Twenty-six: Summer Things
***
Almost.
It took time, of course, for Keltie’s world to resort to normalcy again. Or rather, what passed for normalcy. As luck would have it, a number of pedestrian events arose to help things along the way. One of them was exam week. Since Bolt’s fire damage to the school was limited mainly to the roof, all class scheduling remained intact. This turned out to be good as far as Keltie’s scores were concerned. Having short-circuited her fears and doubts on Bolt, the exams suddenly seemed like small beer. She sat through her tests on autopilot, marking down answers like a girl high on antihistamine. Anna Sewell died in 1878 after finishing Black Beauty. Einstein’s theory of general relativity is a theory of gravitation. The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China for 276 years.
Final grades for the year arrived at the end of June. Just before lunch a girl walked the halls, delivering cards to each door. Keltie took hers without a word, tossed it on the bed, and went to eat Brussels sprouts in the cafeteria. When she came back the card was still on the bed. It had nothing as yet to say. There was no way it could speak with its face on the pillow.
Begrudgingly, she decided to have a look. She’d gone through the trouble of attending classes, after all. May as well find out how things went.
***
Science: B+
English: A
Gym: A+
Math: C+
History: B
***
Well then. She’d passed. Bully for that. Next year she’d be a junior.
Her mom provided another convenient, if not altogether comfortable, distraction from recent insanity. With school out, Keltie was able to keep a much closer eye on Sunset Lane. Twice a week, she visited Chloe’s trailer, sometimes with Cameron, sometimes alone. Each was an exercise in avoidance for both women. They drank tea; they watched television. They went shopping for clothes, where Keltie’s preference for short skirts triggered a far less hostile reaction in Chloe than it had Cameron. At the end of the day they would either dine out or cook dinner together. Chloe’s kitchen was small but functional. And best of all, she’d been keeping it clean of late. Each week Keltie would approach the trailer with cautious eyes, bracing herself for the worst. But if Chloe was having trouble with sobriety (and how could she not, after so many years of drinking?), she never let on.
Cameron continued to do his janitor bit at the Methodist church. He seemed happy with his position, or at the very least content. There were no bitter, back-handed comments about work when they went out to dinner. No sneers or rolling of the eyes when she asked what life at the church was like. His chatter was pleasant, his jokes light and inoffensive. Only once did he bring up the recent past, commenting in an off way about the red ribbon in her hair. It looked pretty, he said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin at Berry’s. Keltie thanked him and mentioned it was a gift from Mrs. Haschak. Then she tactfully changed the subject.
Her final distraction, and by far the sweetest, was Marty.
He spent that summer close to her side, eating lunch with her in the cafeteria, taking her for sunset walks on the back lawn. On the night of July 4th they went to the fairgrounds, where she sat in his lap to watch the town fireworks display. At the end of July they spent a day at Cedar Point, riding roller coasters and eating cotton candy. That night, as they strolled an off-midway path aglow with Chinese lanterns, he kissed her and said he loved her.
A month later, his family moved out of state.
To Texas, where his dad had taken a new job. Keltie cried, though it didn’t help. For nights leading up to his departure, she cried. This on the school doorstep as well, while a car waited to take him away, hugging him tight as she could. It was a hot August afternoon, the air barely breathable. Yet even the freshest breeze could not give her solace then.
“Take this,” she sobbed, pulling the red ribbon from her hair.
“I love you,” Marty said again. “We’ll keep in touch online. And I’ll come back. I swear it.”
Then he got into the car. And when the car drove off, she was alone.
She stood on the step for a long time, watching Benedict Avenue shimmer in the heat. Turning to go inside, she noticed an open window that let on the art room. It was the same one she and Penelope had used for escape not eighteen months back.
Great, the crazy bitch said, perfect.
Seeing it made her cry all over again.
***
Another thing that hurt was the sale of Wooster-Boalt. It happened in September, not long after classes started. Keltie went to the library to check out a book on trigonometry (Jesus), and came to a dead halt before the newspaper rack. The front page picture for the local rag made her blood go cold. PRIVATE INVESTOR BUYS WOOSTER-BOALT, its headline read, beneath a grainy image of the vampire’s former residence.
The accompanying article mentioned no names. Regardless, Keltie read it three times. The news saddened her, though she didn’t know why. Other than to understand that she liked the house. Marty liked it, too. Together, perhaps, they could have grown to love it. But not now. Now, all three stood in separate worlds.
“Take care of it,” she said aloud to the newspaper. “Whoever you are. Take care of it.”
A boy at a nearby table shushed her violently.
“Oh fuck you,” she told him.
“Detention,” the librarian, who’d overheard, said.
“Shit.”
“Double detention.”
Keltie rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on!”
“Triple.”
“Goddammit!”
“Quadruple.”
“Fine,” Keltie said, “I’m just gonna leave.”
“No you’re not,” the librarian smiled back. “Your first detention is now. Grab a feather duster. The shelves are a mess.”