They compiled lists of Idgy Pidgy sightings. There had been less than twenty in the town’s history, dating back to the 1920s.
“We should cross-reference them with Loch Ness and Ogopogo sightings,” said Eli. “See if there’s a pattern. Then we can figure out when we should surveil the lake.”
“Surveil,” Gracie said, doodling a sea serpent in the margin of Eli’s list. “Like police. We can set up a perimeter.”
“Why would we do that?”
“It’s what they do on cop shows. Set up a perimeter. Lock down the perp.”
“No TV, remember?” Eli’s parents had a “no screens” policy. He used the computers at the library, but at home it was no Internet, no cell phone, no television. Apparently they were vegetarians too, and Eli liked to eat all the meat he could when they left him to his own devices. The closest he got to vegetables was french fries. Gracie sometimes wondered if he was poor in a way that she wasn’t. He never seemed short of money for the arcade or hot pretzels, but he always wore the same clothes and always seemed hungry. People with money didn’t summer in Little Spindle. But people without money didn’t summer at all. Gracie wasn’t really sure she wanted to know. She liked that they didn’t talk about their parents or school.
Now she picked up Eli’s notebook and asked, “How can we surveil if you don’t know proper police procedure?”
“All the good detectives are in books.”
“Sherlock Holmes?”
“Conan Doyle is too dry. I like Raymond Carver, Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley. I read every paperback they have here, during my noir phase.”
Gracie drew bubbles coming out of Idgy Pidgy’s nose. “Eli,” she said, without looking at him, “do you actually think I saw something in the lake?”
“Possibly.”
She pushed on. “Or are you just humoring me so you have someone to hang out with?” It came out meaner than she’d meant it to, maybe because the answer mattered.
Eli cocked his head to one side, thinking, seeking an honest answer, like he was solving for x. “Maybe a little,” he said at last.
Gracie nodded. She liked that he hadn’t pretended something different. “I’m okay with that.” She hopped down off the table. “You can be the stodgy veteran with a drinking problem, and I’m the loose cannon.”
“Can I wear a cheap suit?”
“Do you have a cheap suit?”
“No.”
“Then you can wear the same dumb madras shorts you always do.”
They rode their bicycles to every place there had ever been an Idgy Pidgy sighting, all the way up to Greater Spindle. Some spots were sunny, some shady, some off beaches, others off narrow spits of rock and sand. There was no pattern. When they got sick of Idgy Pidgy, they’d head over to the Fun Spot to play Skee-Ball or minigolf. Eli was terrible at both, but he seemed perfectly happy to lose to Gracie and to tidily record his miserable scores.
On the Friday before Labor Day, they ate lunch in front of the library—tomato sandwiches and cold corn on the cob that Gracie’s mother had made earlier that week. A map of the U.S. and Canada was spread out on the picnic table before them. The sun was heavy on their shoulders and Gracie felt sweaty and dull. She wanted to go to the lake, just to swim, not to look for Idgy Pidgy, but Eli claimed it was too hot to move.
“There’s probably a barbecue somewhere,” she said, lying on the bench, toes digging in the dead grass beneath the table. “You really want to waste your last school-free Friday just looking at maps in the middle of town?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”
Gracie felt herself smiling. Her mother seemed to want to spend all her time with Eric. Mosey and Lila lived practically next door to each other and had been best friends since they were five. It was nice to have someone prefer her company, even if it was Eli Cuddy.
She covered her eyes with her arm to block the sun. “Do we have anything to read?”
“I returned all my books.”
“Read me town names off the map.”
“Why?”
“You won’t go swimming, and I like being read to.”
Eli cleared his throat. “Burgheim. Furdale. Saskatoon…”
Strung together, they sounded almost like a story.
Gracie thought about inviting Eli when she went to see the end-of-season fireworks up at Okhena Beach the next night, with Lila and Mosey, but she wasn’t quite sure how to explain all the time she’d been spending with him, and she thought she should sleep over at Mosey’s place. She didn’t want to feel completely left out when classes started. It was an investment in the school year. But when Monday came and there was no Eli walking the main road or at the DQ, she felt a little hollow.
“That kid gone?” Annalee asked as Gracie poked at the upended cone in her dish. She’d decided to try a cherry dip. It was just as disgusting as she remembered.
“Eli? Yeah. He went back to the city.”
“He seems all right,” said Annalee, taking the cup of ice cream from Gracie and tossing it in the trash.
“Mom wants you to come for dinner on Friday night,” Gracie said.
But she could admit that maybe Eli Cuddy was better than all right.
The next May, right before Memorial Day, Gracie went down to her cove at Little Spindle. She’d been plenty of times over the school year. She’d done her homework there until the air turned too cold for sitting still, then watched ice form on the edges of the water as winter set in. She’d nearly jumped out of her skin when a black birch snapped beneath the weight of the frost on its branches and fell into the shallows with a resigned groan. And on that last Friday in May, she made sure she was on the shore, skipping stones, just in case there was magic in the date or the Idgy Pidgy had a clock keeping time in its heart. Nothing happened.
She went by Youvenirs, but she’d been in the previous day to help Henny get ready for summer, so there was nothing left to do, and eventually she ended up at the Dairy Queen with an order of curly fries she didn’t really want.
“Waiting for your friend?” Annalee asked as she sifted through her newspaper for the crossword.
“I’m just eating my fries.”
When she saw Eli, Gracie felt an embarrassing rush of relief. He was taller, a lot taller, but just as skinny and damp and serious-looking as ever. Gracie didn’t budge, her insides knotted up. Maybe he wouldn’t want to hang out again. That’s fine, she told herself. But he scanned the seats even before he went to the counter, and when he saw her, his pale face lit up like silver sparklers.
Annalee’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a cackle.
“Hey!” he said, striding over. His legs seemed to reach all the way to his chin now. “I found something amazing. You want a Blizzard?”
And just like that, it was summer all over again.
The something amazing was a dusty room in the basement of the library, packed with old vinyl record albums, a turntable, and a pile of headphones tucked into a nest of curly black cords.
“I’m so glad it’s still here,” Eli said. “I found it right before Labor Day, and I was afraid someone would finally get around to clearing it out over the winter.”
Gracie felt a pang of guilt over not spending that last weekend with Eli, but she was also pleased he’d been waiting to show her this. “Does that thing work?” she asked, pointing to the column of stereo gear.
Eli flipped a couple of switches and red lights blinked on. “We are go.”
Gracie slid a record from the shelves and read the title: Jackie Gleason: Music, Martinis, and Memories. “What if I only want the music?”
“We could just listen to a third of it.”
They made a stack of records, competing to find the one with the weirdest cover—flying toasters, men on fire, barbarian princesses in metal bikinis—and listened to all of them, lying on the floor, big padded headphones hugging their ears. Most of the music was awful, but a few albums were really good. Bella Donna had Stevie Nicks on the cover dressed like an angel tree-topper and holding a cockatoo, but they listened to it all the way through, twice, and when “Edge of Seventeen” came on, Gracie imagined herself rising out of the lake in a long white dress, flying through the woods, hair like a black banner behind her.