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  Robin threw her arms tragically around Tink and screamed, “Don’t go, PLEASE don’t go!”

  This set off a stream of sarcasm and before long, all six of them were blubbering into each others’ necks, “I’ll miss you! I love you! I’ll write every day!” while Gene stood rolling his eyes and shaking his head. There was a moment or two of authentic gravity and a couple of genuine (if well hidden) tears amidst the mess of sarcasm. And as they all wound down toward the inevitable separation, Julie and Robin suggested that they might make a summer trip out to Washington for a visit. Everyone perked up at the thought. And so, accompanied by a slew of smiles and waves, the three sisters scrambled into Julie’s little clunker and buzzed away.

  Gene ushered his three children into the house and assigned them to different tasks in preparation for the next day’s journey. Tom waited until he was convinced that his two sisters were out of earshot and then asked his father for permission to go out that night. Gene shook his head; they had a long drive ahead of them tomorrow and he wanted everyone in bed early so they would be well rested in the morning. The last thing he wanted to deal with during a two-day road trip was a tired and grumpy teenager.

  Tom grumbled bitterly for a few moments and then accepted defeat. “Well, I have to go call Julie anyway and tell her I can’t go,” he said, glaring at his father with an insolence that only a nineteen-year-old could achieve.

  Gene shrugged, unmoved. “I guess you better go call her then,” he replied.

  Tom’s plan to sneak out of the house and meet Julie secretly took shape almost accidentally. He had already managed to sneak out on one previous occasion that week, but he had really been hoping that his father would be reasonable this time. Still, Tom wasn’t about to let Gene’s refusal spoil the evening. So after a few minutes on the phone, he and Julie had established their secret plans.

  Tom had been sleeping on the fold-down bed in the back of the van for most of the week. After spending one long, sleepless night on his grandmother’s blue velvet couch, listening to his father snoring through the wood-paneled wall, Tom had convinced his parents that the most logical, most comfortable place for him to sleep would be the van-bed. After all, what was the point in having a van-bed if nobody was ever going to sleep in it? So all that week at bedtime, Tom had taken a house key and a van key, and retired to the driveway. Tonight, he would simply head up the street and wait for Julie at the corner instead.

  As Tom replaced the earpiece carefully onto the cradle of the old rotary phone and swiveled around on Grandpa Art’s basement bar stool, he came face-to-face with his sister Tink and knew instantly that his plans had been found out. After several minutes of whining and begging, Tink was about ready to give up her hopes of being invited along when Kathy ambled out of the bathroom, towel around head and toothbrush in mouth, to see what she was missing. Tink filled her in on the excitement, hoping for an ally in her arguments, while Tom nervously eyed the staircase and hissed at her to keep her voice down. Kathy returned to the bathroom to spit and when she came back, she started systematically pointing out flaws in the plan. The most obvious and discouraging problem was that Tink and Kathy were sharing the guest bedroom, which was directly across the hall from their light-sleeping grandparents. It would be nearly impossible for either or both of them to sneak out undetected. For Tom the task would be infinitely easier. In fact, he wouldn’t really have to sneak out at all, he would merely have to sneak away. Eventually, Kathy’s annoyingly sensible logic won her sister over, and Tink conceded. Besides, she didn’t want to be a tagalong, she sniffed as she marched up the stairs, she wanted to be asked to go.

  This scene was the perfect representation of the two Cummins sisters and their dispositions. Tink never thought about practicalities. She was the dreamer, the comedian, the center forward on her hockey and soccer teams, always seeking the spotlight and usually getting it. Kathy was the shyer and more sarcastic but braver character. She played goalie on both teams and she was more grounded and sensible than her slightly older sister. Tink was the aggressor; Kathy was the defender.

  So the sisters wished their brother luck and went back to their assigned chores. Tink more grudgingly of course, pouting for a little while until she started to yawn amidst her folding and packing. Eventually, she even began to think that maybe bed wouldn’t be such a bad end to the evening. Shortly everything was made ready for the morning’s journey and the lights of the cozy home started to go out, one by one, as its occupants drifted to bed.

