Page 24 of A Summer Mismatch
“The speech therapist told the school that Cameron’s talker was his voice and they couldn’t take it away from him. Mom was so relieved. It took a lot of work to get him the device from the state in the first place, much less teaching him to use it. Countless hours, and sometimes he still doesn’t want anything to do with it. She was thrilled he was exploring it at all at that point.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about how much work it would take to learn.”
“It’s like any new language,” she replied. “Repetition is key. Even if it’s animal sounds.”
Cameron punctuated the following silence by pressing the top bar of the device, which repeated every single emoji and animal sound he’d pressed.
Julia and Logan shared a smile, and his heart jumped into hyperdrive. He leaned against the railing, and to his relief, she came and stood beside him.
“So, our grandpas…” she said.
“Yeah,” Logan said. Grandpa Smitty had lectured Logan on staying away from anyone associated with the Rees family. Nonna had interjected that Grandpa was overreacting, and he was quickly forgotten as their argument had escalated. He’d slipped out, hoping to catch Julia, but she’d already left too. “Lot of bad blood there.”
“Seems like it.” She folded her arms tightly across her stomach, and he could feel the wall going up between them. How had things gotten so complicated so quickly? Julia looked as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. “It’s probably best if we keep our distance, though. You know? Just until things settle.”
Logan hadn’t realized how happy he’d felt with Julia until the prospect of not seeing her anymore hit him. But what could he do? Nonna would bring Grandpa Smitty around eventually, but Logan didn’t know Horace or Winnie Rees. And what he did know of Julia was that she adored her grandparents and wouldn’t want to displease them.
“Will they settle?” he asked, but regretted it when she looked at him with aching in her expression.
“I don’t know.” She stared down at her shoes. “Maybe I should convince Cameron not to come here until my mom can bring him.”
“No,” Logan said. “Don’t do that. He loves it. And I love seeing him too. And you need to do research for your book, right?”
“Yeah.” She tipped her head to the side and let out a long breath. Keeping their distance or not, Logan gave into the urge to try to make her smile. He stared out at where Adia and Lulu played in the mud together, letting the sight of the sisters cheer him up. Elephants had that gift for him.
“Okay, research time.” He rubbed his hands together and invoked his educational voice, the one he used for school visits and lectures. “First lesson in elephants—and the most important thing to remember, in my opinion—is that they have very distinct personalities.”
“Really?” She turned toward him, her eyes lighting up. He felt the tightness in his chest loosen. Maybe they could get past their grandpas’ issues. “What are their personalities like?” she motioned to June, Adia, and Lulu.
“June is the mom of the group. Elephants are a matriarchal society, and Adia and Lulu follow her lead. She is very serious and quiet, and on the lookout for any danger that might come to Adia and Lulu. When we train her, she follows our commands eventually, but she’s the most unpredictable. She does not like to be touched, responds best to soft-spoken voices and her favorite treats, and after some coaxing will let us get her blood samples or other vitals.”
“How often do you take vitals?”
“The keepers do it every day. We want to make sure our elephants stay healthy, and it helps with our training regimen, so that way if they ever do get sick, they’re trained well enough for us to get their bloodwork and give them the care and medication they require.”
She had turned toward him, her expression open and eager, her walls completely down again. Today, she wore a white T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of a smiling flamingo on it, tied at the waist above her stretchy-looking pink skirt. He could imagine her in front of a classroom of children, reading one of her books to them.
“June—sounds like a typical mom,” she said with a laugh. “What about Adia?”
Adia let out a loud toot of her horn as if she’d heard her name being spoken. She was having the time of her life out there.
“We probably shouldn’t have favorites, but Adia is my favorite,” Logan said, easing into the topic. He could talk about his elephants all day, the trick was making sure the person he was talking to cared to hear about them. Julia leaned even closer to him, as if not realizing his words were drawing her in.
“Adia is playful and loveable, and I swear, she’s the elephant version of a Labrador. She wants to please us, which means her training sessions are a dream. She is highly motivated by treats, she adores being petted, and she wants us to tell her long stories and sing to her. She’s a huge tease, which supports emergent elephant research—that they have a lighthearted side.”
“That’s fascinating,” she said. “I’ll have to go find that research.”
“Do,” he encouraged her. “There are so many stories about how intelligent elephants are. They mourn one another. They teach each other and love to play together. They even outsmart the scientists.”
She pulled up her notes app on her phone to write a few things down.
“And Lulu?” she asked after she finished.
“Lulu is still trying to figure things out,” he replied. “She is sometimes serious like her mom, and playful like her sister. She loves toys like sticks and rocks, and rolling in the mud is the best. Her favorite thing, though, is to stay close to her mom’s leg. She finds a lot of comfort there.”
Julia’s fingers went crazy again as she wrote in her notes app. He wanted to ask her a million questions about how she came up with story ideas, and how she thought she might use this information, but he didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.
“Thank you. That is really so helpful,” she said. They stared at one another for a beat, and she shook her head and stepped back as if suddenly realizing she’d moved closer to him while he spoke. “I don’t want to take advantage of your time. I know you need to work.”
