Truest Read online

  “Well?” I said. “Let’s get started.”

  He didn’t move.

  “What now?” I asked.

  He still had that persistent grin on his face. “I’m waiting for you to admit you need my help.”

  “You are so annoying,” I complained.

  “And you are so bossy,” he retaliated.

  I waited.

  He waited.

  Finally I grumbled, “I’d appreciate your help today.”

  “And we’ll split everything fifty-fifty?”

  “Fine. Gosh.”

  Silas’s smile could have split the earth in two. “I will not use a vinyl product on leather seats,” he recited.

  “You’d better not!” I said, turning away so he wouldn’t see my smile.

  We got to work, and I examined his efforts like a drill sergeant. “The goal is to blow them away,” I said. “Nope, stop. See how this is an aftermarket tint? We can only use the ammonia-based glass cleaner on factory-tinted glass. For this we’ll actually use seltzer and then dry it with crumpled newspapers to keep it from streaking.”

  “Got it,” he said, returning to the stockpile of supplies on the lawn. “How did you learn all this stuff?” He found a bottle of seltzer and soaked part of a cloth with it and began to work on the interior windshield from the driver’s seat.

  I was in the passenger seat, meticulously cleaning the various ins and outs of the dashboard. “Online forums mostly. In eighth grade, Trudy—she’s my best friend, but she’s at camp this summer—Trudy and I wanted something we could do together, and the Red Owl always rehires the college students who come home for the summer, so it’s hard to get work there. We thought about detasseling, but Tru has allergies. We couldn’t get a job in St. Cloud because we couldn’t drive yet, so we sort of stumbled into this. It works great—we have no supervisors, we get paid in cash, and the whole time we’d just talk about boys and books and plans. Let’s switch sides,” I said, since we’d each finished our respective jobs on either side of the cab. Before I could move out of my side, all six feet plus of Silas crawled over the center console and into my space, his knee pressing into the seat near my hip, his arm around the seat’s headrest so that our faces were only inches apart.

  “Hi,” he said, looking right into my eyes.

  I quickly scooted myself over to the driver’s seat. I swallowed hard, and my heart did that annoying cartwheel thing again. I wondered if . . . if he was making fun of me. Like, if he was aware of how attractive he was and was kind of teasing me by flirtatiously invading my space the way he just had. Maybe he was the kind of boy who felt powerful by making girls blush.

  “Listen,” I growled, my throat getting hot. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “How nice for you,” he said patronizingly. “And I have a girlfriend.”

  “You do?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Well . . . just . . . just . . . don’t do that.”

  “I was only switching sides with you. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” He was wiping down the right side of the windshield and had assumed the egotistic hauteur of the day before—only, I thought I caught sight of a tiny, crooked grin on his face.

  It infuriated me.

  Taking quick, seething breaths through my nose, I sat back in the driver’s seat and told myself to calm down. He was just some ridiculous, moody, strange whack-job from Alaska who was trying to get under my skin. Don’t let him.

  “Look, can we work together in peace?” I asked quietly. “Is that possible? Do you know how to act like a normal person and not be such an asshole?”

  He laughed. He actually laughed.

  But it didn’t sound mean or patronizing. It sounded apologetic.

  Which also irritated me. It’s harder to hate someone with a conscience.

  “Let’s start over, okay?” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head as if to erase everything that had gone before. I looked at Silas, and he nodded. “How long did you live in Alaska?”

  “About three years,” he said. “My mom was an aerospace engineering professor at UAF and did consulting for the Kodiak Launch Complex. My dad taught astronomy.”

  “Did you like it there?”

  “Yes. I loved it. The last thing I wanted to do was move to Minnesota.”

  “Why did you guys move?”

  Silas paused. “Well, Mom got a pretty good offer to teach at the University of Minnesota.” He pursed his lips, obviously debating whether to say what came next. Then suddenly his face relaxed and he said, “Yeah.” That was it. I wanted to coax him into telling me more, but I remembered his frown when I’d asked about his sister the day before. We were finally speaking without hostility, so I didn’t press him.

