Chapter Sixteen: Homesickness Cure

The rest of the week- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday- seemed to take forever to pass. It’s not much like me to count off the days and hours, especially when on a vacation trip, but I was so eager for that one to end that I actually got homesick. And when I wasn’t homesick, I was either off in the clouds of ‘not listening’ or actively struggling to keep my barbed thoughts from escaping through my mouth. Again, that’s not usual behavior for me, but this was one considerable exception.

The problem was our friends and their good intentions. There’s that saying about where ‘good intentions’ will get you, and it occurred to me quite a few times over those three days… They’d knew how narrow our escape had been, and they’d been present when we gave Dad some of the details about Dr. Rhee’s alleged genetic experiments. So, knowing we’d had a rough time and seeing how subdued we were when Dad had to hurry off to his next case, they decided we needed cheering up and distractions to help us forget our troubles. They must have been perplexed when my mood not only didn’t rise but actually lowered after all their good-natured attempts to cheer me up. But Chet and Biff are both loyal and determined, and they carried right on with their program of trying to make me feel better. Joe was much less of a difficulty for them, but he’s always been lighter-hearted anyway.

Distraction-wise, things weren’t so bad. We hiked the trails, we swam and fished more, we even made the long trip to town and spent the day checking everything out. Joe helped Biff with the engine of the little boat, which was starting to knock again. My brother could be a fine mechanic if he chose, he has a real knack for it, and that’s with virtually no training at all.

It was the ‘cheering-up’ part that was the real heart of the problem. A group of guys- even if they’re great friends- isn’t a terribly sensitive gathering, even if some of them are fairly sensitive as individuals. So the cheering up- which, in fairness, did often start as amusing remarks and jokes- very quickly devolved into what I least wanted to deal with: teasing. The battles of wits were bad enough, annoying me so that I obstinately refused to indulge in them, but the full-fledged teasing usually sent me off to the bedroom Joe and I were sharing. It was either that or lose control of the bitter replies lurking under my tongue. And it wasn’t just the barbs directed at me that angered me; I don’t particularly appreciate it when people taunt my younger brother, either. Joe didn’t seem to mind, but I did. I was in a bind: I couldn’t respond the way my friends hoped I would; I wasn’t in the mood for anything that resembled mockery. But I certainly couldn’t let my temper loose on them when they were only trying to help.

I might’ve handled it a little better if their main method of teasing me hadn’t been exactly that thing I’d become so disenchanted with: my ‘responsible, mature, old for my age’ attitude. Never mind that I was deliberately doing far less of that than I had in the past; it was still the primary source of cheerful jabs from my friends. Especially since I was being so ‘humorless’ and ‘dour’ and generally acting ‘like one of those ultra-conservative old coots who thinks it’s a crime to be young and full of fun’, as long-winded Chet phrased it Friday evening after dinner. I needed to 'lighten up'.

At that, I decided I’d had enough; I left the cabin without a word and went down to the pier to watch the summer sunset alone. I sat down on the very end and stared across the dark water at the trees, then considered, grimly, that someone might find it amusing to come up behind me and give me a push into the lake. And they'd probably think it was funny, too. With that in mind, I moved back a few feet and leaned against one of the support beams. The sky was a beautiful deep blue, the reflections clear in the still water, the fading sunlight glowing golden- and all I wanted to do was get up, walk to the car and drive away. But I knew I couldn’t. There was no way I could take off and leave Joe behind- in that respect, I did have to be responsible. 'Tomorrow we leave,' I reminded myself. 'It’ll be better on the drive home, they can’t mock me then, and Joe won’t.' That was a consolation and I felt some of my angry frustration easing away, but I remained unhappy. Some snide little inner voice was reminding me how I hadn't wanted to do this, how I'd known I wouldn't enjoy it. 'Vacations are supposed to be fun,' I grumped mentally. 'Not to make you wish you'd stayed home, and not to feel like a complete loss of time that you could've been using for something better!'

I didn't notice how long I sat there feeling surly, but it couldn't have been long before I heard footsteps crunching behind me. I turned, expecting to see Joe, but to my surprise it was Chet, bearing the last of the ice cream in the two-gallon jug. Joe was following him, carrying bowls and spoons, and Biff was trying to manage several bottles and jars of toppings at once. The sight actually made me smile, something I hadn’t done much of recently. “Voila,” Chet declared as he set down the ice cream with a thump. “Sundae time!”

