“The end.”

  “What was the girl’s name?” I ask her.

  “Linda,” she tells me. “Plain old Linda with an ‘i.’ No ‘y’ or anything like that. Just Linda.”

  “It’s not a very happy story,” I say.

  “You didn’t ask for a happy one,” the girl says. “Besides, it’s better than a happy one, because it tells the truth.”

  “But most people would probably want the girl to find out she really is special,” I tell her.

  “Of course they would,” she says. “Because they want to be special. But that’s not the truth, is it? I mean, not usually. Most people really are ordinary. They might not want to be, but they are. I hate those stories where someone finds out she’s the Chosen One or whatever. That’s false hope.”

  “So there should only be stories about people being like everyone else?” I ask.

  “More or less,” she says.

  “That wouldn’t be much fun,” I argue.

  “Life isn’t much fun,” she counters. “Not most of the time anyway. Mostly we’re all just a bunch of Lindas.”

  “Are you?” I ask.

  “Sure,” she says. “I’m perfectly ordinary. Nothing special about me.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think most people could come up with a story like that. Especially not when a total stranger asks them to do it.”

  “Maybe this is my one shining moment,” the girl says. “It will never get any better than it is right now. I should probably hang up so that I can enjoy the thrill before it’s gone.”

  And then she does. At first I think she’s just being funny. But she’s really not there. And for some reason, it makes me sad. I don’t know why, because really her story kind of sucked. But she was right about one thing—it was the truth. I guess I like that.

  I consider calling her again. I’ve never wanted to do that with any of the storytellers before. But I don’t even know what number I dialed. That’s part of what makes the game interesting. Besides, I think, what else would we have to say to each other? She was probably right to hang up. But I still would have liked to at least thank her for her story.

  I put the phone down. Then I realize that my room is filled with fireflies. Dozens and dozens of them. Their blinking lights twinkle as they form constellations over my desk and swoop like meteors through the dark. There’s something magical about the way they’re behaving, as if this is all some kind of choreographed ballet.

  This goes on for a long time. Then the fireflies start leaving through the open window, back out into the yard, until eventually there’s only one left. This one lands on the needle of the record player. It sits there and blinks steadily on and off, like a beacon.

  Because I have lived with Hank, Starletta, and Clodine for my whole life, I believe in magic. Despite what I said about the toads at breakfast. And something about this feels like magic.

  “What?” I say to the firefly. “Am I supposed to do something? Was I supposed to count how many of you there were so that Hank can tell me what it means?”

  The firefly puts its light on and flies away, drifting lazily toward the window. I half expect to look up and see a bunch of them spelling out a word or forming a symbol of some kind. But there’s just the one, and pretty soon it’s gone as well.

  I lie down again and stare at the ceiling. I think about the girl on the phone, and wonder where she is. Is she also lying in a bed in a dark room, unable to sleep because it’s so hot? Is she thinking about the strange boy who called her up, and wondering who he is? Maybe she’s telling someone else about it. (Hey, listen to this weird thing that just happened.) Or maybe she’s already forgotten about it.

  The sound of laughter floats up from downstairs. The Grands are still up, of course, talking about who-knows-what. I consider going down and asking them about fireflies. I’m sure they have an opinion about them; they have opinions about everything. Maybe I’ll tell them about Tom Swift, or the girl on the phone. (It occurs to me that either one could be the interesting thing the toads predicted.) Or maybe I’ll ask them to tell me about my mother. Or the curse. All of a sudden, I have a lot of things on my mind.

  Instead, I go to the cardboard box and take out album number three. Revolver. The Beatles. 1966. I slip the headphones over my ears, set the record on the turntable, and gently put the needle down. The countdown that begins “Taxman” starts, and I mouth the words.

  The note my mother included with this album is one of the shortest.

  A lot of people think the Beatles are the greatest band that ever existed. Maybe they are. I think what they really did was show the world what music could be, and other bands took it from there. This album is all about ideas.

  I didn’t understand what she meant by that when I first read her note. And I didn’t like Revolver for a long time, even though there are songs on it that pretty much everyone knows, like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine.” But the more I listened to it, the more I started to hear the ideas she was talking about. Sometimes it would be just a couple of words, or a few particular notes. They would stay in my head after the album was done playing, or pop up when I was thinking about something completely different. But little by little, these bits and pieces grew into bigger ideas, and the songs started to mean something to me.

  I think that’s what she meant, that listening to what the Beatles have to say in the songs on Revolver makes me think about other things in different ways. Like the music turns on another part of my brain or something. It’s hard to explain.

  Suddenly, I’m very tired. I close my eyes and listen as Eleanor Rigby wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. I make it through “I’m Only Sleeping” and “Love You To.” But by the second chorus of “Here, There and Everywhere” I’m drifting off.

