My Almost Epic Summer Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  I Am Fired

  Something Turns Up

  I Do Not Get to Think It Over

  I Receive an Impractical E-mail, and Then a Better One

  I Take Fate into My Own Hands

  A Beginning

  Little Lainie

  Some Cold Water

  I Have a Small Realization

  Lainie Astonishes Me

  I Am Slightly Slighted

  I Make the Acquaintance of Starla

  Affirmed and Reminded

  I Make an Impact

  The Morse House

  Mischief

  Two Postings

  A Loss

  A Greater Loss

  A Small Reprimand

  A Bad Angel

  Longing and Disappointment

  My Mother Makes Up Her Mind About Me

  An Unexpected Request

  I Attempt to Explain Myself

  My Resolution, and Its Sequel

  Intrigue

  Preoccupations, New and Old

  I Am Given a Reprieve

  Visitors

  I Mess Up

  Reality Gives Me a Nudge

  A Heroic Twist

  Affirmed and Resolute

  I Break My Resolution

  I Become an Almost Heroine

  Foreshadowing happens in Epics, but never in real life.

  In real life, I knew exactly what my summer was changing into—unrelenting hours of playing I Spy with Lainie Prior and telling Evan for the umpteenth time to wash his muddy sneakers, feet, or legs before coming indoors, while counting off the days until school started. Which would then begin a whole new countdown to the last day of school. I wonder when I can stop my countdowns? I guess not until the day I take off.

  But I guess things could be worse. Five hundred years ago I’d be babysitting my own kids.

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  For Erich

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  With special thanks to Lisa Brown, Katie Hancock, Matt Heller, Sara Kreger,

  Charlotte Sheedy, Geoff Watson, and especially Nancy Paulsen.

  SPEAK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

  Copyright © Adele Griffin, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Griffin, Adele. My almost epic summer / Adele Griffin.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Stuck babysitting during the summer while her friends take

  glamorous vacations, fourteen-year-old Irene learns some lessons

  about life after meeting a beautiful, yet troubled, girl.

  [1. Self-perception—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction.

  3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Babysitters—Fiction.]

  I. Title. PZ7.G881325My 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005013491

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09853-0

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  I Am Fired

  HERE IS MY DREAM. One day I am going to open my own beauty salon. It will be an upscale but cozy boutique in Los Angeles, with chandeliers and a white wood floor, where I will offer the latest looks. My specialty, however, will be re-creating the hairdos of Great Women in Literature.

  I plan to call my shop Heroine Hairstyles.

  In preparation, I have drawn seventy-six pages of heroine heads in my blue spiral notebook. Three heads to a row, four rows to a page, no order. On one page, Franny Glass is next to Antigone is next to Scout Finch is above Anna Kareni—

  “Girl! You got shampoo in my eye!”

  I look down. The lady’s eyes are squeezed tight. “Left or right?” I ask.

  “Who cares left or right? Get me some water!”

  “I-rene!” My mom races from the cash register to the line of sinks. When Mom’s mad, she says my name like it’s a pronoun plus verb.

  Rene (REEN): to perform an act of astonishing stupidity.

  “Hurry up! My eye—my left eye—is burning!”

  Mom has the hand towel and glass of water ready. She shoos me off. Bella, sweeping up hair at the other end of the sinks, giggles while watching herself giggle in the opposite mirror. Working at a beauty salon is the perfect job for Bella, whose first love is her own reflection.

  “Flush.” Mom hands the lady the glass of water. “Apologize to Mrs. Conti,” she hisses at me.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Conti,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  “You said the same thing last week.” Mrs. Conti sits up, tips the water into her eye and blinks.

  “A little water clears us of this deed,” I quote. That’s from Shakespeare, after Lady Macbeth gets her husband to pop off Duncan. It’s not exactly an apology as much as an observation about how guilt can stain a person’s character. Sister Soledad says I have a knack for ironic quotation.

  Mrs. Conti looks like she’d have been happier with plain old groveling.

  Mom signals Bella to finish Mrs. Conti’s shampoo. Then she tugs me into the changing room, locking the door behind us. She begins with her usual sigh.

  “Mom, I know. But I’m really, really working on paying better attention at the sinks.”

  “Honey, it’s more than that,” says Mom. “You’ve been here—what?—three weeks? And all I do is run interference for your crazy screwups.”

  “I’d feel better if you said honest mistakes.”

  “I’ll give you honest,” says Mom, “but let’s backtrack a minute. In three weeks, you shrunk an entire wash load of fitting robes down to baby doll size. You put hot oil in the cream rinse dispensers and vice versa. You junked the magazines into recycling and left us without a scrap of reading for our clients. Then yesterday, you managed to mix up Mrs. Dent’s color glaze so that her hair turned pink.” Mom shudders at the memory. “And I lost count of how many times you’ve burned clients’ eyes or scalded their scalps. People shouldn’t equal an appointment here with pain, Irene. This is a beauty salon, not a dentist’s office.”