I kept my mouth shut my initial ill-tempered reactions, and particularly on the notion that the sweet stuff would attract bugs, and instead took the bowl and spoon that my brother handed me. Chet scooped out large helpings of the chocolate and vanilla ice cream while Biff busily opened topping lids. The three of them were very cheerful and there was quite a bit of laughter and joking around as they chose what to put on the impromptu sundaes. Before I knew it my own spirits were beginning to lift, and for a change, there were no mocking jabs.

“Gross! Disgusting! Chet, how can you do that?” my brother exclaimed in a grossed-out voice, and I turned to see Chet scooping maraschino cherries directly from the jar and eating them.

"Yuck!" I agreed. How anyone can eat those sick-colored chemical-soaked things is beyond me. Give me a genuine cherry with a stem and stone any day.

"If you want disgusting, look at that.” Chet wrinkled his nose at Biff’s hefty dose of caramel sauce. “It looks month-old melted toffee,” he declared.

"I wish I'd thought to get bananas," Biff lamented, ignoring this disparagement of his favorite topping. Then he tried to explain to me that chocolate sauce on chocolate ice cream was redundant. “Try something you haven’t got already,” he urged, offering the marshmallow sauce.

“No, thank you; marshmallows do best with s’mores,” I replied, at which point Joe took the jar and tasted a spoonful of it. “Now, really, Joe, how is that different from Chet eating cherries out of the jar?”

“The difference is, marshmallow sauce is the same as marshmallows out of a bag, just softer. And marshmallows are good- not like those sick-cherry imitations,” my brother retorted.

"Hey, these are no worse than a cherry-cordial from a box of chocolates!" Chet protested.

Joe replied, shrugging, “Well, those are gross, too.”

The back-and-forth went on while we ate, and we all got pretty keyed-up from the sugar. There were a couple little scuffles and it really was a bit of a surprise that no one fell, or got pushed, into the lake. As the sunlight faded into dusk, the mosquitoes began to arrive in droves, so we gathered up the sundae-makings and took them inside. The ice cream container was empty; that got thrown away. After we’d finished cleaning up, we sat around on the porch and talked. I got a little edgy, expecting the teasing to start up again at any moment, but it didn’t. The moon came up and the stars began to come out, and that was when Chet suggested a night swim. It was a warm night, so we put the idea into practice almost at once. ‘Almost’, because there were some minor details in the way, like getting swim trunks on and finding towels.

When we were all ready, we ran back down to the pier, Biff winning the impromptu race. He halted near the end of the dock, supposedly to catch his breath, and there was a typical struggle to see who would be the first to (involuntarily) enter the water. Joe and Biff tied at this, because Joe took the straightforward method of grabbing Biff’s arm and leaping right off the end of the pier. Chet seemed to admire the tactic, if the way he tried to repeat it on me was any indication, but I twisted out of his grip and he went in backwards without me.

We swam and splashed and dove and even had a few races. And there was a definite bonus to the fact that we were miles from anywhere, because we were noisy. The water, cold enough during the day, seemed even colder at night, though it probably wasn’t. About an hour after getting in, I decided I was chilled enough and suggested to Joe- whose teeth were chattering- that a cold swim needed the remedy of a towel, clothes, and maybe something warm to drink. “Unless you want more ice cream,” I added, and he groaned.

“Don’t say ‘ice’,” he requested, splashing out of the water and wrapping up in his big beach towel. I joined him; Chet and Biff followed a minute or two later and I led the way back to the cabin. We did warm up pretty quickly, especially when Biff brought out a packet of hot chocolate mix and made cocoa.

“This is crazy, you know,” Chet remarked as we sat around sipping the drinks. “First ice cream, then a cold swim, now hot chocolate and jeans and all...it’s like we can’t decide if it’s summer or winter.”

“It’s summer, it’s just not as warm in that lake as it is at the Bayport beaches,” Joe pointed out. “Especially when the sun’s gone down. And the air’s a lot cooler, too.”

