Fourteen people—and a dog—were probably a few too many for our dock, but we all crowded on and had more or less settled by the time the next firework shot up into the sky, almost directly above us.
I ended up toward the back of the dock, sitting near the chair my mother had carried down for my dad. I glanced behind me, to see if Henry was coming over from his house, but so far, no sign of him. I had no idea how long the work at the bakery would take, and all he’d told me about my surprise was that it would happen after the fireworks. But after checking for him a few times, I let myself just relax and enjoy the show. And maybe it was that I hadn’t seen a fireworks display on the Fourth in a few years (I’d been out of the country or trying to learn to speak another language), but it seemed pretty impressive. Certainly more so than I remembered from the last time we were up here to watch them.
I tipped my head back and just watched the bursts of color and light that were taking over the sky, reflecting on the water below. After a series of particularly spectacular ones, the group on the dock clapped, and the dog raced toward me at full speed.
“Sorry,” Davy, who’d been holding him, said as he turned back to me. I grabbed the dog before he fell into the water—we weren’t sure of Murphy’s swimming abilities—and picked him up. As I did, I noticed that he was trembling violently. “I don’t think he likes the noise.”
“I’ll bring him inside,” I said, pushing myself up to standing.
“Thanks, kid,” my dad said, giving the dog’s dangling paw a squeeze as we passed. “He probably doesn’t understand what’s happening. Poor thing must think he stumbled into a war zone.”
“Actually,” I heard Wendy say from farther up the dock, “dogs’ ears are amazingly sensitive. So what we’re hearing is being amplified ten or twenty times for him.”
I walked up to the house, feeling the dog flinch in my arms whenever a firework exploded. And I realized my father was probably right—if you had nobody to tell you we were only celebrating, you could easily think that the world was coming to an end. I dropped him inside the house, where he immediately fled down the hall to my room. Maybe it was because I had a bedskirt, but I’d noticed that the dog tended to hide under there whenever it was thunderstorming. It was, apparently, his safe place.
As I started to head down the hill again, I realized that the sound of fireworks had stopped—I’d missed the finale. And sure enough, I saw the group on the dock begin to stand and make their way up the hill. I continued down, figuring that I would probably be needed to help and not wanting to risk my mother’s wrath a second time.
Fifteen minutes later, I had helped my mom clean up, said my good-byes to everyone, thanked people for coming, and promised to call Lucy later and tell her what Henry’s surprise had been about. My father, exhausted, had gone right to bed, with Warren helping him up the stairs.
“I guess that’s it,” my mom said, as she picked the last abandoned plate up off the lawn and looked around, as though making sure that everything was in order. Gelsey was still on the lawn, darting from one citronella candle to the other, blowing them out. “Gels,” she yelled to my sister, “bedtime!”
In the light left by the last candle, I watched as my sister dropped into a low arabesque, her leg almost parallel above her. “Five minutes!” she called back, her voice slightly muffled.
My mother nodded and turned back to me. “And not too late for you,” she said. I nodded as well, feeling myself smile. I’d received a text mid-cleanup from Henry, asking me to meet him on the dock in twenty minutes for my surprise. Even though I had no idea what we’d be doing or how long we’d be out, my curfew, such as it was, had gotten very relaxed over the summer. All my mother had asked was that I come in at a reasonable hour, and quietly.
I set out for the dock a little early, which was when I noticed that Henry was also walking toward the dock, the white of his shirt bright against the darkness of the night. “Hey,” I called, and Henry stopped and turned around, smiling when he saw me.
“Hi there,” he said. Taking advantage of the darkness, and the fact that his brother wasn’t around to make gagging sounds at us, I slid my arms around his neck and kissed him. He kissed me back, hugging me hard and lifting me off my feet for just a second, which he seemed to like to do occasionally, if just to remind me that he was now taller than I was.
“You missed the show,” I said, when we broke apart after a moment.
“Did I?” he asked, his tone strangely neutral. “Too bad.”