  Meanwhile, Tom stalled in the basement bathroom. He brushed his teeth twice. He flossed. He brushed again and then looked at his watch. He sat nervously on the closed lid of the toilet, fully dressed and waiting for the sounds of wakefulness to cease above him. He flipped idly through his mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal and tried not to stare at his watch. He was usually the last one to bed, so his parents wouldn’t be suspicious if they heard him going out to the van after everyone else was tucked in for the night. All the same, he was hoping the whole house would be asleep before it was time to go. When reading “How to Make the Perfect Bundt Cake” finally became too much for him, he closed the magazine, took one last look in the mirror, and switched off the bathroom light.

  At eleven o’clock, Tom closed and locked the front door of his grandparents’ brick house feeling a bit stealthy and silly. In the driveway the bright spotlight came on, illuminating the whole yard and, it seemed to Tom, half of the neighborhood. He studied the window of the room where his parents were sleeping. The curtains and shades were pulled tight. Nothing stirred. He approached the van and unlocked it, threw his backpack inside, waited a moment and then slammed the door. Unconsciously, he held his breath as he turned the corner of the van and walked quickly and quietly toward the street. As he arrived at the end of the driveway, he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a package of cigarettes. He stopped a few minutes and stood at the end of the driveway, smoking and watching the house. If anyone inside was suspicious, they would follow him out now, in the next minute or two. The cigarette was a good alibi — he would much rather get caught smoking than sneaking out. But there wasn’t so much as a peep from inside the house, so halfway through the cigarette, he turned on his heel and started walking into the chilly night, thinking how ridiculous it was that he was nineteen and he still felt so sly disobeying his father.

  When Tom had asked his father’s permission to go out earlier that night, he originally intended to go to Denny’s — just for a coffee and a sociable chat with Julie and Robin. But now that he was out, he realized he had no time constraints. When Julie and Robin pulled up in the car that Tom had dubbed “the Hornet” thanks to the high-pitched, moped-like drone of its engine, the three cousins held a quick conference. Shouting over the loud buzz of the little car, they made the collective decision to complete the one item that had been neglected from that week’s to-do list: they would go see the poem Julie and Robin had spraypainted on the deck of the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. They would swing by, go for a moonlit walk, have a quick look at the poem, and then go to Denny’s for that coffee.

  It was fairly easy for Tom to talk himself out of his usual apprehension about such an idea. He told himself that his anxiety was unwarranted, that the Midwest was different from the East Coast, that they would be perfectly safe. After all, he was from Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, Missouri, was hardly competing as the murder capital of anywhere. Tom’s was a fairly common misconception: St. Louis had somehow escaped the reputation it deserved. In 1991, people still thought of the city as the “Gateway to the West,” a safe and friendly Mississippi River town. Somehow, the fact that St. Louis had the third-highest metropolitan murder rate in the country had gone largely unnoticed in the realm of public opinion. Certainly it wasn’t a statistic that Tom, or even Julie or Robin, knew anything about.

  So the atmosphere in the Hornet was excited and chatty. Julie and Robin were elated at the prospect of showing off their handiwork to their cousin. Tom was relieved an
d somewhat exhilarated by his second home-escape of the week. The conversation, as usual, flipped from politics to religion to sex to music. The three friends changed topics as often and effortlessly as Julie changed lanes on I-70.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On that night, the fourth of April, 1991, Tom Cummins was nearing the final stages of a fairly major identity overhaul — pretty standard stuff for a nineteen-year-old. He was in transition from awkward high-school screwup to young dedicated fireman/ professional. And to his mind, he had the girl seated to his left to thank for much of this change.

