Chapter 3

Friday came and Memorial Day weekend finally began. The holiday marked the official start of summer and the perfect time to come back to Summer Lake, according to the resort’s annual magazine the front office sent to guests from past years each spring to drum up bookings. The cover featured a handsome middle-aged couple with their beautiful blonde boys running on Summer Lake’s sandy beach, with Nicole Ballard in the lifeguard chair behind them, wearing sunglasses and twirling her whistle.

It seemed to have worked. The lobby was buzzing and there was a sign taped in the employee level’s elevator landing suggesting they consider taking the fire stairs to free up elevator capacity for guests. Everyone on staff seemed to be roundly ignoring it.

Eric Frank stood on the back of the stand-on mower, its gray metal barely chipped and only slightly stained green with the chlorophyll of the millions of blades of grass which it had trimmed. His boss had stressed that maintenance meant not only servicing the blades, wheels and engine but also keeping the sheet metal cladding of the equipment as clean as possible. Eric felt a certain delight when getting on a pristine, new-looking machine each morning as if it set the tone for the kind of clean, careful work he’d be doing that day. His co-workers said the clean machines were more about impressing the guests, and Eric supposed that was true, but he still liked it for its own sake. A man should take pride in his tools.

He rode around the lake mowing the grassy upper lakeshore which the resort kept mowed as lush green lakeshore lawns, even though it was bad for erosion and chemical runoff into the lake. His boss said this was just how they had always done it and it was what the guests expected. Eric agreed that it looked great, these manicured lawns stretching into the distance around the lake, very neat and clean, like nature with a sharp haircut.

Few of the guests came out this far back, where you could see the lodge across the water. There was talk of putting in a paved recreational path, but apparently the guests didn’t even want it. They were happy with their walks on the terrace, and the oldsters viewed jogging as a foolish fad of a younger generation (his grandfather was the same way – mocking joggers he saw in the neighborhood and calling them hippies who were getting in the way of cars). All of this meant the grass around the lake was purely cosmetic, and the first-years like him were dispatched to give it a perfect mow every Friday. There was supposedly three miles of shoreline and the grass went back over a hundred feet, so even with riding mowers it was a big task.

Eric didn’t mind being a first-year. Everybody had to start somewhere. This was his first job with an official paycheck and he was glad to have it. Grandfather had been good to take him and Abby in, but it was time to start being a man and earn his daily bread.

Everything about this felt good. Sure some of the other guys on the crew were cut-ups who talked about chasing girls and smoking weed, but most were hard workers like him. They had been going for six hours today and weren’t slacking off yet. If someone would work a good honest day out in the sun and then wanted to go have a little fun at night, Eric thought that was perfectly okay. He would be having fun with his sister and new friends all summer too, he hoped, even if he doubted he’d be chasing girls or smoking weed.

The only real worry was his family. Abby struggled so much socially, getting into fights with girls and even boys, but it wasn’t her fault, she was just different. He sensed she’d had some trouble at orientation but she wouldn’t tell him what, exactly, which made him hope it was minor.

If there was actually a problem, she’d tell him. She always had if things were getting really bad, like in 8^th grade when she’d thrown basketballs at the heads of two scumbags who were groping a girl in the gym with the coach nowhere around. The girl was saying no and the boys wouldn’t stop, so Abby beaned them with basketballs and pulled the girl away in the confusion. For a week, the boys went around saying they were going to jump Abby and “give her what they should have given to the slut in the gym”. So she told Eric, and brother and sister jumped the boys together first. Those jerks sure weren’t expecting that. Abby fought as good as a man, Eric recalled with a smile, and combined with her brother they were more than a match for those two guys. Vengeance was supposedly not a noble pursuit, but Eric disagreed. How else were losers like that going to learn they couldn’t do that kind of stuff to girls?

Less fun to think about was his mother. He and Abby had called home on the payphone the previous night and their grandfather had said their mom was out of jail and in a halfway house and going to rehab soon for the drinking. Eric asked Abby if this meant they’d be living with their mother again at some point, but she didn’t know. Sometimes Eric wished they were just 18 already and on their own, but that was still over a year away.

He guided the mower along the edge of the lawn, where the grass gave way to large-stone gravel on the final slope to the water. The lake was massive and supposed to have the bluest water of any lake in the state. All of the lake was visible from the lodge and its lakeside terrace, and it made quite the view. Supposedly the trees beyond the shore were all hand-picked by some landscape architect for maximum visual appeal. With its man-made lake, vast mowed lawns and architect-selected trees, Nick said the whole place was an artificial construct, “the Disneyland of Nature” as he called it. Eric thought it was all beautiful.

