Summer in the City

Summer in the City — page 3 — Especially when she starts talking about the importance of preparing for final exams Like right now I want all of you to review Revise Make a List of Your Priorities She’s waving her arms around like a windmill and her red face is streaked with chalk She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to say something incredibly important THE RESULTS OF THESE EXAMS WILL DECIDE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE That’s enough to melt anybody’s brain Adults are so weird I’m finishing sixth grade and I’m supposed to think about the rest of my life I just want to get out of here so I can play baseball The rest of my life can wait My mother’s always asking me in her casual I’m-not really-asking-you kind of way what I want to do when I get older As if I didn’t know she wants me to say I want to be an artist just like you But if I said that the next minute I’d be enrolled in Saturday morning art classes like it or not Or if I answered I’d like to be a doctor I’d end up in

Summer in the City — page 4 — young scientists camp before I could say Open heart surgery No the rest of my life can wait until after summer vacation That gets me thinking I wonder where we’ll be going this summer You see whether I want to or not year after year vacation after vacation my parents bundle us into a car or a plane and off we go to some out-of-the-way place Ever been caught in a revolution in Mexico with kids not much older than you pointing rusty old guns in your direction I have Ever been chased by raging bulls around a square in some tiny village in the south of France Tell me about it If we’re not riding out hurricanes on the coast we’re getting sandblasted in the desert Or coming face to face with hungry alligators in the middle of a swamp in the middle of nowhere Those are the kinds of vacations we have No lazing around on the beach No Disneyland Our specialty is roughing it in some faraway place If I had the choice which I never do I’d have a normal kind of vacation in a

Summer in the City — page 5 — normal vacation spot But that would never happen in my family Not with my parents This year something fishy is going on Usually by the end of school our living room is buried under a mountain of maps and guidebooks Off the Beaten Track Way Off or Places to Go Where Nobody Goes or 101 Dangerous Things to Do on Your Vacation open suitcases backpacks hiking boots diarrhea cures mosquito repellant rain ponchos you name it But this year Nothing The living room is empty and my parents haven’t made their usual great announcement I wonder what’s up Tonight just as we sat down to supper my father suddenly put on his serious face You know that look It happens when your parents want to tell you something important but don’t quite know how to go about it The serious look is supposed to make you pay attention And it works

Summer in the City — page 6 — I have to admit I was a little worried Was someone sick Were my parents getting a divorce As usual my little brother Max didn’t notice anything He was trying to slip an olive to our cat who was parked under the kitchen table Miro will eat anything Brussels sprouts avocados pickles anything My mother calls him the feline vacuum cleaner Then my father cleared his throat in his serious way Boys he said Max straightened on his chair and put on an innocent

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