Page 255 of Summer Heat
I wake up with tears streaming down my face. I look at the clock. 3:15. Of course it is. I roll my eyes and get up and wash my face. When I step back in my room, I look at the envelopes on top of my desk and take a deep breath as I walk to them. I sit in my chair and spin around a few times before deciding to open the one I opened the other day. I take out a Ziplock with pictures. The first picture takes my breath away. It’s her. My mom. I just saw her in my dream. She looks much more beautiful in the photo than in my dream, though. She has long dirty-blonde hair and soulful gray eyes. She’s wearing a maxi dress with big flowers on it. Her face is beaming as she looks down at the smiling little girl. The little girl has dirty-blonde hair and big happy gray eyes. Her long eyelashes match my mother’s and she’s wearing a white tank-top dress and silver sandals. In the photo, I look like a miniature version of my mother. Behind us, there’s a handsome man with brown hair and brown eyes. He’s dressed in a short-sleeve polo and khaki pants and he’s smiling as he watches us.
I take a few deep breaths and continue to sort through pictures. They’re more of the same—until they’re not. There’s a batch of pictures of me running in a large plain of grass. Most are me by myself. Some are me and a boy. The boy from my dreams; Nathan. I squint my eyes to study him, but the pictures were taken from a far angle. After looking through those, I put everything away and beg sleep to take me when I lie back down. I wake up again at 8:00 and get ready for class.
“Hey,” Aimee says when I walk into the kitchen.
She’s been staying here a lot recently. I greet her and Bruce, my security guard, or shadow as he calls himself. Bruce is a kind, older man. We’re only going to have him around until the deal for the land is signed on the other end. Then I want life to go back to normal—whatever that is.
Aimee and I arrive at school, and she’s still talking to me about Thanksgiving. I tell her that I’m going to spend it with Cole at Maggie’s this year. She tells me to invite Maggie to her house, but I refuse. I know how Maggie is—she won’t want to burden Aimee’s family. Aimee asks me to go with her to her parents’ house after class, so she can pick up some things that she needs. I’d been wanting her to invite me for a long time but only because I wanted more information about Mark. Now that I have access to him I don’t really care to go. I agree to go with her anyway. I’m curious to see the place and figure out why she hates going home so much.
Her father is the mayor, and I assume that he’s personable, but who knows. Maybe he’s so busy and stressed that he’s an asshole. I also think her mom is probably one of those snobs that spends her husband’s money and goes to charity events to show off her new wardrobe. I can’t imagine why else she’d hate her parents so much if they were nice people.
Aimee’s parents’ house is in Winnekta, which is only a twenty-minute ride from school—in slight traffic. We drive through an affluent neighborhood, where the kids are outside riding bikes and older folk are watering their garden—all without a care in the world. We pull up to a huge brick house and my eyes widen at the sight of it. This is the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen in real life.
I turn in my seat to face Aimee. “This is your parents’ house?”
“Yup,” she draws out. “Trust me, it’s as dead as it is lavish.”
I purse my lips but continue to look around as she makes the drive toward it. There are topiaries on both sides, lining the long circular driveway. When I get out of the car, I look at the house across the street and do a triple-take as I slap my hand over my mouth.
“Wait a minute...is that...do you live in front of Kevin?” I ask shriek.
Aimee laughs loudly. “Kevin?” she asks in amusement.
“Yeah, is that the Home Alone house? It looks just like it,” I squeal.
Home Alone is one of my favorite movies. I used to be obsessed with Kevin when I was little. When I moved in with Maggie, she rented it for me one night, and we all watched it together. I knew every line. Cole was so impressed that he bought it for me for Christmas that year.
Aimee laughs and shakes her head. “Yes, that is the house. But if you’re looking for Kevin, you may find that his real name is George, and he’s an eighty-year-old man who likes to wear his underwear when he fetches the newspaper.”
I grimace at the mental image, before laughing along with her. When we walk into her house, I gape at my surroundings. It looks like a museum where you’re not allowed to touch anything. It makes me feel like a child, and I hope she doesn’t ask me to sit down because I wouldn’t know where to sit. None of the couches have plastic over them, and they’re all light colors. The first room we pass is red, the second room is blue, and the third is dark purple.
“Your mom has a thing for colors, huh?” I say, following her up the stairs. Our boots clink against the creaky hardwood floor with each step.
“You have no idea,” she replies.
There are five doors upstairs. She leads me to the first one, which is her room. Her room is completely pink.
“Oh, I have some idea,” I deadpan.
As Aimee goes to her walk-in closet, I look around her room, she has pictures of herself with her parents on a couple of frames. Her mom has short brown hair and sad green eyes and her dad has brown hair and dead brown eyes. I remember seeing him on television a couple of times, and him looking animated. They look like a happy family in the pictures. They’re both smiling at the camera, but their eyes say otherwise. As I look at the pictures, a thought strikes me like a thunderbolt embedding into my brain.
“Aimee, you’re an only child?” I ask curiously.
I hear her rattle and drop some things in the closet. When she steps out, her eyes look pained.
“I am now,” she says as she drops her sad gaze to the hardwood floor.
“Oh, sorry,” I say with regret.
“No, it’s okay. It was a long time ago. I guess you might as well know. It’ll make more sense if you meet my family and you realize how crazy they are. Hell, maybe you can even warn Aubry before he meets them during Thanksgiving,” she says as she sits down on the edge of the bed.
I sit on the other side and wait for her to continue.
“I had a brother—a twin. He looked nothing like me. He was older by two minutes. He died when we were little.”
I give her an empathetic look. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs. “I have some pictures of him in that album,” she says, pointing to her desk. “I just can’t bear to look at them. I looked at them every day for years, wishing he was alive. When I realized he wasn’t, I stopped looking.”
