Summer in the City Page 3

  “And the beginning of senior year,” she added.

  Burned once, shame on them, burned twice, shame on you. But I had thought this was a different situation; I had thought that Brett knew he had the starting tight-end position all wrapped up. Why either of those guys had thought Dad’s decisions would be affected by who I dated, I had no idea.

  “I have a lot of guy-friends,” I told her. “You know, just friends,” I explained, repeating the words I had come to hate. But that didn’t deter my mother from a subject that held so much interest for her.

  “Well, then, what’s your dream guy like?”

  “How would I know if I never met him?” I replied crossly.

  “Easy. Imagine him,” she said, with the reasoning of a writer. She wasn’t going to give up. “Maybe you’ve caught a glimpse of him,” she suggested.

  I sighed and searched for a description that would satisfy her. “He’s the kind of guy, who, when you’re feeling stupid and hurt and mad about something, something that’s not even his fault, and when you’re not looking and least expecting it, he gives you a rose.”

  My mother looked at me with surprise. “You are a romantic,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  During dinner that night at Holy Frijoles on The Avenue, Mom talked about her new career in books and I about my career in high school sports, both of us avoiding the topic of guys. Later, I called Dad, as I had promised. I told him everything was great and didn’t mention that Mom was seeing a Swedish trainer from her health club. Nor did I ask how Miss Matlock was doing with her cabin preparations. We stuck to the usual: the NBA playoffs and the Tigers.

  Afterward, when I stuffed my sweaty clothes from the last two days in a laundry bag, I carefully removed the satin rose from my shirt strap.

  It’s pathetic, I told myself for the second time that day, when the most romantic gesture of your life was made by a guy in drag. Still, I was touched by his small, sweet gesture. I set the rose on top of my softball glove on a table next to my bed. At that moment, my mother walked in.

  I was afraid she’d ask about the rose, but when she saw what I was wearing, she was too aghast to notice anything else. “Oh, baby,” she said, “I need to get you to Victoria’s Secret.”

  That must have been where she had bought her very sexy red silk nightie with its matching robe.

  “I really like cotton,” I said, fingering my Peyton Manning football shirt.

  “The blue is nice, I suppose.”

  “The Colts will be glad to hear you like it,” I told her, moving myself between her and the little table with the rose.

  “We certainly have some shopping to do,” she went on.

  “It’ll be fun,” I lied. I enjoyed shopping, but not with my mother.

  “Well, I thought I’d say good night and get my laptop.” She closed the computer and picked it up. “I feel inspired tonight.”

  I didn’t ask by what?

  “Sleep as late as you like, baby. May I have a good-night kiss? Just tonight.”

  She rose up on her toes and I leaned down. “G’night, Mom.”

  I turned out the light right after that. The office had an air conditioner in one of the windows, but I switched on the ceiling fan and lay there listening to the night noises: people talking, people laughing, doors opening and closing, dogs barking, a car blaring music then roaring away, some softer music from someone’s home. It was not nearly as peaceful as home in Michigan, but the city played its own kind of lullaby, and I was soon asleep.

  When I woke up, the windows were closed and the sun was squeezing around the edges of the leopard valances and blinds. Mom must have come in and turned on the AC. I rolled over and looked at the clock. Eleven A.M.!

  The moment I opened my bedroom door, I heard their laughter downstairs. Viktor was back. I guessed I’d do anything to avoid Sunday brunch with my mother’s boyfriend. I slipped on a summer top and skirt, grabbed some money for something to eat, and told them I was going to church as I headed out the door. It left my mother speechless. If my father had heard, he would have been speechless as well, since I had fought him about going to church for the last three years. Actually, I was planning to find breakfast, but I came upon a church with a twelve o’clock mass and went in. The same old prayers were kind of comforting. In a summer where everything was changing in a bizarre way, maybe I needed one thing that didn’t. Or maybe, with both my parents acting like teens, I had to be the adult. Whatever. I felt better, especially after I ate at Café Hon, and I walked home swinging my purse.

