The night of our great fishing expedition with the twins Mack’s waiting on his front steps with his trusty tackle box and two poles. I bring two from our collection, several generations’ worth. What I don’t bring is the bamboo pole with a cork on a string and no reel at all. We used it when we were little, but the girls won’t appreciate that. Some days I catch more with it than all Mack’s modern rigs and reels, but it’ll look dorky on a date with girls who didn’t grow up around here.
“Boyo.” Mack’s batting at the bugs and the sun hasn’t even set.
“Seen the twins?”
“I told them I’d call before we came.”
“We’re walking over?”
He nods.
“So… what are you waiting for?”
When he fakes to his right and swings his left hook, I step back, laughing.
He goes inside to phone the girls to warn them. Mack and I have already learned that girls don’t like being surprised. While I wait on the porch, Mrs. Petriano appears at the living room window and waves. She’s not so bad.
By the time Mack comes back, Meredith and Juliann are halfway down their front walk. They’re trying not to smile or look at us, so I know they’re nervous too. Their heads bump in that whispery girl thing. No moon yet, just that silting dusk that melts the shadows and brings the mosquitoes. I’ve slathered up with bug repellent at home to avoid looking geeky in front of them. Juliann slaps at her bare shoulder.
“Hey, Daniel. Mack.” She slaps again.
“I have some bug stuff if you want it.” I offer the spray bottle.
Meredith reaches out. “We didn’t have so many bugs in the mountains.”
Mack grunts. “That’s ’cause they’re all here at the river.”
We scuff along the sidewalk by St. Margaret’s, the private girls’ high school on Water Lane, out of session until mid-September. When Juliann bends down to apply bug spray to her ankles and calves, Mack eyes the rear view. I elbow his gut. Such a pervert. These girls don’t seem the type to appreciate that kind of interest.
“Monday’s the big day,” Meredith says once she’s done.
“Sure you’re ready for Essex County High?” I ask. They’re the newcomers after all. It’ll be harder on them.
“We’ve started at five new schools. It’s no biggie.” Juliann doesn’t sound convinced. I’m getting the idea that she’s the second twin, the follower.
Mack trots up to be next to her. “It won’t be too bad. You know us.”
“So true.” She looks back at me when Mack laughs. I guess to be sure we both know she meant to be funny. “Plus we already met a few kids at the Laundromat yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah, who?” Mack says.
She and Juliann exchange looks.
“What’d they look like?” I ask.
“Bev something-or-other. Almost a crew cut, lots of mascara.”
“Bev Lintner?” Mack suggests and Meredith nods.
Juliann finishes the thought for both of them. “And her big sister. Jean? Or Jane? She didn’t stop reading the whole time.”
Mack exchanges a look with me. “No one knows her name.”
The girls laugh, which pleases him.
“Bev’s nice enough,” I add. It will be bad if they get the impression we’re snobs.
Juliann elbows Meredith. “Who was that guy? The guy who stopped by on his motorbike. Shoulder-length black hair, kind of Latino-looking. He seemed pretty interested in Bev.”
“That’s news,” I say when Meredith doesn’t answer her sister. It’s been almost three months since school let out and I’ve been busy with the doctors and all, haven’t kept up with the social scene. “Who d’you think that could be, Mack?”
“Maybe Leon Barker? Or one of the strawberry workers’ kids?”
Juliann answers. “Leon sounds right. Bev introduced us.”
Meredith’s frown gets lost in the thickening night, but not before I catch it. “At first she didn’t much want to. Leon had to ask twice.”
Although Mack looks discouraged, he goes along. “Bev sprints for the track team. Fifty-yard dash, I think. She’s actually not that fast.”
“He looked muscular all right.” Juliann giggles.
My turn to look at Mack. Good thing he asked them to go fishing this weekend. After Monday and the first day of school we might not have another chance if muscles turn them on.
The tackle box is a mess. After expressing appropriate disgust at the worms, the girls watch while Mack baits hooks and I straighten out his box. I can’t stand that kind of disorder for no good reason. I’ve been like that since I was little. The box has the compartments built right in, for God’s sake. All you have to do is put the things that match in the same little square. How hard is that? Mack and I have had this discussion before, but it’s never really bugged me like it does tonight.
