Something Like Summer (2 page)

Ben nodded. They had
managed to find not one but two pairs of pants that actually hugged
his waist tight instead of having to be cinched to death with a
belt. Shirts he wasn’t so lucky with, but there was still another
couple weeks before school started and he hadn’t checked the
secondhand shops yet. Ironically, they always seemed to have more
stylish and hip clothes than the retail stores.

As the Ford Escort chugged
away in an effort to get them home, Ben considered just how lost
he’d be without Allison, how her broad smile and the mischievous
glint in her eye always kept his spirits high. He loved too the
jealous glances men gave him when they were out together, mistaking
the tall, thin beauty on his arm as being his girl.

“
Shit!” Allison shouted as
the tape player sputtered and squealed.

Of course those jealous
guys probably didn’t suspect that she could cuss like a sailor as
well.

Allison jabbed repeatedly
at the eject button with total disregard for the road until the
player spit up her most recent mix tape. Spools of magnetic strip
dangled from it as she held it up. “I stayed up all night listening
to the radio to make this stupid thing!” she cried, braking just in
time to avoid running a red light.

“
You need a CD player,”
Ben said.

“
I need a new car,” she
countered.

As if on cue, a sports car
full of teenagers pulled up to the stop light, the music pounding
from their car so loud that it shook the Escort’s rearview mirror.
Even though the summer was almost over, the car still had “Class of
‘96” written all over it in white shoe polish.

“
I hope we’re not that
lame when we graduate,” Allison said when the light turned green
and the car sped away, “but at least they can listen to
music.”

“
There’s still the radio,”
Ben suggested.

Allison pointed through the
windshield at a broken stub of metal where an antenna should have
been. She raised her eyebrows and bobbed her head side to side in
the way some black girls did when making a very good
point.

“
Ah, right,” Ben
conceded.

Allison returned her hands
to the wheel and her attention to the road before she raised her
fine, arched eyebrows and smiled.

“
Sing for me,” she said
sweetly.

“
What do you want to
hear?”

“
Uhhh… What’s that one
called? ‘Take a Chance on Me.’”

“
You mean by ABBA?” Ben
asked, failing to hide the disapproval from his voice.

“
Yeah, the one with the
comic strip video and the hot singer.”

“
That’s ‘Take on Me’ by
A-ha,” Ben corrected, feeling relieved.

“
Just make with the music,
pretty boy.”

Ben smiled, cleared his
throat and began to sing. His voice was his favorite thing about
himself. When talking it sounded as average as could be, but when
he sang his voice flowed like honey. Ben loved to sing. Ever since
he was a little boy he crooned along with his mother’s country
music while she cleaned and his father’s oldies while he drove.
When he was singing, everything in the world felt right to him, as
if it magically placed the world in a temporary state of
grace.

From the gleam in Allison’s
eyes, he could tell that she felt the same way. She listened to
half the song, laughing when he interjected new lyrics for the ones
he didn’t know, before joining in with him on the next chorus. Her
voice was leagues ahead of any other girl at school, the sugar to
his honey. Nobody could out-sing the pair of them, which they had
proven more than once in choir class last year.

Allison stopped singing
suddenly and took a sharp right. “Oh my god, have you been down
here lately?”

“
No,” Ben said, wishing
that they could have at least finished the song.

“
It’s so different now,
you won’t believe it!”

Outside the window was a
neighborhood full of newly built houses. They were just three
blocks over from where Ben lived, but he hadn’t paid attention to
this housing development at all. He vaguely recalled his parents
complaining about how these houses were just bigger and better
enough to send their own real estate values down. Or up. He
couldn’t remember which. Either way, they did look nice even though
the yards were bare, aside from the spindly new trees injected into
the ground.

“
This all used to be
fields when we were kids, remember?” Allison sighed. “We always
used to play here.”

He did remember, although
it was actually Allison and his sister Karen who had played
together. He had tagged along a couple of times, but always against
their will. A small age difference had ended that friendship. Once
Karen was in high school, she felt being friends with a junior high
kid would be social suicide, and so Ben was automatically promoted
to Allison’s best friend. Allison tended to rewrite history, giving
all of her memories with Karen over to him, which was flattering in
a way.

“
Shame about the willow
tree,” she said, pointing to a tennis court and a small children’s
playground. “Still, I wouldn’t mind living here.”

“
It’s all right,” he said
as he eyed the three-car garages and facades with yawning windows
that revealed two-story-tall entryways inside. There was something
about a new subdivision that Ben found both off-putting and
alluring. What he didn’t like was how the houses were too new to
have any character. None of them had been personalized yet by
basketball nets, daring color schemes, out-of-control bushes, or
curious lawn decorations. That there were only three or four cookie
cutter houses in the neighborhood was all too apparent. This was
the case with most neighborhoods, but the uniformity was obscured
as individual touches over time changed the houses into
homes.

What Ben liked came
directly from what he disliked. The generic template was like a
blank sheet of paper, and made it easier to imagine living in any
of the houses he might like. In his mind Ben could choose what
color he would paint it, how he would decorate it inside, and even
what sort of job he would have and who he would live with. The idea
made him yearn to be out of school so he could finally start a life
of his own.

The buzz of a lawnmower
matched the unhealthy sound of the car’s engine as they turned a
corner. A familiar figure was pushing the machine across a yard
that had barely managed to sprout grass yet.

“
Pull over!” Ben yelled.
“No! Not here!” he shouted when Allison headed for where Mr. Blue
Shoes was mowing. Thankfully he wasn’t facing them and didn’t
notice the car jerk away from the curb and back into the middle of
the road.

