was waiting for Piper when she was on-island, or might be. The key was to keep busy, and so Garrett joined Marcus and Winnie at the beach. They looked surprised to see him, but they didn’t get up and leave, though he wouldn’t have blamed them if they did. He swam for the first time all summer and the water felt great. He bodysurfed in the waves until his nose stung and his lungs ached and then he headed up to the house and made sandwiches for everyone, including Marcus, who said it was delicious after the first bite.

After lunch, Garrett started to read the third book on his summer reading list, Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver. A chick book, he realized after twenty pages, something added to the list to appease all of the neo-feminist girls in Garrett’s class. He put the book down, incredulous that the reading list should be so ill-suited to his tastes, and he checked the clock for the very first time that day. Two-thirty. Garrett went to the front door and looked down the long stretch of dirt road that led to their house. No Piper. He tried to be rational. She would either ride her bike or have David drop her off as soon as she got home. And it was Sunday, so David wouldn’t be working. Garrett stood at the door for a long time, long enough to feel desperation seeping into his skin. Garrett hopped on his bike and rode to Piper’s house, just as he promised himself he wouldn’t.

He cruised by the house, checking for clues. The yard was empty, thank God, since the worst thing, which Garrett hadn’t considered until he sailed past, would have been David out mowing the lawn. But no, the house looked quiet; both of David’s vehicles were in the driveway. Which meant what? Either Piper was already home or not home yet.