“All right, count us in,” I said.
Rose squealed.
“Don’t keep them out too late, sis, we have to be up early,” Mom said. “I’ll stay back and read my book. Manny, maybe you can work in Aunt Willow’s studio and draw one of your supersized maps on a canvas?”
“Roger that!” he shouted from underneath the beach towel fortress he’d constructed in the back of the boat.
“Party starts at eight, so we should leave by seven,” said my aunt. “We’ll take the boat over. How about we head back and grab some lunch, then you guys can have the rest of the afternoon to yourselves before we go?”
“Great!” said Rose. She grinned and spun to face me, propping her legs up on my lap.
“Great,” I agreed, trying not to appear as crazy-happy as I felt.
That evening, after a brief panic over dress-code concerns, Aunt Willow drove us across the lake to the party. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the eastern sky had begun to grow a deep violet. Yellow sparkles peppered the lakefront as homes turned on their lights for the night.
Once there, a group of men in polo shirts greeted us at the pier, offering free valet docking service. While some of the vintage wooden boats and small yachts had been granted mechanical lift access, smaller boats, such as the SS Ron Burgundy, were moored to buoys a small distance from the pier.
We walked up a winding pathway, lit on either side by small, solar-powered lights. Ivy-covered stones tiered the hill into three levels. Near the top, we began to hear the buzz of conversation. As we cleared the summit, dozens of people came into view, talking, eating, and drinking, while servers with silver trays circulated between them. The imposing house behind everyone looked more like a resort than a home—the windows alone were twenty feet tall.
A white-haired woman came waltzing over to us as we took it all in. “Willow! So glad you could make it, darling. And this is your niece and nephew?”
“This is my nephew, Zeus, and this is his—” My aunt looked to me for confirmation.
“Girlfriend. Rose,” I confirmed, taking Rose’s hand.
“Zeus and Rose, now isn’t that marvelous? It reminds me of the theater, I don’t know why, ah-ha-ha-ha! I’m Sylvia, it’s a pleasure.” She shook our hands. I got the impression she loved playing hostess. “Zeus, your aunt is an incredible artist, you do know this, yes?”
“I do,” I replied.
“The best. Come, follow me. The other young people are just over here.”
Sylvia led us across the lawn to the veranda, where her grandson and his friends sat in a circle staring at their phones. “Jake, darling, this is Willow’s nephew, Zeus, and his friend, Rose. They’re here visiting from Illinois.”
“What’s up,” said Jake, never looking away from his phone.
“Won’t you introduce your friends?” asked Sylvia.
Jake continued looking at his phone, but pointed to the others. “J. B., John, Dave, Todd, Mikey, and Domingo.”
“What’s up,” they all muttered, more or less in unison.
“Willow, come with me,” said Sylvia. “Let’s get you a glass of champagne.”
“Have fun,” said my aunt as Sylvia whisked her away.
I looked at Rose and offered my arm. “Shall we mingle?” We approached the group, whose names I’d already forgotten except for Jake. They all wore various colors of deck shorts and boat shoes and all of their faces remained buried in their phones. I wondered if they were communicating with one another, or simply existing in the same physical space separately.
“Where’re you from in Illinois?” asked the one in pink shorts.
“Buffalo Falls,” I said.
“Never heard of it,” replied Pink Shorts.
“Me neither,” said Yellow Shorts.
“I have.” Blue Shorts momentarily put his phone down to inspect us for the first time. “My parents used to take me to that state park lodge when I was little.”
“Metea State Park,” I said.
“Yeah. It was lame,” said Blue Shorts. Then he went back to his phone. None of them offered us a seat, so we continued to stand.
“So, what do you do in Buffalo Falls?” asked Jake, big emphasis on the second do. From the way he held his phone, I could tell he was positioning for the perfect selfie.
“Uh, it’s small, so . . .” I thought about what we’d done that summer—polka dancing, palm reading, salad deliveries, geriatric puzzle assembly—not acceptable answers. “We usually just hang out.”
Rose took over. “Do all of you guys live around here?”
“My parents have a place across the lake,” said Pink Shorts, “but we all live in Chicago.”
“Oh really? Zeus is from Chicago originally,” said Rose.
That made Jake look up from his phone. “Yeah? Where at?”
“South Side, by Midway,” I replied.
“Oh,” he said, making me feel like I’d answered wrong.
“Where in Chicago are you guys from?” I asked.
“Highland Park,” said Orange Shorts, who hadn’t spoken until now. I was about to inform him that Highland Park, an affluent suburb home to the likes of Michael Jordan and other multimillionaires, was decidedly not in Chicago, but I bit my tongue.
“Right on,” I said.
We stood in silence for a moment. Then Rose spoke again. “You guys must love it up here. It’s beautiful. This house is amazing.”
“Yeah,” said Jake.
“It’s decent,” said Yellow Shorts.
It was beyond clear that Jake and the colorful-shorts crew had zero interest in us.
Rose whispered in my ear, “Maybe we should go mingle with ourselves, if you know what I mean.”
“Do I ever,” I whispered back. “Let’s go.”
TWENTY-NINE
ROSE AND I WANDERED AROUND THE PROPERTY UNTIL WE FOUND A wooden bench swing facing the lake. We sat, my arm around Rose while she rested her head on my shoulder—a move we’d mastered at that point. Her hair smelled like lilacs with a hint of lake water. The sun had just begun to sink beyond the horizon, painting the clouds in deck-shorts pink.
“Seriously, how can their phones be more interesting than this place?” asked Rose.
I shook my head. “I guess when you’ve grown up with all this, you take it for granted.”
Rose let out a soft sigh and stroked the hair on my arm. We watched the last wink of sunlight slip out of view. Lightning flickered across the lake. We waited for the thunder, but it was still too far away.
“Maybe it’s like what we talked about before, about heaven,” said Rose.
“Like, if everything’s great all the time, how can you tell?”
“Exactly. I bet those guys grew up with everything they ever wanted. Coming here is probably just another day. An inconvenience, even.”
Two ducks flew across our view.
“I wonder what their heaven is?” I asked.
Rose chortled, then in a ditzy valley-girl accent said, “Probably, like, the perfect selfie.”
I laughed, then mimicked a bro voice. “Dude, did you notice my deck shorts match my phone case?”
“Uh, yeah! Hello? I just tweeted about it.”