sarah ockler :: author of TWENTY BOY SUMMER

Twenty Boy Summer

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Summary

“Don’t worry, Anna. I’ll tell her, okay? Just let me think about the best way to do it.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me? Promise you won’t say anything?”
“Don’t worry.” I laughed. “It’s our secret, right?”

For Anna Reiley and Frankie Perino, the ingredients for the Absolute Best Summer Ever are simple: Two girls. Two bikinis. And twenty days in Zanzibar Bay, California. The best part? According to Frankie, if they meet one boy every day, there’s a good chance Anna will find her first summer romance.

Anna lightheartedly agrees to the fun, but there’s something she hasn’t told Frankie… she’s already had her romance, and it was with Frankie’s older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death last year.

TWENTY BOY SUMMER explores what it truly means to love someone, what it means to grieve, and ultimately, how to make the most of every beautiful moment life has to offer.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Frankie Perino and I were lucky that day. Lucky to be alive—that’s what everyone said. I got a fractured wrist and banged-up knee, and my best friend Frankie got a fat little scar above her left eye, breaking her eyebrow into two reflective halves. Up one side, down the other. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after.

Before, all of us were lucky.

After, only me and Frankie.

That’s what everyone said.

Chapter 2

It was just over a year ago.

Twelve months, nine days, and six hours ago, actually.

But thirteen months ago, everything was… perfect.

I closed my eyes, leaned over my candles, and prayed to the cake fairy or the God of Birthdays or whoever was in charge that Matt Perino—Frankie’s brother and my best friend-that’s-a-boy—would finally kiss me. It was the same secret wish I made every year since Frankie and I were ten and Matt was twelve and I accidentally fell in love with him.

Frankie, Matt, and their parents—Uncle Red and Aunt Jayne, even though we’re not related—celebrated my fifteenth birthday in our back yard with Mom and Dad, just like always. When all the singing and clapping and candle-blowing stopped, I opened my eyes. Matt was right next to me, beside me, sharing the same air. Mischievous. The back of my neck went hot and prickly when I smelled his apple shampoo—the kind from the green bottle he stole from Frankie’s bathroom because he liked how it made his hair look—and for one charged-up second I thought my birthday wish might finally come true, right there in front of everyone. I didn’t even have time to think about how embarrassing that might be when Matt’s hand, full of birthday cake, arched from behind his back on a not-so-slow-motion trajectory right into my face.

While cake-in-the-face was clearly progress from the previous year’s Superbowl coach-style shook-up soda over the head, something in the wish translation was still getting lost as it blew across my candles into the sky. I made a mental note to clarify my demands next year with bullet points and irrefutable examples from Hollywood classics and screamed, shoving both hands into the mangled confection on the picnic table.

I scooped out two giant corners overloaded with fake frosting flowers.

Then, I charged.

I lunged.

I ran.

I chased Matt around the yard in laps until he dropped to the ground and wrestled the extra pieces from me, grinding them into my face like a mud mask. We went at it for ten minutes, laughing and rolling around in the grass, Frankie and our parents cheering and howling and throwing more cake into the ring, candles and all. When we finally came up for air, there wasn’t much cake left, and the two of us were coated head to toe in blue rainbow chip frosting.

We stood up slowly, laughing with our mouths open as we half-heartedly called a truce. Dad snapped a picture—Matt’s arm around my shoulders, bits of cake and colored chips and grass clinging to our clothes and hair, everything warm and pink in the glow of the setting sun, the whole summer stretched out before us. It didn’t even matter that Matt was going to college in the fall. He’d be at Cornell studying American literature, just over an hour away, and he’d already started talking about my and Frankie’s weekend visits. 

When the novelty of the birthday cake wrestling match finally faded, Matt and I went inside to clean up. Beyond the sliding deck door, shielded in the cool dark of the house from everyone out back, we stood in front of the kitchen sink not saying anything. I stared at him in a sideways kind of way that I hoped didn’t expose the secret thoughts in my head—thoughts that, despite my best efforts to contain them, went further than I ever let them go before.