By the time I have my own line baited and set, Juliann has caught a fish and the girls are analyzing it in the bucket. With the sun going, going, gone, the streetlamp’s light makes a murky pit where the pier starts and the pavement ends.
“It looks so soft.” Meredith sticks her hand down to touch the catfish before I can warn her. When it stings her, she pulls back fast, but doesn’t scream. I’m impressed.
“It bit me,” is all she says, wrapping the injured finger in her shirt, exposing more tan at her waist.
“Stung you. Those whiskers are their protection. When they’re threatened they secrete some wild kind of protein that feels like a giant bee sting. Suck your finger.”
She doesn’t even hesitate. She puts two fingers in her mouth and makes a quick swipe at her eyes with the palm of her other hand. I know from experience how much it hurts.
Mack apologizes. “We should have made you throw it back, but it was your first one.”
Juliann doesn’t seem to care in the least that her sister is injured. She scoots closer to Mack on the pier and stares out at the wide path of moonlight that has just appeared across the water.
“It’s perfect,” she sighs.
Meredith glares at the bucket. “Can you eat catfish?”
“Revenge, eh?” I like her more than her sister.
“Yeah.”
“Here, hold my pole and I’ll bait another one for you. You’re looking for blue. They’re better eating.”
“What about crabs?”
“You catch them in wire cages called crab pots.”
“Oh.” She smiles in a way that sends me. “I’ve never lived near the water before.”
“First time for everything,” Mack says. I could kick him.
Meredith’s polite enough to laugh when most any other girl would have a hissy fit at a boy making fun of her. Let me tell you, I’m usually nervous around girls, but she’s sooo easy. Like Phoebe Caulfield seems from Holden’s descriptions, easy to talk to. Easy to be with. Nice. I mean that in a good way, not spastic. She’s not like most of the girls I know who are forever calling attention to themselves as if no boy would notice them if they didn’t whine and fuss. HC would like her. He’d probably call her old Meredith, invite her to a show.
After we’ve thrown back four or five catfish and there’s one ten-inch spot in the bucket—mine—Mack stands up. Juliann stands too.
“I’m starving,” he announces.
Meredith hands me her pole. She pulls out a sweatshirt from her backpack and drapes it over her shoulders. Pale yellow against that tan, wow.
A breeze off the water is chasing the mosquitoes inland. A little night music, as Dad always jokes. I give the pole back. With a maestro’s flourish I pop open the lid on the salsa jar and set it on the dock. After Mack digs out the licorice, he takes the package and a giggling Juliann out to the end of the dock. But he doesn’t come back for salsa, so he couldn’t be that hungry. For salsa.
When Meredith and I sit down to eat, her knee touches mine. Now I know those magazines in the doctor’s office are true. Women do shave their legs every day. Even though I hardly know Juliann and she’s being like every other girl with that thing about moonlight, I have to agree with her. It’s as close to perfect an evening as I’ve had in my lifetime.
“Have you finished the summer reading?” Meredith asks between chips.
“Uh-huh.”
“What did you think of Atlas Shrugged?”
I’m thinking fast. I could lose the whole shooting match here if I come off sounding like a pseudointellectual coffeehouse type of guy, the kind Holden accuses of being fake just to impress a girl.
Meredith flaps at her ear. “Kamikaze mosquito.” She giggles. “You must have thought something?”
Choking back panic, I look right in her eyes, kind of a dare to show her I’m not hesitating for lack of an opinion but because I want to be precise. “The characters are so sure of themselves. That’s not very realistic. I mean, I don’t think it’s very believable.”
“But I know people exactly like that. They’re scary.”
“Scary how?”
“What makes them think they’re right? There’s a ton of things you can’t know. Like, I mean, you only live your life with your own family. In your own town. You can’t know how it is to be someone else in another place. But when they do that, it makes other people feel small, less. It’s not fair.”
If she has moved five times and feels that way, who am I to argue? Essex County’s the only place I’ve ever lived. Farmers and fishermen, that’s all I know. To have to depend on the weather isn’t a huge confidence builder.
“Did you finish it?” She’s licking salsa off her fingers and I lose my train of thought. “Atlas?” she reminds me.
“Uh…I read ahead some.” As soon as I say it I hear how really geeky that sounds. “Since I’m not sure what my schedule will be this fall.”