The only natural part of Summer Lake’s majestic view, even Nick conceded, was Suicide Bluff, that impressive rock outcropping over the trees where it was far too steep and rocky to mow, no matter how much power the resort’s landscapers felt they had over nature. Uncle Bobby claimed he had jumped off of it into Summer Lake and become a legend here back in the 1960s, but looking at it now Eric doubted that tale even more than he had in the car. It looked like nearly a suicidal jump, as the name suggested, between the sheer height as well as the distance that one would need to clear over the rocks below. The idea that anyone had even tried that jump, let alone survived it, seemed like an urban legend. So it was exactly the sort of thing Uncle Bobby would brag about, Eric thought with a chuckle. In that phone call home, they’d heard that their uncle lost so much money at the Indian casino that he’d had to ask their grandfather to wire him gas money to get home.

Eric was glad to be rid of those people for the summer. His grandfather was fine but the rest of their family was always causing problems. Of course, there was no shortage of drama at Summer Lake, with the way Abby and now Esmie got bullied, but they were also having summer fun despite it. They hung out the previous night in his and Nick’s room, the newly formed group of friends playing cards. Nick all surly and constantly trying to catch the others cheating, Esmie overflowing with energy and cuteness (and cheating, Nick eventually caught her). But it was all great fun, even Nick didn’t take it too seriously, he just liked to complain. Eric was having the best summer of his life and it had only just started.

He came to the end of the last strip of unmown grass and raised the blades so he could hurry back to the landscaping garage. It was quitting time. He had made it through his first week and felt great about the work he’d done, but now it was time to go meet his sister as her lifeguard shift ended, and then find their friends.

It was their first Friday Night at Summer Lake.

Nick Sanchez had spent the morning with cables over his shoulder and a tool belt strapped to his hip rigging sound for the band shell. He felt like perhaps his attention to detail had been overkill, it was unlikely that the elderly fans of the Mike LaHockey’s Original Windy City All-Stars would notice the perfect sound engineering that night, but out of professional pride he couldn’t stand the thought of the sound being off with poor mixing, a delayed speaker, reverb, echo off the lake, or microphone feedback.

He had done everything except climb to the top of the band shell to adjust the lights and replace the dead bulbs. They were mounted to a metal truss arch which mirrored the curved shape of the band shell directly behind it. This was perhaps a fine way to light the stage, but at about 40 feet in height, he sure wasn’t going to climb up there. One of his many anxieties was a long-standing fear of heights. He’d asked the front office for the landscaping department’s bucket truck so he could do the job safely, but his boss Laura Ballard told him not to hold his breath. Maybe the lights just wouldn’t get pointed properly.

Nick began just after nine in the morning and worked until four when he was doing the final checking of his work. He had the mixer configured just right and could get it all up and running before the show that night with minimal worry, and he even had the master tape queued up to record everything (apparently the resort sold recordings of its concerts, and people actually bought them). He’d already worked with the maintenance guys to get the stage cleaned and chairs and tables set up.

This was going to one professionally staged concert of very dull music for very old people, Nick thought. Everything was good to go ... except for those darned lights.

After probably a few more tests than was necessary, he was finally satisfied. He turned everything off and hid his checklist for getting everything on in the right sequence later that night. Another anxiety of his was paranoia, and he was sure some moron would steal or throw out his checklist if he didn’t hide it discreetly under the mixer.

“There’s the genius at work,” he heard a male voice say, then turned around to see Eric and his sister Abby walking down the aisle of chairs set up by the maintenance guys. Eric was wearing jeans and a Guns ‘n Roses T-shirt, Abby had on black pants and a black shirt, an outfit after his own heart.

To his surprise, he found himself happy to see people coming to bug him at work, which normally he preferred to do in a solitary fashion with no interruptions. He had been suspicious of Eric at first, the boy was twice his size, and a jock with incredibly awful, mainstream taste in music. Nick would have thought he’d be a bully or at least a total bore, but the big guy was kind and funny, and Nick found himself considering him a friend.

Better yet, Eric’s twin sister was simply amazing. He’d only gotten the chance to talk to Abby a few times so far, always with Eric around, but she had sophisticated taste in music and a wry sense of humor that was absolutely delightful. What’s more, he found her beautiful. Her body was unusual, so tall and skinny, yet athletic to the extreme. Nick was sure she could beat him up. She didn’t wear makeup, everything about her was just sincere and honest. She was jarringly different from every other girl at Summer Lake, and that was fine with Nick.

