The last day of school before March vacation was shockingly warm. Kids peeled off their neckties, rolled up their sleeves, and we didn’t even bother carrying our balled-up tweed blazers from one class to another. By lunchtime the lacrosse guys were walking around in shorts.
“Please let us have class in the park,” whined annoying Tori Lublin in history, in art, in ethics. “We’ll concentrate,” she said. “We promise we will.” But in the fall, one of Selden’s seniors had eaten a vendor hot dog in the park during an outdoor English seminar, got food poisoning, and missed her interview at Princeton. None of the teachers budged.
It was the last day before the break, so there were no sports, and we were free to go when the bell rang at the end of eighth period. Usually, on the day before vacation, my mom makes us rush right home from school to help her pack. My mom hates packing, and the suitcases are always still open at ten o’clock when my dad comes home with the bad news that he can’t go away, by which point we’re all kind of relieved, since it’s better to know for sure than to be guessing—guessing is why we hadn’t been able to pack in the first place. But Julia and I hadn’t heard any updates about travel plans. As far as we knew, we weren’t traveling at all.
Gus found Ewan and me at my locker. Gus’s parka was stuffed into the straps of his book bag, and he was holding a soccer ball under his arm. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt under his oxford in honor of the fact that he was flying to Hawaii with his dad, Buffy, and his stepsisters the next day.
“Want to kick the ball around in the park?” he said.
Ewan shot me a look, like he was checking to see if Gus meant both of us or just me. Ewan was carrying an extra-heavy duffel bag, full of books he was planning to bring home and read over the break.
Gus hadn’t seen Ewan’s look, but he said, “Yeah, you too, Greer. Bring your inhaler.”
Since Vermont, Julia’s, Trip’s, Gus’s, Ewan’s, and my thoughts had been connected. We slipped in and out of one another’s minds, feeling when we were there the traces of one another’s steps. When Julia emerged from the tutu-wearing corps in Sleeping Beauty, I’d felt sick to my stomach with her fear. I’d felt her pride when she took her bows, and had to hide my tears by booting up the Game Boy before the applause had died down. But Julia had known how I felt, just as Ewan knew when Trip hit a home run in baseball, and Ewan knew when any of us were stuck for an answer on a test (unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of connection where he could feed us the answers). It wasn’t that we had psychic powers. Ewan made us all go back to Charlisse’s dining room, but she just clapped her hands emphatically and said, “You’re children, not mystics.” It was more that we’d found a way to all be friends.
We walked down Fifth Avenue, Gus’s ski jacket strapped to his back like he was carrying a giant pillow, mine flapping open. Ewan pushed his off his shoulders, trying to let in some air.
“Hey, wait up!” we heard, and saw Trip coming down Ninety-first Street. He was eating a slice of pizza folded in half inside a paper plate. For spring break, Trip was spending a week at his brother’s college in Colorado. His brother went to the kind of college where your dorm room sits on a ski slope and there were boot dryers in the lounges.
“Did you finish the essay on the history final?” Trip asked Ewan when he’d caught up. In addition to eighth-grade history, Ewan was also taking the tenth-grade class with Trip. “I screwed up the multiple choice so bad that when I got to the essay, I was like, ‘Oh, well.’ And then the bell rang.”
“I hated that stupid test,” Ewan said. “He tried to fool us with that obvious citation from the Treaty of Versailles. If you’re going to be tricky, fine, but he was just wasting our time, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” said Trip, his voice emptying. “I guess I missed that one.”
After we got back from Vermont, Trip had asked his mom—who served on Selden’s board of trustees—to get Ewan out of work study for the spring so that he could play on the tennis team. It turned out Ewan was really good at tennis, as long as he used the inhaler. And now Ewan was helping Trip keep up a B average so that he could play baseball.