“Because of the…”
“Leukemia. It’s okay to say it. It’s no big secret.”
“Mack said you just found out.”
“Two months ago.”
“So you’re doing the chemo now?”
I wonder how much she knows about chemotherapy, whether there is someone close to her who’s had cancer if she uses the lingo so handily. That may explain why her father doesn’t live with them.
You’ll have to get used to this. My imagination’s always been hard to control. One time last year when I’d written something wild that didn’t exactly fit the assignment, Stepford-Hanes said my imagination would stand me in good stead later in life. When she said it, it made me feel better about the B minus she gave me for not following instructions. Not only did she recognize some part of me as particular to me, but it was something I could depend on. It would always be there. Later in life implies you’ll be an adult someday doing worthwhile things instead of the way it is as a kid, just feeling ignorant and having to be learning stuff all the time. Her comment felt especially good because I don’t have the kind of talent that Nick and Joe have.
Since The Disease struck though, the imagination thing is actually more ironic than anything else. Stepford-Hanes taught us about irony, too. My mind projects into the future, I just don’t have much of one.
Meredith stops eating and waits for my answer, another point in her favor.
“My parents are investigating all the options.”
“The way Mack described it, fourth stage and all, I would have thought the doctors would want to move fast.”
“Yeah, well, my parents aren’t sure about chemo, radiation. Putting all those poisons into one body. They know this herbalist, Miss T. Undertaker, and she says there are less invasive ways to stop the cancer.”
“She should change her name.”
I laugh right out loud. “Well, it’s actually Underwood. Yowell came up with the nickname.”
“Yowell?”
“Another guy at school, Leonard Yowell. He’s in tenth too.”
I can’t quite figure out why I don’t describe him as a friend. Although he’s smart and that makes him a little arrogant, which is annoying since we did rec camp together for a bunch of summers. That’s where you get to be blood brothers. No kidding. For life. Seriously, I’m just explaining to you what we did back then. Like background. None of us really believe that blood-brother junk anymore. Except maybe Nick, and I won’t spoil it for him.
As I watch Meredith sweep that great hair off her shoulders, it comes to me why the distancing with Leonard. He could be competition. Apart from the temporary acne issues, he’s the old-fashioned kind of handsome. His family has money. His dad’s a powerful senator—at least everyone treats him as though he is. I mean, they always talk like politicians are the movers and the shakers. Maybe that’s why I’m not keen to claim Leonard as a friend.
Plus I don’t want Meredith to get the wrong idea about me. Name-dropping is not a virtue. I don’t even need Dad to lecture me on that. No one likes the guy who acts like he’s got the seat next to the king; he’s a suck-up, all hot air.
She sticks another chip in the jar and holds it out to me with her hand under it to catch any dripping salsa. “Have you talked to the doctors yourself?”
“My mom handles all that. She’s read a ton of stuff about AML.”
“You can still ask. You’re the patient.”
A debate over my physical condition isn’t exactly what I had in mind for the evening. “Can we talk about something else?”
She lets her shoulder bump mine. “Sorry. That was pretty rude. You’re all set to teach me about Virginia wildlife and I’m being nosy.”
“It’s okay, really. I’m just not used to talking about it with anyone except my parents. Or talking about it at all, actually.”
When the pier starts to shake, we watch Mack lumber toward us, a white cape of moonlight on his shoulders. He slumps down next to me on the dock and whispers, “Juliann has a boyfriend at Albemarle.”
“Has that ever stopped you before?”
“He’s captain of the debate team.”
“So…you’re here and he’s there.”
Mack starts chomping on the chips like a machine. It’s a little gross. I can hear Juliann singing at the end of the dock. Any girl who can sing in front of people she hardly knows is a romantic, like right out of those grocery store books where the muscled man drags the big-chested woman into his arms. Why can’t Mack see that she’s probably dying for a kiss in the moonlight?
When Meredith disappears into the sweatshirt, her arms wiggling in the air as she pulls it over her head, I signal Mack to go back to Juliann.
“Get lost, buddy,” I mouth. Uncharacteristic of me, but I told you I was short on time.
It takes him two minutes to talk Juliann into walking over to the 7-Eleven for ice cream and two more minutes to pack up their half of the fishing gear. He’s a quick study. A great guy, willing to sacrifice everything for a friend.