She also had an amazing attitude. Like her brother, she was kind and decent to people who treated her that way themselves, but she had an edge to her that was exciting and dangerous. He’d heard from the guys who set up the stage that Abby was already despised by the lifeguards for something she’d done to Nicole Ballard, his boss’s cousin and the head lifeguard (and total bitch), but none of them had known exactly what Abby had done except that it was shocking. Nick had no trouble believing that Abby would tell off Nicole Ballard though. She had even offered to beat up the girl who’d called Esmie a spic. What other white girl would do that? Abby was so wonderful and weird.

Of course, Nick had no illusions about his chances with her, even if Eric kept implying they’d make a good couple. Eric wanted his sister to be happy, and evidently wanted his new friend Nick to be happy as well, so the big boy’s mind drew a nice clean conclusion: Nick and Abby should be boyfriend and girlfriend. In messy reality though, while Nick might be perfectly happy to date Abby, Eric’s aloof sister seemed uninterested. That only made Nick all the more intrigued by her, though. Man always wants what he cannot have, he thought to himself.

“Oh, hey guys,” he said, looking up at them from under the mixing booth where he was giving the power cords one final inspection, always fearful that one had come partially unplugged in all his frenzied configuring of other equipment. “Just wrapping up, except for the lights. You don’t have a tool that could reach them, do you, Eric? In the landscaping equipment?”

“Hmmmm well, not really, unfortunately,” he said. “We could get most of the way with ladders if you want, but not to the top ones. At least I don’t think.”

“What are you trying to do? Replace a dead bulb?” Abby asked.

“Yeah there’s one at the top center, plus the lights need to be pointed at the stage properly,” Nick said.

She shrugged, grabbed a light bulb from the nearby table and put it in her pocket. Then she and walked over to the lighting tower and started to climb, grabbing handholds and moving up off the ground with effortless grace.

“Whoa no, it’s not safe!” Nick said, quickly jumping to feet.

“What are you, OSHA?” she laughed dismissively and kept going. Unlike most every other girl their age, Nick noted her footwear was abundantly practical – very sturdy sneakers that gripped well as she climbed.

“This is one of her superpowers,” Eric said with brotherly pride, “She can climb anything.”

The towering arch had evidently been meant to be serviced this way, there were discreet rungs that could be used for climbing, but workplace safety rules had presumably been quite a bit different in the 1950s when this thing was built, and Nick had balked at using them. It looked wildly unsafe to Nick as the slender girl moved up ten feet as casually if she was walking on flat ground.

And yet, she seemed to be in total control. Nick switched on the lights. “Eric go stand on the stage,” he said, and the boy complied. For a guy who looked like he could knock over the metal tower with his bare hands if he felt like it, that boy sure was docile and even happy to be told what to do. When it was his friends telling him, at least.

Nick stood underneath and guided Abby to point the lights using her brother as an amply-sized target. Nick spoke, then Abby’s fingers moved a light with surgical precision. When she got to a dead bulb she unscrewed it and dropped it down to him. She was sprawled out on the metal arch like a spider, moving with an agile deftness as she climbed directly over him, the late afternoon clouds blowing by above her. Nick was feeling dizzy just looking up at her.

Her strength was obvious from the way she climbed, but she moved in a graceful way that could only be described as feminine. He knew it was a terrible idea to fall in love with such a quirky and unattainable girl. He’d done it before and those humiliating failures formed his most bitter memories now. Nevertheless, as he looked up at Abby Frank climbing gracefully through the heavens just to help him out, he knew that he was falling for her, and hard.

“Hey, do you wanna replace this bulb too?” she said, having found a dead one he hadn’t even noticed. “Earth to Nick...” she said impatiently when he didn’t answer quickly.

“Oh uh, yeah, sorry,” he said, and scrambled to find another new bulb. “I guess you’ll have to come down to get it, sorry.”

She laughed. “Don’t be a pussy, just throw it up here!”

Nick blushed at a girl saying that world. She was 30 feet up. But then again, he’d had to pitch a baseball in gym class and what was that, 60 feet? She was dangling her arm down, and when he stood on the stage he was even closer. He still thought this was a bad idea, but he found himself unable to tell Abby he wouldn’t do what she said.

He threw the bulb up underhanded, still in its box so perhaps it wouldn’t be destroyed in the likely event that he screwed this up. It wasn’t a great throw, but her arm dangled down impossibly far and she grabbed it – barely.

“Work on your arm strength,” she said playfully, and Nick blushed again. She unboxed the light, holding herself aloft with just her legs and one elbow draped over a bar, then dropped down the packaging to her brother, who caught it easily, and then she screwed the bulb in.

It was a weird old type of socket so it took her a moment. With her directly overhead like this, set against the sky so beautifully, Nick took the opportunity and grabbed his Canon F-1 to snap a few quick shots of her. He knew this was indulgent and might even piss off Abby or her brother, but he had to have a picture of her in this moment.