His messy black hair and bright blue eyes cast a spell on me, muffling the chatter outside like we’d been dunked under water. I held out a sticky hand and threatened him with another gob of frosting in an attempt to break the silence, afraid he’d hear my heart pounding under my T-shirt. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Matt scooped some frosting from my outstretched hand and moved to close the space that separated us, changing absolutely everything that ever was or wasn’t between us with a single raised eyebrow.

“Anna,” he said, dragging his frosted fingers through my hair. “Don’t you know what it means when a boy pulls your hair at your birthday party?”

No. Just then, I didn’t know what anything meant. I couldn’t remember how we’d arrived in the kitchen, why we were covered in cake, why my best friend-that’s-a-boy was looking at me so differently, or even what my name was. I bit my lower lip to prevent my mouth from saying something lame without my brain’s permission, like “Oh, Matt, all my wishes have come true!” I felt the stupidity rising in my throat and bit down harder, staring at his collarbone and the small piece of blue sea glass he wore on a leather cord around his neck, rising and falling.

Rising.

Falling.

Seconds? Hours? I didn’t know. He’d made the necklace the year before from a triangle piece of glass he’d found during their family vacation to Zanzibar Bay, right in front of the California beach house they rented for a two weeks every summer. According to Matt, red glass was the rarest, followed by purple, then dark blue. To date he’d found only one red piece, which he’d made into a bracelet for Frankie a few months earlier. She never took it off.

I loved all the colors—dark greens, baby blues, aquas, and whites. Frankie and Matt brought them back for me in mason jars every summer. They lived silently on my bookshelf like frozen pieces of the ocean I had never seen.

“Come here,” he whispered, his hand still stuck in my wild curls, blond hair winding around his fingers.

“I still can’t believe you made that,” I said, not for the first time. “It’s so—cool.”

Matt looked down at the glass, his hair falling in front of his eyes.

“Maybe I’ll give it to you,” he said. “If you’re lucky.”

I smiled, my gaze fixed on the blue triangle. I was afraid to look at him, because if I let my eyes lock on his, he might try to—and then everything would be—and I might just—

 “Happy Birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving gently from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts.

Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after.

In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely.

I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too.  

I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…

“What’s taking so long?” Frankie asked, running up the deck stairs outside. “Come on, Anna. Presents.”

I pulled away from Matt just before she pressed her face against the screen to peek inside.

“Yeah, birthday girl,” Matt mocked. “What’s taking so long?”

“Be right out, Frank.” I gave Matt my Don’t You Dare face. “I just need to change.”

“Can I come?” Matt whispered against my neck, causing a shiver. Or an earthquake.

I suddenly remembered all the baths we took together as little kids, before we got old enough for it to be dangerous. The memories seemed different now. More vulnerable. Raw. My face went hot, and I had to look away.

“So?” Matt teased, pinching my arm.

“So you’re lucky Frankie didn’t see that,” I said, not sure I meant it. “And you have to go change your own shirt. In your own room. I mean, over—”

“Mmm-hmm.” Matt grabbed my hand and pulled me in tight for another kiss, his other hand on my cheek, quick and intense. He pressed his body against mine in the same configuration of hip bones, stomachs, and ribs as the first time. I pressed back, wanting to wrap myself around him, anchor myself to him. It was all that kept me from floating away like a tiny iridescent bubble.

“Do you think she saw us?” I asked when we finally stopped.

“Nah.” He laughed, still holding my hand. “Don’t worry. It’s our secret.”

 

Alone in my bedroom, I shoved my frosting shirt into a plastic bag to deal with later. I rinsed my face and hair with cool water, but my legs wouldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t catch my breath. The brain that was conspicuously absent for the kitchen sink rendezvous was suddenly hyper-aware, modeling scenarios and impossible questions that were about twelve-and-a-half minutes too late:

What now?