When we got to the park entrance just above the Met, Gus let the ball roll down his legs and started dribbling up a hill. We were next to a playground, where little kids were running from swings to sandbox, their hair sweaty, their nannies making them keep their winter coats on even though it was warm. Gus kicked the ball against the high iron playground fence, and it bounced to the other side of the path. My backpack banging against my body, I ran into the woods after the ball, kicking it ahead of Gus so he had to run too. Trip cut him off, lifting the ball on his toe and catching it in his hands.
“Ewan, think fast,” he said, and threw the ball right at Ewan’s chest. Ewan caught it, a little shakily, then kicked it over to me. Trip was always doing things like that to Ewan, but Ewan was starting to get used to it.
The four of us kicked the ball back and forth, jogging around the reservoir and down the bridle path. Just below Ninetieth Street, we cut over to the Great Lawn, which is a huge open area where you can play softball or just lie on the grass. Today it was surrounded by a temporary plastic fence, but Gus pushed a section of the fence down and we crossed over. The lawn was immense and glowing, like a lake, while the woods that we had passed through were already dark.
Ever since Gus and I got knocked off our bikes by kids from a different school when we were in fifth grade, I’d been afraid of coming to the park after dark. But now I’m not afraid of things the way I used to be. Maybe it’s because I’ve started to grow. My mom took me to Dr. Horowitz just to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with me after I grew an inch in a month and had shooting pains in the bones of my ankles. “What exactly are you worried about?” Dr. Horowitz said. “Would you be happier if he were shrinking?” I can now stand up straight and carry the cello case on the stairs at school. When the upperclassmen pass me on the way to the lounge and laugh, I look them straight in the eye. But I don’t really think I’ve stopped being afraid because I’m taller. I guess after Vermont, it’s going to be a while before I’m afraid of anything again in ordinary ways.
When we reached the middle of the Great Lawn, Gus threw down his bag and jacket, picked up the soccer ball, and ran halfway across the field shouting in a fake English accent, “Keeper Edwardson with an amazing save! And he’s running. He’s running down the field. Wait! This is incredible! Do I believe my eyes? He’s got Euro football confused with American, and no one’s touching him.”
“Criiiiikey,” Trip chirped. “One of the Italian defenders spots him! And he’s chasing after him with amazing speed. It looks like he’s going to use the full body tackle!”
I stood where I was, letting my bag slide down to the grass as well. I didn’t know if I should run like Gus and Trip. I decided to run, but not toward the ball. I ran away from it, feeling the sponginess of the ground that was stiff from being still half frozen. As I gained speed, I lost the sensation that Trip and Gus were watching me. I ran and ran, and felt like I could go forever without ever reaching the other side of the plastic fence, without ever coming upon another path, another person, a tree.
Eventually, I circled back toward Trip and Gus. Gus saw me coming, and with Trip closing in on him, he threw the ball down onto the grass and kicked up a chip shot. I jumped harder and higher than I thought I could and felt a stinging in my palms as I pulled the ball to my chest. The ball felt like it was electrified.
Trip tackled me, hitting hard so that we both fell back onto the grass. “You dork!” I shouted, but I knew that it wasn’t me he’d tackled, it was the ball. He would always—as long as he lived—go for the ball. I rolled on top of it now, and tried to keep it underneath me. Gus had taught me that if you want to break someone’s grip you should go limp for a second before pulling away.
Finally I rolled clear of Trip, struggled to stand, and threw the ball up in the air as hard as I could, thinking that it was the only way to protect the ball and keep it safe. Gus, Trip, and I stopped, watching it twist into the dark and almost disappear before it reversed. Ewan was watching too. Time seemed to stop while the ball hung in the air, and with the four of us together, in the dark, I had a tiny electric memory of climbing across their bodies in the great dark they had saved me from.
When Gus caught the ball, he called out, “Spud!” I laughed and so did Trip, who was leaning over to catch his breath, his hands resting on his knees. I looked over my shoulder at Ewan to see if he got the joke, and that’s when I saw the figure at the edge of the lawn.