  “That’s cool that your mom’s from here.”

  “Yeah,” he said again, “I’m still getting used to how everyone here seems to know everyone else.”

  “And everyone else’s business too,” I added. “You’ll see.”

  He pressed his lips together thoughtfully. When he noticed I was looking, he gave me another one of those forced grins. I picked up the Windex, sprayed the plastic covering the odometer, and cleaned it with a cloth, the ammonia yanking at my sinuses. “So, what’s it like in Alaska? Isn’t it twenty-four hours of sun in the summer and twenty-four hours of darkness in the winter?”

  “Not in Fairbanks,” he said. “In Barrow, yeah. That’s as north as you can go. In the winter, the sun doesn’t rise there for over two months.” He shook his head, incredulous. “But still, even in Fairbanks, we would have only about four hours of sunlight in a winter day. Of course, in the summer, there’s only about four hours of darkness, and then after the sun sets, it’s still bright enough to do regular stuff.”

  Silas and I each stepped out of the cab, closed our respective doors, and began to wash the outside of the car. “Start from the top down,” I instructed. No matter what I thought about Silas Hart, it was a treat to watch his lean, strong frame as his long arms reached easily over the roof of the car to wash it. His height was going to be an asset in this job. “Sounds like it would be hard to sleep,” I said. The slippery, soapy lather smelled like cherry foam.

  He laughed a little. “It’s trippy. I’ll be honest. Fairbanks has this summer solstice celebration, and the whole town stays out super late. We have a baseball game that starts at ten thirty at night, and we don’t even use any artificial lights. Stores stay open later. Last year, a couple of my friends and I headed out to Cleary Summit, about twenty miles outside town, and stayed there for hours watching the sun. We camped out, and Beth did this long-exposure photography thing and ended up with a picture of the Chatanika River Valley with about a dozen suns in the background.”

  I wondered if Beth was his girlfriend but couldn’t think of how to ask.

  The hose and high-pressure sprayer attachment I used to clean out the wheel wells made a loud, rhythmic trill against the metal, so I spoke louder when I asked, “So, what about winter then?”

  “Winter is kind of a beast,” Silas admitted. “The temperature is moody, depending on where the wind is coming from. So it goes from just an average cold down to, like, cold-cold and back up again. And meanwhile, it’s dark out and purple. The sun sets before school’s out. That is a terrible feeling.” He laughed a little. “I literally could not go running in daylight because the sun didn’t come up until three hours after school started. I kinda hated it. Laurel really hated it.” Again, he looked as if he was going to say more. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, still undergoing some internal debate.

  I remembered the Nikes peeking out from under his bed. “You run?” I asked, immediately regretting giving him the easy way out.

  “What?” he asked, as if distracted. “Yeah, I love it. Like mother, like son, I guess. I run my best and hardest when I’m frustrated . . . which is why it’s great to have Laurel as a sister. No one more frustrating than her.” He grinned at me, lips pursed mischievously, eyebrows raised—an odd
ly suggestive look, as if he’d just made some outrageous or even salacious proposal.

  “I refuse to believe that until you meet Libby and Shea,” I said. “They’re twelve and seven and watching us through the window right now.”

  Silas looked over at the window and waved. My siblings ducked out of sight. I pictured them giggling on the floor.

  “What are you doing after this? Wanna get lunch?” he asked, pushing his thick hair out of his eyes.

  “Not really. Your moods are kind of giving me whiplash here,” I confessed.

  “I’ll behave. Promise.”

  The afternoon stretched out before me, empty of friends and responsibilities. If I could just get through the day, I could call Elliot and Trudy later on to catch up.

  Silas held up three fingers—Scout’s honor—squinting at the sun in his eyes. “I promise,” he repeated.

