The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

11





NOW THE HIGHWAY WAS DARK, BLACK AS VULTURE feathers. Only a jellybean-shaped keyhole view of the road was granted by the headlights. There were no streetlamps, no reflectors to indicate lanes, no metal railings to keep you on the road. Just a dusty snake you had to ride as it wound its way through the mountains. Jesse squinted into the night, her fingers gripping the wheel. We were stuck behind a truck piled high with bananas, going twenty-five miles per hour. I searched for soothing music on Isabel’s iPod. I settled on Cowboy Junkies, but it sounded haunting in the darkness.



The Ford stayed close behind us now, Arshan still at the wheel. Lynette, Cornell and Arshan were listening to Norah Jones and discussing Kendra’s marriage prospects with Michael.



“This is crazy. Screw it,” Jesse said, and reached for the gearshift. She gunned the accelerator and swung beside the banana truck.



Arshan sprang to life. He’d been anxious to get around the truck, too. He floored the gas, feeling exhilarated.



I gulped, didn’t say anything, turned up the music, and pretended it was exciting. Isabel wasn’t even paying attention. Man, she has the good seat. I turned to look at the banana truck as we came up beside it. The driver was an old man hunched over the wheel. There was the shadow of a child next to him. Or maybe a dog. I leaned closer to the window to look.

“Oh shit!” Jesse yelped. I spun back around to see a tractor trailer barreling down the mountain, around the curve. His horn blared and the lights blinded us. Jesse looked in the rearview mirror to check on Arshan. I could see his surprised face lit up in the glare. No way was he moving back fast enough. Jesse squeezed her eyes nearly shut, floored the gas pedal and sped into the lights. Isabel and I screamed at the top of our lungs.



Arshan moved his foot to the brake, then veered to the right, barely slipping in behind the truck, which then slammed on its brakes, trying to avoid the Honda. Arshan jerked the car to the right again without looking.



I closed my eyes. I heard the tractor trailer fly past with clanking metal, searing horn and screeching brakes. I opened my eyes to see another car appear in our headlights. Jesse cursed again and spun off the road, wheels skidding toward the edge.



Arshan jerked the steering wheel and veered around the truck toward the edge of the mountain. In front of him, out of the dust, like a desert mirage, appeared the Honda. Cars rushed by on his left. There was nowhere to go. He slammed on the brakes and grimaced, his eyes squeezing shut.

They were going to hit.



Oh, thank God we didn’t go over the edge. I was a hunchback statue, gulping in shaky breaths like a winded Chihuahua, a hand on my chest to both affirm and calm my racing heart. WE, breathe in, ARE, breathe out, ALIVE, breath in—

Bam! We were struck from behind. The seat belt karate kicked my ribs, and my palms slapped the dashboard. Isabel, the idiot not wearing a seatbelt, crashed full body into my seat, adding more sounds of crunching metal and thudding body parts to the night. Jesse let out a groan. Then silence.

Silence.

Silence in both cars.




If both of us died, Kendra would be an orphan.





So help me God, I will never look at Sandra Miheso again.





Maliheh. Reza. Mina. Almost joined you.





Jeezus H. Christ. No one else here is allowed to die. You hear me, Mister Almighty? I should have told Isabel about her father.





You take me if you’re going to take anyone else. You stay away from my friends.





Mina, did you save us?





“Holy crap!” I said so I wouldn’t cry. I opened my car door and nearly walked off the edge of a mountain. “Holy crap!” I said again. “Jesse, get out so I can climb across.”

Jesse didn’t move.

“Everybody okay?” I heard Arshan call out.

Jesse started at the sound of his voice. She whipped around and looked at Isabel.

“I’m okay,” Isabel choked out and looked down at her still intact body in awe.

Arshan called out again and Jesse finally stumbled out of the car. I climbed across and made it out just in time to see Jesse fall into Arshan’s arms. Arshan stroked her hair with his eyes shut tight until Isabel jumped out of the car and Jesse hugged her fiercely. We really did almost just die, didn’t we?

I looked quickly at the bumper of our car and the hood of the Ford. Both were banged up, but most likely they’d still run. When I got closer to the other car, I saw Cornell huddled in the back, Lynette nearly hidden in his arms. I held my breath. I could make out Cornell whispering into her hair, “I love you I love you I love you.”

I stood up and took in the scene, like standing in the empty parking lot of a drive-in movie theater. I watched the dark forms of Jesse, Arshan and Isabel locked in an embrace on the side of a road on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, adding shallow breaths and tears to the silent black cloak around them. Cornell and Lynette were wrapped up in a world of intimacy, each silently bargaining for an eternity more of each other.

I felt suddenly cold, seeing all those arms intertwined and holding tight. The darkness threatened to swallow me. Or abandon me to infinity. Distant, haze-dusted stars were as comfortless as a burning lighthouse. I realized I was waiting to see if anyone was going to remember I was there. The silence quickly told me that the only person who’d truly needed me was gone. I mourned Mina’s absence as if she’d just tumbled over the edge of the mountain.

But instead of imaginary screams, I heard one clear, simple question in the night air: Now what? The movie playing in front of me and the chill in the night air were all too clear in their message.