Neither of them seemed to care, though. Abby finished with the light, spun around and began climbing down the other side of the arching tower, repositioning the lights at Nick’s direction as she made her way down. A few minutes later, the stage was lit beautifully.

Back on the ground, she brushed her hands together, shaking off the grime that was on them after climbing all over the old metal structure.

“I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that,” Nick said in amazement.

“Get used to it with her,” Eric said, “She does a lot of stuff people didn’t think was possible.”

“If that landscaping thing doesn’t pan out you’ve got a promising career as a model, Eric,” she joked to her brother.

Eric was still standing on the stage in the glow of the lights, and he struck his idea of an effeminate male model’s pose that looked especially ridiculous given his bulky frame. Nick and Abby laughed at his antics.

“Well uh, thanks for the help, guys,” Nick said.

“We don’t mind helping our friends,” Abby said casually. Friends, Nick thought, that was so lovely. Back home he’d had acquaintances, and his sister, but she didn’t really count. It felt nice to have actual friends. Even if he was now wanting Abby to be so much more than a friend.

“Hey you wanna hang out now? You got time until the concert?” Eric asked.

Nick shrugged. “I’d love to except I just have a few hours before the concert, I need to go take a shower and rest for a bit. You should go see my sister though, she was asking about you guys. Esmie gets off work at six.”

“Cool,” Abby said, “Glad your sister was asking about ... us.” She looked to her brother, who seemed oblivious. Nick wondered if Abby was really implying that his sister was interested in Eric. With any other girl, and any other guy, he’d have been furious at someone suggesting it. But now he found himself thinking it might not be that bad of a thing to have happen. Eric seemed so harmless, and he shared a room with the guy. Esmie had said she wanted a “summer boyfriend” and there was no deterring that girl from what she wanted, so Nick figured his sister could do a lot worse than the big goofy redhead.

“Yeah she likes to act obnoxious but she’s a good person, just don’t tell her I said that,” Nick said. “I’d love it if we were all friends this summer.” He cringed instantly at how upbeat and silly that sounded, but the twins didn’t seem to mind.

“See you later then, Nick,” Eric said.

Abby walked off stride-for-stride with her brother. Well, Nick thought, he’d done it again. He’d fallen for a perfect – and perfectly unobtainable – girl. This time it was much worse. She was not some beautiful, shy girl he saw in the halls and never talked to, but he built up in his mind as perfect based on her voice, haircut and that one time she was humming a REM song. Abby was not some far-away girl he built up in his mind. She was his friend, happy to hang out with him, to climb metal towers for him, all summer she’d be right there with him, but she’d never go out with him.

So close, yet so far away. “Ah well,” Nick thought, “Here I go again.”

At first, the concession stand had smelled like the state fair: one big mess of odors. Once she stood in the middle of it for six hours though, Esmie now realized there were several distinct gross smells: hot dog water, stale hamburger buns, french fry oil, cheap nacho cheese which came in a disgusting 1-gallon can, yet somehow the strongest of all was the wet lettuce for the salad and hamburgers, wafting through her nose, assaulting the smell sensors in her brain until she thought she was going to be sick. She’d begged to go clean off the patio tables where guests had left their disgusting trash just to be away from the smell for a half hour.

She thought she’d be a natural on the cash register, but more than one of the guests acted annoyed at a brown-skinned girl taking their order. This old bat took one look at her and asked if she spoke English. Her manager had sent her to make those awful salads after an ancient geezer complained about Esmie being “hard to understand” even though she spoke perfect, unaccented English just like her brother.

She supposed she should have known it would suck for a girl like her to take a summer job just a few degrees south of the North Pole (at least that’s where it seemed like Summer Lake was located to her). She couldn’t have taken another summer in Alabama though, with her dad at the chicken factory and her mother cleaning hotel rooms, sharing a trailer with just one flimsy window air conditioner unit, which only Nick could fix it when it broke. Her parents needed her to work even though she was just 14, and she accepted that. Her brother had a good job up here in the northern wilds and said he could get her something, and anything would be better than cleaning bloodstains and drug paraphernalia from motel rooms back home with her mother.

What an unglamorous reality she lived in. It clashed so badly with the beautiful image she felt was inside of her and which she tried to project to the world, but what could she do? It was just how it was when your parents were poor immigrants trying to raise their kids the best they could. She was so embarrassed by her background, even if she loved her parents very much. She and Nick were on the same page here, he didn’t particularly want people to know that he lived in a trailer, and the Summer Lake people would tease them relentlessly if they knew their father worked in a chicken plant.