  I dream of fireflies. They come into the room through the window, a large group of them. They swirl over the bed. And then they start to sing.

  sleep and dream your heart’s desire

  sleep and dream the face of love

  when you need me, call my name

  i’ll come to you and keep you safe

  The voice is a woman’s. It comes from each of the fireflies, but really it’s just one voice being shared among them. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

  in my arms find rest and comfort

  in your bed sleep warm and dream

  night will pass in hours untroubled

  till you wake at morning’s gleam

  The words are barely a whisper now. I know I’ve heard this song before. I search my mind, trying to remember where, trying to hold on to the melody and replay it over and over until a memory forms. But it slips away, becomes something else, an indistinct murmur that clouds my thoughts and lulls me to sleep. I try to sing the words to myself, to keep them alive, but they’re gone now, nothing more than the gentle thrumming of firefly light. I let it surround me, a luminescent cocoon of gold and green, and I sleep.

  Four

  I call Tom Swift on Wednesday morning. This year my father has hired Becky Roth to help out at the Eezy-Freezy a couple of days a week, and she’s there today, so I’m off. I’m supposed to be painting the front porch floor, but Hank, Starletta, and Clodine are camped out there in rocking chairs because it’s too hot in the kitchen, even for them. They’re drinking iced tea and discussing what it means that the hydrangeas have come out a particularly bright shade of blue this year.

  I hope that Tom answers the phone, but it’s an older man. I hesitate for a moment before asking, “Is Jennifer available?”

  “Just a minute,” the man answers. Then I hear him say, “It’s for you.”

  Then Tom is on the line. “Hello?” he says, sounding suspicious, like maybe I’m somebody calling to try to sell him car insurance.

  “Hi,” I say. “This is Sam.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “From the Eezy-Freezy,” I add.

  “I remember,” he says finally, still sounding unsure. Then nothing.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go tubing today,” I tell him. “They usually open the dam around noon, and that raises the water level downstream and makes the rapids a little faster.”

  There’s a long pause before Tom says anything. Then all he says is, “Okay.”

  “Great,” I say. “How about I pick you up at eleven thirty? We can leave my truck at the falls and Hank can pick us up at the bridge and drive us back.”

  “Hank?”

  “My grandmother,” I explain.

  “Okay,” Tom says again. Then he tells me his address, and I hang up.

  An hour later, I pull my truck up to a cabin not too far from the Eezy-Freezy. It looks like most of the cabins that encircle the lake, except that someone has put a concrete garden gnome beside the front porch. It holds a sign that says The McCrackens.

  Before I can get out of the truck, the front door opens and Tom comes out. I see the same old woman from the other day standing inside, peering out at me. She doesn’t look happy.

  Tom opens the passenger side door and gets in.

  “Hey, Tom Swift,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says. “Do you mind if we just go?”

  I pull away from the cabin. As we drive away from the lake, I can feel the worry coming off Tom like heat from a sunbaked road. He still isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s staring out the window.

  I try to decide if we’re going to have to talk about this. On the one hand, it’s none of my business. On the other, I don’t want to spend the afternoon floating down the creek with all kinds of weird tension going on. And I would like to be his friend. I decide that we do have to talk about it.

  “When I told the Grands that I’m gay, Clodine wanted to know if it meant I was going to be a hairdresser,” I say. “She was all excited because she thought she could stop paying Pearleen Hepworth to do her permanents.”

  “I’m not gay,” Tom mutters.

  “Oh,” I say, because I’m not really sure what’s happening here.

  “I’m trans,” he tells me.

  “Oh,” I say again, but in a totally different way, because now I understand. “Okay, then.”

  He turns and looks at me. “Are you being a dick right now?” he asks.

  “What?” I say. “No. I mean it. It’s okay.”

  “Do you even know what being trans means?” he says.

  I nod. “It means your inside doesn’t match your outside,” I say. “Well, that’s how Farrah describes it. I know it’s more than that, but that’s a pretty good definition, right?”

  “Who’s Farrah?” Tom asks me.

  “One of the queens,” I explain. “At the Shangri-La.”

  “The what?”

  I realize that this is going to be a much longer conversation, so I say, “I’ll explain while we’re tubing.”

  We arrive at the falls, and I park the truck. It’s a little before noon, and there are a couple of other people there waiting for the dam to be opened. I nod at the ones I know, and can’t help but notice some of the girls looking at Tom and smiling. One of them, Anna-Lynn Burling, comes over to us.

  “Hey, Sam,” she says, flipping her long blond hair out of her eyes. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Tom Swift,” I tell her. “He’s a summer person. Tom, this is Anna-Lynn. We’re in the same class at school.”

  Anna-Lynn beams at Tom. “A summer boy,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Tom.”

  “You too,” Tom says, but he doesn’t sound all that happy about it.

  A horn blasts, interrupting the introductions. “Five-minute warning!” Anna-Lynn screams. “Everybody in the water.”

  People rush toward the edge of the rocks. The dam is about two hundred feet upstream. It’s a small dam, nothing impressive or anything. It just lets out water from the reservoir. But it’s enough to make the creek rise and make rapids over the smaller rocks. Everybody wants to be in the water when it opens, to get that first rush.

  I take the two inner tubes that I’ve brought in the back of the Ford and hand one to Tom. We’re both already dressed in swim trunks and sneakers. I take off my T-shirt and toss it in the truck, but Tom keeps his on. Then we walk to the creek and he watches me sit down in my tube. A moment later, he’s beside me.

