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Samantha
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SAMANTHA STUFFED SIX reject quilts into the Burley, the bike carrier on wheels her parents toted the kids around in when they were small. She attached it to the back of her mountain bike, rode across the bridge to Wicasa Bluffs and inched up the hill to the Gainsborough B&B in granny gear.
Lucy helped carry Kate’s quilts into the house and laid them out on a shimmering red davenport. “Want some lemonade?”
“I’m good.” Samantha took a perfunctory swig from her water bottle.
“Hey, can you or Jamie use this?” Lucy reached into a worn suitcase, pulled out a suede vest with fringe, and tossed it to her.
“Oooh, cool.” Sam slid her arms through and shrugged it on. The vest was lined with satin and cut high, would be perfect on top of a ratty old v-neck T, with cut-off jeans and boots.
“Yeah, it’s kinda retro, isn’t it? Needs somebody young to pull it off.”
“Thank you.” Though Brace would call her on the hypocrisy of animal skins . . .
“No problem. So. How is the patient?”
“Fine,” Samantha answered quietly. “Better I guess.” She really hoped this wouldn’t turn into a gross Mom-as-romantic-lead-in-eighties-movie sort of conversation.
“She was here right before it happened.” Lucy stared out past the gravel drive and clasped hands on hips, contemplating it. “That hill is so steep and it ends right at the stoplight. It’s always been dangerous. You gotta be careful riding down it. You got good brakes?”
“Sure.” Samantha remotely knew she should ask if Mom had confronted Lucy about her blog and if she had been upset. Asking Mom right now was totally out of the question, she was all zoned-out on painkillers. She knew if she hadn’t shown Mom the blog it would have never happened. She’d cried all the way to the hospital, thinking she’d killed her. But now she convinced herself Jamie would want to be here when they told Lucy they had read the blog and had been forbidden from reading anymore.
“Hey, you okay,” Lucy said, she reached out and poked Samantha’s long bangs behind one ear. “I heard that Jamie’s blowing town. When I suggested Cooper, I didn’t completely think it through. I’m sorry, kid.”
“Whatever.” Samantha shook out her hair, walked out onto the porch, and sat on the step. Everyone was always trying to pull it out of her eyes. Didn’t they know she looked like every other girl with it all flat behind her ears. Surely Lucy of all people knew that. “I’ve never said this to anyone before. But I think it’s really selfish.”
“Selfish of her to leave?” Lucy sat down too.
“That and the transition. Everything is about Jamie. And don’t get me wrong, I am so in her corner, but it’s like my brother says, nobody notices when you’re just regular.”
Lucy was quiet for a while. “It is going to be rough next year without her and Zev. But Jamie won’t always be this focused on herself. Once she grows comfortable in her own skin, she’ll be able to give more back. And if you’re not into Zev, it’s best to let him go.”
“I am into him, but he might be done with me. Took his cousin to prom.”
Lucy made a wincing face. “Ouch. Did he give you a reason?”
“She’s got some bone disease and they’ve always been close. He wanted to show her a good time while she was in remission. I’m fine with it. He’s a great guy. And we’re all still going to Summerfest together . . . but he got accepted to Columbia, so it’s getting a little frosty. Probably for the best.”
“That’s your Mom talking.”
Samantha looked out past The Leap. The wind was picking up, pushing clouds above them eastward. “And really, what are the chances that Jamie and I are going to end up in the same college either?”
“It happens. All the time. And the way the Internet works now, you can talk to anyone halfway around the world like they’re in the room with you.”
“Gee, thanks for the technology update.”
“Smartass. Hey, I lost a lot at your age too. It’s unavoidable. Everyone is in transition, not just Jamie. Talk to her. Tell her how much you’re going to miss her. Forget your pride. It ruined everything for me when I was your age. And I thought I was somehow valiant putting up such a front.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Disappointment burns like an ulcer if you let it. Does a ton of damage. You and Jamie need to have the best summer you can imagine. Save the tears for September.”
“Ooh, song name.”
Lucy mock-gasped. “Yeah. I’ll get on that.”
“Who’s the smartass now?” Samantha stood up. “I gotta go.”
“Hey, got something else for you.” Lucy hopped up and went inside for a minute. She came back with her huge pair of astronomical binoculars.
Samantha raised her hands. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” Lucy pressed them to her. “You use them more than I do.”
“Then I’m only borrowing them.” Samantha tested their heft in her hands. “Wow.”
They walked to Samantha’s bike.
“Hey, you got a little red bump there.” Lucy nodded at Samantha’s cheek. “You get stung?”
Samantha let her hair fall in her face again. “Oh? Oh, that. I get those sometimes.”
“Hives.”
“Yeah. That’s what it is. When I get anxiety.”
“See what I’m saying? You can’t run away this stuff. You’ll bury it and inflict it on yourself.”
