Page 11 of The Dead of Summer

Before anyone gets any pizza, the oven has to warm up. While it does, I stand with Bash and Elisa in a little triangle of awkwardness.

“Hi,” I say.

They don’t respond. The heat from the oven is matched only by the burns I’m sure their eyes are leaving on my skin.

Whatever the reason I came back here, it simply cannot be worth this.

Customers trickle in, lining up, and Bash tells them the first pizzas of the day are still baking.

We have a few minutes, but I’m not sure I can survive it if no one will even speak to me.

Finally, Elisa decides to talk. “What do you want?”

“Elisa, be nice,” Bash warns.

“He must want something, right? I mean, why else come back here? I’m surprised he even remembers us. It’s been, what … ten months? And all he has to say is hi ?”

I hate that she’s right, but I’ll be damned if I admit that. I pull on the XL Pizza Monster shirt. All worries of Aunt Maddie and my mom burn away for the moment. I’ve got to put this fire out first.

“I came to say I’m sorry,” I lie, but in a way it’s truer than the truth. I didn’t come here ready with an apology, but I’ve been on my way to this reckoning since the moment Gracie announced we were returning to Anchor’s Mercy. Elisa and Bash trade a look that isn’t completely contemptuous.

“Are we still friends?” I ask.

“Heard you had a new friend,” Elisa says. “That you imported him directly from the mainland. Do they make them different there?”

I put the pieces together based on Bash’s reddening ears. His mom drove Sam home last night. I’m sure by now he and Elisa have created an entire fictional biography of Sam, a mainland usurper symbolizing my betrayal of the Suds.

“He’s just a boy I met on the ferry,” I say, not too defensive. “Gracie latched on to him. He’s here alone.”

I’m a terrible person, guilting them with Sam’s predicament. Until this moment, I had barely thought about him.

“Just drop it, Elisa,” Bash pleads, this time putting a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugs him off. “Don’t give me those puppy dog eyes, Bash. He’s not sorry. He didn’t even tell us he was coming back!”

By now we are fully having this argument in front of a family. The father clears his throat, but Elisa gives him a look that could pop a balloon, and he backs off.

“I’m sorry,” I try again. “I’m sorry about a lot, okay? Can you just give me a chance to explain?”

Bash’s eyes are kind. “You really don’t have to—”

Elisa cuts him off again. “You know Gracie was like a mom to me, too. And you couldn’t bother to tell us she survived? I thought she was dead until a week ago. We nearly buried you both.”

When Elisa’s mom left in fifth grade, Gracie stepped in.

I never thought about what it might mean to Elisa to lose her second mother.

In fact, I hadn’t really thought about anyone else’s loss in all this.

My own grief was too huge, but now I realize it distracted me from yet another way I was failing my own life.

“Okay. That’s it.” Bash grabs us both and pulls us away from the counter to a nook in the back.

“In two minutes, this place is going to be swarming with people. The horde will descend, and we need to be ready to feed it, so I’m going to cut right to the chase.

You two can fight about the flotsam and jetsam of it all later, but answer this for me right now: Is there any reason, on land or sea, that either of you would give up on our friendship forever? ”

I can’t look at Bash. My eyes fix on a poster behind him.

It’s for one of the many fundraisers that happen in the offseason, but when I see my name, I realize that this one was for me and my mom.

I don’t know who organized it, but it’s proof that the love here never died.

I just lost sight of it. If I were to be brave enough to reach out right now, would the magic of Anchor’s Mercy recognize me?

Or am I truly too far gone to be welcomed home?

“No.” Elisa answers first. “I’m not giving up.”

“Me neither,” I whisper.

“Then it’s settled.” Bash grabs our hands, forcing them together. “Suds stick together, right?”

Elisa and I both grumble in agreement, and that’s enough for Bash. With our spat settled (at least for now), he gives us our orders and then leads us into the rush. The oven is at full heat now, but instead of feeling oppressive, it feels grand. Familiar. Now this particular monster’s got my back.

Hours later, it’s like I was never gone.

The individuals known as Bashar, Elisabete, and Orlando have ceased their inefficient toiling as autonomous beings and united into the legendary hive mind known as the Suds, the only force powerful enough to take on the horrors of the hungry horde.