  “You’re annoying,” I said again.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  four

  We went to the Red Owl—which has technically been a SuperValu since before I was born, though no one in Green Lake calls it that—and bought pop and apples, along with a bag of cinnamon-roasted almonds and some sandwiches from the tiny deli section, then biked to the park that brushed up against the pointer finger of the town. We ate lunch on the swing set near the lake.

  Just the sight of the playground made me ache for Trudy, who had accompanied me to these swings since the days when we’d buy Pop Rocks and magazines with our allowance money and listen to the carbonated candy fizzle on our tongues while we debated the merits of various teen stars. I smiled thinking of the Pop Rocks and how, when you’d crunch down on them, it sounded like all your teeth were breaking.

  “My turn to ask the questions,” said Silas, polishing his apple on his shirt. “Tell me what you like to do.”

  “I read a lot,” I said, my feet dragging in the sand beneath them as I bit into my apple—Gala, sweet.

  “I knew it. Like what?” Silas grinned as he took a bite of his own.

  “Kind of everything. Contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi.”

  “Nice. Have you read C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy?”

  “Like a million times,” I said.

  Silas’s eyes grew wide with childlike excitement. “I’m making Laurel read it this summer!” he said, waving around the hand that held his apple. “He has total command of language. Gosh, such great alliteration. There’s this part with all these k sounds . . . stops you like a king in the road.”

  I smiled at him, a little skeptically.

  “What?” he asked, eyes wide and beatific, and I burst out laughing.

  “I’ve just never heard anyone talk affectionately about plosives.”

  Another grin from him. That same walloping one that made me stagger. It was wide and warm and in his eyes as much as on his lips. It was playful and had just the smallest hint of mischief. The gulf between this boy and the one who’d been so cold the day before spread wider, confusing me.

  “So, you read,” he said. “What else?”

  “I also have this weird penchant for Australian authors.”

  “No, I mean, what else do you like to do?”

  Oh. That.

  “Mmm, I don’t know,” I said, munching on my apple, trying to appear thoughtful—but really, frantically searching for a response. I hated questions like this; while they gave definition to other people, they reminded me that my outline was fuzzy and gray. What did I like to do? I didn’t play sports or music, didn’t follow fashion, had no crazy obsessions, wasn’t extreme in any way. Around town I was known as “Pastor Beck’s daughter” or “Elliot Thomas’s girlfriend.” Stories were my one real love, and Silas had just asked what else I did besides read.

  I stretched to fill in my own embarrassing blanks: “Um, I listen to the radio. Avoid thinking about college. Con people into telling me their secrets.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “With my long eyelashes,” I said, batting them at him. “Now spill your guts.”

  He laughed, then looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You know, you’re all right.”

  “I’m so glad I have your approval,” I said, half annoyed that he was allowed to issue this verdict and half grateful it was—sort of—positive. “Daily validation, check! So, what about you?”

  “Oh, I write,” he said, tossing his apple core toward a garbage bin about fifteen feet away. It went in easily. “Yesssss.”

  “Epic adventures of danger and daring?” I teased, glad to redirect the focus onto him as I opened the bag of almonds. He let me shake some into his open palm.

  “Nah, I’m no good.”

  The humility shocked me.

  “I’m a seventeen-year-old poet; what do you expect? My poems are shit.”

  “Favorite poet?” I asked.

  “Billy Collins,” he said. “Though when I read his stuff, I want to light myself on fire.”

  “I guess I should be happy I stand on the reader side of literature,” I said, savoring the sugary crunch in my mouth. “The writer side sounds like masochism.”

  He looked at me, eyes wide in understanding. “Absolutely. Why do you avoid thinking about college?”

  “I guess I don’t know what to do with my life,” I said. Then, before he could ask any more questions, I held up the bag of nuts. “Actually, I just had an epiphany. I think I’m gonna major in almonds.”

  “You’re such a dork,” he said—and there was that grin again.

