Page 5 of Notice Me, Jameson Hart

whistle while you work

I t’s the Monday after the Fourth of July, which can only mean one thing.

From now until the end of August, the house is mine all day, Monday through Friday.

Adam and Robbie are at football camp, and Dad has his lifeguard job at the Arcadia Beach Club—which, yes, is as preppy and weird as it sounds.

If you’ve never spent a summer alone in a suburban house, let me paint a picture for you: pajamas become formalwear, breakfast is eaten at noon, and every surface becomes a stage.

I’ve performed in this house with the confidence of a seasoned showman, and I have the imaginary Tony awards to prove it.

Sometimes I blast show tunes because the acoustics in the house is incredible. Other times, I grab Diana’s hairbrush and pretend there’s an audience in the kitchen.

The truest highlight of my solo summers, though, is the cleaning.

I know, I know—what kind of teenager voluntarily scrubs a house?

But there’s something intensely satisfying about the transformation.

When I was little, my grandma used to say that if you clean well enough, the room thanks you by becoming warmer, brighter, more alive.

Of course, the other reason I clean is for the thrill of the snoop. I’ve made it a personal mission to learn the location of every hidden item from late-night snacks and money stuffed under the mattresses, to love notes folded into impossible shapes, then shoved inside worn sneakers.

You learn a lot about people from what they choose to hide, but snooping does have its downsides. I once found a shoebox in the back of Dad’s closet, filled with vintage Playboy magazines. I got grounded for that discovery.

Today, though, I’m not in the mood for scandal, not right away, at least. The house is a disaster zone.

In the kitchen, I load the dishwasher with last night’s dinner plates and this morning’s protein shake bottles. The counter gets a thorough wipe-down, as does the microwave, which has suspicious splatter marks from what must’ve been one of Robbie’s late-night burrito experiments.

In the living room, I return the couch cushions to their rightful place and straighten the throw pillows Diana bought Dad for Father’s Day.

I gather up the various socks, phone chargers, and wrappers my brothers have left scattered around.

The coffee table becomes friends with the feather duster, and the remotes get returned to the holder in the proper order—TV, DVD player, sound system.

After taking care of the dining room, pantry, and hallway, I head down to what Dad calls “the man cave.” But really, it’s nothing more than a finished basement with delusions of grandeur.

The game room greets me with its usual chaos. Cables tangled together in such a way that my eye twitches. The pool table has become a dumping ground for empty chip bags and half-finished sports drinks. The air hockey table, untouched since Christmas, sits covered in a fine layer of dust.

I open the sliding door that leads up to the backyard to air out the musty smell, grab a trash bag from the closet, and get to work.

It isn’t long before an imaginary orchestra swells in my mind.

The lights above become stage lights, and suddenly, I’m no longer Kevin the cleaner.

I’m Kevin the star of a brand new musical— The Clean Machine.

I wrap the ends of the trash bag around my shoulder, turning it into a cape that Superman would be proud of. “Welcome to my kingdom of chaos and grime,” I sing, making up the melody as I go. “Where dust bunnies mark the passage of time.”

The gaming cables become my dance partners as I untangle them with theatrical flair and coil them properly.

In my mind, I’m not alone. Woodland creatures hear my song and traipse into the room.

Some shake out the dust from the curtains with their paws.

Others use their tails to sweep the crumbs under the rug—until I tut at them and point to the dustpan and broom in the corner of the room.

And then there are the deer, who use their antlers to fix the crooked picture frames on the walls that are too high for me to reach.

When the game room is spotless, I bid them adieu, grateful for all their help, then shimmy on over to the workout room, where the real challenge awaits.

The weight bench sits askew. Dumbbells rest on the rubber floor mats instead of on the rack. And the mirror that covers one wall is smeared with fingerprints and what I hope is dried sweat.

“Scrub and shine, make it gleam.” I continue the made-up song, turning it into a spell as I grab the cleaning supplies from the shelf. “We’re gonna this pigsty into a dream.”

I spray the mirror in wide arcs and use the paper towels to wipe in time with the imaginary beat. My movements are part Bob Fosse, part something out of Austin and Ally .