  The horn blasts again. The one-minute warning. “Ready?” I say, grinning at Tom.

  He nods. Anna-Lynn, who is a little downstream from us, calls out, “Race you to the bridge, boys! Last one there buys Cokes for everyone!”

  “You’re on!” I shout back. I wink at Tom. “I think she likes you.”

  He frowns, but doesn’t say anything. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, joking with him like this, but before I can apologize, the little gate in the dam opens and water comes streaming out.

  It hits us about thirty seconds later, lifting our inner tubes up and sending us into the middle of the creek. The water is funneled between two rows of large rocks, and one by one the tubes and their riders shoot down the rapids. The water is freezing cold, but the thrill of being carried downstream makes it so you don’t notice.

  My inner tube twirls around as I bounce off a boulder, and I see Tom behind me. At first he looks a little bit scared, so I wave at him and let out a happy whoop. He can’t help but laugh, and when his tube bumps up against mine, he’s got a big smile on his face.

  “I told you it would be fun,” I say.

  We ride the rapids for a while, until the creek has risen as much as it’s going to and the water calms down, flattening out into a wide ribbon. Now we’re floating more slowly, passing beneath overhanging tree branches as the creek turns in a series of curves that carry us into the woods. Anna-Lynn and her friends are still ahead of us, and although we sometimes see them on the long, straight stretches, when they disappear around a bend, Tom and I are all by ourselves.

  “Sorry about what I said earlier,” I tell him as I lie back on my tube, staring up at the bright blue sky. “You know, about Anna-Lynn. I was just joking. Although I do think she thinks you’re hot.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just that . . .” His voice trails off.

  I sit up and look at him. “You don’t have to explain anything,” I tell him. “Really.”

  “I guess she is kind of pretty,” he says after a while.

  “She has an identical twin sister,” I tell him. “Lynn-Anna.”

  “She does not,” Tom says.

  “It’s true,” I tell him. “The only way you can tell them apart is that Anna-Lynn is left-handed and Lynn-Anna is right-handed. So if you ask Anna-Lynn out, be sure to toss a baseball at her and see which hand she catches it with. Otherwise, you might be smooching her sister.”

  Tom splashes water at me. I splash back. Something has changed. I can feel it. He seems lighter. Happier. Secrets are heavy, and he’s carrying a lot of them.

  “So,” I say when we’re done with our water war. “Want to talk about it?”

  Tom sighs. “No,” he says. “And yes. Not right now. It’s been a rough couple of months. I’d like to just have fun. But how about this? You can ask me one question. Anything.”

  I know immediately what to ask. “How’d you come up with Tom Swift?” I’m curious about his name, particularly because I’m having trouble coming up with my own for the other me.

  “Really?” he says. “That’s what you want to know?”

  I nod. “Yep.”

  Tom dips his head back until it touches the water. “When I was little, we used to go visit my grandparents a lot. Not the ones here. These are my father’s parents. I mean my mom’s parents. They lived in Maine, right on the ocean. Their house was big and old and I loved it. I had my own bedroom there, and it had a bookcase in it filled with books my grandfather had read when he was little. There was a series about a boy named Tom Swift. He was an inventor, and he had adventures. The books were called things like Tom Swift and His Giant Robot and Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon. I used to curl up in bed and read them. I wanted to have adventures too. I wanted to explore the ocean in a submarine, and study comets, and go into caves. And I did kind of do those things with my grandfather. He took me fishing, and hiking, and sailing, and he never told me I couldn’t do something because I was a girl. Then he died. When I was eleven. My grandmother gave me all the Tom Swift books. So when I realized what was going on with me, it seemed to fit. I guess it’s silly.”

  “It’s not silly,” I tell him. “It’s cool. You wanted to be something, and now you are.”

  “Not really,” Tom says. “It’s just a name. And actually, you’re the first person I’ve ever tried it out on. I was too scared to use it back home, where people know me. But I figure here nobody does. And then my grandmother had to go and fuck it up.”

  “It’s all right,” I tell him. “Nobody else heard her.”

  “Now can I ask you one question?” he says.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you know?” he asks. “About me. Before my grandmother said that?”

  “No. I just thought you were a cute guy.” I realize too late what I’ve just said.

  “You think I’m cute?” Tom says.

  “That’s two questions,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “Not fair!” Tom cries, and smacks the water.

  “Rules are rules,” I say, spinning my inner tube away from him.

  But now that I’ve said it, I realize that it’s true. I do think Tom Swift is cute. And since the rule about asking only one question doesn’t apply to ones I ask myself, the next logical one is: Do I still think he’s cute now that I know he’s not exactly who I thought he was?

  As an almost-seventeen-year-old guy, I’ve thought about sex. A lot. And I’ve had a lot of the one-handed type. But so far I haven’t had any with another actual person. Not that there are a ton of options around here. At least not with guys my age. I’ve thought about maybe trying it out with one of the men who come to the Shangri-La. Believe me, I’ve thought about it a lot. But Lola says he’ll disown me if I do. Lola says that a guy’s first time should be special, and he doesn’t want me hooking up with just anyone. So I haven’t.