Chapter Nine: Come Summer's End
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By the time summer ended, there was something very different about the Sometimes houses. In fact, there were several somethings.
The gardener had lost his battle to keep his gardens intact. In the rows of hedges lining the drive, he did his best to cover up the tunnels crawled through them, making sure that he cut the thorns from all the rose bushes nearby with the knowledge that there was a very strong likelihood that two precocious children would be having 'adventures' in them. The trees no longer stood quiet and untouched around the gardens; every one of them had, at some point, been conquered and climbed. The immaculate lawns showed the tread of feet running over them, a nearby wall dented from a ball kicked against it over and over again. And, in Emily's room next to her bed, torn from being shoved into pockets and grubby from dirty hands, was a map of every trail, tunnel, and shortcut they'd claimed from the yard that was for only quiet contemplation no longer.
Emily's bedroom was also changed as the season rolled onward and the weather began to cool. Empty more often than not, Emily had requested a camp mattress on the floor of Spencer's room and spent more nights there than she did in her own house. Diana had become used to a breakfast table set for three and both children vanishing from the moment they ate to the moment it was time to come inside once more.
The children themselves were changed. Both had sunburned—both were now tanned, which was a startlingly new thing for the boy from the desert city, despite his hometown. Diana, wary of the questions that would be asked when Elizabeth returned to find Emily's expensive clothes destroyed by their games, had taken the girl to a thrift shop and bought her two sets of 'outside' clothes of jeans and polos, buying Spencer much the same after a moment's thought. Emily, naturally, was thrilled.
Baltharog, who'd been exiled from the big house and back into the garden with her new family, had her own Sometimes home now. The gardener, perhaps in an effort to reassure Emily that he didn't plan on eating their hare, had built her a little burrow made of wood and tucked below a wide bush, perfect for hiding in and with plenty of room for the growing hoard of smaller hares. The smaller hares, now nearly a month old and fully weaned, wanted nothing to do with the children who came to stare at them from the bench nearby—where Diana told them firmly they must sit to watch the hares, lest they frighten them away for good by going closer—but Balthy appreciated the biscuits they brought with them. She was, after all, a very easy-going hare, lying sprawled by the bench as Spencer sat there and happily regaled her with the adventures he was now having with Emily, instead of by himself and with only a hare for company.
The biggest change between the end of summer and the beginning was probably the biggest: there was nothing like witnessing the beauty of childbirth together after a terrifying storm to ensure that a lifelong friendship had been formed, one cemented by a shared desire to adventure, a lingering fear of loneliness, and the realisation that Emily could finish her classes and homework twice as fast if Spencer helped her. The children were firm friends and sure that nothing could ever change that.
But summer always ended.
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"Your mother will be home on Sunday, ready to see you off to school on Monday," Diana told Emily, partly to inform her and partly to distract her from whatever she was planning to do to the poor tailor taking her measurements. School uniforms had been procured for her, Elizabeth's instructions for them to be tailored to fit neatly proceeding as planned. It all seemed very odd to Diana, who wasn't sure why an almost-eight-year-old needed to be so perfectly presented simply to go to school. "Are you excited?"
Emily shrugged violently, earning a scowl from the tailor.
"Shoulders straight," the man said firmly. "Arms out, stop moving."
"Do I have to do that?" Spencer whispered from behind Diana, sitting patiently on Elizabeth's expensive couch with his hands on his knees, waiting for his friend to be finished so they could play.
"No, don't worry," Diana stage-whispered back, hearing Emily huff. "No chance of getting poked for you, boyo."
The tailor now turned his glare onto Diana, probably resenting the implication that he was pricking Emily with the pins he was so carefully hemming her dress with. Emily, who was unhappy to be back into yet another dress that she was to keep 'presentable', took a deep breath. Diana saw the danger and decided to step in before the tailor got himself 'accidentally' kicked.
"What adventures are in store for my brave heroes on their last free weekend?" she asked, seeing Emily wilt.
"It's not a free weekend," she muttered. "I still have the stupid French dialogue to write, remember?"
"Maybe you should have done it last week like I told you too," Spencer retorted. Diana watched with interest—her little wallflower had more bite in him than before, even standing up to his headstrong friend when he felt like it was needed. "Now we're going to spend our last weekend writing French."
"It's Emily's homework, not yours," Diana pointed out, pretty sure that she should at least keep up a pretence that there wasn't any collusion going on in her classroom.
Emily shrugged again, earning a long-suffering sigh. With as much dramatic effect as she could muster, she cast a miserable look at the neat pile of dresses still to be fitted. "Are they all dresses?" she asked hopefully, already knowing the answer. "I hate dresses. I hate uniforms. Why can't I go to Spencer's school? He doesn't have a uniform…"
Diana didn't answer that, wincing a little at the idea of Elizabeth Prentiss and her daughter walking into the public-school Spencer would be attending.
"I wish I had a uniform," Spencer said wistfully. "Can I wear a tie anyway?"
But Emily's lip was beginning to wobble dangerously, and Diana thought perhaps it would be prudent if they took a break before she broke down completely, citing lunch as a reason.
"Diana?" Emily whispered as they walked up the hall together, Spencer trailing behind and still rambling about the long and varied history of neckties. "Spencer's still going to be here when I come home from school, right? He's not going to leave?"
"Of course, he will be," Diana replied, feeling a small hand creep into hers, Emily's feet dragging on the floor. "Different schools are nothing—you'll still be perfectly good friends when you return home."
"Unless he makes better friends at school and forgets me…"
It was telling, Diana thought, that Emily never considered the possibility of her making other friends and leaving Spencer behind in turn.
