Page 2 of The Summer Show
“One of our students is an amazing artist and I need to know who,” I went on. “I need to broaden their range. Move them away from just genitalia.”
“Kathleen,” Marti said.
“Yes?”
“School is over for the year. Get out of my office.”
I slapped the book shut and slid it toward her, across the vast forest of paperwork. “Find me the penis artist and I’ll go.”
“I’ll find them, I promise. If I don’t, you can have my Choose Your Own Adventure books. All of them.”
“The first editions?” I asked, breathless with longing. I wanted those books and I wanted them bad.
“The first editions. I swear it on Fake Ana’s life.”
At precisely that moment, Marti’s door opened and Fake Ana walked in.
He gulped.
I turned to leave.
Marti lunged around the desk. “Oh, and Kathleen? I swear to every deity on Earth that if you leave for Greece without hugging me, I’ll make sure you never acquire books for my library again.”
I hugged her with all my might while Fake Ana stood on the sidelines, shifting uncomfortably in his crisp chinos.
“Do I join the hug?” he asked. “I don’t know the protocol.”
“Bring it in here, Fake Ana,” I told him.
“It’s, uh, Nate.”
“Bring it in here, Nate.”
* * *
The man in the aisle seat’s knuckles glowed white through his tanned skin. Clenched in each of his hands, in serious danger of snapping, was an armrest that hadn’t done anything to deserve it. The glow intensified as the plane’s nose rose into the air and lifted its bottom.
“First time in a plane?”
Mr. 24C kept staring directly ahead. “No.”
I waited. No other words followed.
Message received.
Fun fact: This was my first time on an international flight, and I was soaking up the extra space. Slouching in my seat. Wiggling my feet because I could. For the dull part of this adventure I was wearing cozy layers and my strawberry blond hair was scraped up in a messy bun.
Where was this plane headed, you might be wondering?
Greece.
Ana—Real Ana—had invited Marti and me to spend summer on Nera, the Greek island she now called home. Marti was stuck at home in Oregon, iguana-sitting for her parents. But given that the number of iguanas in my life was currently zero, my summer was free of commitments beyond reading books and avoiding arguments with strangers on the internet. I’d seized Ana’s invitation with outright enthusiasm. The current plan was to spend three weeks on Nera, then leave for the mainland to soak up as much ancient history as I could squeeze into a two-week window.
I opened my book, but snuck peeks at the man in the aisle seat. As an elementary school librarian, my peripheral vision game was strong. I could almost see around corners. At least that’s what I told Bush Lake Elementary’s students when the full moon was wrecking havoc. Sometimes I think they believed me. The first graders, anyway. Fifth grade kids didn’t believe anything unless it was from a stranger on Roblox.
Good thing nobody was sitting between us, because Mr. 24C’s shoulders required extra real estate if they weren’t going to smack other passengers—specifically: me—in the face.
Whatever this guy did for a living it involved lifting things and putting them back down, and then lifting them again. The shoulders, the arms, the chest, none of it came from an office job. The tan announced that he worked and played outdoors. His haircut was fresh, and there was a thin white line around his ears, dipping down to his neck, where the hair had been buzzed away, revealing terrain untouched by sun. His smooth jaw said he had recently spent time with a razor. From what little I could see of his chest through the unbuttoned gap in his henley shirt, the man wasn’t hiding a bear in his family tree. His jaw was strong enough to crack walnuts, although right now it was clenched so tight that his dentist would soon be able to afford that beach house in Seaside.