Page 3 of The Sky in Summer
“Stop looking panicked, Tyler! Aunt Barbra is gonna think I fucking killed you!”
“You asshole! Why did you throw it so hard?!”
“How did this happen? What cut him?”
The question is directed at them all. Four guilty faces say there’s something happening here. Nobody speaks at first. I recognize the blank stare from my own history with my brothers. When you don’t respond to a pointed question like mine, you are trying to assemble a lie or waiting for someone else to think of one.
“Better tell me now, so we can figure how to put it best to your mom and dad.” I start for the shore.
With that comment they identify me as someone to trust. A possible ally.
“I accidentally hit him with a glass bottle. We were just messing around. I tossed it to him. It broke on his hard head.”
“You’re an asshole, David!” Tyler states more emphatically this time.
“Where’s the bottle?”
“I dropped it. It’s at the bottom of the lake.”
“So it was a beer? Is that why you’re all panicking?”
Four deer in headlights, but two of them are in the direct path of the Mac truck about to run them over.
“It was a fifth of whiskey. My mom will kill us. We can’t say that. We took it from my aunt’s house. Maybe a beer would be better to say.”
The words spill out, in an effort to get my help.
“Thievesanddrinkers, huh?” I say.
The words once said by my mother to my brothers and me ring in my ears. Here I am being a grown-up and it sounds ridiculous.
“It was the first time! Really.”
“So what? Do you think that’s gonna make her feel better?” I say, pointing out the obvious.
“You think we should say it was a beer?”
“No! Don’t say it was alcohol at all.”
“What a waste!” Teddy says.
I give him “the look”. The one my mother has perfected.
“Oh shit! Mom’s here! She’s early!” Tyler sounds panicked.
Looking to the shore, I see a woman in a red cover-up walking toward a bikini wearing sunbather, laying on her stomach.
“Is that your mother in the red with the big hat?” I say as we gradually get closer.
“Yeah. She’s talking to my aunt.”
“You two are lucky this wasn’t worse.”
Then I address my own family members.
“And why you two took this risk for a fucking drink, I don’t understand.”
“We had nothing to do with it!” Sam says firmly, and with an air of insult.