Will this kill our friendship?

What about our parents?

Does he like me, or was he just messing around?

Will it happen again?

How do we tell Frankie?

Why did he say it’s our secret?

Made-up answers raced through my mind, and I had to close my eyes and count to fifty to calm down. Fifteen minutes after everything changed was too soon to start obsessing about the what-ifs of the future.

 

Back outside, warm and giddy in front of Dad’s bonfire, I spent the rest of the night not touching Matt, not laughing too hard at his jokes, not looking at him, afraid that someone would read the thoughts written on my face. After the fire faded to a soft glow and I’d opened all the gifts, it was time for the Perinos to head back to their house next-door. I said my goodbyes and thank yous to Frankie, Uncle Red, and Aunt Jayne and looked at my feet when it was Matt’s turn.

“Thanks for the cake,” I said. “And the journal.” He knew how much I loved my diaries—as much as he loved his books. It was the best present ever. Well, second best.

“Happy Birthday, Anna,” he said, picking me up and spinning me around in a giant hug, telling me with a wink that he’d see me tomorrow, just like he’d done on a thousand other nights. “Write something for me tonight.”

To everyone else he was regular Matt, the big brother part of the inseparable Anna-Frankie-Matt triangle, the boy who used to bury our Barbies in the back yard by day and read us adventure stories when we couldn’t sleep by night. But to me, he’d become something else as soon as he pulled my hair at the kitchen sink. Something other. Something that would never be the way it was before.

 

“You awake?” Matt’s text message lit up the phone on my night table later that night.

“Ya.”

Of course I was awake. In the hours since the party, my heart hadn’t slowed it’s furious beat. Sleep was out of the question.

“Meet me out back, k?”

“K. 5 min.”

I pulled on a sweatshirt, brushed my teeth, and put my hair in a loose ponytail. I started to dig for my eyeliner but decided it would look a little strange (and obvious) if I showed up behind the back deck at one in the morning in full makeup. Instead, I opted for hair down with a little mango-flavored lip-gloss—casual but cute.

It wasn’t sneaking out, exactly. I mean, it was my own back yard, and if I saw any of the upstairs lights go on, I could duck back into the kitchen and pretend I was snagging the last piece of cake salvaged from the birthday battle.

Matt was waiting by the stairs when I tiptoed out the back door. My bare feet hadn’t even touched the dewy grass when he pulled me against the side of the house.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, kissing me again, this time with a purpose and intensity I’d never seen from him in the long history of our friendship. I kissed him back, wrapping my arms around his neck as his mouth pressed against mine. I must have been shaking, because after a minute he stopped and asked if I was cold.

“Just—surprised,” I said. “And happy. And scared.” It was barely a whisper, but I hoped it communicated everything I was thinking. Scared of getting what I wished for. Scared of hurting Frankie. Scared of losing my two best friends. Scared of undoing everything the three of us knew and loved since we were kids.

“Me too,” he whispered, breathing hard. “Anna, did you ever—”

Before he could finish, a square of light fell on the grass from Mom and Dad’s bathroom window upstairs.

“I have to go,” I said. “Tomorrow?”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him, a whisper brushing against my cheek. “Tomorrow.”

Then he kissed my neck, his lips alighting on the skin below my ear like a spark from the bonfire that burned long after I crept back to my bed.  

 

He called the next day.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” I was still dazed from the late-night back yard encounter and kiss-induced insomnia.

“Frankie and I are going for ice cream. Come over?”

Frankie.

“Sure,” I said. “But Matt, should we—I mean, did you say anything to her?”

“Not—exactly,” he said.

Does that mean he doesn’t think it’s a big deal? That we can just go for ice cream like any other day, like it didn’t happen? Like it won’t happen again?

