Three Bird Summer Read online

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  HERE’S WHAT I KNOW about girls. They like talking and combing their hair with their fingers, and they move in careful packs, like wolves. They smell like soap and bees. They speak at two volumes: megaphone loud and impossible-to-hear whisper. Even when they’re huddled together in hushed conversations, they keep their eyes trained outward, scoping the scene like Secret Service agents. I’m pretty sure they can communicate telepathically, too. They often dress exactly alike — showing up one day all in jean jackets and another day in ruffled skirts and flip-flops — as if they have access to the same secret dress code. In class, they keep their eyes on the teacher, but they can actually see in every direction. I’m sure of it. If you scratch your armpit or put your finger anywhere near your nose, you’ll set off a round of giggles. Girls shriek, and they laugh over the smallest things. Words, even. Prune. Waddle. Unruly. I hardly ever get what’s funny. Sometimes I’m not even sure they do.

  On the first day of summer vacation, my mom and I were loading the car for our annual trip to my grandmother’s cabin when three girls from school rode by on their bikes. The moment they spotted me, they turned into the driveway with the precision of a team of Blue Angels and came to a stop inches from the car. Today’s dress code was short shorts and nail polish the color of root beer.

  “Going someplace?” asked Emma. She always talked first.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Where?” asked Margaret, glancing skeptically at my hole-pocked sneakers.

  “To see my grandma,” I said.

  The girls laughed. As usual, I had no idea why.

  I looked at my mom, but she was too focused on her perfect packing job to get involved. She shoved my duffel against the cooler, then realigned it for maximum efficiency. Next she scooped up two of her work bags and balanced them carefully on top.

  “I think that’s everything but my purse,” she told me. “I’ll call Grandma and let her know we’re on our way. Don’t touch a thing.”

  She nodded at the girls and headed into the house.

  “Where does your grandmother live?” asked Annie, the smallest and the nicest of the three.

  “She’s at her cabin up north in Minnesota,” I said. “On a lake. In the woods.”

  “Cool,” Annie said.

  Emma and Margaret were now peering into the back of the car, appraising its contents. Even though there was nothing in there out of the ordinary, I felt weirdly exposed, like they had X-ray vision and could see straight through the fabric of my duffel to my striped boxers, my robot pajamas.

  “Are you staying all summer?” Margaret asked.

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “Who’s going to water your roses?” asked Annie, leaning down to sniff our flower bushes.

  I stared at her incredulously. Was she really wondering about that? Were all girls just moms waiting to get their promotions? I almost said, “My dad will come by sometimes,” but that would have invited a whole new set of questions. So instead I told her I didn’t know.

  They looked at me like I was supposed to say something else. When I didn’t, they glanced at one another and exchanged a wordless message. Possible translation: “He’s boring. Let’s go to Dairy Queen and talk about penmanship.”

  “Well, have fun!” said Emma, shoving off.

  “Watch out for bears!” said Margaret.

  Annie just waved.

  I heard them laughing as they rode away.

  When they turned the corner, I leaned against the car and gazed up at the sky. Sixteen starlings were perched on a set of telephone wires above the street, twitching and fidgeting in the morning air. They clung to the wires in an up-and-down pattern like notes on one of my trumpet scores.

  “Brum, brum, barum,” I hummed through my lips, imagining the tune. “Brum brum brum barum.”

  “I sure hope you won’t be making noises like that all the way to Minnesota,” my mom said, emerging from the house with her purse, a box of Kleenex, and a travel mug. She was wearing a linen skirt and gold sandals that looked right for Wilmette but would be completely out of place at the cabin. She bit her lip and tucked her things into the car. “How did Grandma sound when you two spoke last week?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess.”

  “You think so?” She walked to the back of the car for one final inspection, then slammed the hatch. “Anyway, she had some news. Apparently there are new neighbors on the lake — where the Parkers used to live. They have a girl your age. Grandma says she’s darling.”