This is all a joking narration from Bash spliced into the hectic atmosphere of Pizza Monster to keep us laughing as we work.

Elisa—the most diplomatic—manages orders, the soda fountain, and the register.

I—the quickest hands—hover at her back, fulfilling the orders as they come through to me written on the bottom of paper plates in Elisa’s rune-like code language.

Bash manages the monster with his trusty pizza peel—a big wooden paddle he wields with a lion tamer’s flourish—and tosses dough for the tourists.

Two ’ronis! One cheese! One Greek! He announces every pie as it exits the oven’s flaring mouth like each is a hard-won prize, as though the oven really is a monster we need to coax into production.

There are moments in the rush where I lock eyes with Bash or Elisa, and I expect it to be awkward, but each time they give me a reassuring smile as if to say It’s good to have you back.

And it feels good to be back. Gradually, my heart unclenches.

At some point, Mrs. Itani gets the generator running and the overheads flicker on.

The sun sets early behind returning storm clouds, and the people coming in get increasingly windswept and wet as the storm resumes over the island.

I get my phone charged, but the cell phone service sucks.

Maybe it’s better, I think, that I can’t text my mom.

She might need this time as much as I do.

My earlier dramatics start to feel silly.

Not just the whole fiasco with Aunt Maddie, but the way I yelled at my mom.

And my brooding before that. And the silence that stretches through the last ten months.

I know better than to think this euphoria will last, but so long as my friends are allowing me back between them, I’m going to ride the high.

The lows are all but promised. Maybe, for once, I’ll just let things be good while they’re good.

Finally, the rush ebbs sometime after sundown, leaving us delirious with relief.

I eat through half a pizza just by myself while Elisa and Bash regale me with stories about their school year without me.

I hear almost none of it, mostly just enjoying the way stories are told as duets between them, both talking at once but in a way that’s like hands working together on a keyboard.

The rain picks up, pinching off the flow of tourists, and soon the only people we’re serving are townies, soaked drag queens, and go-go boys fueling up before their late-night gigs.

A few other kids from school have caught wind that I’m back, and they pop in to say hey as they rush to and from serving jobs.

A few stick around, chatting with us to avoid heading back out into the rain.

“Did you see that navy ship? The white one? I heard it’s a hospital ship.”

“I’m more curious about that yacht in the marina. It’s a real yacht. Huge, not like those little motorboats the circuit gays like to putt around in.”

“I heard the yacht is a stealth craft.”

Bash confirms this, forever powerless against the urge to show off his knowledge of all things boats. He also clarifies that the white naval ship is, in fact, the USNS Embrace .

“It’s supposed to be in the Gulf of Mexico, though,” he offers, but no one really cares.

“I heard Imogen Pfaff is losing her gig.”

This last tidbit catches Elisa’s attention, and she lingers near the drag queen spinning the tale.

Imogen Pfaff has been director of AMIOS since …

forever. She must be ancient, but like all things born to the sea’s chilled dark, she is a pale and slippery thing that lurks in the island’s crevices and only ever darts into public for a rare errand, or a trip to the mainland.

Sometimes she speaks at town meetings. Elisa, I remember, distrusts the older woman completely.

Most people do. AMIOS is here for our own good, but that doesn’t quite take the edge off all the strange illnesses the townies keep coming down with.

“Imogen Pfaff is getting fired?” Elisa asks as she mops the floor.

“She’s been coming into Stabby’s every night these past few months,” the queen says.

“Drinking like the eel she is, writing in that red notebook of hers. I tried to get a peek at it, but she never leaves it alone. Not for a second.” The queen shrugs.

“She drank herself sick, so we kicked her out. Again.”

“She’s been doing drunk karaoke at Hail Mary’s.” I offer them Willy’s gossip from yesterday, and Elisa’s eyes flicker with satisfaction.

As though summoned, the next guest to dash into Pizza Monster is Wendy Pretendy herself, swathed in a gigantic poncho of clear plastic that she hurls to the floor. At first people cheer, but then she scans the room with huge, terrified eyes. Her eyes land on me.