“
What the hell?” Allison
complained. “I thought you were going to puke or
something!”

“
Sorry.” Ben fidgeted in
his seat as he turned to glance out the rear window. “Just drop me
off at the end of the block.”

“
All right,” Allison said,
peering suspiciously in the rearview mirror. “You know that
guy?”

“
Not yet,” he said with a
smile as the car slowed.

Allison gave a surprised
laugh. “You’re feeling brave today! Come by my place and get your
things later then. If you aren’t busy, that is.”

“
Shut up.” Ben grinned as
he hopped out of the car. He waved at her as she drove away before
walking in the direction of his infatuation.

Ben was used to this little
ritual taking place in the evening. Being in broad daylight was
making him nervous. He worried that he would stand out too much
just walking down the road without any clear purpose. Ben wished he
had… What? A clipboard or something? He could at least be out
walking his dog.

Ben cursed himself
mentally. Wilford! He could have been walking his dog all those
nights he had oh-so casually passed by Mr. Blue Shoes. Magazines
always claimed that dogs were good ice breakers. Maybe Mr. Blue
Shoes was an animal lover. He probably was and would have stopped
to pet months ago. Was it too late to start bringing the dog with
him?

The rumbling of the lawn
mower was close now but Ben didn’t dare look. What was he thinking?
This was too obvious! He kept his eyes instead on the row of houses
to the right and pretended to seek a specific address.
I belong here, I belong here,
he kept repeating in his head
.
Nothing odd about me being here, pay no attention.

The lawn mower buzzed to
his left, then faded behind him as Ben kept walking. A risked
glance over his shoulder revealed Mr. Blue Shoe’s sweaty back
turning to continue mowing in his direction. Ben whipped his head
around, hopefully without being noticed, and increased his pace.
God, how he prayed that Allison had actually driven home and not
turned the car around to watch him. Otherwise this pointless
exercise would be humiliating. She expected that Ben was being all
suave and chatting up a hot guy when in fact he could barely bring
himself to look at him.

At least it was over now.
Ben reached the corner of the street and turned, hearing a female
voice yell something unintelligible. The sound of the lawn mower
died and the voice repeated itself. “Tim, telephone!” Ben dared
another glace back and saw Mr. Blue Shoes heading for the front
door as a woman held out a cordless phone for him.

Once the coast was clear,
Ben took off running down the street, laughing. Not only did he now
know where he lived, but now he knew his name!

* * * * *

Allison was all grins as
she tossed the shopping bag at him from across her waterbed where
she sat. “Well? What happened?”

“
His name is Tim.” Ben
flopped down on the bed, creating waves that sent them both
bouncing up and down.

“
That’s a good start. So
what did you say?”

“
Well…”

Allison’s face dropped.
“You
did
talk to
him, didn’t you?”

“
The lawnmower was
running. What was I supposed to do, flag him down just to say hi?
Besides, his mom came out of the house too.”

“
So you hung around and
eavesdropped?” Allison snorted. “I’d call you pathetic if I
wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

Ben smiled and reached
across to the headboard shelf where she kept her CDs in vinyl
wallets. He chose one randomly and began flipping through. “So what
do you think I should do?”

“
I dunno. You’ll have to
invent an excuse to talk to him.” Allison hoisted a sarcastic
eyebrow. “Maybe go to his door and say you are selling Girl Scout
cookies.”

“
Don’t tempt me,” Ben
replied. “Hm. I could always say that my cat’s gone
missing.”

“
Sure, except you don’t
have a cat and what would it be doing inside his house
anyway?”

Ben tossed the CD wallet
aside and flopped on to his back with a groan. “There has to be
something.”

“
Well, there’s school in
two weeks. Maybe he’ll end up in one of your classes.”

“
Two weeks?
I don’t want to wait that long!”

“
You’ll live.” Allison
glanced at the digital display of her alarm clock. “Dad’s home in
ten minutes. Want to head back out and find those
shirts?”

The two sentences weren’t
unrelated. Allison’s father hated him. The feeling was mutual, but
Ben dreaded there ever being a confrontation. The man was wound
tighter than a spring, the bulging veins on his neck and temples
beating out a warning every time he caught Ben visiting. He never
spoke to Ben, even when greeted politely. In fact the only thing he
had ever said to Ben was “cracker faggot” as he was leaving the
house one day.

“
Shopping it is,” Ben said
with an uneasy glance at the clock. “But let’s go to the mall this
time. There’s more people there.”

“
Just in case?” Allison
asked.

“
Just in case.”

__________

Chapter 2

There were only two days
left before school started and Ben hadn’t caught sight of Tim once,
despite having walked by his house almost twice a day. In his
recent attempts, he made sure to use Wilford as camouflage. He was
simply walking his dog, just like any other chump in the world.
This had made Wilford very happy but hadn’t done anything for Ben
except increase his sense of frustration. He blamed the ungodly hot
August weather that had everyone closing their blinds and cranking
up the ACs.

Narrowing down where
someone might go jogging was especially difficult in The Woodlands.
Countless paved bike paths ran through the entire town, most of
them winding around the plentiful number of trees that hid away
building facades. Biking across the city without seeing anything
more than woods was completely possible. Tim might have stuck to
the same path between his house and the small lake when he first
moved here, but now he was probably exploring in different
directions. Even so, Ben began worrying that Tim was only in Texas
visiting family for the summer and had already gone back to
wherever he came from.