The Summer We Came to Life

“Do you? Do you want it to be, K?”

Kendra tried to think of how to answer. Of course she didn’t want it to be like this. This was horrible, not at all how it was supposed to be. This was the opposite of a Thanksgiving dinner of a life—her perfect boyfriend who would be her perfect husband, who would make partner while she made V.P. Their first child, a boy, wouldn’t be born until three years from now, leaving just enough time for a girl the following year, taking care of the children thing so she could return to work—

“Kendra?”

“I think you should leave.”

“Ken, come on, we have to talk about this if you’re leaving for freaking Honduras tomorrow.”

Kendra felt the vibrating phone in her hand like a low rolling of thunder. She picked up Isabel’s fourth call and put it to her ear.

“I’m not going to Honduras.”

November 2

Samantha

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

It’s not freaking fair that life gets to muck around in our plans like this.

I sound like Kendra, don’t I?

But we were supposed to be friends for another fifty years. Friends that wrinkle and giggle and whine through the flagging days of youth into our eccentric golden years. I can’t grow old without you. That can’t be what’s meant to be.

Obviously today was not a good day, seeing you like that.

Sigh. Okay. Let’s move from the world is against us to us against the world.

For physicists, the Holy Grail is the Theory of Everything—a single mathematical theory in which the equations of the microscopic world agree with the macroscopic world we experience. A theory that would explain:

What is life? When does a soul/human being become or stop being itself? Roe v. Wade but even deeper.

Imagine a single theory that unites biology, philosophy and supernatural phenomenon.

I’m sitting here amongst a mountain of my old textbooks and new ones, so at least we know we’re not the first ones to have gone this route. I’ll keep you posted. But right now I’m freaking exhausted, and I still want to go to the hospital with you tomorrow, butt crack early, as promised.

xoxo

—Sam.

CHAPTER

6

THE NEXT DAY I WAS ROLLER-SKATING AGAIN, chastising myself for letting Isabel talk me into letting her take a cab. She was late and her cell phone went straight to voice mail.

And there are no addresses in Tegucigalpa. Not numerical, maplike directions anyway. Instructions to my apartment translated as “up the hill near the electronics store, past the police headquarters, before the gated neighborhood at the top.” Isabel could be dead. Car accidents in Honduras were like blue skies in California. Isabel was probably dead and it was my fault.

Argh. This was the thing—I was losing my grip on my identity. The old Samantha didn’t worry. She lived and breathed a world that was safe, exciting and ultimately fair. Now the two incarnations of me were at war.

A rap at the front door interrupted the battle. I stumbled out of my skates and made for the door.

A flash of dark hair and aquamarine eyes leaped into my arms. Isabel stepped back to look me over then wrapped me back up in another hug.

She put two slender, perfectly manicured hands on either side of my face. “Man, it’s good to see you!”

What do you get when you mix an American supermodel with a Panamanian heartthrob? Isabel Brighton was so stunningly beautiful, you never remembered how beautiful and always ended up speechless. And I’d known her for over twenty years. Fresh from a filthy cab ride, Isabel looked like she’d stepped out of a magazine ad. Her tan platform sandals and her crimson toenails matched her fedora. You would never know that this girl was the archangel for the world’s poor. Which was the only reason I’d let her take a cab by herself. Isabel was nobody’s fool.

She swatted me with her purse. “Lemme in, I’m beat. I need to sit—” Isabel looked around the empty living room. She burst out laughing. “You are hilarious. You are aware you have four adults coming to visit, right?” I loved how we weren’t considered adults most of the time. But then I frowned.

“I can’t believe Kendra’s not coming. You believe her about work? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, you got off work.”

Isabel frowned, too, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she beelined for the kitchen. “So whatcha got in the way of refreshments for a weary traveler?” She opened the fridge and took out two Port Royals, the local beer.

I looked at my phone. It was three o’clock. Isabel arched an eyebrow and shoved the beer further toward me. “I’ve got bad news.”

We sat in the chairs with our feet up on the railing. Isabel had her skinny second toe crossed over her big toe. It was no party trick. That’s the thing about being someone’s friend that long—you know all their ticks and their warning signs, usually better than they do. The toe thing meant her mind was off wrestling an alligator. Isabel hated to complain. She also hated to mope, belabor or reveal any amount of vulnerability. I knew it would take some careful best-friend maneuvering before she told me what was wrong.

“I got canned.”

Or maybe not. I studied her face for clues of what she wanted me to say. “And now you can take those tightrope-walking lessons we always talked about?”

She giggled. The one thing that always gave no-nonsense Isabel away—her schoolgirl giggle. She sighed. “I think you had it right all along. Live free in exotic locales watching the sunset, not chained to a desk, drowning in case studies of awful things happening to people who don’t deserve it.”

For the first time, I could see little lines under Isabel’s eyes.

“Ha. Hate to break it to ya, but I’m having a crisis in the exact opposite direction, wondering what the hell I’ve done with my life.”

Isabel turned to look at me, her turquoise irises narrowing. “Oh, jeez, don’t ruin this for me. I’m one inch away from moving here to work in an ice-cream store.”

I nudged her foot with my toes. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know, just that the economy is shit and obviously the first thing we should do is abandon the people that need the most help. Makes sense to cut back funding on the ones that will probably die anyway, right?”

Her compassion moved me. She wasn’t worried about herself. God, all I’d been worrying about lately was myself. I felt ashamed.

“So, then you got laid off, not fired?”

“Does it matter? I’m tired of trying to change things that are never going to change, Sam. Poverty, corruption, disease. For as long as there have been human beings, there has been evil.”

I’d never heard Isabel talk like that. She rubbed her temples and continued. “We all die alone anyway, don’t we? Why do anything except try to be happy—bum around the world and have fun.”

She wasn’t trying to insult me, but it cut deep anyway. She noticed.

“No, I’m being serious. It’s not only my job. Ever since Mina’s death I just don’t see the point of drudgery in the face of this—” She waved her hand across the balmy, admittedly beautiful skyline of Tegucigalpa. “But—”

But that would make you question every single thing about who you are, I thought.