Page 40 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
The crowd surged forward.
“Oh God,” said Pam.
“Dad!”
“Are you all right?”
“Give me your hand!”
Dad and Caleb flapped their hands. They didn’t want assistance. Offshore, June resurfaced and spat out a stream of water. She swam back to the rocks and hoisted herself out. Her hair appeared intact.
“June?” called my dad.
“I’m alive, you big asshole.” She shook the water from her shorts and T-shirt.
Speedy nodded approvingly. Then he shut his eyes and slumped sideways in Caleb’s lap.
“Is he okay?” whispered Helene.
“Honey?” asked Mom.
“Dad?”
“Hospital,” Speedy mumbled without sitting up.
“Oh God,” said Pam again.
“Is he having a heart attack?”
“Someone call 911!”
“Can we get a helicopter out here?”
“Oh, quit scaring them.” June reached down and pulled Dad back up into a seated position. “He does this shit every day.”
Dad’s head peeked mischievously back up. He started to laugh. He laughed so hard it looked like he might fall out of Caleb’s lap.
Out of habit, I glanced over at Manuel. He was already looking at me, wearing the smirk he used to wear back when we would sit side by side and admire my family’s insanity.
Before I could stop myself, I flashed it back.
14
SUMMER BEFORE SIXTH GRADE
THE QUESTION OF WHETHER ORnot Manuel will join us at Cradle Island this year isn’t a question at all. When I ask, Wendy practically rolls her eyes.
She’s greedy for his love, my mother. Eager to absorb him into our family, to erase any hint of his unhappy past. He even appears on our Christmas card this year—and will every year hereafter—a fact she dubs “sheer coincidence.”
“Is it my fault that you bring him everywhere we go?” she asks, whistling as she stuffs envelopes. “We don’t have a single photo without him.”
In the grocery store, I even hear one of her friends ask if we’ve adopted a new son, an “adorable little Mexican.” I whip around when I hear her words, elbow knocking into a pyramid of cantaloupe. The falling melons drown out my mother’s response.
—
THIS SUMMER, WHEN WE PULLup to the boathouse—a perfect landing by Speedy, who had an accessible lift installed on theSilver Heronthis spring to help him reach the flybridge; he isnotgoing to lose the childish joy of driving a boat—my siblings mobilize,throwing suitcases over the gunwale and yelling about who’s staying where. Caleb and Clarence argue over beds in Tangled Blue. Taz quietly loads bags into the carts that we wheel down the boardwalk. I pay little attention to them. Instead, I focus on Manuel’s face. On his expression. I watch as he takes it all in.
I’ll never forget this moment. The roundness of his eyes. The parting of his lips. I’m immensely self-conscious, as if we’ve just crossed a barrier in our friendship from which there’s no returning. I look up, take it in myself. And I see, for the first time, that this is not just a vacation home.
