Seemy stretched her bare arms out and held her palms up to the sky, spinning in a circle. “It’s crazy warm out! That was the longest winter ever in world history, period, forever, the end.”
I smiled sleepily, watched her spin from where I sat on the top step of the fountain in Washington Square Park. She was right, it had been a long winter. Wet and cold and disgusting and never ending. It barely snowed at all, just weeks and weeks of overcast, freezing, windy days and the occasional mix of sleet and freezing rain that made rivers and lakes of slush in the streets.
It was like the weather had tried its best to scrub out all memory of me and Seemy’s summer together, until all I felt when I looked at her was cold. Our friendship had been shoved into the margins since Christmas. On week-nights we both had to be home by seven, and to Seemy that meant we had to spend the few hours of freedom we had freezing our asses off on Saint Marks Place with Toad, maybe drinking if she had anything, but mostly just wandering from store to store, coffee shop to coffee shop, never inside long enough to really warm up. And even though she complained about the cold outside, she couldn’t stand to be indoors. “If we were upstate,” she’d say, “we’d be out hiking in the woods right now.” She’d go off on how the city was unnatural, on how it felt like we were all going to snap our tethers to Mother Nature and go flying off into the universe. Toad would say, “Yeah, man, you’re right.” But he’d say that for anything Seemy said.
I barely ever saw her on weekdays anymore. Weekends I’d still go along with it, mostly because I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. My old friends from school didn’t want anything to do with me. And I acted like I didn’t want anything to do with them.
But then there was a Tuesday in March, the first really warm day of spring, when Seemy called me after school and said we should meet up, and the air was so warm and it felt like the tiniest whisper of summer and I couldn’t say no. There was hope in the air. The sun was so warm I dozed off for a second, woke up when Seemy screeched, “TOAD!” and I watched her leap up and try to climb him like a bean stalk. He was smiling this goofy, big-toothed smile, and his nasty black cargo pants were paired with a clean olive green T-shirt, no jacket. His long, pale arms glowed in the sunlight like the skin under a picked scab.
“Let’s go,” Toad said, balancing Seemy on his back. “I have someplace special to take you guys. Even you, grumpy face.” He nodded to me with a snaggletoothed grin.
“Where, where, where?” Seemy squealed, wiggling down and then hopping in a circle around him.
“It’s a surprise,” he said, “a good surprise.” He looked genuinely excited, but he jutted his chin out a little when he looked to see if I’d follow, like he expected me to rain on his parade.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping off the fountain.
We walked for a while, all the way up University to Union Square, where we pooled our money to buy apple cider doughnuts at the farmer’s market. We kept heading north and then turned left on Nineteenth Street. By this time we were thirsty, so we used Seemy’s credit card to buy the first iced coffees of summer, even though the sun was getting low and the air was starting to chill so much I kept having to switch hands to keep my fingers from going numb. I felt this sort of hope for the future. It was nice to be walking along with two friends in the almost-warm air, eating doughnuts and drinking iced coffee and joking and teasing and yelling and scaring the other pedestrians.
We walked past Seventh Avenue, then Eighth, and then the buildings started to get nicer. There were a lot of brownstones with huge windows, giving us glimpses of their fancy interiors.
“Toad,” Seemy asked, “are you about to tell us that you’re secretly rich or something?”
“Nope, even better,” Toad said, then he laughed. “Well, maybe not better, but almost as good.”
He stopped walking suddenly at the mouth of a narrow alley between two brownstones. He looked quickly around, then hurried down the alley, turning around and grinning, whispering, “Come on!” Seemy grabbed my hand, pulled me in after her. At the end of the alley was a black iron gate, and beyond that there was a falling-apart tiny brick house surrounded by overgrown grass and mud. The house had huge black double doors that took up almost the whole front of it, and a couple little windows with white sills above.
We stood side by side, our fingers hooked in the iron gate, staring at it.
Seemy said, “It’s like a real house. A house that can take a deep breath.”
You don’t see a lot of freestanding houses in New York City. Even the fancy buildings share walls with their neighbors. But this place, this place actually had space, and Seemy was right, seeing it sitting there alone in the swampy yard made you want to take a deep breath.
“It’s a carriage house, used to be a horse hotel for rich people,” Toad said proudly. “They were going to renovate it and turn it into a house for some rich dude, but he ran out of money. My uncle was on the construction crew and told me about it. It’s totally empty. It’s like . . . ours.”
Seemy looked at him with such wonder that I got a tinge of jealousy. “Ours, Toad, really?” she asked. I bit my tongue, wanting to say, No, actually, it’s not ours at all. Not even a little bit. But they both looked so happy I didn’t say a thing.
Toad scaled the iron gate, long monkey limbs making it easy work. Seemy looked at me expectantly and I tried to smile while bending over so she could climb up on my back and get high enough for Toad to pull her over. Then they both started walking toward the carriage house, and Seemy called over her shoulder, “Nan, come on!”
And I was standing alone on the other side of the gate, so I did what she said.
The front lawn was soaked and spongy from the spring rains, and our feet got stuck and made loud slurping noises as we pulled them free. Seemy sank almost to her knees right before we got to the rotting front steps, and Toad and I had to pull her out. We laughed so hard I thought we might die, and we feverishly shushed each other and started laughing all over again.
It took all three of us to pull open one side of the double doors.
“Oh my gosh, horse stalls!” Seemy squealed when we got inside. Toad took out a flashlight and shone it around. He had come prepared. There were three stalls on either side of the stone walkway that ran down the middle of the house.
“I love it.” Seemy sighed. “Even if it does smell like horse poop. Is there a hayloft?” she asked, clapping her hands as she ran to the back of the carriage house, where a wooden ladder reached into a dark hole in the ceiling.
“Yeah, but it’s treacherous.” Toad shone his flashlight at the holes in the ceiling. “There’s rats up there, too.”
“We can stay down here then,” Seemy said, pirouetting her way back to us and then grabbing us both in a hug. “This place is awesome.”