  “Grandma actually used the word ‘darling’?” I asked. What I didn’t say was that the idea of a neighbor girl filled me with dread. Being at the cabin was my chance to get away from Emma, Margaret, Annie, and their kind. I’d be more comfortable encountering a real wolf on Grandma’s property than a stray member of the girl pack.

  “Well, maybe she said ‘cute,’ ” Mom admitted.

  “Which is a word she uses to describe earthworms,” I pointed out. “And featherless baby birds with those big bulging eyeballs.”

  Mom ignored me. “I just thought it might be nice to have someone your age around. With your cousins away and all.”

  “I don’t care about that,” I told her. This year, for the first time ever, it would just be me, Mom, and Grandma at the cabin. My parents had gotten divorced over the winter, and this meant that my dad and his side of the family wouldn’t be visiting. I hadn’t thought much about what it would be like to be the only kid, except that it would be a relief not to have my cousins flipping me out of the hammock in surprise attacks or challenging me to brutal games of chicken on Grandma’s canoe. No cousins also meant more pie . . . for me.

  “Well, then forget what I said,” Mom told me. “It’s not like we see a lot of the neighbors when we’re up in Grandma’s little wilderness anyway.”

  I slid into the passenger seat and pulled on my seat belt. I really hoped she was right.

  THERE WAS A MOMENT on the drive to Grandma’s cabin when you realized you were finally up north. After counting hay bales for mile after mile of flat farm fields, wondering how long it would take for somebody to invent human teleporting so you would never have to make this boring drive again, you’d suddenly see them: pine trees. Their triangular tops rose up over the horizon — a boundary, a front, a promise — like spindly giants in pointy hats, signaling the beginning of the great North.

  Now, even in the near-darkness, I could see the familiar silhouette of the pines as we drove up the two-lane highway toward the town of Hubbard Falls. I rolled my window all the way down and let the night air rush against my face. Warm, then cool; sweet, then skunky.

  We skirted the edge of town and followed one last mile of country road to get to Grandma’s property. Only a small mailbox on the right side of the road indicated the presence of any kind of human habitation to our left. The woods were dark, and the drive was just a narrow gap between the trees. Mom turned in and
drove carefully with her high beams on. We steered around trees and bumped over roots and ruts for nearly half a mile until the cabin appeared, nestled on a rise, with just one exterior light on.

  Mom parked our car beside Grandma’s old Ford station wagon, and we climbed out into the night. It was too dark to see anything except the small area illuminated by the light, but the smell of pines and damp earth was enough to know we’d made it. I loved arriving at night, when the property felt at its most mysterious, when crazy little bugs whipped through the air and unknown creatures snapped branches beneath the distant trees. But part of what I loved, too, was knowing that when I woke up, the curtain of darkness would be lifted and my summer world would be there, waiting for me.

  I slammed the car door, and the sound echoed in the silence.

  “Shhh! I’m sure she’s asleep by now,” Mom whispered.

  We pulled our most essential bags from the car and headed up the steps to the cabin. A crowd of moths and june bugs was going nuts around the porch light, slamming against the bulb like hockey players hitting the boards. In the morning, we’d find fried ones scattered among the brown pine needles on the steps below.

  Inside the cabin, Mom turned on a light, casting the kitchen in a yellow glow and turning the windows into impenetrable black squares. Two biscuits and a few slices of ham sat in a tin pie plate on top of the stove. Beside them was a small note written in my grandmother’s shaky hand, with a pencil beside it:

  Thought you said you’d be here by dinner. Eat up.

  “I told her we’d be on the late side!” Mom said, sounding exasperated. She took up the pencil and wrote Sorry! We both knew Grandma would wake up hours before us, still bothered by our delay.

  “Tell her it’s because of your coffee habit,” I whispered.

  “Shhh,” she said back.

