Page 1 of The Summer List

CHAPTER 1

Naomi

“Can you pull over? I think I’m going to puke.”

My mom glances at me from the driver’s seat. Her forehead creases with a few worry lines before she looks back at the road.

“You can do this, baby. Your dad said Sandy is so excited to meet you, and Peter has always been a good boss to him. They’re going to love you, and besides, they’re leaving in a couple hours, right?”

I shake my head, staring straight through the windshield with my arms wrapped around my stomach in a futile attempt to keep the nausea at bay. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth, and sweat is breaking out on the back of my neck.

“Exactly. That’s two whole hours of social interaction with Dad’s boss and Dad’s boss’s wife. How am I supposed to keep up a good impression for two hours? What if I say something stupid? What if I can’t say anything? What if I actually puke? Like, on one of their expensive…vases, or something. They collect art, right? What if I get Dad fired because I throw up in some priceless sculptural vase made by a Portuguese master artisan?”

I glance at her as she guides the car off the highway and down the exit ramp. She’s pressing her lips together like she’s trying not to laugh.

I’d laugh too, if I weren’t so paralyzed by terror. I always know when I start to sound like I’ve gone off the deep end, but when it comes to socializing, there’s this diehard part of my brain that insists on validating all my insane imaginary scenarios with a constant chant of, ‘What if? What if? What if?’

It doesn’t matter that I only have a couple hours of talking to get through before they head to the airport and leave me to spend the summer house sitting in blissful solitude. I’ve already come up with a dozen ways those two hours could go horribly wrong.

“Well, Naomi,” my mom says once we’ve pulled up to the red light at the bottom of the ramp, “I’m not sure exactly how that situation would play out, but I know we could handle it. I know you could handle it. I also know you’re not going to throw up in a vase today.”

I hunch forward as my stomach does a particularly aggressive flip in protest of her confidence. She reaches over and smoothes a hand down my back.

“I know you’re nervous, honey, but I promise, you’ve got this. Do you want to try one of those exercises your therapist told you about?”

The traffic light turns green, and she puts her hand back on the steering wheel. I nod and straighten up in my seat, pulling a deep breath in through my nose as I prepare to tune into each of my senses one by one.

I start with scent. The sun-bleached cardboard pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror hasn’t been switched out for at least a year, so mostly, the car smells like the stale air billowing on full blast from the air conditioning vents with a tinge of artificial lime bubbling out of my mom’s sparkling water sitting in the cup holder between us.

I move on to touch. Even with the air conditioning on high enough to have goose bumps lining my arms, I can feel the backs of my thighs sticking to the fake leather seat. The late afternoon sun glaring through the windshield is warm on my cheeks.

Trying to focus on taste just reminds me how nauseous I am, so I steal a sip of the sparkling water and focus on the way the tiny bubbles fizz against my tongue. I take a couple more sips as I turn my attention to what I can see: a tree-lined street with wide sidewalks, a sprinkler dousing a vibrantly green yard, a shiny white truck glinting so bright in the sunlight I have to blink a couple times and look away.

We’ve entered of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Ottawa, and the houses are all supersized. The lawns have that manicured look to them, with crushed gravel twining around tidy flowerbeds and symmetrically trimmed shrubs.

“Jesus,” my mom says under her breath, “that one looks like it could be a hotel.”

The house she’s staring at is a sprawling two-storey brick mansion with a three-door garage. There are actual Corinthian columns holding up the roof above the entryway.

“I think it’s an embassy,” I say, peering at the unfamiliar flag fluttering next to the red and white Canadian one at the top of the two flagpoles adorning the yard.

“I haven’t been to this neighborhood in years. I forgot how fancy it is.”

I nod and focus back on my grounding exercise. I only have sound left, and with the windows rolled up, there’s not much to focus on besides the hum of the engine and the constant rattle of the air conditioning. I tune into the whirring fans, letting them become a metronome in my ears as we turn the corner onto yet another wide street lined with giant houses.

“It says it will be on the left.” My mom hunches forward over the wheel to get a better look at the house numbers.

I was just starting to feel like I might not be on the verge of a truly horrific combination of vomiting and cardiac arrest, but as soon as I glance at the map on her phone and see we really are only a few meters away, I’m right back to where I started.

I let out a low moan and rub circles against my sternum, begging my runaway heartbeat to slow down.

“Oh, honey…” Mom pulls up to the curb just before we reach the house and shifts the car into park. “What can I do? What do you need?”

I rip my seatbelt off and crouch forward into the emergency landing position, forehead pressed to my knees and hands wrapped tight around my ankles.

“A new brain,” I answer with another moan.

My voice is muffled by my kneecaps. My mom clears her throat and tells me she didn’t quite catch that. I stay folded over but turn onto my cheek instead.

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