It was a smudge against the woods, and I shuddered. I looked to either side. There was no one else around.
By now, all four of us were looking over at the figure—they’d seen him without my having to say a word. It wasn’t that Gus, Trip, and Ewan were reading my mind. It was just that something made them look up and see the figure watching us from the other side of the fence. They knew without my having to say anything that I was worried. And maybe, without really knowing that they knew, they understood that we should all be worried because this man looked exactly like Grandpa.
He was too far away for me to really see him, but there were signs. The angle of his shoulders. The way he lifted his feet like he was being careful not to make any noise. The way he raised his arm over his head in a very particular wave.
I hadn’t stopped missing him since we’d left Vermont. I hadn’t lost the feeling I’d had in the cabin, waiting for him to come back, wondering how he could have left me when he’d told me that he loved me as much as his life. But now, with him watching us from beyond the fence, my feet grew heavy and my fingers cold. I was afraid—not of Grandpa, but of the cold. I was afraid of the emptiness I’d felt in the cabin when I was alone.
And then the figure stepped out from the woods and into the last little light that was coming from the sky, and I saw that it wasn’t Grandpa. It was Dad.
I had never thought they looked alike, but now, I saw it. If my dad stooped a little, and cut his hair closer to his scalp, and if he got a tiny bit shorter, but stayed just as lean, my dad and Grandpa were the same.
My father stepped down over the plastic fencing and started walking toward us on the field. Gus, who was still holding the ball, tossed it to me, and I caught it, easily. I could feel his relief—but I could also feel how Gus hadn’t been worried. I don’t know if I knew this from feeling it, or if I just knew Gus well enough to guess, but he’d been waiting to start worrying until the situation was clear. Trip was more curious than anything else, and Ewan had been busy analyzing the implications. Now I could feel them relax, but it was only in the vaguest way—sort of like someone’s got a jackhammer going outside and you don’t really notice it until it stops.
“What are you doing here?” I said to my dad, when he was close enough to hear me. I think I felt a little hopeful, a little excited, though I knew better by now. It’s amazing how the door stays open. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Yes,” said my dad. “I guess I should be. But I couldn’t concentrate today. And I think the ice is cracking up on Grandpa’s lake.”
“Yeah?” I said. I tried not to sound too interested.
“Your mom tells me this is spring break week. I was thinking maybe we could get up there for the weekend and start working on clearing out some of the woods.”
“Why?” I said, but I knew why. I hadn’t thought of it, but it was exactly the right thing, to cut down trees Grandpa had let grow up between his porch and the sight of open water.
“We need to bury Grandpa,” Dad went on. “All of us. Julia and you—your mother—we should all be there. To say good-bye.”
I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t. I might have cried. But also, I didn’t want to interrupt my dad. I wanted him to keep talking, to finish saying what was in his head. “And for another thing,” he went on, “I want a contractor to come in and look at the cabin. Maybe we can spend time there this summer. Or on weekends. You can bring your friends. I swam in that lake every summer when I was your age. Maybe it will feel a little warmer to you now that you’re older.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to sound like I cared too much. I still didn’t know if this plan was just talk, or something that was really going to happen. But I liked the plan. A lot. I wanted to swim in the lake. I wanted my dad to teach me that dive he’d learned. And I wanted to bury Grandpa. I wanted to stand next to my dad and dig a hole in the ground at the top of the mountain where I knew Grandpa once stood looking at the view, eating a piece of salami. I wanted to tell my dad about that hike, and I wondered, was my dad going to listen?
He took a step closer, and he held up his hand. I threw a quick push pass, the kind I had made on the day Grandpa taught my body how to play basketball. My dad caught the ball and looked at me. I looked right back. I’d found Grandpa in his eyes before, and in my eyes Grandpa had found a way in. But right now, the only person I was seeing was my dad, and he was seeing me too. He spun the ball a few times in his hands, and then, still looking, he pushed it back to me, as if we were starting a game and he was checking in.