  “Explain how you needed five stops for caffeine and ten stops to pee,” I added. Because it was true. I was convinced we’d added two hours to our travel time pulling over at rest areas and gas stations.

  “Adam, enough!” my mother whispered. “I’m sure she isn’t interested in the gory details. Anyway, it’s time for bed.”

  Mom lingered in the kitchen while I hauled my duffel through the main part of the cabin, breathing in the familiar smell of wood paneling and fireplace cinders. Everything was in its usual place. There were the couches with their lumpy orange cushions, the handmade wooden tables, the bronze reading lamps. There was the Three Bird Lake banner — a large felt rectangle featuring an eagle, a loon, and a great blue heron — hanging over the fireplace as it had for decades. There were the faded books on the shelves, sharing space with collections of rocks, feathers, and pinecones. There were the curled sketches thumbtacked to the walls — crayon drawings my cousins and I had made when we were little, and a few pencil drawings by my grandmother of birds and plants.

  Back in my small bedroom, the decor hadn’t been changed for decades, either. My bed had a scratchy wool blanket, red with a single black stripe. A small dresser stood against the wall, with an old framed mirror above it. Stuck into the mirror were black-and-white snapshots of my mother as a young girl, a 1961 postcard from Chicago, and a picture of me from kindergarten. Grandma kept a white lacy fabric on top of the dresser at all times, and when I used to tell my mom that it was too girly, she told me to hush and feel grateful that I had my own space at all. My cousins had always had to sleep on pull-out bunks in the main part of the cabin, listening to each other snore.

  I dropped my duffel, and it hit the wooden floor with a thud.

  “Shhh,” my mother said from the hall.

  In past summers, that would have been the cue for Dad to tell her to relax. I sighed and pulled on my pajamas.

  In the morning, I woke to the sounds of motorboats crossing the lake and the smell of bacon. Grandma made pancakes and bacon for breakfast every morning. It was one of her best traditions.

  I got up and made my bed, knowing Mom and Grandma would tolerate nothing less. Then I walked into the living room. All along one side of the cabin, tall windows looked out toward the lake. This was the first thing anyone noticed stepping into the cabin — how it was almost like a giant screened porch. Today I could see patches of blue sky through the tree limbs, and sunlight skipping on Three Bird Lake below.

  “Here’s Adam!” Mom said as I shuffled into the kitchen.

  Grandma was leaning over the stove, plucking bacon from the griddle. She was wearing her usual cabin attire: an oxford shirt rolled up at the sleeves, khaki pants, and little white sneakers. At my mother’s words, she turned and looked up — at me and beyond me, it seemed. I looked over my shoulder to see if I was missing something.

  “He’s grown, hasn’t he?” Mom said. “I think he finally has us beat.”

  Grandma blinked and nodded. She came over and gave me a little kiss on the cheek, then returned to the stove. She jabbed at the remaining bacon with her fork like a bird pecking at worms.

  “I see you didn’t eat the food I left out for you last night,” she said.

  “We were just so tired, Ma,” my mom explained.

  I sat down at the table, and Mom slid me a glass of juice. “It looks like a beautiful day,” she said, fingering one of the gold hoop earrings she still had on from yesterday.

  I nodded.

  “Are you going to paddle around the lake by yourself this summer?” Grandma asked me. It was a question she asked me and my cousins every year. Not “How are you?” or “How was your school year?” or “What do you feel like doing most this summer?” Just a question that seemed designed to provoke and, in my case, humiliate.

  “We’ll see,” I said. In other summers, it wouldn’t have been easy to make a solo voyage. My cousins were all boys: Max, Rocky, Toad, and Stu — the sons of my dad’s brother, Uncle John. They were older than me and much more aggressive. Whenever they were visiting the cabin, I was lucky if I even got a chance to steer the canoe, much less be alone in it. Not that I really minded. Solo canoeing had never been high on my list of summer priorities.

  Grandma flipped a pancake on the stove. “How many of these do you eat now?” she asked me.

