Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff Page A

the box and took a big bite, munching with his mouth open so I could see all the pieces as he chewed—“you do dangerous stuff all the time.”
    â€œNo I don’t,” I said.
    â€œDo too. You go in the car with your parents, for one thing. That’s dangerous, ’cause you could get in a car accident. And even just eating lunch you could choke on a sandwich or something.”
    â€œShut up,” I told him. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” But he was right, and I knew it. Cars and eating were dangerous. “But…” I said, trying to think things out, “that’s different, though. Because you have to do that stuff—you don’t have a choice. You just need to be careful when you do it. Like wearing a seat belt, and chewing all the way. But obstacle courses”—I looked over across the grass, where Rebecca was dodging Aaron’s Super Soaker and screaming—“there’s no reason to do that at all.”
    Doug put the rest of the hot dog back in the box and swallowed. He was looking at me like I was a nut job. “You do it ’cause it’s fun, Annie,” he said. And he shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
    For the next hour or so Dad and I sat around waiting for the sun to go down, Dad reading his magazine and me reading Charlotte’s Web . We drank orangesoda and nibbled on watermelon without talking, while everyone around us laughed and shouted and played music and ran around looking like they were having a lot more fun than we were. I wished I had the bread for the ducks. I wished my mom were there. I wondered what happy things she’d think up if I asked her. They’d be all about vacuuming, probably. I sighed and turned a page in my book.
    After a while the sky got so dark that I had to squint my eyes to read. I looked over at Dad, who had set his magazine down beside him on the blanket and was staring at a swarm of gnats. I wondered for a minute if he might like playing the picnic game, but I never opened my mouth to ask him. Instead I just traced my pointer finger over the picture of the animals on the front of my book, over and over, covering every single line, until the sky finally turned a deep blue-black, and everyone got whisper quiet. That’s when the fireworks started up.
    I lay on my back on the blanket, my bare toes tickling a patch of grass, and I watched the sky over thelake light up all different colors. Then, after a while, I closed my eyes and I just listened. Everyone around me was oohing and ahhing, every time the fireworks popped, but I didn’t need to look anymore.
    Last year it had been all of us, me and Mom and Dad and Jared. All of us together, sitting on our blanket like usual, right up close to the water. And I’d been busy watching the fireworks when all of a sudden, in the middle of a big-kazam loud one, Jared caught me off guard and dumped a handful of grass right on my head. So I waited until I knew he wasn’t expecting it, and then I pretended to be looking at the sky, but really I was grabbing at the grass next to me, and when I had a good chunk I stuffed it down his shirt. And then he got me back with grass in my socks. After that there was some chasing but finally we decided to call a truce and we snuggled up next to Mom and Dad under the extra blanket, all of us together cozy warm, and watched the rest of the show. And then, just after the last firework had gone off but right before everyone started clapping, in that second of quiet, Jared turnedto look at me and I thought he was going to shove grass in my socks again but he didn’t. He just grinned real big and said, “That was fun, huh?”
    I wished there was a way to keep that in a bottle, that one moment of wonderful perfect, so I could open it up whenever I needed to get a good whiff.
    When the fireworks were all over, I opened my eyes and stared up into the black sky speckled with