“I want to, Anna,” he said, reading my mind. “It’s just—she’s my little sister. And you’re our best friend. And now you’re my—I mean—we need to look out for her, you know?”

And now I’m your what?

“I know,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Anna. I’ll tell her, okay? Just let me think about the best way to do it.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me? Promise you won’t say anything?”

“Don’t worry.” I laughed. “It’s our secret, right?”

 

I spent an hour getting ready, obsessing over hair and clothes and things that never used to matter so much. I couldn’t calm the butterflies in my stomach about seeing Matt again, about feeling his lips on me, about telling Frankie, about the rest of the summer, about the rest of always.

When I first got to their house, I climbed in the back seat and avoided eye contact with Matt, worried that he’d either already told Frankie, or that he hadn’t. We rode the whole way not looking at each other, Frankie chattering in the front seat about their upcoming California trip, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the whole world changed the night before. It wasn’t until we got to Custard’s Last Stand and Frankie forgot her purse in the car that we finally locked eyes.

“Hey, you,” Matt said gently, smiling at me. I opened my mouth to say something important, something witty and charming, but in the new dawn of our relationship where everything suddenly mattered, I was tongue-tied.

“Hey,” I said lamely.

Matt jangled his keys and kicked at the dirt with his foot.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, tracing a line across my forehead.

Before I could invent something better than “Last night at the party and behind the house and I wish you would just shut up and kiss me again,” Frankie was back with her purse, pressing us to make the difficult decision between the banana split and the fudge brownie sundae.

Sparing Frankie any further agony over the ice cream selections, Matt ordered one of each, along with a caramel sundae for me, and we shared everything, fifty-fifty-fifty, just like always.

As Frankie shoved a spoonful of brownie into her brother’s mouth, laughing her soft Frankie laugh, a flash of guilt squeezed my stomach. Until the night before, there were no secrets between the three of us but the ones I kept for myself—my silent, formerly unrequited feelings for Matt. I could hardly look at him without my insides tying up. Please, please let’s tell her.

“Listen,” he said later that night. We were out back under the stars again, sneaking out after everyone else had gone to sleep. “You know she needs to hear it from me. I think the best time for me to tell her is when we’re in California. It’s only a few weeks away, and then I’ll have some time alone with her to tell her about everything.”

The thought of keeping something so important, so intense, so unbelievable from my best friend for three weeks almost killed me. But I trusted Matt. And when he took my face in his hands and breathed my name across my lips, I knew that I would keep my promise forever.

Days passed quickly into weeks, Matt and I perpetuating our “just friends” charade as best we could in front of Frankie and our families. Whenever we could steal a few minutes alone, we became the “other,” the charged-up thing that kept me up at night, afraid of falling so fast, afraid of losing, afraid it wouldn’t last. We snuck out every night behind the house to watch for shooting stars and whisper about life, about our favorite books, about the meaning of songs and old memories and what would happen after Frankie knew.

On their last day before the trip, after they’d finished packing, the three of us went back to Custard’s for an ice cream send off. I ordered the mint chocolate chip brownie sundae, Frankie got a dipped cone, and Matt got a strawberry shake. Matt and Frankie were buoyant, floating on the anticipation of their upcoming trip, carrying me along in the current of their excitement. I couldn’t wait for them to get to Zanzibar, to their summer house, down to the beach where Matt would tell Frankie about us and she’d smile and laugh and hug him and everything would be perfect again.

“It will be fine, Anna. You’ll see.” He whispered to me when Frankie went up to the counter for more napkins. “I know we’re dragging it out, but she’s my little sister—I can’t help it. We just have to look out for her.”

I smiled, envisioning our final kiss before tomorrow’s departure; later tonight at our usual meeting place behind the house.