“You know it sometimes gets down in the fifties, even the forties, up here in the summer?” Biff asked quietly of no one in particular. “Sometimes we’ve had fires going and sweatshirts on.”

“Brr.” Joe took another sip of his hot chocolate and gave an exaggerated shiver. I wondered if we were in for another sugar high, but as an hour and then another wore by with nothing more than talk and joking and some card games, I concluded not. We were all tired out from the swim and I figured the only reason no one had gone to bed yet was teenage stubbornness. When you’ve got the opportunity to stay up late, with no one in authority telling you to be off to bed, you tend to make the most of it.

We finally packed it in around midnight, admitting that we might as well turn in, since we’d have a busy day tomorrow. As I was crawling into bed, feeling the nicest kind of weariness, Joe came in from the kitchen. We did our face-wash and tooth-brushing at the kitchen sink, since there wasn’t one in the outhouse. Joe flicked off the light, shut the door and came to sit on the side of my bed. His hand rested on my arm as he asked softly, “Have a good evening, bro?”

“Yeah,” I answered, settling back and looking up at him. “I wonder- do I have you to thank for that?” I’d almost swear he blushed, but even with the moon shining in through the window, there wasn’t enough light to be certain.

“Well,” he started, sounding oddly shy, “when you went outside after dinner, they, uh, talked a little about how- how gloomy you’ve seemed. Couldn’t figure it out, they were both like, ‘nothing seems to be working, he won’t even smile.’ So I told ‘em- again- that if they really wanted to help, they should knock off the teasing and just try to have a good time without it.” Joe paused for a breath, then added, “They weren’t so sure, but I reminded ‘em that you never have liked to be teased, much. You always tell ‘em to knock it off a lot sooner than anyone else does, or ignore ‘em altogether. So they said okay, they’d try it. And now I guess they know I was right.”

I couldn’t stifle a chuckle; he sounded so smug, so suddenly. “I guess they do,” I agreed, touching his wrist. “Thanks, Joe. I keep thinking I should tell them exactly what irritates me, and why, but...it’ll raise so many problems.”

“Like why you never told them sooner,” he suggested, and I knew what he was referring to.

“Yeah. I really was going to talk to them Tuesday, but I was so grouchy- I knew if I said anything, I’d be too harsh. And I don’t want to make ‘em feel bad, Joe, I just wish they’d stop. I can’t win, you know? Either I take charge and get teased for it, or I don’t and get teased for that.”

“I don’t think I ever really paid attention to that before,” Joe admitted. “But that’s happened to me, too. If I lose my temper, someone makes a joke about that; if I control it, somebody makes a joke about how incredible it was that I didn’t blow up.”

I turned onto my side, thinking about that. “Makes you feel like you can’t ever get it right. And it’s not even your fault- but it sorta feels like it, doesn’t it?”

Joe nodded and I watched moonlight and shadows shift across his face. “A least we’ve got a start. Maybe we won’t need to explain an awful lot, just gradually get less and less tolerant of the nasty kinds of teasing.”

It was my turn to nod. “Some things are okay to tease about. But there’s others- they hit you right where it hurts, no matter who’s saying it or how they’re saying it. Like, imagine if one of us called Chet ‘Porky Pig’ like that one asshole did.”

“Head for the hills if you pull a stunt like that,” Joe muttered. Then he yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Bed. And home, tomorrow.”

“Day after,” I reminded him, letting go of his wrist. “Remember, we’ve still got to pack up and pull out. And we'll probably have to stay overnight somewhere again.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Joe got up, but paused, looking at me. “Sleep well.”

“You too.” There was more hope than courtesy in my reply; he’d had a wretched night Wednesday and it had taken a long time for me to soothe him. Even when I’d tucked him in beside me, he’d continued to shiver for twenty minutes or so. He hadn’t told me what had scared him so badly, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it was case-related. I hoped this latest nightmare passed quickly, but I knew it wasn’t likely; Joe’s nightmares have a nasty habit of sticking around for a while to scare the daylights out of him.

I always hate to see him frightened, it makes me feel helpless, even though Joe stoutly insists that I help him calm down faster than anyone else could. I never am sure if he means that, or if he says it so I won’t feel inadequate. It would be so like him to do that, he always thinks of other people first.

 

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.