Enough of this. “You gonna join a band again, someday?”
Lucy hesitated, taken aback. She looked out over the river valley. “Yeah, probably. I’m writing. Not giving up.” She turned back to Samantha. “Neither should you.”
“Right, Tears for September.” Samantha chuckled and then remembered the book. “Oh!” She went to the Burley trailer, grabbed Song of the Lark and held it out to Lucy. “I liked it. I liked that there wasn’t a big moral to the story. Most books we get in school have happy endings or bad endings with a lesson we’re supposed to learn. It just felt like real life.”
Lucy crossed her arms. “Keep it. Reread it in ten years.” She smiled broadly. Were her eyes glistening with tears? Why was she giving stuff away? Was the cancer back? She didn’t look sick. But cancer was weird that way. Jamie said her aunt had been fine one day and was dead the next week of a brain tumor.
“You’re going to be amazing, kid,” Lucy said. “Just take your time. Take it all in.”
Samantha shrugged and grabbed the bike handlebars. Without permission her body let go, ran back to Lucy, hugged her really quick. Then she got back on her bike.
“See ya,” she said and rolled off, the wind flapping the fringe of her new vest as she sailed down the hill. A fullness and confidence emanated from both within and all around her at the same time.
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LATER THAT NIGHT, Samantha took a break from Frans De Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics to browse her mother’s yearbooks for Lucy Van Buren. There at the end of the senior pages, Lucy hung in her little oval, grinning goofily, her hair spiked and looking like an artful assemblage of crow feathers. Below her name: Class Clown.
Samantha landed next on Mom’s unfortunate sophomore photo, the girl-woman looking weightless and fairy-like, thin-necked with sparkling eyes, a glistening smile. No angry elevens in sight. Katherine Louise Andern had yet to grow into her nose. And oh, those questionable fashion choices: plaid blouse with puffy sleeves and a curly bob parted flat in the middle?
Whatever.
Samantha flipped through the unprinted pages in the back that were interspersed with big ballooning handwriting in various marker colors. Stars, XOXOs, hearts from a dude named Gary and some indecipherable lettering that looked half Japanese, half Martian:
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Forever, L
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Brace ambled over to Samantha’s bedroom door, all humid from the shower but still a little stinky, like mold or jock itch or whatever happens to a puckhead’s feet when they’re locked in skates all the time.
“Dad is so pussy-whipped.”
“Huh?”
“Mom’s making Dad take you on the fishing trip this summer.”
“Um, no, he asked me to go.”
“Yeah, right. She made him ask.”
“Prove it,” Samantha snapped. “Dad asked me all by himself.”
Brace looked down his nose at her. “Thought you hated fishing.”
“Well, maybe I’ll just observe. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Mom about the beer.”
“Great.” He rolled his eyes and turned to go.
“Hold on a second. What’s so awful about being pussy-whipped? I find it fascinating that you’re threatened by female anatomy.”
“Don’t bonobo-analyze me, dude.”
“I can’t help it.” Samantha shrugged. “Once you start seeing the ape in everyone it changes everything. Besides, bonobo males are total mama’s boys. It’s a great life. They don’t have the violence of other ape societies. Women handle the food and keep the men in check with sex. Each male is as popular as his mom.”
“So, that would make Dad the top guy in town, since Grandma is like the alpha female.”
“Well, yeah, technically. If Grandma had a clearer majority, he would be top male. But he’d still be under the other top females.”
“Like Mom.”
“Yeah. He’d probably be above me, but you’d be below me.”
Brace shuddered. “Scary. And there’d be no hockey.”
“Then you’d have to be a chimpanzee I guess, and risk getting cannibalized. Maddox is a total chimp. But in bonobo society, all the daughters have to leave the troop eventually and find new troops. So I’d be out of your hair anyway.”
“Hmm. Nice. Still, sounds like a buncha bullshit to me. There’s a reason they’re still in the jungle and we’re not.”
“Yeah, that’s the million dollar question. We’re still looking for the missing link. It’s not a perfect science. Every researcher comes to the table with their own biases. And a lot of it happens in zoos. Animals act differently in captivity.”
Brace leaned against the door and shook his head. “Least you know what you want to study.”
“Jamie says you can’t go wrong with a business degree.”
“Eh, what does she know? Her parents are freakin’ socialists who live in a geodome.”
“Um, they make a ton of money selling solar panels.” Samantha shot him the get-out-of-my-room-puckhead look, glaring at the division of beige hall carpeting and her purple carpeting. At least he referred to Jamie in the feminine this time.
His stare softened. “Heard she’s not going to be in school next year.”
“Nope. Moving to the cities.”
“I’m sorry, Samster,” he said quietly.
Do not cry in front him. Do not.
“Yeah. Me too.”