The Hidden Summer

Behind our apartment building, past the chain-link fence, there’s a dead tree that somehow hasn’t fallen yet. It’s standing up tall and straight, pretending to still be alive. Or maybe it’s just scared to fall down-it’s surrounded by briars and poison ivy and all sorts of weeds. It looks like nobody’s set foot near that tree for a hundred years. Except for me and Lydia.
I like that the tree is an undiscovered place. I also like the honeysuckle, which grows in clumps of twisted, looping vines with delicate yellow and white blooms. They smell like honey tastes. Over time the honeysuckle has taken over the stumps and the shrubs and even the dead tree. Lydia and I stomp our way through the briars to get to the tree, and we sit on its roots, which stick out of the ground like the humps of sea monsters. We look up and it’s a honeysuckle sky, little bits of blue showing through the vines. The honeysuckle is over us and around us-it falls down like curtains and hides us.
We drink up the flowers sip by sip. Today was the last day of school, and it’s getting close to sunset. We can hardly see each other-it’s all shadows under the tree. I don’t need light to talk to Lydia, though she’s my best friend and I can see her face even with my eyes closed.
“Mrs. Hughey definitely dyes her hair,” she says, pinching the end off a honeysuckle blossom. “Amanda Elliot saw the roots when she was standing at Mrs. Hughey’s desk.” Mrs. Hughey is the sixth-grade math teacher. We’ve always suspected her hair isn’t naturally possible. It’s the color of mustard.
“I heard Adam can do four one-armed push-ups,” I say. I pull on the string of my own honeysuckle, taking my time, waiting for the little droplet to bead at the end of the flower. I hold it up to my mouth and let the liquid drop on my tongue.
Any and all things related to Adam Cooper are of interest to us. He’s in seventh grade one grade ahead of us-and, so far, has never actually spoken to either one of us. (The one boy who does speak to me plenty is named Gabriel Johnson. He has two parts in his very curly hair, so he has a puff of hair on the left, a puff in the middle, and a puff on the right. He looks slightly like a poodle. He writes me poetry, and I wish he’d stop.)
“Can you do a one-armed push-up?” Lydia asks.
I don’t know. I’ve never tried. We both try to arrange ourselves on the dirt and roots and give the push-ups a shot, but neither of us can quite manage it. I can do one on my knees, but I’m pretty sure that’s cheating. Eventually we just collapse on our bellies, propped on our elbows, and catch our breaths. The air smells like dirt and grass and honeysuckle.
“I have to tell you something,” Lydia says as she rises, brushing dead leaves off her stomach. She looks serious. “You have to go to camp again this summer?” I guess. Last summer she got sent to an art camp in Tennessee for a whole month. Her mother loves camps.
“Worse,” she says, picking at a leaf. Tearing a leaf to shreds, really. And she’s got a piece of her hair in her mouth. She does that when she’s nervous. Her hair is dark brown and long, but it’s also usually got dried spit in it. “Okay,” I say, nervous myself now. She could be moving to another city. She could be sick. All of a sudden there’s a bitter taste in my mouth that’s nothing like honeysuckle.
Lydia’s looking at me like she doesn’t know how to finish what she started. I stare back at her. Her father is from Guatemala, and she has his lovely brown skin, but she has her mother’s green eyes. I have freckles and light brown hair that’s hardly any color at all.
“Nell,” Lydia says, “my mother says we can’t see each other for a little while.”
I frown. It doesn’t make sense. “Why? Why would she say that?”
“Your mom.”
This could mean a lot of things. But Lydia’s mother has known my mother for years, and Mom hasn’t changed any in the last few days as far as I can see.
Lydia’s chewing her hair with a lot of enthusiasm now. “Something… happened. I’m not sure what. My mom said she’d put up with your mom long enough, and she didn’t think I should, um, like, hang around with you.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“She also said we spend so much time together that neither of us get to have other friends. She said it would be better for us to get a little space.”
“That’s stupid,” I say.
“I know,” she says.
“How long is this break supposed to be?”
“She said for a couple of months. Or so.”
“Two months is the whole summer! And what’s ‘or so’ mean? That could
be forever.” “We can still figure out how to see each other,” says Lydia. “You know we can. I’ll sneak out and come over. Otherwise what good is the back staircase for?”
She smiles, and I know she wants me to smile back. To see this as some big adventure. But I can’t. I’m all for adventures, but Lydia has always been part of them.
Even if we sneak out, it means I can’t go to Lydia’s house. No more eating lunch at her kitchen counter, no more spending the night, no more throwing water balloons off her balcony or dressing up her dog in her mom’s old nightgowns. We always stay at her house. Some of our best times have been after everyone else has gone to bed, whispering all our best secrets. That’s when you really know you’re best friends with someone, I think when the entire world is asleep and there’s no one left but the two of you and you can say all the things you’re afraid to tell anyone else. Now we’ll hardly see each other this summer. Maybe not at all.
“Okay,” I say, not looking at her.
“I’ll let Mom calm down some and then ask her again. In a week or two.”
“You better go home now,” I say.
“Yeah, we should go,” she says, and starts to stand up. I don’t move.
“You go on,” I say. I don’t know why I say it. It hurts her feelings. Her hands fall to her sides and flop around like fish out of water.
“You know I hate this, too,” she says.
“I know,” I say, because it’s what I’m supposed to say. I do know that she hates it. But it’s different for her. She’s not the one who’ll be alone in the apartment with my mother all summer. She’ll have her nice bedroom and parents who don’t pay much attention to her but never yell at her. Even though I love Lydia as much as I love anyone on this planet, for right now it all seems so unfair that I can barely keep the it’s-okay-don’t-worry-about me smile on my face. And, trust me, I’ve had lots of practice keeping a smile on my face when I really don’t feel like smiling.
Lydia waves at me and ducks under the honeysuckle curtain. I hate the sight of her leaving. But it hurts worse to see her next to me, like everything’s normal, when I know it won’t last.