Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Winnie nodded. It was awful of her to slide the telegram under the door like Marcus was some kind of leper, but at the time she’d been too indignant to knock.

“And remember when I told you that I had a secret?”

Of course she remembered! She felt like shaking him. Didn’t he understand that his every word printed indelibly on her brain?

“Yes,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Marcus said. “These telegrams?Are you ready?”

Winnie was pretty sure she wasn’t ready, but she nodded.

“They’re from my editor.”

Winnie smiled at him. She thought he’d said “editor.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I have an editor,” Marcus said. “At Dome Books in New York. His name is Zachary Celtic.”

Winnie felt like the butt of some kind of joke, though she wasn’t sure yet if she was supposed to be angry or laugh along.

“I still don’t understand.”

Marcus squinted at the ocean. The sun seemed to have gotten brighter in the past few minutes. So Winnie was skeptical. She believed in him, but not that much.

“I have a book deal with Dome,” Marcus said. “This guy, this editor, Zachary Celtic, offered me thirty thousand dollars to write a book about what happened with my mother.”

“You’re kidding,” Winnie said. “Thirty thousand dollars?”

Those three words had power, Marcus realized, even over someone with plenty of money like Winnie. They’d held so much power over him that he’d agreed to write a book he didn’t want to write. There, he’d admitted it.

He didn’t want to write the book.

“They gave me five hundred dollars already,” Marcus said. It sounded like such a paltry sum when compared to thirty thousand, but since Marcus now knew he had to pay it back, it seemed like a lot. “But I spent it. And what this telegram says is that the first fifty pages and a complete synopsis are due next week, September first. ‘Per our agreement.’ ”

“You’ve written fifty pages?” Winnie said.

“No,” Marcus said. “I’ve only written one page. I had writer’s block this summer.”

“Maybe they’ll give you more time,” Winnie said. “Like an extension on a term paper?”

“More time won’t help,” Marcus said. “I’m not going to write it at all.”

“Really?” Winnie said. Now she was having a hard time processing what he was telling her. He had a book deal for thirty thousand dollars but he was giving it up?Turning it down? She felt compelled to push him toward greatness. Marcus could be a writer, a real writer, before he even turned eighteen. “Why not?”

“I don’t have it in my heart,” Marcus said. “I’m furious with my mother and I know better than anyone else that what she did was wrong, but that’s not stuff I want to explain to the rest of the world. I want to work it out privately.”

“But you don’t talk to your mother,” Winnie said.

“Yeah, I know,” Marcus said. He felt like crumpling up the telegram and tossing it into the water, but it had the phone number of Dome Books on it and now he had to call. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to be a writer. And I will be someday. But I’m not writing this story. I kept thinking of your dad, too. He wouldn’t have wanted me to write this book.”

“Yeah,” Winnie said. “He wasn’t into exploiting his cases.”

That word, “exploiting,” was the one that made Marcus squirm. Along with the horrible things Zachary Celtic had said at lunch, and the way the five hundred dollars was handed to him-cash in an envelope-so seedy, so underhanded. They were buying Marcus’s betrayal. “Anyway, that’s my secret. I have a book deal with this big publishing house for all this money but I’m not going through with it.”

“Well, okay, then,” Winnie said. She poured two cups of lemonade and handed one to Marcus. They clicked cups in a toast, though they had different ideas about what they were drinking to. Winnie thought they were drinking to Marcus’s future career as a writer, if not with this book then with another. Marcus thought they were drinking to his freedom.

Winnie was thrilled to accompany Marcus on even the smallest errand; standing in line at the post office to get stamps with him was a delight. But this-going with him in the morning to call his editor and turn down the book deal-was monumental. Marcus was so nervous about the prospect of contacting this man, Zachary Celtic, that he said he wouldn’t come to Winnie’s room at all that night, even though she begged him to as they sat on the deck looking at the stars. She reminded him that their nights together were dwindling in number.

“I can’t,” he said. “My guts are bound up about this call tomorrow. I just want tomorrow to come so I can do it.”

“What are you going to say?” Winnie asked.

“I’ll just tell him I’m not writing it. I’ll tell him I’ll return the five hundred bucks.”

Even though Marcus and Winnie were in love, there were certain things she was afraid to ask. Like where he was going to get that kind of money.

“And what about your mother?” Winnie said.

“What about her?”

“Will you go see her when you get home?”

He squeezed her hand so tightly she nearly cried out in pain. “I don’t know what to do about my mother,” he said.

In the morning, they rode their bikes into town and called Za-chary Celtic from a phone booth. Marcus had brought the telegram along with him. He dialed the number, then pumped the payphone full of quarters; his pockets were heavy with them. Winnie stood at Marcus’s back, outside of the booth. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear the conversation, and for a moment she wondered why he’d invited her along when clearly this was something he wanted to do by himself. She looked up and down the street at the people walking their dogs, drinking coffee, waiting for the shops to open. A man on a bench nearby read the Wall Street Journal and talked on his cell phone about the upcoming football season. Marcus had two fingers plugged in his ear and his head bent forward. Winnie heard him say, “Zachary Celtic, please. True crime. It’s Marcus Tyler calling.” His voice was strange. Winnie wanted to touch him in some reassuring way, but she was scared to. The man on the bench blabbed into his cell phone, bragging now about the dinner reservations he’d managed to “score” at the Pearl and American Seasons. Winnie nearly shushed him. Marcus pumped more change into the phone. He turned around and smiled weakly at her, saying, “They’re seeing if he’s available.”

“Do you have enough money?” Winnie asked.

He patted his pockets for confirmation, then he yanked Winnie into the booth with him. She was relieved. The two of them wedged themselves on either side of the telephone, and Marcus managed to squeeze the door shut. He held the receiver in one hand and Winnie’s wrist with the other. Then he swallowed, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like that of a nine-year-old boy.

“Mr. Celtic?Yeah, this is Marcus Tyler?Yes, I got it yesterday. Listen, I have some bad news.”

Winnie squeezed his fingers.

“No, more time isn’t going to help. When you first asked this spring, I thought I could write it. I definitely wanted the money, and I understand it was, like, a huge leap of faith to offer that kind of cash to a kid. But I tried all summer, and I can’t seem to get any decent sentences on paper. At first I thought it was writer’s block, but then, I don’t know…” Marcus took a huge breath, sucking all of the remaining oxygen out of the phone booth, then said in his normal voice, “I don’t want to write it.”