CHAPTER 10
Two emotions warred within me, each taking its turn at the top spot.
Excitement.
And, of course, dread.
“Happy first day of summer!” I cheered when the front door opened, and four little kids waddled their way inside. I had a party horn I’d gotten from the dollar store between my fingers and blew into it. It let out a pathetic little wail. “Yay!”
I expected a cheer in response, at least from one of them. Theo flinched at the sound of my loud voice, so sudden in the cramped entryway of our house, and Penn looked at me like I was the lamest person alive.
“The first day of summer isn’t technically until the twentieth,” Junie said, kicking off her shoes.
Penn, as Ivy dropped her backpack in the middle of the entryway, muttered, “It’s the twenty-first.”
“Nuh-uh. We learned it in school. The summer solis.”
“Solstice.” Penn brushed past me, already yanking off her tie. “Don’t be a know-it-all if you’re wrong.”
Junie stomped her foot. “I’m not wrong!”
I grabbed Theo’s hand and gave his arm a wiggle. “Look at you! All done with kindergarten. You’re growing up, kid!”
Theo giggled at the attention.
I picked up Ivy’s discarded backpack, kicking the kids’ shoes that they’d left in the walkway to line up against the wall, swallowing an inward sigh as I did so. It’s the first day of summer, I told myself, hooking Ivy’s backpack on a peg in the entryway. Give them a break.
I tried not to be a downer, but today was the day I’d been dreading since I’d opened my NYU portal on April 1st. The day that everything became infinitely harder, when they’d stop being away for eight hours of the day and home for all twenty-four.
My responsibility for all twenty-four. But it was exciting for them, and I wanted to make it special.
“So, what should we do to celebrate?” I asked the kids, trailing after them where they’d walked into the house.
“Ice cream!” Ivy said, grinning up at me. Her hair was loose and tangled, not in the braids she’d begged me to put in this morning. “We need ice cream to start summer off!”
“Can I get the Superman ice cream?” Theo asked.
Junie scrunched her nose. “You hate the Superman ice cream.”
Theo mimicked her, inching his little nose up. “Do not.”
“You just like how it looks.”
“Do not! I mean, I do, but I—”
“Ice cream sounds good,” Penn interrupted, her eyes meeting mine over the littles’ heads. “But it’ll be busy. Everyone’s probably going for ice cream right after school.”
“So I guess we need to bide our time.” I slipped my hands into the pockets of my shorts and lifted my eyebrows. “How about… going to the park?”
Now, everyone but Penn let out a little cheer.
The kids raced upstairs to change out of their uniforms while I went to work packing a backpack of supplies, like sunscreen, snacks, juice boxes, and my sketchbook.
The kids hated the park closest to our house—which was understandable, since the only slide it had was metal and practically a frying pan in the sun—so we made the fifteen-minute trek to Biscayne Park’s community playground.
The affluent neighborhood’s park was massive, with multiple custom wood climbing structures, rope bridges, monkey bars, and even a splash pad if kids brought swimsuits.
The play area was a little bigger than I was comfortable with, but now that the kids were older, I felt a bit better about everyone keeping an eye on each other.
Theo was my main concern, since he was smaller and had an infuriating affinity for talking to strangers.
He stood off near the small merry-go-round now, watching as kids took turns propelling it forward.
Penn sat at my side on one of the benches, munching on a mini bag of Cheetos I’d packed. “We didn’t have to come all the way to Biscayne Park,” she said with her mouth full. “We could’ve gone to our park. There’s an ice cream shop a few blocks away.”
I had my sketchbook open and propped on my bent leg, working on a new sketch.
Not of Kit-slash-Jamie, but on a drawing of the playground, sans kids.
The castle structure of one of the towers was all hard lines softened in the sun, and I tried to capture that essence.
“They don’t have Superman ice cream,” I answered, lifting my gaze to do another scan.
Ivy stood on the tallest wooden structure, waving her hand like she was a princess in a tower.
“And more kids come to this playground. It’s more fun for them. ”
Penn shook her Cheetos bag. “But it’d be easier for you.”
“For me? How so?”
“Less of a walk. I don’t know.” She scowled. “You do realize you’ll have to carry Theo on the way home, right? Sun, play, and sugar? It’ll knock him right out.”
“Look at you.” I smirked down at my sketchbook. “You sound like a little mom.”
I sketched a few more lines, glancing up for another reference of the tower.
As I looked, I did another quick scan. It took me a few seconds to spot Junie, but she was on the swing set, twisting round and round until the metal chains cinched together.
Then, she let go, and her hair flung out as she twirled.