  “Let’s say five,” I said.

  She nodded approvingly. Sometimes I thought she’d be better off with a bear cub than a grandson. Maybe she even wished I was Toad, who’d gotten his nickname as a toddler when he ate a dead housefly off the windowsill and who still ate like an amphibian — all cheeks and tongue.

  When she’d finished serving me and Mom, Grandma finally sat down with her own pancake. She didn’t show much interest in eating it, though; instead, she wrapped her knobby fingers around her mug and sipped her coffee slowly, like medicine. Grandma had a tough face — tan and leathery from so much time in the sun, and scoured with wrinkles that made her look like she was always frowning. Her white hair was cut short like a boy’s, and it lay flat against her head in hard angles. She wore silver glasses — always the same shape and style. They were dull now, but her eyes still glinted behind them when she was in the right mood.

  “Did your mother tell you about our newest neighbors?” she asked, gazing slyly at me.

  “A new family or something?” I said.

  “They have a girl your age!” she said.

  “Girls my age are . . .” I hesitated.

  Mom listened with obvious interest.

  I stuffed the last bite of pancake in my mouth and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Probably starting to look interesting, I’d say,” Grandma teased.

  I slid off the bench and dumped my dishes in the sink. “I’m going to go down to the dock.”

  I pushed open the screen door and let it close with a bang, cringing as I heard Mom and Grandma chuckling behind me. Is this what I had to look forward to all summer? Even having my cousins around putting centipedes under my pillow would be better than being the sole object of Mom’s and Grandma’s attention.

  I hopped down the wooden steps of the deck and followed
the worn path that curved around the cabin and down to the lake. The smell of dry pine needles tickled my nose. When I reached the shore, I walked out the length of the dock and stood at its end, taking everything in.

  Three Bird Lake was a long oval — more than two miles from end to end and just over a mile across. Small houses dotted the shoreline for most of its perimeter. When my mom was growing up, this had been a summer cabin community with plenty of untouched wooded land. Now most of the neighbors lived here year-round in real houses with grassy lawns. Only Grandma’s property was crowded with pines and birches like a genuine northern forest. Lucky for us, she had more than a thousand feet of shoreline and more than a hundred acres of woods. If you stuck to her property, you could still feel like you were someplace wild, even if the other people on the lake owned Jet Skis and plastic flamingos.

  The end of the dock was my favorite place on Grandma’s property. I spent hours here doing nothing at all. Grandma teased me about it sometimes. “World’s best dock-sitter” she sometimes called me. “The neighbors probably think you’re a statue, there to scare off the gulls.” But I didn’t care. I loved the big sky and the big lake rolling out at my feet.

  A cool breeze crossed the water. It felt like the great North was barreling through me with my every breath. Here’s what slipped away: schedules, bus rides, the stale smell of the school cafeteria, algebraic equations, Mom and Dad’s phone arguments, girl talk, and Grandma’s interrogations. Here’s what I got in exchange: water sloshing slowly and steadily against the dock like the heartbeat of a great whale. A pair of black-and-white loons swimming into view. Fresh air and a lake that, right then, felt like it was all mine.

  I sat down and dropped my feet in the water. It was cold for the middle of June, but I’d get used to it in a few days. Minnows darted at my toes, casting busy black shadows on the sand below.

  I heard voices across the water. Grandma’s dock was the one place on her property where you were aware of having neighbors. On land, the woods wrapped us in dense cover, but out here, you could see a few nearby docks and the edges of the neighbors’ lawns. Now a girl about my age and a boy maybe a couple of years older were standing on the nearest dock, loading a small rowboat with gear. The famous neighbor. Grandma hadn’t said anything about a brother, so I figured this was her boyfriend. Maybe that would put an end to Grandma’s teasing. Both kids were tall, blond, and tan. Typical Minnesotans. They were probably ace tennis players and competitive Nordic skiers. Not dock-sitters, at least.