  That evening was a perfect Minnesota June night, cool and breezy, and Cedar Street was quiet except for the sound of Jody Perkins riding his lawn mower home from the bar. We waved to each other as I wondered what Tru was doing that moment at camp. Probably trying to corral middle schoolers into quieting down in the cabin. I wondered how Trudy was handling living with a herd of young females all summer—especially with Ami Nissweller along for the ride. Ami, a self-proclaimed chess nerd and a bit of a hanger-on, had always annoyed Tru, who, when finding out that Ami would be working at Camp Summit too, announced, “She’s checkmated me!”

  I called Elliot’s cell from my front steps that night as the sun streaked the sky with pink. He answered, either on or near a tractor, the sound of the motor a thunderous drone.

  “I miss you,” I said, trying to speak loud enough for him to hear over the noise.

  “What’s that?”

  “I miss you,” I said louder, hoping my siblings wouldn’t hear me from inside. “I spent the day with the new kid, and he’s really annoying—but he was too good at detailing to not—”

  “—West? Are you still there?”

  “I’M STILL HERE!” I almost bellowed, cupping my hands around my phone, my voice only slightly quieter than a shout. “CAN YOU HEAR—”

  “—West? I’m going to have to call you later.”

  “OKAY,” I roared. “I MISS YOU.”

  “What’s that?”

  I hung up. It was useless.

  When I tried calling Trudy, the call went straight to voice mail.

  This is the story of my summer, I thought.

  I tuned into August Arms through my phone while my mom herded my siblings to bed inside. Dad was still gone; apparently, he’d come home for lunch, but then advanced like a knight back into the dark world to fight sin and sadness.

  I felt laden with loneliness. The summer had only just started.

  But then, Sullivan Knox’s voice punctured the night. The host of August Arms had one of those deep, slightly overbearing radio voices that could fill any space. It was husky and articulate, and it used clever inflection to add depth to every story. I loved it best at night, when the world seemed smaller and it was easier to convince myself that Sully and I were having a conversation: curious people talking of curious things, things that were so other from anything Green Lake had to offer, anything I had to offer. So, even though I could
listen online at any time, I always tried to listen to the live show when it aired each night. Elliot thought it was silly—and Trudy too, a little—and, heck, maybe even I did. But not enough to change.

  August Arms usually centered its stories on a theme, which lasted an evening or a week or sometimes a month, and tonight’s common thread was secrecy: an architect who led three separate lives; Arthur Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter; and the Sacrament of Penance.

  As usual, each story was fascinating—but tonight they were heavy too, just like the pressing scent of the blooming crab apple trees on our street. I couldn’t help but think of Silas from earlier that day: how he’d cut his answer short when I’d asked why they’d moved, the peculiar way his voice had sounded when he said Laurel had “really hated” the polar twilight, as if those two words were the title page for an entire novel. What was he not telling me?

  With August Arms as my sound track, alone on my porch, I embraced my inner stalker and looked each of the Hart twins up online. Neither of them had high privacy settings, so I was able to see quite a bit. Silas’s social media looked exactly as I’d expected: he had lots of friends and was tagged in about a million photos, which I looked through one by one. Silas crossing the finish line at a cross-country meet, Silas in a row of guys all in tuxedos, Silas and Laurel blowing out candles on identical cakes that said, “Happy 17th!”

  I even found the time-lapse photo of the midnight sun he had mentioned briefly. Beth Öster, the photographer, was his girlfriend and had a stark beauty afforded by her low-bridged nose, dark hair, rosy cheeks, and unexpectedly blue eyes that peeked out from under a parka hood. She had tagged each sun as a different friend. Silas was the sun beside her sun.

  When I looked up Laurel, though, it was a different story. There was still a good sample of friends and photos, but she’d obviously not been online much in the past year. People had been posting things like “When are you coming back to school?” and “Hope you’re okay—call me!” and “I miss you” quite a bit in December and January—but those posts had dwindled in the past six months. She must be sick, I thought. But why would that be a secret? Her pictures were mostly from dance performances—Laurel in tap shoes, Laurel in a red Latin dress, Laurel in ballet slippers as Odette from Swan Lake. They’d all been uploaded years ago.