  Before Julie came into his life, Tom could never have envisioned himself holding an animated intellectual discussion with two other intelligent people. Instead, the pre-Julie Tom would have sat moodily, probably rolling his eyes and shrugging his responses to any questions directed at him, not because he didn’t have anything engaging to say, but because he didn’t have the confidence to say it. It was thanks to Julie that now he spewed his views on everything from the movie Dead Poets Society to Mayor Barry’s latest hijinks. He was sure Julie hadn’t noticed his substantial personality change because, with her, he had always felt comfortable expressing himself. He wondered if she had any idea at all how much she’d helped him grow up.

  Tom’s journey through the American public-school system had been a long and arduous one. By the time he reached high school, he had pretty much embraced the version of himself that he saw through his teachers’ eyes: lethargic, unresponsive Tom. But as he reached the middle of his teen years, his difficulties became a bit more complicated than some low grades and a lack of educational enthusiasm. Adolescence just didn’t seem to agree with him. He was awkward and tongue-tied most of the time; he was embarrassed about being slightly overweight. In fact, he was embarrassed about most everything. And when his first real girlfriend dumped him to start going out with his best friend, he threw up a mighty wall of indifference.

  He started hanging out with the punk crowd at school. He admired the girls with the shaved heads and the piercings. He became a die-hard Sex Pistols fan. He took up smoking with vigor. He bought blue hair mascara — but couldn’t quite find the courage to wear it, so he ended up passing it on to Tink, who used it to paint her braids for cheerleading. He skipped class periodically, but only at times when he knew he’d get away with it. He tried everything he could, really, to fit in with the out crowd, but he could never quite seem to make it click.

  It wasn’t long before Tom started spinning stories and telling tales, sometimes to his friends in an effort to seem cool, other times to his parents to cover up the latest report card or a party he wasn’t supposed to go to. He walked a fine line, but he seemed to know instinctively where that line was and he did not cross it. He knew the difference between what was regular adolescent disobedience and what was just plain bad. So he wasn’t a lost cause. His teenage rebellions seemed to follow the same patterns that his schooling had: he screwed up just enough to cause his parents constant disappointment and worry, but never enough that they gave up on him. He really wasn’t a bad kid, just a hearty underachiever.

  For Gene, the relationship with his son was particularly frustrating. Like Tom, Gene was the eldest sibling in his family. But unlike Tom, Gene had developed a seriousness of purpose and sense of responsibility very early in life. He would never have dreamed of disobeying his father, and that fact lent an extra sting to Tom’s growing impertinence. Gene couldn’t understand his son, couldn’t relate to his attitude, and had no patience for his irresponsibilities and juvenile delinquencies.

  One night Tom missed his curfew by almost an hour, and when he finally did come home he was sleepy and reeked of peach schnapps. His father dismissed him to bed, agreeing to deal with him in the morning. At seven A.M. the following day, Gene crept into his son’s bedroom and silently slipped a Tchaikovsky tape into his stereo. He cranked the volume all the way up, hit the play button, and yanked the quilt off the bed. Then he yelled at his son to peel himself off the ceiling and get dressed — hangover or no hangover, he was going to spend the day cleaning out the garage.

  As the daily clashes on the home front escalated, Tom played the game, adopting the characteristics his parents expected of him. The cycle constantly refreshed itself: obnoxious teenager, angry parent; obnoxious teenager, angry parent. Things were looking bleak. And then one day, in Tom’s sophomore year at Gaithersburg High, something remarkable happened.

  As part of Gene’s work as a Catholic deacon, he participated in a lot of community outreach programs. He ministered to the sick at the local hospital and he took communion to the elderly. Most recently, he had been offered the chaplaincy of the local fire department. Gene wholeheartedly embraced the opportunity; he loved the idea of attending to the people who so nobly and courageously gave of themselves to the community. So, with his usual quickness and efficiency, Gene took the required qualification classes and began a rather extensive volunteer program as the fire department’s official chaplain. And the job came with an unexpected bonus: Gene impressed his son.