  “But Mom, I’m still new.”

  “Three weeks isn’t new.” Mom is tapping her teeth with her nails. One coat of Cotton Candy and one of Rose Blush. I did them for her last night. I smudged a thumb but I don’t think s
he’s noticed yet. “Hon, I might own this business, but I answer to the customer. Don’t you want to work someplace that fits you better?”

  “I like it here.”

  “Yeah, I know, but . . .” Mom stops tapping and stares at me with those intense brown eyes I didn’t inherit. “Maybe here doesn’t like you back.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Instead of answering, she hugs me. “I’m real sorry,” Mom whispers in my ear, “but we’ve gotta eat and pay bills. Irene, honey, this is just not working out. I’m gonna have to let you go.”

  Something Turns Up

  AS I SIT with my book on the hood of our car, waiting for Mom to finish locking up the salon, I can see and hear the epic of My Life, set to an evocative soundtrack.

  What kind of mother fires her own daughter? narrates the brave, only slightly plaintive heroine.

  My Life fades out once I get back into the ending of The Color Purple. At first I was reading it for Shug Avery’s hairstyle, but now I have to see if Celie gets her revenge on any of the people who’ve been kicking her around. As a whole, this story puts a person in a kicking mood.

  When I look up, Mom and Judith Prior are walking toward me across the parking lot. Judith owns the Plugged Nickel, a secondhand shop two down from Style to Go.

  Mom is smiling. She does not bear the guilty countenance of a woman who has just sacked her own daughter.

  “We have a plan,” Mom announces once they’re in earshot.

  “Irene,” begins Judith, “how would you like to come work for me?”

  “Oh,” I answer. “Hmm.” Judith’s shop would not advance my future salon career, though it has its cramped, cluttered charms. There’s a jukebox that plays tinny songs from the 1950s, and Judith lets her customers hang out all afternoon without inflicting any pressure to buy a single thing. I should know.

  “What’s the catch?” I ask.

  “No catch,” says Judith. “I’ll match your pay here, plus ten percent.”

  There is a catch. Something twinkly is happening in Judith’s eye. “What about transportation?” I’m suspicious. “And are the hours the same?”

  “I’d come pick you up in the morning and take you home at night,” says Judith.

  “Why couldn’t Mom drive me in, since she works so close?”

  “Because you wouldn’t be working at my store. You’d be working at my house.”

  “You want me to babysit Lainie and Evan?” My voice squeaks. “As in, all day all week all . . . ?” The unspoken doom of all summer hangs like a bad smell in the heat.

  “Lainie and Evan love you! You’re their favorite babysitter! And we’ve been in a crunch since Dan’s mom went back to Orlando.”

  “Let me think about it.” Lainie and Evan aren’t the worst kids in the world, but I couldn’t imagine dealing with them regularly. Babysitting is a job that usually requires at least one day of recovery time.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” says Mom. “Most other summer jobs are taken by now, and last I checked, you were too young to have a driver’s license.” Thanks, Mom.

  “I hear the Lotsa Tacos over in Nutley is looking to hire,” I say.

  Mom snorts. I take her snort to mean there-is-no-way-in-hell-that-she-will-be-driving-me-all-the-way-out-to-Nutley. I’m not bad at interpreting Mom’s snorts.

  “Why don’t you call me tonight after you’ve thought it over?” suggests Judith.

  “I’ll do that,” I tell her.

  I Do Not Get to Think It Over

  MOM’S BOYFRIEND, ROY, used to be homeless, but for the past year or so he has lived at 711 Valentine Way with Mom and me. Mom likes the company of strays. Before Roy, there was Don the eleven-months-of-the-year-out-of-work Christmas tree dealer, and before Don came Bruno, a drummer for a band that had broken up before I was born. I have no idea what Roy was doing before he got dropped on our doorstep, but he seems happy enough about where he landed. He even cleans our house (not my room), does all the washing (not my clothes) and cooks us a hot dinner with bread crumbs every night.

  I don’t have anything against bread crumbs, but occasionally I’m not in the mood for them and then they annoy me beyond anything. Same as Roy.

  Tonight it is chicken cutlet marsala in bread crumbs plus a salad.

  “That’s some look on your face,” says Mom. She imitates it. Roy haws with laughter.

  “I apologize if my mood accurately reflects my grim destiny, spending July and August babysitting the Prior kids.”

  “Gimme a break.” Mom ladles a spoon of bread-crumby sauce. “You scored. There you’ll be, out in the country, breathing fresh air instead of bleaching chemicals. Plus those kids are, what, eight and eleven? They can practically watch themselves.”