  “Hi.” It was a shy hello, from a great-looking guy sitting in front of Mom’s house.

  You are way too young for her, I felt like saying, then I realized he was sitting in front of his own place—the windows above the sidewalk matched up with his house, not ours. He must have been one of the Hopkins students.

  “Hi, I’m Jamie.”

  He rose from his plastic chair and shook my hand.

  If guys in college treated girls like this, I’m going to enjoy it! I thought.

  “I’m Ted. Ted Wu.”

  He was my height, Asian-American, with a perfect mix of features, magazine ad material.

  “I’m spending the summer here with my mother,” I explained.

  “You’re Rita’s daughter? That must be something—to be Rita’s daughter.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and decided I didn’t want to know. I glanced in the direction of his radio, hearing phrases that sounded like a broadcast of a baseball game.

  Ted reached out and politely turned down the volume.

  “Don’t do that. I love baseball,” I said. “Is it the Orioles?”

  “And Detroit Tigers.”

  “Oh, wow! I’m from Michigan. Who’s pitching for the Tigers?”

  “Bonderman. Want a chair?” he asked.

  A few minutes later we were sitting side by side on folding chairs, our feet propped up on plastic crates, discussing the American league. We shared a passionate dislike for the Yankees, a love of any kind of football, and a preference for collegiate basketball over the NBA. Ted loved lacrosse and described the past season of Hopkins’ Blue Jays.

  I realized I was settling into another of my sports-buddy relationships, but I didn’t care; I was so glad to have someone to hang out with.

  “Want some iced tea? I grow mint in the backyard, if you like that in your tea.”

  “Cool.”

  While he fixed the tea, I went inside to change to a pair of shorts and a skinny-strapped shirt—might as well get a tan while I was sweating on the sidewalk. I made lots of noise as I walked down the narrow hall between the front door and stairway, so I wouldn’t surprise Viktor and Mom.

  “Just coming in to change my clothes,” I called out.

  I passed Viktor, who was in the middle bedroom, checking out a huge carton. It had a treadmill in it. I wondered why Mom, who was the sociable type and would prefer exercising at a gym, would purchase her own equipment. If anyone else had been in that room, I probably would have stopped to discuss training equipment, but I just waved as I went by.

  “I see you’ve discovered stoop-sitting,” said Viktor.

  I backed up. “Stoop-sitting?”

  “It’s what they do here in Baltimore, sit on their front stoop, their little porches and steps, or even the sidewalk in between, and talk. I find it quaint.”

  Mr. Sophisticated World Traveler, I thought. “I find it fun.”

  “Especially with a college boy,” he replied, breaking slowly into the smile that was too cosmetically perfect.

  “Yeah, well, I really like being with people my own age.”

  Continuing down the hall, I knew that I’d been obnoxious, but he really got on my nerves.

  Mom was in the air-conditioned office-turned-bedroom. Her fingers fluttered up from the laptop keyboard in a short wave, then she went on typing as I changed clothes.

  “I’m stoop-sitting,” I told her, and headed back to the game.


  By the seventh-inning stretch, Ted and I had moved to the backyard, which faced east and therefore supplied some shade close to the house. Ted had learned about Dad and Christine and Mom and Viktor. I had learned about his father, who was second-generation Chinese-American, and his mother, who was Canadian, and the Washington townhouse they called home—his dad was a congressman from California. It seemed as if Ted and I had been friends forever.

  The game, which had been a pitchers’ duel, took a sudden turn. The Orioles had bases loaded and two outs. “There’s a swing and a long fly ball to center field,” said the radio announcer.

  “Yes, yes!” cried Ted, leaping from his chair.

  “No, no!” I shouted, beating on the arm of mine.

  “The center fielder is going back, reaching up—”

  “No!” hollered Ted, waving his arms as if he could keep the Tiger from catching it.

  “Ye—es!” I urged, my hands closing as if I were the center fielder feeling the ball land in my glove.

