“Sure,” I said.
Then we just stood there. I could see mosquitoes threading their way to us from the woods, and I wondered why Patra was out here on the road by herself, if she’d come to intercept me. I hoisted my backpack higher on my shoulder. “Um, I was thinking maybe Paul and I could try swimming today,” I told her. “It might be warm enough.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful. Yes. Thank you.” Her most functional smile flashed into place. “But, actually. That’s what I wanted to say. I think we’ll be okay for a couple of days.”
Without me, she meant.
I glanced at the house behind her with its pulled shades, its closed door, its sealed-log fa?ade. All the good windows were on the other side, the direction that faced the lake. And all weekend, those windows had been black with sunlight (the days were getting long now), except for an hour or two in the evenings when Patra and the husband ate in dim lamplight. I hadn’t seen any of them out on the deck for days. I wondered if they’d driven somewhere together—to the Forest Service Nature Center, or to Bearfin to return the rental car, or to the diner in town for a piece of chocolate mousse pie. I wondered if they’d gone as far as Whitewood, where there was a playground with two slides. A minigolf course. A movie theater.
Patra was still smiling intensely. “I mean, we’ll be okay with both Leo and me around, for now. But thank you, Linda.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll definitely call.”
“Great.” There had never been any way for her to call me.
Mosquitoes were all over Patra now, flickering at her hands and neck. She was waving at her ears. I stood still and let them get me if they wanted. I could feel a dozen or more probing the hair on my arms, and as they did I felt some measure of relief. It felt right, now, to give in to the mosquito feast, to do nothing to avoid them. “Tell Paul I say hi!” I said, pointing my cheerfulness straight at Patra. Aiming precisely. “Tell him I hope he’s feeling better!”
Did a look of panic catch on her smile? Maybe I’m only remembering it that way now.
“Of course! Sure! He says hi, too!”
But when I turned to leave, Patra stopped me. She took a few clumsy steps forward, nearly tripping on her bootlaces. “Hey, Linda”—she touched my elbow—”there’s something else.”
I waited for her to say what it was. She was very close to me now, chewing her lip, sweating a little. “It’s Drake.” She brushed a mosquito from her eye, waved another from my neck. “Have you seen him?”
I thought of the white cat as I’d seen him last, Friday afternoon, meowing like an alarm clock at the sliding door.
“No,” I said.
9
LESS THAN A WEEK LATER SCHOOL LET OUT. There were four long days of war movies to watch first—Glory, Doctor Zhivago, M*A*S*H—while teachers hunched in the dark back of the class and calculated grades. Lily’s desk still sat empty. All the unclaimed items in the lost and found were confiscated by the student council for charity. All the goose shit was cleared off the football field for graduation ceremony, the bulletin boards in the halls stripped down to exposed pushpins, to itty-bitty holes in the cork. The last day of school began with someone pulling the fire alarm during homeroom, so we went out to the parking lot—and stood for ten minutes on the puddly concrete—then shambled back inside again. When the final bell rang that afternoon, the seniors flung their notebooks out the open windows one story up. We could hear them pushing back their chairs, thudding around. Everyone rushed from Life Science to join them, the freshman hockey players and the Karens, but I stayed put at my desk and watched all that paper come down outside. It fell surprisingly slowly, catching drafts. You could see exams and tests and notes and graphs. You could see years of education sailing down, whirling over parked cars and across Main, landing in gutters and papering fences.
When I stood up, there was just Ms. Lundgren left rewinding Project X on the VCR. “Have a good summer,” she said, crouching in front of the TV console.
“Summer doesn’t technically start for another two weeks,” I told her.