But another part of me bristled at this thought. The old Samantha—the fearless one—was offended. Every message has a flip side. If I never let anyone get as close as Mina, I would never feel this pain again. If I went my way alone, I could stand on the fringes and observe and laugh. I could focus on my art. Or go back to science. Achievement is like love, with less risk. It would be better that way, just me. I was tough. With my screwed-up family, I should have learned the danger of human attachment long ago. It was like what Jesse said about the outhouse. I should know better.

A truck flew by on the road, blowing dust and the scent of cattle into my face. My eyes began to penetrate the darkness. Graffiti appeared on rocks lining the highway. My arms broke out in goosebumps. That meant people lived in these mountains. Or bandits. Was that the sound of pebbles falling or scrambling feet? I suddenly felt exposed, like an action hero surrounded by invisible bad guys in the bushes.

“Everybody get back in the cars!” I said. “Now!”

Cornell’s eyes found mine through the rear car window, startled. Lynette lifted her head and I saw fear scurry across their faces.

Arshan, though, looked like he didn’t hear me at all. He had Jesse and Isabel wrapped up in his arms snugger than cellophane and if I didn’t know better I’d say he looked almost happy. Certainly he looked like he had no intention of letting go. For the first time, I got a glimpse of what losing Mina must’ve been like for him. She’d left him all alone like me.

It was cruel the things that could happen to you in an instant. The way people could be ripped from your arms like mice snatched by eagles.

I felt the two Samanthas ready to argue again. There was something Mina had told me once, something she’d said.

But there wasn’t time. I hurried back to the car and tapped Arshan gently on the shoulder. In a daze, we all took our seats as before.

As the cars’ engines startled the silent air, I sank back into my seat and stared down the darkness. Soon, I thought. The internal civil war had to end and I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do. Stay lost or be found.





Lakehouse, Rappahannock, VA, 1991



“Want some more lemonade?” Eleven-year-old Isabel stood on the dock.

I looked up at her, the sun shining high in the sky above her head. She had a hand on her hip, waiting impatiently. “Come on, Kendra. Come with me.”

Kendra looked up, embarrassed. She was drawing hearts around two initials overtop the advertisements in her YM magazine. I tried to see what it said, and Kendra tried to hide it unsuccessfully with her hands.

KJ + A

Only one letter for the boy. “Adam!” I laughed. The boy staying next door to the lake house Jesse was renting that summer.

Kendra glared at me, and Mina giggled. She was floating on her back in the water but could hear us apparently.

“He’s cute,” Isabel said, to take Kendra’s side. She put out her hand with pink nail polish on her fingers.

Kendra took her hand and followed Isabel up the big hill to the house to ask for more pink lemonade.

I picked up the magazine, and flipped forward and back a few pages. Kendra had drawn, like, twenty hearts that morning.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?” I said, tracing over the amazingly symmetrical hearts.

Mina swam close to the dock, next to my knees.

“What?” I said, and raised my eyebrows.

Mina changed her mind and went back to floating. She looked up at the sky, completely crammed full of drifting fluffy clouds. I watched them, too, for a second, admiring how they arranged themselves into faces and animals and a hundred other pictures of life.

“What do you think is the point?”

“Of what, Em?”

“Any of it. All of it. Boys. School. Life.”

I looked at my feet under the water, thought how delicious the coolness felt, especially when miniature waves lapped at my ankles and left spots to be tickled by the wind. “To have fun?” I suggested.

Mina splashed me.

“I don’t know, Em. But we got lots of time to figure it out, right?”

Mina didn’t answer. She dove under the water and disappeared. I watched in amusement, but she stayed under a long time. I scanned up and down the channel, at the green water and the trees across the way.

Mina surfaced next to my feet, yanking them hard. I almost fell in and then I let myself fall in, until I came up face-to-face with Mina, grinning. My toes squished into the mud on the bottom and I made a “yuk” face. Mina laughed the way she always did at me, benevolently amused.

“I think,” she said, and waited for us both to recover from laughing. “I think the point is to find soul mates.”

I looked at the magazine on the edge of the dock and grinned. “You mean boyfriends?”

Mina crinkled her eyebrows. “I guess, but I was thinking more like us. Don’t you think soul mates are people who understand how you see things, maybe because they’ve known you so long, or maybe just because they understand all your bad parts and love you anyway? I think a soul mate makes up for everything you’re missing.”

“Well, then, if you put it that way—you are definitely my soul mate. So now we can just have fun?” I climbed the dock ladder and then pushed off with my feet and did a backflip into the water. I opened my eyes underwater and watched the flurry of particles dance through the green, moss-colored water.

When I came back up, Mina was laughing, but a different laugh from her repertoire, a sadder one. “But don’t you think there are many soul mates, in case we ever lost each other?”

I looked up at the house and saw Kendra and Isabel walking back with the lemonades, two in each hand. Mina followed my gaze and watched them. She nodded. She lifted her hand and waved. Isabel waved in a way that made Mina laugh, and we could see Kendra scold her for spilling.

Mina touched my shoulder, so I would look over. “I’m just saying, Sam. There’s a lot of people in the world. There must be lots of soul mates.”

I was wounded. “But—”

“Lemonade!” Isabel interrupted us with pink frosty glasses, and Mina’s face told me the discussion was over.