  “He misses it! He lost it in the sun!”

  “All-lll right!” exclaimed Ted.

  “Aghhh!” I crumpled up on the ground, feeling that a grand slam by the opposing team called for melodrama.

  Ted laughed, and his gentle laughter was followed by laughter that was deeper. A tall guy wheeled through the back gate what was probably the most expensive bike I’d ever laid eyes on. Okay, so I noticed the bike first. I followed up with a much longer look at the guy, then dusted myself off and got back in my lawn chair, feeling stupid.

  He gazed at me, his eyes bright with amusement…and interest? Get a grip, Jamie.

  “Hey, Ted.”

  “Bring back a paper?” Ted asked.

  “Two,” the guy replied, wheeling his bike up the walk with one hand, swinging down his backpack with the other.

  I was tempted to stand up as Ted had done for me, just to compare, but I remained seated, pretty sure he was several inches taller than me. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and long, tapered fingers, and was—what else can I say—overall gorgeous. I wondered why I had let my own small town convince me that there were no other kinds of guys in the world. Not that I thought a guy like him would be interested in me, but just his existence next door made me kind of hopeful and curious about what else was out there.

  He set down his backpack, leaned his bike against his hip, and extended his hand. “I’m Andrew,” he said, looking into my eyes.

  “Hi.”

  After a moment he laughed. “And you are…?”

  “Oh. Jamie. Jamie Carvelli.”

  “Rita’s daughter,” Ted added.

  “Really!”

  Once again I wondered how others saw my mother and what that connection meant, but I had even less nerve to ask him. “Really.”

  “She’s here for the summer, and in the fall, is going to be a Lady Terp. Got a basketball scholarship,” Ted informed him.

  “I’m sorry to hear you will be playing for the wrong team,” Andrew said teasingly, “but I guess if the sports fan of the house can deal with it, I can.”

  He unzipped his knapsack. “Post or Times?” he asked Ted and me, taking out the Washington and New York newspapers. I was impressed.

  “Post.”

  “Yeah, who wants to read about the Yankees?” I said.

  Andrew laughed. “You’re here for the whole summer? I don’t know if I can take two sports addicts.”

  “Andrew is an arts guy,” Ted said.

  I could get into the arts, I thought.

  “Any calls?” Andrew asked his housemate.

  “Left them on the answering machine.”

  “Later,” Andrew said, smiling at me, lifting his sleek titanium bike onto his shoulder and climbing the steps to the kitchen door.

  “He doesn’t have a steady girl,” Ted told me when Andrew had disappeared.

  I looked at him in surprise. Had my thoughts been written all over my face? If they had, I felt as if I had somehow betrayed Ted. “Did I ask?”

  He smiled quietly. “No, but girls always do. So I thought you’d want to know.”

  I took a long drink of my iced tea. “Well, I think it’s rude of those girls.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve got so much work when school’s in session, I don’t need distraction. Biochem is a tough major, and my parents expect nothing less than A’s from me. Following sports is a lot more relaxing than dating.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  We settled into an old-friend kind of ease with the game chatter between us, followed by the wrap-up of scores for the day. Ted and Andrew versus Viktor, I thought to myself. Two to one in favor of a good summer.

  Chapter 5

  By the next morning, the score had tipped the other way. First of all, Viktor spent the night. I holed up in my room early with the AC going full blast so I didn’t have to hear their laughter, music, or anything else. Second of all, when I arrived at Stonegate’s sports camp, I got a rude awakening.

  The school itself, about two miles north of Mom’s neighborhood, had impressive gates facing a wide, tree-lined avenue and a campus like a small college, with individual buildings for the lower, middle, and upper schools as well as a visual arts center, a performing arts center, a dining hall, two independent gymnasiums, multiple tennis courts, four baseball diamonds, and six soccer/lacrosse/hockey fields. Oh, yeah, and an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool.