“I’m glad you didn’t stop drawing,” Penn said suddenly.
I jolted a little. “What? Why would I have?”
Penn popped another Cheeto into her mouth, speaking around the crunch. “I was afraid you’d get all depressy and say, ‘Oh, NYU doesn’t want me, I’ll never draw again.’”
Her words hurt, but in a bruise-like way. Maybe because it wasn’t like the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. That first week after getting the waitlist decision, I hadn’t picked my sketchbook up once. The thought of drawing had made me sick. Like an imposter.
I could remember sitting in the cafeteria, right hand holding my sandwich, left hand idle. I’d normally sketch and eat at the same time. Not then. At that time, my left hand had twitched, empty and useless.
Then Jamie had pushed a piece of paper in front of me. Draw an octopus wearing glasses for me. With one arm chopped off.
So I’d drawn a seven-armed octopus wearing glasses on a torn piece of a homework worksheet. And that mindless, lame drawing had jump-started me like a car.
“I’d go crazy if I didn’t draw. Speaking of.
” I flipped the pages of my sketchbook. Penn might not have been the most sensitive person to show my art to—her criticism had no constructive qualities to it—but I at least knew she’d be impartial.
I flipped to the drawing of Kit from Wednesday night, except I’d erased his glasses. “Does this look like anyone to you?”
Penn’s eyes flicked down to the page. She barely scanned it. “The lame character you always draw.”
I briefly imagined smacking her. “Anyone else?”
“Who do you want me to say?” She seemed to give it more thought, a corner of her lips turning down in concentration. “Tanner Hagen?”
“Huh? Who?”
Penn rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I forgot you’re old. Harry Styles?”
Now I actually did smack her. “Forget it.” I flipped back to my playground page, bitterly sketching more lines that were way too dark. Harry Styles. This doesn’t even look like Harry Styles. Psh.
“Wow, crazy running into you here.”
Both Penn and I jumped at the sudden voice.
I craned around, finding Dalton standing by our bench.
He had on a pair of khaki shorts and a loose ASU tank top that exposed his tan skin and muscular arms. The sun backlit his warm brown hair, giving it an almost golden glow and making my heart hiccup in my chest.
“What are you doing here?” Penn demanded coldly, which made my brows shoot up. Sure, she copped an attitude with the kids and me sometimes, but I’d never heard her talk to someone else like that.
Dalton just smiled. “In our angsty teen phase, huh?” he asked, even going as far as to try to ruffle her hair. She ducked away before he could touch her. “It was Tony’s last day, too. He wanted to come to the park.”
I turned back to the playground, looking for Dalton’s little brother. He was the same age as Junie, and I hadn’t seen him since the breakup.
Penn suddenly crumpled her bag of Cheetos and stood. “I’m going to go check on Theo,” she said to me, shooting Dalton a not-so-discreet death glare before walking away.
Dalton inhaled through his teeth. “Yikes. I thought she liked me.”
I nearly said I thought she did too before it hit me. “That was before you dumped me.”
He walked around the bench to sit where Penn had gotten up from, letting out a small groan as he fell much too close beside me. Our shoulders brushed for a brief second before he settled the inch between us. “Kids really like to hold grudges, don’t they?”
I shouldn’t have been relieved he sat down. I shouldn’t have chased the feeling of his arm brushing mine. I hated myself for it. “She gets it from me.”
Dalton chuckled, and my stomach flipped over on itself at the sound. “You don’t hold grudges.”
No, because when he’d tried to kiss me at Lydia’s party, I would’ve let him—if it hadn’t been at the expense of disappointing my friends.
My phone chirped as a text came through, and I fished it out of my back pocket to peer at the screen.
Jamie
Are you at home?
no, I’m with the kids at the playground
Jamie
The one by your house?
no, the biscayne park one
“How’s the drawing coming?” Dalton glanced over at my open sketchbook, where I’d forgotten to close the lid. “Did you finally move on from drawing people dying, DD? Thank God. That much has changed in a year?”
Self-consciousness ate at me, nibbling away at my skin until I finally did flip my sketchbook closed. “I still draw it,” I said, packing as much confidence as I could into looking up at him. “I have a perfect model for my next sketch, in fact.”
“I’ll pose for you if you want.” Dalton nudged me with his elbow lightly. “But, hey, it’s not that weird, apparently. My Intro to Psych course talked about how sometimes coping mechanisms for grief can seem… intense.”
Great, so now he was psychoanalyzing me. Maybe I wasn’t relieved he’d sat down. “Glad you finally accept my weirdness. It only took three years.”