  For the first time in years, Tom allowed the well-buried respect he had for his father to cautiously bubble up within him. The common ground that Gene had searched so fruitlessly for had finally, accidentally, appeared. Gene installed a fire radio next to the kitchen table and started carrying a portable radio and a pager. Kay hated the continuous squawking, but both father and son were immediately addicted. Tom tried to appear uninterested, but he silently suspected that his father’s new activities were bordering on heroic. It became harder and harder for him to keep his curiosity at bay. Eventually, he started asking questions about the different codes and tones that the dispatchers used, about the different coverage areas, about the squads, and about Gene’s own place in the rank and file. Gene answered all of his questions with muted excitement and then one day, as casually as he could, he invited Tom to come with him to the firehouse.

  Tom was fifteen years old at the time and after one trip to Station 8 in Gaithersburg, he knew he had found his calling. His parents assumed that it was a phase, but they were so happy with the improvement in his attitude that they naturally encouraged the interest. The next semester when the school issued its course catalogue, Tom was ecstatic to find that they were offering a work-study program in conjunction with the county fire academy. Tom came home so excited that he talked his father into making a call to the sergeant that very night. The next day, Tom was enrolled in the program.

  So during his junior and senior years Tom attended Gaithersburg High School in the mornings and then took a bus to the Montgomery County Fire Academy, where he spent his afternoons in qualification classes. His academic grades improved significantly, and at the fire academy Tom graduated near the top of his class.

  As a graduation present, Kay and Gene bought Tom a round trip ticket to Florida, where he would spend a couple of weeks of the summer at the home his grandparents had retired to in Clear-water. Julie had just finished her freshman year of college and had decided to spend some time that summer in Florida as well. The two cousins hadn’t seen each other in years. Gene and Kay had left their hometown of St. Louis many years earlier to travel where Gene’s Navy career took them. Many of his eight siblings had followed suit, scattering across the country. But Julie’s mother (and the oldest Cummins sibling after Gene), Ginna, had stayed in St. Louis to raise her family. Nevertheless, when the two cousins arrived at Grandpa Gene’s and Grandma Maria’s, the bond that grew up between them was instant. They had a couple of basic things in common: they both had an unusual, eclectic taste in music and in movies; they had a similar, offbeat sense of humor; they both liked beer and were too young to buy it. And although Julie didn’t share Tom’s academic difficulties, she did feel that she could relate to his awkwardness, his sense of not quite fitting in. Tom appreciated that and it amazed him. If she hadn’t been his cousin, Tom would have thought she was too charismatic, too pretty and intelligent, to understand what it was like to be him. But he recognized
that, in her own way, Julie was really different too. And for the first time, it dawned on him that being different, being a little bit weird, might just be a good thing.

  The two cousins went to the beach every day and became regulars at a dive bar where they sipped non-alcoholic cocktails and watched the volleyball players. Their friendship evolved rapidly, changing planes with each new conversation. They shared intimate secrets and worked on their tans. They discussed poetry and Julie proudly recited some of her work. Tom confided his humble firefighting ambitions to her and she buoyed him. They discussed their shared family — Julie detailing a colorful history of growing up in close proximity to their grandparents and the rest of their cousins. Tom imagined himself somewhere in each of the scenes she described. They learned about themselves from each other. Tom’s own family became more real to him in Julie’s words, and in return for that gift, Tom provided her with an outlet. They discussed issues from religion to ecology to politics to marriage. They debated. But they never argued. Julie even once joked that, in Zimbabwe, it was legal for first cousins to get married.

  On their last night of that summer together they stayed out late and didn’t come home until the house was thick with sleep. Tom silently steered his cousin onto the back patio and retrieved an old Tupperware dish from the garbage to serve as a makeshift ashtray. They sat at the deck table and matched the fireflies flicker for flicker with their Marlboro Lights until they had filled the Tupperware twice. They talked about everything, confiding in each other their darkest problems, their most terrifying closet-skeletons. They exchanged smiles and tears with their secrets. The first rays of dawn were glowing back to them on the still surface of their grandparents’ pool when they finally lugged themselves inside and fell asleep.