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Ben lay flat on his worn blue bedspread, wishing for more than just a window AC unit.
By August, Cameron was hot and humid, and heat rose, he felt, specifically to his room. In only a matter of days, he’d be moving out, so he should probably savour everything about home. He rose to check that it was on the coldest setting, and then sank back down on the bed, accepting his fate. He couldn’t watch a film, read, or even listen to music. Everything he owned, all his “worldly possessions”, as Jane kept saying when she had wandered in to help him pack, were in tidy boxes stacked on the floor.
As the fifth Penderwick to move out to college, he wasn’t feeling unprepared or daunted. Especially at the prospect of studying film in New York, with Rafael. He grinned a little at the ceiling.
But it would still be strange to leave home. And in the summers, Gardam Street felt extra home-y, with at least most of the Penderwicks back from college for a short time, and the sprawling lawn thick and green, soccer balls whizzing across it. The woods at the end of the street cooled at night, and insects buzzed over the lazy creek. This weekend, even the Geigers were back, he could hear them yelling down in the yard.
His thoughts drifted between Quigley woods, where he would sneak with Rafael when they were 14 and it was the only place where he could breathe, and the thought of walking, hand in hand, in some sunny park in the city. All his older sisters had gained a certain strength that was hard to define when they returned for the first time from college. A quiet clarity and strength, like they were more completely themselves. Batty had come back from Boston after her first fall semester with choppy little bangs and a singing voice that was even stronger.
Ben was running his hand through his own hair, contemplating this, when the cacophony outside reached new heights, and suddenly piano music was pouring out of the front room with lots of clapping that was mostly in time. It could only mean one thing–Lydia home from Arundel.
Ever since Rosy’s wedding a few years back, Lydia spent as much of her summer as she could there with Alice and her family.
Without having to look, Ben could perfectly imagine the scene below: Lydia twirling around in her pink converse to whatever Batty was playing on the piano, alternating between breathlessly telling everyone what she had done all summer, and giving everyone tight hugs. He thought about going down and joining them, and decided against it. He was sure he’d get the summer recap anyway, and sometimes it was nice to be alone. Again, Ben reminded himself that in a few weeks he’d probably be missing not only the stifling summer heat of his childhood bedroom but the chaos of his family. He rolled over and replied to himself that he had a solid eighteen years worth of lovely chaos under his belt and had been very productive all day, packing and cleaning. His eyes drifted closed as his mind wandered back to Quigley woods, Rafael, the 2 years they had spent not talking, their reunion in the middle of senior year, and their college plans.
Of course, no one in the family knew that this reunion was more than just a childhood friendship back in full force. No one but Skye knew anything about that. Eventually–Ben yawned–he would tell them. They wouldn’t mind. He liked things to be just his, sometimes.
When he woke up, he could tell even with closed eyes that the light in the room was all different. And someone was quietly but insistently knocking on his door. He stretched, taking in the fact that according to the clock, it was already almost midnight, and that he had fallen asleep in jeans, lying on top of his blanket.
“Yes?”
“Ben! Mom wants to know if you’re feeling alright? Also it’s me! I’m home! Let me in!”
Ben clambered up, letting Lydia, laden with two bowls of ice cream, in. She hugged him as much as she could without dropping a bowl or tripping on a box before sitting on his bedspread.
“Don’t spill,” Ben said, accepting his bowl.
After assuring her, and then his mother, who insisted on checking his temperature before she went to bed, that he wasn’t sick and only a bit tired, Lydia began to chatter about Arundel.
Her and Alice and Jack and the chickens, running away from Mrs. Tifton, the short film they had made that she was going to show him, playing hockey on rollerblades on the long driveway, the time that Jeffrey and Batty came to visit, and so on.
Sometimes Ben felt like the only Penderwick who had never truly had these mythical Arundel summers. The only Penderwick who hadn't always had the Penderwick name, having been born before his mother had met his father. The only brother in the house. It was silly, considering Tommy and Nick and Jeffrey, and all the summers he had in Cameron, and of course he loved his family. But as Lydia spoke, he felt a strange feeling, like misplaced nostalgia. At 18, he was already impossibly ancient. He would never be younger again and could never enjoy things in the same way.
“Are you listening, Ben? Are you getting sleepy? Don’t act like you usually fall asleep at 9pm every night or something. I know for a fact that your sleep schedule is like, totally screwed.”