We split our ice creams three ways again, saving just enough for the ride back home. In the car, Matt turned up the volume on his favorite Grateful Dead CD. Frankie and I sang the melody while he filled in the harmony, his face tight and serious as he concentrated on the words. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other tapping the dashboard, then his thigh, then back to the dashboard—a wild imaginary drum solo. I stopped singing long enough to shove in another spoonful of my mint chocolate chip sundae, a pothole causing me to miss, the ice cream toppling down my shirt to my lap. I was in the front seat, right next to him, and I didn’t care. In just two weeks, my best friends would be back home, helping Matt get ready for college, enjoying the sunsets of summer and looking forward to the rest of our days; the rest of our forever.

The chorus started again through the speakers and I sang louder, Ca-sey Jones you bett-er… watch your speed… Frankie laughing from the back seat, Matt smiling at me sideways, fingers secretly brushing my knee, the noon sun laid out and happy on the dusty road ahead.

Together. Happy. Whole.

The three of hearts.

The possibilities endless.

And then… my sundae flying out of my hands into the dashboard.

Veering.

Screaming.

Slamming.

Broken glass.

A wheel spinning.

Casey Jones skipping, over and over. Watch your—watch your—watch your speeeeeed.

Someone squeezing my hand, hushing, asking for my parents’ names and phone number. Helen and Carl Reiley. But don’t tell them, I think.

An ambulance. Paramedics. Stretchers.

I’ve got him, someone shouts. Get the girls out!

Can you hear me? Can you move your legs?

Jesus, you girls are lucky to be alive.

 

In the hospital lobby, I curled myself against Dad’s chest, letting him stroke my hair and hum Beatles songs like he did when I was little to chase away the monsters. My head hurt, my knee was bandaged up and my wrist was immobilized and wrapped in white tape. Frankie, sitting across from me with her knees pulled to her chest, had a fat lip and eight stitches sticking out like angry black spider legs through her left eyebrow. She was still—all but her fingers rubbing the red glass of her Matt-bracelet. I closed my eyes under the fluorescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a one-time do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.

I thought about Matt’s clove-and-marzipan-frosting mouth and his favorite used books stacked up on every flat surface of his bedroom as the doctor told us what happened. Matt wasn’t a careless driver; he just had a hole between the chambers of his heart, a tiny imperfection that had lain dormant for seventeen years until that moment on the way home from Custard’s when it decided to make itself known. They used a more medically appropriate term when they explained it to Red, handing him a plastic bag full of Matt’s things—jeans. Watch. Wallet. The Syracuse Orangeman T-shirt he’d worn that day. But I knew what it meant. I knew as soon as Red started shouting, as soon as Aunt Jayne collapsed in Mom’s arms, as soon as the hospital chaplain arrived with his down-turned mouth and compassionately trained eyes. 

Matt—Red and Jayne’s Matt, Frankie’s Matt, my Matt—died of a broken heart.

And everything else that ever mattered in my entire existence just… stopped. I was underwater again, seeing things in a slow-motion fuzz without sound or context, without feeling, without care. The world could have ended and I wouldn’t have noticed.

In a way, it did end.

They must have let Red and Jayne and Frankie say goodbye to him, but I don’t remember.

Mom and Dad must have called relatives and friends and funeral directors, but I don’t remember.

There were probably nurses and apologies and organ donor papers and Styrofoam cups of cold coffee, but I don’t remember any of it. Not in a way that makes sense.

I don’t even remember how I got home. One minute I was under water in the hard plastic hospital chair, and then I was back in my own bed with the door closed against my parents muffled conversations downstairs and the endless ringing phone.

I must have fallen asleep, because I dreamed about him. In the dream, he gave me his blue glass necklace and Frankie’s red bracelet.

“We need to look out for her, you know?” he said. “I have to be the one to tell her. It’s the only way.”

I know.

And when he smiled at me, I promised. I promised him I would protect her.

I promised him our secret would stay locked up for all eternity.

 

And it will.

Additional Details

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
June 1, 2009
ISBN-10: 0316051594
ISBN-13: 978-0316051590