Page 68 of The Summer Show

I took back the thermos and poured coffee into the lid-cup combo and handed it to him. He took the coffee and swallowed it all in one gulp.

“Nice day to sit in the dirt.” I took stock of our immediate surroundings and found a small stick that I used to draw a hangman board. “Six letters. Care to make your first guess?”

He stared at me, dazed. “E?”

“Bzzt. No E.” I drew a line in the dirt and threw him a clue. “Unless you’re a certain former vice president.”

“Tomato?”

“You say tomato, I say potato. Because potato is the word.” I handed him the stick. “Your turn.”

He accepted the stick and stared thoughtfully into the distance. What was he thinking? About words that could lead me to hang myself, or about whatever was on his mind before I came along with my coffee and games?

Why wasn’t he on his aunt’s roof? Roofing was his job.

Surely he—

The pieces fell into place. Nick wasn’t afraid of flying at all. It was the height that bothered him, not the convenient mode of travel. Capture the Flag? He wasn’t worried that I’d win, he was concerned that I was climbing the ladder. The fifth floor bar party with the see-through balcony? The comment about the absence of view-blocking curtains in his third-floor suite? Now his aunt’s roof?

For whatever reason, Nick was afraid of heights.

Now he was sitting on the street, trying to work up the armor to climb the concrete steps to the roof of his aunt’s two-story house.

He scratched two words in the dirt. Five underscores, one space, three underscores.

“A?”

He drew an A in the middle of the first word.

“E?”

That got me a line in the dirt.

“T?”

The moment he drew the T at the beginning of the first word, the answer became obvious.

“Thank you?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Using the flat end of the stick, he smoothed out the dirt.

“I can’t go up there, Kathleen.”

That was a problem.

“Okay, so I’ll go up and you tell me what to do.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what needs to be done.” He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his hair before jamming it back in place. “I haven’t been up there to check. I can’t.”

My problem-solving abilities kicked into high gear. I could build Scholastic displays and coordinate the Accelerated Readers Program, nothing was beyond me with this can-do attitude.

“This is precisely why humankind invented cellphones and the ability to Facetime.”

“I’m an Android guy.”