“No, sorry Lyds. I was just thinking. But hey, I want to rewatch that little movie I made at Arundel. With Alice as the-”
“The alien! Of course I remember. Yes, I will watch it with you.” The lighter strands of her ginger hair, the same as his, shone in the lamplight. Her feet, one with a Hello Kitty sock, the other with a neon green sock tapped the carpet as if they were dancing all on their own.
Ben really had missed her, he realized. It always kind of surprised him.
“Let’s do something tomorrow also, ride bikes or something. I only have three days left in Cameron.”
Lydia agreed, kicking the boxes to make a better path to the door while Ben carried the empty bowls. After depositing them in the kitchen sink, they settled in front of the TV with a bag of pretzels. Ben found the DVD, popping it in. The screen hummed with quiet static for a while, before it finally resolved into a black and white, but very recognizable scene of Arundel.
Lydia pointed, her hand over her mouth to not laugh too loudly. Her own elbow, unmistakably pointy and freckly, hovered in the corner of the shot.
“Whoops,” Ben muttered under his breath with a grin.
Alice appeared, genius and perfect in the alien costume, and Lydia fell into a rapt silence, that Ben could only guess was a mix of nostalgia and devotion to her best friend.
Ben himself hadn’t rewatched it since he had edited it that summer. He couldn’t have picked a more perfect thing for them to watch.
The whole thing was brimming with a Penderwick coziness that he hadn’t even been aware of when he made it. It all came back to him: the slight shakiness of the camera and the unquestioning respect of his younger self’s artistic vision by everyone involved.
See? He told himself. You had a Penderwick summer at Arundel. It still counts.
Seeing everyone slightly younger was also so strange. You never know what direction people will grow into, in the future. At the time, everything felt so final. Was Ben driven by a desire to record because he knew that it would be a fleeting summer? As with youth, dragging forever in the moment, and light speed in memory?
That was an interesting line, so he thought it over a few more times so he wouldn’t forget. He was trying to improve his writing about film, so that he’d be prepared for university. The little alien, starkly out of place against the wide breezy meadows, felt like a far too obvious metaphor, looking back. He made a mental note of this as well.
The film might have been short and amateur and inherently a little silly, but there was something about it. Something great sparkled through, when they shot that damn death scene. Alice as the little alien falling mournfully, right along with some sad, end of summer rain. And Lydia gasped, when that massive dog, Batty’s ex-boyfriend’s, if Ben remembered right, limped over to the little alien, howling his grief into the sky.
When it was over, the static returned. The siblings sat in silence for a while, until Ben got up to take the DVD out. He glanced over at Lydia and paused, uncertain. Tears were running down her face, dripping off her freckly chin.
“Oh, are you okay? What’s-”
“I love Arundel so much and I love Alice so much and I don’t want you to go and-”
Lydia, normally quite cheerful and reasonable, tended to ramble when she was upset, as if she was trying to get it all out as soon as possible. Ben did not feel well equipped at this moment to handle someone crying, so he was a little relieved when she was cut short by Batty arriving from around the staircase.
“Hey guys. Oh, Lyds,” she said, her tone softening as she went to sit beside her. Ben squished in next to her.
After a while, Lydia was all cried out, the situation with the film explained, and they settled into a comfortable silence. Tomorrow, Ben thought, he would promise that she could come visit him in New York and see whatever shows she wanted. He could probably put her in an assignment project too–maybe an alien sequel. Or a prequel.
“Batty, why were you downstairs anyway?” Lydia thought to ask.
“Oh, I was calling Jeffrey,” Batty said, smiling radiantly down at her phone. “He wanted my opinion on a piece he was working on, and then we were just talking.”
Lydia gave Ben a look over Batty’s unsuspecting head that he returned, suppressing a grin.
A few years later, when Alice came to stay with the Penderwicks for Thanksgiving, Ben would see, from his window, Lydia and Alice walking together on the sidewalk. Bent close and giggling together, pinky fingers loosely linked between them; Alice, in a purple winter coat and his sister in a pink winter hat. Something made him pause to get his camera to take a picture. Maybe it was the angle, or the contrast of Alice’s black hair against the light, early dustings of snow. When he came back to the window to take it, Alice was gently, softly, moving a ginger lock out of Lydia’s face. They stopped there, for a second, the twin trail of footprints in the snow ending jumbled together, before the girls seemed to come back to themselves and turned to walk into the warm house.