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Come Sunday, they were throwing bits of biscuit to Balthy and her brood, neither of them in the mood to really make the most of their last day of freedom.
"We'll still have weekends," Spencer said hopefully, watching Soulpepper chasing George in frantic, hoppy circles. "We can adventure on weekends. And I like school—I'm doing two grades this year and my teachers have come up with this really—"
"It's not the same," Emily snapped. In a temper, she threw her biscuit so hard that it flew over the top of Balthy's head and vanished into the bushes behind them, two leverets giving chase. "And, besides, I don't get weekends. I have lessons and church and just, blah. And Mom is going to make me go to functions again, I bet."
"What are functions?" Spencer asked.
"Dinners and boring places with boring people and no kids, ever. They all smile at me and tell me nice things but they don't actually want to talk to me and, even if they did, I'm supposed to be quiet and polite and only say certain things."
That sounded very odd to Spencer. "What's the point?"
"I don't know. No one ever tells me. I don't think any of them know the point of it either, they just do it because adults do." This, to Emily, sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation. Adults were completely perplexing, from their functions to their manners right down to the really weird stuff, like the baby-making. It had been very quickly decided after reading the reproduction book that they were never going to bring it up again, ever, although Emily sometimes stared at people with kids on the street now with her brain screaming gross gross gross gross gross at the thought of what she knew had been done to get those kids.
"I'm never having kids," she announced for the eightieth time since reading that book, Spencer making a low noise of distress at the reminder. He seemed to have taken it a lot more personally than she had, going through another five more books just to be sure since "that doesn't sound right." "I think I'm going to grow up and be a hare."
The hares, as though they just wanted to show off how great a life that would be, flopped in the sun and began to snooze.
"I'm going to be a recluse." Spencer's nose was still wrinkled unhappily, but he seemed sure of this. Emily looked quizzically at him. "I'll live on a mountain and read a ton of books, or something. Maybe write a ton of books and never give an interview, like Thomas Pynchon. No one will know my name."
He seemed very pleased by the idea of that.
"How will you publish books if they don't know your name?" Emily asked curiously. "You've got to put your name on envelopes to send them through the mail."
"I'll use a pseudonym—a pen name. Like, um. Dr Joseph Bell."
Emily stared. What a boring made up name. He was even boring in his imagination. "Your names suck," she told him, shaking her head with disappointment. "If I was going to bother with a fake name, I'd make it cool. Like…" She looked around, for something cool, seeing only sleeping hares and biscuits. "Like. Um. Blackbird! That's a cool name."
But Spencer wasn't listening to how cool her fake name would be anymore; instead, he was looking behind them to where the drive was barely visible. "Someone is here. Maybe your mom?"
Oh no.
Miserably, Emily brushed crumbs from her nicest skirt and trudged over the lawn to greet her mother, Spencer trailing behind.
Summer was definitely over.
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It wasn't Elizabeth.
One moment, Spencer was walking behind the glumly trudging Emily, worrying about the fact that she wasn't marching with her usual surety, the next she'd stopped dead and was staring at the person climbing out of their car. Spencer stared too. It was a man. Spencer had never seen him before, although he guessed by Emily's shocked stance, she—
"Daddy!" screamed Emily, rocketing forward from her frozen stance and leaping into the air to be caught by the startled man. Despite his shock, and his armful of papers and a briefcase, he dropped it all to catch her and hug her tight. "You're home! I missed you, you're home, I missed you, where did you go, are you staying are you home are—"
"Whoa there, Miss Muffet, settle down," the man said, swooping her in a circle before putting her down beside his spilled papers. "Yes, I'm home. We'll talk more inside—and yes, I've missed you too. Come on, hop hop. Let's go."
And Emily, chattering on rapidly and without a single glance back at Spencer standing there, raced after him into the big house, the wide front door closing firmly behind them.
Spencer stood alone.
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Curled in bed that night, Spencer stared at the empty camp mattress while his mother read to him from a book of old poetry. Normally, he'd be engrossed in the rhythm and metre; tonight, he was just worried.
"What's Emily's dad coming home mean for us?" he asked finally, as Diana stopped reading and just looked at him. "Are we going to have to move again?"
"No, love." Diana leaned down and kissed his forehead, wondering just how well her sensitive, genius boy was going to handle everything awful in the world. "We're here to stay. Michael is just home until Elizabeth is able to return from Rome, then he'll likely be leaving again."
"Why?" Spencer pressed. It didn't make sense to him, not even a little. The man who'd hugged Emily so tight today must love her. Why would he leave someone he loved? "They look happy…"
"What's that thought?" Diana tapped him on the nose with the book, smiling as he giggled. "'Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'"
Spencer closed his eyes and thought about that for a moment. "I don't know it."
"Tolstoy. I have some of his works here. I'll put them aside for you. The ideas may be complex, but your comprehension is adequate enough for a rudimentary introduction."
Spencer thought further about what he was being told. "You don't think they're happy."
But the clock was ticking on, and tomorrow her boy needed to be clear-headed for school. Diana stood, checking his nightlight before tucking him in. "I don't think anyone in such a big home with so little heart is happy," she said finally. "And no little girl wants to be paraded about like a porcelain doll. Go to sleep, Spencer. We're not being sent away, and Emily will still be your friend, father or no. I love you."
"I love you too. Night, Mom."
But, even when he finally fell asleep, Spencer's dreams were fraught and filled with lonely houses and dolls with no purpose.
He wondered what autumn would bring.