  “Babysitting is more than just watching the kids.”

  “That right?” asks Roy. “Like what?”

  “Well,” I start, “you have to deal with all this personal stuff. There you are, in another family’s space, taking their phone messages and using their bathroom and—”

  “Oh, please. Here’s a job like a hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground,” Mom interrupts, “and you’re worrying if you can break it into tens or twenties.”

  I frown at Mom’s imperfect analogy, but decide against commenting on it.

  “I like kids,” says Roy. “Kids say the darndest things.” Mom and I pause to smile at him. Roy requires politeness. A tiny thing like not smiling, or smiling at the wrong time, can fly him into a rage. Like once when Mom asked him to “put on the water,” meaning turn on the kettle for tea, and Roy turned on the faucet—when Mom and I started laughing, Roy went completely berserk and yanked the knob clean off the back door.

  “Yeah, I like kids, too,” I answer carefully—no mocking undertone, “but I might go nuts if I have to hang out in the boonies all day. The Priors don’t even have a television. Anyhow, I’m sure there are other jobs.”

  “I’m sure there aren’t,” says Mom, pointing her spoon at me, “and tomorrow when I’m at work slaving away to pay rent while you’re parked on your butt thinking over your career options, maybe the answer will become more clear.”

  “And remember, there’s plenty of odd jobs around the house in the meantime.” Roy winks.

  The Epic of My Life, helping Roy bread-crumb cutlets while Mom checks in to see if I’ve done the laundry yet, suddenly flashes before my eyes.

  The answer, suddenly, becomes extremely more clear.

  I Receive an Impractical E-mail, and Then a Better One

  AFTER DINNER, I check to see if any messages have arrived in response to my dilemma. The two I’m expecting did.

  The first is from my best friend Whitney, who is spending a glorious, glamorous summer at Star Point Tennis Camp up in Stowe, Vermont.

  The second is from Sister Soledad, who taught eighth-grade English at Bishop Middle School for thirty-five years until this spring, when she left to go live at Our Ladies of the Holy Trinity Retirement Convent in Cape May. I was in her last class. She said God couldn’t have planned it better.

  From: [email protected]

  Reeny!

  What is that a joke? Babysitting? Repulsocity. Didn’t you once tell me Lainie Prior pees her bed? I am weeping a thousand tears into my pillow for you. Guess what I got a belly ring! Mom said it was okay to get a piercing “so long as it wasn’t nose or nipple.” Ew from my own mother and it’s still sore. A bunch of us all went in and all did it together and the guy who did it was such a skeeve but once it stops hurting it’ll be so worth it.

  I am getting way bored of Derrick and we’ve only been going out ten days! But there’s another guy Kyle Ganzi who plays semipro and he is turning seventeen and hottie hot hot. Whenever he walks on court kids yell “Oh My Ganzi” but in a good way. I can’t think of any news except our cabin’s got this joke going where you end everything with the words “according to the prophecy.” Kinda a have-to-be-there thing it’s hard to explain!!!

&
nbsp; Also I switched cabins so I’m not bunking with that weird chick Darlene anymore. Did I ever tell you about her duck underpants? On the back across the butt it said Cheez ’N Quackers! Sexy! Now I’m rooming with Grace who is cool and reminds me of Britta. Did you get a postcard yet ? She was sort of bragging about her Dad’s place with the pool and everything but what kind of techno-bully is he to not have e-mail access!? Going on Brit’s postcard though Houston sounds kinda fun.

  Anyhow I say: No job! Collect unemployment! Love ya!

  —Whit

  From: [email protected]

  Dear Irene,

  Unstructured time out in the country, a place to read and sketch and contemplate . . . what an opportunity.

  Oh, who am I kidding? That’s the same junk Father Donovan fed me, and look where I landed. Farmed out to this glorified prison by the sea with nobody to complain to but six hundred squawking gulls and two hundred deaf old nuns. Irene, I am sorry your mother thinks you are bad for her business. But in your last e-mail, you had mentioned that you weren’t overly confident that you were “cut out” (excuse my pun) for the demands of her hair salon. You had mentioned wanting to work more on the research and development side. So perhaps you should think of this job as a paying sabbatical?

  Right now I am reading Love in the Time of Cholera and Fermina Daza wears her hair in “a single thick braid with a bow at the end, which hung down her back to her waist.” Yes, another heroine braid, almost identical to Janie’s “great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume” from Their Eyes Were Watching God. I suppose you had better stock your salon with braided extensions. I’m not sure our modern day world is as splendidly hairy.

  Sister Maria Martinez, whom I believe I’ve mentioned before, has been giving cooking classes. Today I learned how to bake a mean banana bread. The secret, apparently, is half a cup of dark rum.