  That was not the rude awakening, of course; that was like walking into heaven. The shock came when I was assigned to the camp group I was going to spend the next five days with. Try to picture it: a six-foot college-bound girl surrounded by ninth graders who came up to her waist. All right, my elbow, and one or two to my shoulders, but I still looked like a crane that had gotten mixed up with the chickens.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the person who carried the clipboard with my name listed among the others. “I don’t think I belong in this group.”

  The woman, who had thick yellow-and-gray hair and looked as if she had once carried a mean lacrosse stick, gazed up at me. “It said on your application that you don’t have any game experience.”

  Thank you, Dad, I thought.

  “Uh, well, we didn’t have lacrosse teams where I lived, but I’ve played a lot of one-on-one, and practiced shooting.”

  “On a lacrosse field?”

  “Against our garage,” I replied, trying not to grit my teeth. “And whenever I could, I used the soccer goal at school.”

  “Most of the girls you are with, in this group, already have four years of competitive experience over you. Some of them have been playing since kindergarten.”

  I nodded, but wasn’t going to give in. “I really would like a chance to work with the older girls.”

  “JOSH!” the woman hollered, blasting the ears of all of us who stood closer than the person she was summoning.

  Across the field, the coach of the varsity girls looked up, then strode toward Ms. Mahler.

  God, they grow them cute here! I thought. He was about my age, and not any taller than me—maybe an inch shorter—but he had incredibly broad shoulders and powerful arms and legs. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the shadow of his baseball cap, but I could see a strong jaw and a sweet mouth, and I could see that he was ignoring the titter of the girls on “my team,” as they checked him out, keeping his focus on dear Ms. Mahler. His girls followed slowly behind him.

  “Is there a problem?” I heard him ask.

  Mahler pointed to her clipboard, then gestured toward me.

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. Having been pegged as a “problem” for the first time in my athletic career, I gazed back at the two of them without blinking, folding my arms determinedly. I must have looked defiant, because he turned full face to me now, as if surprised.

  “Never played a game in her life,” Mahler said. “Fools around against the garage wall. Didn’t play in a recreation league, didn’t play at school, certainly didn’t play elite, like so
me of our girls, but thinks she belongs with varsity. Give her a tryout.”

  “Two-v-two?” he asked.

  “No, one-v-one, you and her. Let the others start their laps.”

  But the others weren’t going anywhere—that was clear to me and should have been clear to her. Whispers spread throughout the group of varsity girls and giggles continued to come from “my” team, as Josh turned to look in my direction again.

  “Mona, grab my stick,” he said to one of his players. “Got your mouthpiece?” he asked me.

  I stuck it in with the attitude of a cowgirl strapping on her holster. Then I slipped on the protective eyewear. I knew what Ms. Mahler was doing. Seeing the little Blue Jay on the edge of this guy’s shorts, I remembered the blurb in the camp brochure—he played for Hopkins. Mahler was going to make darn sure I got put in my place. If I failed, as she was sure I would, the rest of this week with her was going to be pure hell.

  Well, little did she know. I’d much rather play against him than with girls, two-v-two. Dad had played for Maryland, another lacrosse powerhouse, and yeah, he was old, but I had spent my childhood learning rolls and dodges, trying to outwit him. My big drawback was that I had more experience with a guy’s stick and had played guys’ rules. In the last year I had been practicing with a girl’s stick. My legs still knew what to do, but my cradle and shot weren’t as good.

  Josh plunked the ball in the head of my stick.

  “You’re using a guy’s stick,” he said.

  “So are you,” I shot back rashly. I was starting to feel cornered and angry, angry at Dad, Mom, Viktor, Ms. Mahler….

  He looked at me steadily. Close up, I could see his eyes were hazel—green, brown, dark gold—with the depth of the lake by our cabin.

  “No, I am not,” he said calmly. “When I’m here, I play girls’ style with a girl’s stick. How about you?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Mona, can she use your stick?” he called out.

  “Don’t bother. I brought another,” I said.

  I saw the flash in his eyes. “Oh, really? Then I suggest you get it.”