Killer Summer

90

– hwz it ging?

sme. u? WYCM?

Kevin responded to the “Will you call me?” by immediately dialing her number.

“Hey,” she said. She sounded so close all of a sudden.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s the tennis?”

“Haven’t played.”

“You should.”

“You sound like my father.”

“How is he?”

“The same. In big trouble. I may have to live with my aunt, or something. It sucks.” A silence crossed the line. She filled it. “No big deal.”

“I… I think about you all the time.”

“Yeah. Me too,” she said. “My shrink says that’s part of it.”

“Mine says I’m supposed to move on. Right… Not going to happen.”

“We’re coming up there.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. Some kind of hearing or something.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever fly again,” he said. “That’s what I dream about: those flames.”

“My dad, he cried like a baby,” she said. “Apologizing. As if that’s going to change it. Said how he screwed it all up. I said: Duh!”

“My uncle says people do weird stuff when they’re cornered.”

“Don’t go defending him,” she said.

“You’ve got to forgive him,” Kevin said.

“No way.”

“Way,” he said. “So he goes to jail, so what? Maybe you could live up here or something. Maybe it all works out.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

“It might,” Kevin said.

Silence.

“So, will I see you when you’re up here?” he asked.

“If you’re looking for me,” she said.

He tried to follow the shrink’s advice and just say what came to his mind, but it wasn’t as easy as she made out, and he heard himself whisper, “The thing is… I think about you all the time. I feel like-”

“Shut up,” she said. “I love you too. BFF.”

Best friends forever.

Kevin swallowed, trying to regain his voice. “No… not for me. It’s more than that, more than BFF.”

“Yeah, I know,” she confessed.

He felt good all of a sudden. Incredibly good. “I’m going to see you when you’re up here.”

“Duh!”

He thought he heard her crying. Only a few seconds later, mumbling some excuse about needing to be somewhere, she hung up.

Kevin held the phone in his hand, staring at it. He remembered calling his uncle from the back of the jet as it took off. He remembered leaving the phone by the chimney of the lodge and his uncle telling him how it had helped track him to the ranch. He considered calling the cowboy and thanking him for everything he’d done. He’d been invited to spend time at the lodge and to fish or white-water raft, and he thought maybe that would be a fun thing to do with his uncle. But he wasn’t going to fly in. If they ever went back there, they would have to hike it.