The weight bench gets wiped down with disinfectant, and the lemon-scented cleaner fills the air, dispelling the pungent stench of sweaty boys. Each dumbbell is lifted, cleaned, and returned to its proper spot on the rack, although that takes the most time, because they’re not twenty-five-pounders.

The elliptical machine gets special attention. I oil the squeaky parts as if it were the Tin Man and wipe down the handles until they shine. The treadmill’s belt gets cleaned of whatever mysterious substances have accumulated on it.

As I work, I think about what this imaginary musical number means to me.

It’s not about cleaning; it’s about taking care of the people I love, even when they don’t notice all I’ve done for them.

Every swept floor, organized shelf and sparkling surface is my way of saying “I love you” without saying it out loud.

The big finale of my cleaning opera has me sliding across the floor in my socks, my arms spread wide, as I hit the final note that’s eerily reminiscent of the war cry from “Defying Gravity.”

After I jump in the pool to cool off, I head upstairs to finally do some snooping.

When I walk into Adam’s room, the smell is what hits me first—a mix of leather, athletic tape, and the faint chemical tang of whatever spray he uses on his cleats.

Trophies are lined up on the shelf, and his shoes are arranged by color in front of his bed.

Sports equipment hangs from hooks attached to the wall.

Motivational posters featuring athletes such as David Beckham, LeBron James, Aaron Judge, and several others I don’t know cover what’s left of the wall space.

The last few times I was here, I spent my time going through his dresser drawers and his computer. Hey, it’s not my fault that his password is Lola Tung. I didn’t find anything incriminating to tease him over. The only place left for me to search is the closet.

I slide it open and push my way past the letterman jackets and practice jerseys hanging from the rod. Behind a stack of shoe boxes, I find a small wooden box. The kind you’d keep cufflinks in. I pick it up gingerly and open it. Inside is a folded stack of papers.

My fingers tremble as I tuck the box under my arm and unfold the papers.

Stanford University’s cardinal-red logo stares back at me from the top of an application form.

I flip through the pages of transcripts, recommendation letter requests, and a half-finished personal statement in Adam’s neat handwriting.

Stanford. That’s in California. Three thousand miles from Arcadia that might as well be three million.

My legs nearly give out as it hits me. This is what he was trying to hint to me after the diner. He’s been thinking of leaving, of not going to Arcadia U with Robbie and me.

I pull out Adam’s desk chair and collapse into it. The papers shake in my hands. Stanford. The word echoes in my head, annoying and incessant like feedback from a microphone that’s too close to the speakers.

My stomach twists into knots tighter than the gaming cables I untangled this morning. We’re triplets. We tell each other everything. When Robbie had his first kiss at summer camp, he told us as soon as it happened. When I joined the drama club during our freshman year, they were the first to know.

We don’t keep secrets. We don’t hide things.

Except Adam does. Adam is .

I smooth out the personal statement on the desk. His handwriting is so neat that it could be mistaken for a typed font.

The words blur as my eyes water. I blink hard and focus.

Growing up as one of three has taught me the value of teamwork, of brotherhood. But as I approach college, I find myself wondering who I am when I’m not part of a matched set.

The air leaves my lungs. He’s been feeling it too. This suffocating need to be more than one-third of “The Pryor Boys.” To be Adam, not Adam-Robbie-and-Kevin.

I keep reading, tracing my finger over each word as though they’re sacred text. He writes about football, of course, but also about wanting to study sports medicine. About wanting to work with other athletes someday, if he blows out his knee or something else horrific.

My chest aches. Not because he wants to leave—I get that, I do—but because he couldn’t tell me. Couldn’t tell us.

How long has he been carrying this around? How many times did he almost say something but had to stop himself?

A photo falls from the stack of papers onto my lap. It’s the three of us at last year’s homecoming game. My brothers are in their football uniforms, and I’m wearing a drama club T-shirt. We’re grinning, our arms slung around each other so you can’t tell where one brother ends and another begins.

That’s the problem.

As I fold up the papers, I realize something. The essay is only half done, and nothing’s been mailed. The deadline to apply is in January. Early admission is in November.

He hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. There’s still hope that this is all a moot point, that we’ll all go to Arcadia University next year, happy as clams.