Page 2 of Something Like Summer
“There’s still the radio,”Ben suggested.
Allison pointed through thewindshield at a broken stub of metal where an antenna should havebeen. She raised her eyebrows and bobbed her head side to side inthe way some black girls did when making a very goodpoint.
“Ah, right,” Benconceded.
Allison returned her handsto the wheel and her attention to the road before she raised herfine, arched eyebrows and smiled.
“Sing for me,” she saidsweetly.
“What do you want tohear?”
“Uhhh… What’s that onecalled? ‘Take a Chance on Me.’”
“You mean by ABBA?” Benasked, failing to hide the disapproval from his voice.
“Yeah, the one with thecomic strip video and the hot singer.”
“That’s ‘Take on Me’ byA-ha,” Ben corrected, feeling relieved.
“Just make with the music,pretty boy.”
Ben smiled, cleared histhroat and began to sing. His voice was his favorite thing abouthimself. When talking it sounded as average as could be, but whenhe sang his voice flowed like honey. Ben loved to sing. Ever sincehe was a little boy he crooned along with his mother’s countrymusic while she cleaned and his father’s oldies while he drove.When he was singing, everything in the world felt right to him, asif it magically placed the world in a temporary state ofgrace.
From the gleam in Allison’seyes, he could tell that she felt the same way. She listened tohalf the song, laughing when he interjected new lyrics for the oneshe didn’t know, before joining in with him on the next chorus. Hervoice was leagues ahead of any other girl at school, the sugar tohis honey. Nobody could out-sing the pair of them, which they hadproven more than once in choir class last year.
Allison stopped singingsuddenly and took a sharp right. “Oh my god, have you been downhere lately?”
“No,” Ben said, wishingthat they could have at least finished the song.
“It’s so different now,you won’t believe it!”
Outside the window was aneighborhood full of newly built houses. They were just threeblocks over from where Ben lived, but he hadn’t paid attention tothis housing development at all. He vaguely recalled his parentscomplaining about how these houses were just bigger and betterenough to send their own real estate values down. Or up. Hecouldn’t remember which. Either way, they did look nice even thoughthe yards were bare, aside from the spindly new trees injected intothe ground.
“This all used to befields when we were kids, remember?” Allison sighed. “We alwaysused to play here.”
He did remember, althoughit was actually Allison and his sister Karen who had playedtogether. He had tagged along a couple of times, but always againsttheir will. A small age difference had ended that friendship. OnceKaren was in high school, she felt being friends with a junior highkid would be social suicide, and so Ben was automatically promotedto Allison’s best friend. Allison tended to rewrite history, givingall of her memories with Karen over to him, which was flattering ina way.
“Shame about the willowtree,” she said, pointing to a tennis court and a small children’splayground. “Still, I wouldn’t mind living here.”
“It’s all right,” he saidas he eyed the three-car garages and facades with yawning windowsthat revealed two-story-tall entryways inside. There was somethingabout a new subdivision that Ben found both off-putting andalluring. What he didn’t like was how the houses were too new tohave any character. None of them had been personalized yet bybasketball nets, daring color schemes, out-of-control bushes, orcurious lawn decorations. That there were only three or four cookiecutter houses in the neighborhood was all too apparent. This wasthe case with most neighborhoods, but the uniformity was obscuredas individual touches over time changed the houses intohomes.
What Ben liked camedirectly from what he disliked. The generic template was like ablank sheet of paper, and made it easier to imagine living in anyof the houses he might like. In his mind Ben could choose whatcolor he would paint it, how he would decorate it inside, and evenwhat sort of job he would have and who he would live with. The ideamade him yearn to be out of school so he could finally start a lifeof his own.
The buzz of a lawnmowermatched the unhealthy sound of the car’s engine as they turned acorner. A familiar figure was pushing the machine across a yardthat had barely managed to sprout grass yet.
“Pull over!” Ben yelled.“No! Not here!” he shouted when Allison headed for where Mr. BlueShoes was mowing. Thankfully he wasn’t facing them and didn’tnotice the car jerk away from the curb and back into the middle ofthe road.
“What the hell?” Allisoncomplained. “I thought you were going to puke orsomething!”
“Sorry.” Ben fidgeted inhis seat as he turned to glance out the rear window. “Just drop meoff at the end of the block.”
“All right,” Allison said,peering suspiciously in the rearview mirror. “You know thatguy?”
“Not yet,” he said with asmile as the car slowed.
Allison gave a surprisedlaugh. “You’re feeling brave today! Come by my place and get yourthings later then. If you aren’t busy, that is.”
“Shut up.” Ben grinned ashe hopped out of the car. He waved at her as she drove away beforewalking in the direction of his infatuation.
