The Summer I Saved the World ... in 65 Days by Michele Weber Hurwitz

Author:Michele Weber Hurwitz [Hurwitz, Michele Weber]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-37108-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

He grins at me. “Lower your weapon. I come in peace.”

I stand. My heart slows down. “Ha ha. You didn’t have to sneak up.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. So, um, Neen? What are you doing?”

“I’m— Wait. What are you doing?”

“I asked you first.”

“Okay. Well, I’m planting flower seeds.”

“I was walking. Couldn’t sleep.” He looks at the packets. “Planting? At twelve-fifteen?”

“Yeah.” I smile. It’s hard not to smile at Eli. “You got a problem with that?”

“No. I guess not. But here? And now? And, okay, can I ask why?”

“Don’t you remember that night we ruined Mr. D.’s flower bed?”

He scratches his cheek. “Uh … no.”

“We ran through it, playing hide-and-seek. We were little. Me and you and Jorie. And he got mad and wanted our shoes.”

“Oh, yeah.” Eli laughs. “Crazy guy.”

“No, he’s not crazy. That’s the thing. Our parents were the crazy ones. Overprotective.”

“So after all these years, you just decided to come out here and fix his garden? In the middle of the night?”

“Yes. This is when he leaves his house.”

“Okay …”

I kneel and continue digging. Eli’s just standing there, watching.

“Why are you doing all these things?” he asks. “It’s you, isn’t it? All this stuff that’s been going on?”

I keep digging.

“Neen?”

“You know the answer.” I open a second packet of seeds and sprinkle them into the dirt.

Eli shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “You haven’t told me why, though.”

I smooth dirt over the seeds and look up at him. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.” He sits in the grass, stretches his legs out.

I start my third trench, then search his expression. Can I trust him? I want to. Try to explain this to someone. Maybe even to myself. But I don’t know where he’s at right now.

I sit back and remember how I drew the neighborhood houses on my poster board, eight separate squares that looked like they were floating in space. “You know all those movies, with heroes who fight aliens and monsters and powerful emperors and wizards gone bad … ridding the world of evil?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, what if that isn’t it at all? I mean, what if the bad stuff isn’t that obvious? It’s just sort of a part of things, all around us, but we don’t exactly see it. What if it’s … us? Like, the way we act? Or don’t act?”

“I’m sort of following you,” Eli says.

“And what if the solution is just … good? Plain, simple, small good things, so unnoticed, so unremarkable that they’re remarkable. And what if ordinary people could be the heroes?” I gesture to the dark houses. “Right here.”

Eli doesn’t say anything. His T-shirt ripples in the breeze.

I tear open another packet of seeds.

He moves some dirt with the toe of his shoe.

Then we look at each other, for what seems like a while, even though it’s probably a few seconds.

And I have that feeling again. About a kiss.

But. He stands. “I’ll get some water.”

When he comes back, I’ve emptied six packets of forget-me-not seeds into Mr. Dembrowski’s flower bed. Eli and I plant the rest together until we’ve filled up the entire garden.

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