“Everyone out,” she orders. For a moment, I’m sure she’s mad at me for abandoning her at brunch, but then she amends with “Except the queens. Everyone else, go. Now.”

Wendy Pretendy is the kind of person who could give orders to an earthquake. People rush out, and the doors are locked behind them, leaving just the queens and us to wonder what’s going on.

“Ollie. Sit.”

I barely feel my ass beneath me as I plop down at a table with Wendy Pretendy. Everyone crowds around us. It’s like we’re about to arm wrestle or something.

“Your mom is fine,” Wendy says quickly. “Someone saw her at the beach. Don’t worry. It’s not that. It’s your aunt. Where is she?”

“At Singing House. Locked … no, wait, unlocked in the pantry.”

Wendy shakes her head. “Please try to make sense. Start from the top.”

I do my best to describe the way Aunt Maddie wrestled me to the floor, and how I lightly bashed her head with a piece of aquarium decor, and how she ended up in the pantry covered in her sticky mess.

I want to add that she’s probably still there, but something tells me Wendy knows otherwise.

Like a dark tide, this morning’s forgotten fear creeps back into my stomach.

“I should have listened to you,” Wendy finally says. “Did you tell the police?”

“I tried. And at first they told me to go to the health clinic, but then they told me it was pointless.”

“That’s what I got told, too,” Wendy says. She gingerly massages her temples, despite her makeup.

“Have you seen Maddie? Is she okay?”

“I haven’t seen her, but a couple of my girls reported a few cases of something similar. Sticky tears, big smiles, lots of babbling. I swung by the clinic, but it’s deserted. Police station, too. Everyone’s dealing with cleanup, so now we need to deal with this.”

“It’s probably just a summer cold,” Elisa offers.

Wendy stands up to pace, but then sits back down just as fast. Her eyes lock in on me again. “Did the sticky stuff touch you, Ollie?”

“Yeah, a little, but I got it off with some cleaner.”

“Did it get in your eyes, nose, or mouth?”

I shake my head. I definitely would have remembered if it did.

Wendy seems relieved, but barely. She stands again, this time with a sense of authority that makes the rest of the people in the shop sit up straight. “We’re dropping anchor,” she announces.

The queens gasp, all seeming to understand what this means. They crowd into a booth to whisper about a plan while Wendy heaves me back behind the counter.

“You three. Close up shop. Go home, except for you, Ollie. Can you stay somewhere else tonight?”

Bash raises his hand. “Mine.”

“Great, I’ll tell Gracie when I see her.”

I raise my hand, too. “But what’s going on?”

“Too soon to say,” says Wendy. “But we have a protocol for when something bad is about to happen. If someone calls for a dropped anchor, everything closes down. It keeps people home and out of harm’s way.”

For a moment, we say nothing. Such a protocol seems at first absurd, then completely necessary. Anchor’s Mercy is a world where no one has to hide who they are. Monsters are drawn to that sort of unabashed light.

“What kind of harm?” Elisa presses.

“Some kinda bug, but it’s spreading fast. Stay back here. The adults are going to handle this.”

Wendy leaves us to whisper with her team of queens, and a few minutes later they vanish into the stormy night. Bash dutifully locks the doors behind them. No one seems eager to discuss what we just witnessed, but Elisa’s saved up one last dirty look just for me.

“You got into a whole wrestling match with your aunt and didn’t think to tell us?”

“We had a lot going on.” I say this knowing I’ve already messed up our truce.

“No more secrets,” Elisa says, putting her shoulder into mopping.

We’re quiet as we clean, loading the leftover pies into boxes to be taken home. Right before we leave out the back, the phone rings.

“Ignore it,” Elisa whispers, like the phone can hear her.

“It’s probably my mom,” Bash chides. He snatches the phone from the holster on the wall and answers with the usual line: “You’ve reached Pizza Monster, no, we don’t deliver.”

After a pause, Bash’s eyebrows furrow. He hands me the phone.

“It’s for you, Ollie.”

I might as well be receiving a call from deep space. Who on earth knows I’m here? At first I expect to hear Gracie reprimanding me for worrying her all day, but the moment I put the phone to my ear, I feel that Mercy magic pinching at my heels and I know who’s calling.

“Hi, Sam.”