Sweat prickles between my shoulder blades as I drag my paint brush down the inside of my tree house wall, trying to stay within the mural outline Ethan spent the last few days sketching. We have the shutters on the two windows open, hoping to coax a breeze through, but so far the summer air has been still and stifling for weeks now. But for some reason, I’m still smiling. Actually, for an Ethan reason. A buzz of happiness tingles inside me when I realize that it’s been over five months and he’s still here. I’m starting to hope that we’ll not only finish painting the tree house, but we might even get to start seventh grade together.
I went into each wall of the tree house almost like a dare, a project that would inevitably get cut short by his mom showing up. But Ethan started drawing and she didn’t come. We argued over paint colors and she didn’t come. We dragged up drop cloths and brushes and spent way too long repositioning tape. And she didn’t come.
So one day we started bringing our idea for the first wall to life; a wintery forest full of majestic stags; great, slumbering bears peering out from behind snow-heavy branches; and a single solitary lamppost. I held my breath the entire time, but we finished it and, when there was still no sight of his mom, started something completely different for the second wall, a beach view with a blazing sun in the corner, endless rippling waves, and the silhouette of a man fishing from a small boat surrounded by shark fins.
I’m breathing easier today despite the heat as we’re painting delicate stars for a night’s sky on the third wall. After this one, we’ll only have the last wall left to do. Ethan’s stressed about the design, tearing up sketches before even showing them to me. Nothing feels tight in my chest as I stare at that blank wall though. For a change, I’m not worried about the time we have left, hoarding it like some kind of dragon with its gold. We’ll get there.
“Oh, is it a dragon?” I say out of nowhere.
“Is what a dragon?” Ethan doesn’t lift his brush from the asteroid he’s painting.
“Your idea for the last wall.”
“Do you like dragons?”
“Not especially.”
“Then why would I draw you a dragon?”
He’s finishing his asteroid, ready to move on to the small boy standing atop it, so he can’t see me grin. I told him to pick something entirely for himself to put on the last wall since the other three at least started from ideas I had (something wintery, the sea, the stars) but I like that he’s still thinking of me too. “Am I at least close?”
“No,” he mumbles, and then sighs. “And I haven’t even settled on anything yet.”
I grin wider. “You will.” Then return my focus to the wall, leaving him to stare at me this time. It takes him a beat to start painting again, but when does, he seems lighter, like my confidence in him has helped create some of his own.
I return to my job of painting the moon’s base coat—Ethan has to come back after me and add all the craters and shading—while simultaneously inching the battery-operated fan more in my direction with the tip of my toe without him noticing.
He notices. He puts down his brush and fully aims the fan at me. Then he goes back to painting again.
“Aren’t you hot?” I can see damp spots on his T-shirt so I know he is.
“My mom and I never have A/C so I’m used to it.”
I lower my own brush and immediately scramble to the fan, lifting it to blow directly in his heat-flushed face.
“I don’t need it,” he says, moving away.
I refocus the fan on him. “You should get used to having things you need.”
A non-heat-related flush starts to creep up his neck and after a moment he swipes the fan from my hands, but instead of pointing it back at me, he drags his paint tray right beside mine and sets the fan down so that it’s hitting us both.
His flush makes its way to me when our shoulders touch.
I pretend to paint after that, but mostly I just run my brush over the same area and think how he smells exactly like summer. It’s nice feeling this close to him, so nice that I can’t help wanting to feel closer.
“How come you don’t talk about your mom much or your life when you’re with her?”
Ethan’s shoulders hunch up, tensing. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There must be something. I tell you everything that goes on with me when you’re gone.”
“That’s because nothing ever happens to you.” His brush jerks and accidentally swipes indigo over one of his stars. Then he’s grabbing his rag and rubbing way too hard on the wall, smearing the two paint colors into a streaky brown mess.
“Stuff happens to me,” I say, a slight break in my voice. The last time he was gone my hamster, Fredrick, died. I cried for three days and again when I told Ethan about it.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” But he’s not looking at me and I start running my palm back and forth over my shorts.
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about my mom, but you keep pushing. All the time.” His voice is getting louder and more sweat has started beading up on his forehead. His eyes are bouncing around the tree house as though the walls are about to start closing in on him and suddenly I feel like the one being squeezed.
“Then we won’t talk about her,” I say, trying to hold my breath in as if that act alone could possibly keep her from taking him again.
He makes an angry sound in his throat and throws the rag down. “This is ruined.”
And when he leaves—because Ethan always leaves—I don’t know if he means us or the mural.