Invincible Summer(7)

S hannon has smears of black sand under his eyes and a big pointy stick in his right hand. “The warrior approaches prey,” he whispers.

I’m on my belly in the sand beside him, scraping the beginnings of my sunburn. “Prey continues to be completely unaware of its fate.”

Yawning, Melinda flips a page in her magazine and reaches underneath the rim of her sunglasses to scratch her eye.

“The prey is one hundred percent in sight,” Shannon says, taking a silent step forward. Already, the sock tan around his ankles is starting to fade. “On the signal, the warriors will strike.”

“One,” I whisper, and hitch my feet up to scootch closer.

Melinda crosses her legs and her beach chair squeaks.

“Two,” breathes Shannon.

“Three!”

We rush at Melinda and grab the back of her chair. She shrieks, and all three of us go down in a heap of sand and sweat and swimsuits. The attack’s over, but Melinda’s still screaming, kicking, hitting us with her magazine.

“You boys are awful!” she squeaks, picking herself up off the ground.

Shannon and I are laughing too hard to move.

“Fifteen!” she says. “You’re fifteen!”

“I’m still fourteen,” I choke.

“Yeah, you’re Chase Everboy McGill.”

“What?”

“Always and forever a boy.”

She tries, worthlessly, to dust herself off, then gives up and heads toward the ocean. I try very hard not to watch her ass, to remember that she’s Noah’s, even though Noah went missing hours ago.

“You two are completely mental.” Bella’s hand wraps around my arm, and she pulls me and Shannon to our feet. “You better go rinse off or that sand’s going to be stuck to you forever.”

“You coming?” Shannon asks.

“Nuh-uh. I’m working on my tan.” Bella smiles—she has

a Melinda smile-in-training—and heads back over to where our parents are spread out with their coolers and towels and umbrella. She looks over her shoulder when she’s almost there, meets my eyes, and bites her lip.

I’m so jealous, instantly. I want to bite her lip.

Shannon claps me on the shoulder. “Once you marry Bella and I marry Claudia, soldier, we will have it made.”

I look at him incredulously. “Dude.”

He laughs. “I know, I know. We already have it made.”

It’s about two o’clock on Wednesday and the sun’s at its hottest and yellowest, all prepared to fry our skin into that perfect almost-August brown. It’s the kind of hot where every step feels like it should be rewarded with applause.

Claudia and Gideon have built this huge castle. It’s almost, but not quite, too far up the beach for the waves to crawl, and they’re screaming and rebuilding while it gets slowly destroyed. Or Claudia is, at least; Gideon’s just screaming constantly.

“You should get him hearing aids,” Shannon tells me, as we start wading in. “Wouldn’t do any good.” I squidge my toes into the wet

sand. “They only work if you have some base hearing. Gid has nothing.”

“But then everyone would know he’s deaf. They’d stop staring.” I follow his gaze and look around the beach. It’s crowded, but there’s enough room for us all to pretend that we’re the only ones here—until one family’s six-year-old makes an inordinate amount of noise, I guess. Chubby mothers with orange peroxided hair and fathers with Bud Light and children who are so happy and adorable they don’t even seem real are all either looking at my brother or over at our parents, trying to figure out who is responsible for him.

I would honestly go to each and every one of these people and calmly explain that trying to be responsible for Gideon is like trying to be responsible for Noah, if that would mean anything to them, or if the idea of relating Gideon to Noah again didn’t make my stomach toss.

“You watching him?” I ask Claudia.

She rolls her eyes, digging with a tiny blue shovel. “Of course.”

“Don’t let him get dizzy.”

“He’s always dizzy.” Claudia throws a hunk of sand Gide-on’s way to get his attention, but it gets in his eyes and he shrieks. “Claude . . . ” I splash out of the water and wipe Gideon’s face off with the edge of my bathing suit. Cry no I tell him.

He throws sand at me.

I sign dizzy?

He signs blue and flops down in the sand. Blue? What the hell? And I just wiped his eyes off, for God’s sake. He has to go and take a pile of sand to the face?

Shannon says, “Chase, c’mon!”

“Coming.” I’m not going to spend the whole day babysitting.

I go back into the water where Shannon’s floating on his back and Claudia’s collecting water in her pail. “Keep an eye on him,” I tell her. I’m always afraid Gideon will wander in the water, get dizzy, and forget which way’s back to shore.

She says, “There is a lifeguard, you know.”

“Only until six.”

“Yeah. It’s two.”

“I know . . . ”

“Chase.” She squeezes my hand. “I’m watching him, okay?”

“Okay.” Good. That’s it. I’m done worrying. I’m not supposed to be the one looking after all of us. This isn’t supposed to be my clan.