Eddy runs out to the parking lot, ahead of the others. It’s flat and hot, like Grandma’s frying pan when she turns the burner on high. Letting it warm up just before her butterknife slices off a waxy square of yellow butter and chases it around the pan. Round and round the butter goes, the square losing its sharp corners and the butter slip-sliding in a greasy puddle, getting smaller and smaller until it vanishes and there is only hot brown grease in the pan.

Eddy always ducks his head near the pan to smell the browned butter. And Grandma, laughing, says “Move yer noggin” before she pours in the batter.

Eddy suddenly stops in the middle of the parking lot, looks around.

He feels the heat drilling through the soles of his sneakers. Just as if he were a circle of batter in the great big pan. A circle of batter, thick and pale and gloopy. Like a melted milkshake.

Batter has something extra special about it. “Watch the magic,” Grandma coos. Once it hits the hot slick pan, it sizzles and crackles. Eddy shuts his eyes and listens—it sounds like applause, a thousand tiny pairs of hands clapping as the batter arrives.

“Mind now, not too close,” Grandma warns, and Eddy’s eyes widen as the white circle grows golden brown lace all around its edge. The edge is a little curly, twisty, like the strip of wallpaper that he tore off in his closet that he knew he shouldn’t have. The ugly wallpaper that makes him queasy.

“Count to twenny,” Grandma says, and Eddy does so, except he gets a little mixed up and counts ten, twelve, three-teen. Grandma doesn’t complain. Grandma never complains. She takes her flipper and the minute Eddy roars “Twenny!” she says, “Hooray!” and slides the flipper under and does her special trick. The trick where the white pancake with the golden edge is replaced by a brown pancake.

Eddy’s mouth pools with water just thinking of the magic. He glances around the hot, flat parking lot and turns to watch the others.

They lumber out the door, slow and solemn as elephants. They are pulling off suit jackets. Touching their ties, primping their hair, repositioning their purses. He sees only one other kid, a pale, skinny girl with red eyes. She’s smaller than the adults, but bigger than he is. She stares without smiling at him.

The adults look sad and bored and grumpy.

Eddy wants to cheer them up. “Pancakes,” he yells, adding a fist-bump like Dad does.

Everyone stares a moment, slack-jawed, then they all look away as if they’ve seen something they know they should ignore.

Dad fumbles with keys. “C’mere, Eddy.”

Mum clicks her purse open and shut, open and shut. Eddy runs to the car where his parents are standing. The air above the pavement seems to jiggle a little, touching everything with jiggliness.

Dad opens all four doors, wincing each time he touches the metal of the door. He holds Eddy by one shoulder, preventing him from getting into the car. “Let it air out a minute,” he says.

“Another scorcher today,” the man at the next car says.

“Yeh,” Dad says. “Like opening an oven door.”

“A pizza oven,” says a third man at another car and they laugh noiselessly.

“We should go swimming,” Eddy pipes up.

Nobody replies. It’s as if he has not even spoken. Maybe the hot air has melted his voice before it gets to their ears. He’s seen melting happen to the plastic cup that sat too close to Grandma’s stove. It lost its perfect plastic cuppy roundness and got bulgy in one place. Grandma called it “my wonky cup.” It was her favorite even when wonky because it had a picture of the dead man on it. Yohan, she called him sometimes and Bock, the other times. The dead man wore curly hair, sort of like Grandma’s white hair when Auntie fixes it up for a special day.

Slam, slam, slam, slam.

Now the people are all getting into their cars that have aired out a bit. His family’s car is still hot inside, but Dad starts the engine and says, “Roll down your windows for a minute,” he says. A drop of water trickles from his hairline down his forehead. He clicks the AC knob, but nothing happens at first.

“Up, up,” Dad says. Eddy and Mum roll up their windows and soon that first invisible ribbon of cool air unwinds from the vent. Not very cool, but promising.

Eddy announces, “I wanna go swimming,” kicking the back of Dad’s seat. His cheeks are burning hot.

“Later,” Dad says. “Just wait,” Mom says.

Kick, kick.

“I said, later.” Dad squeezes Eddy’s ankle, then lets go.

Eddy rotates his foot at the ankle. He stares out the window at fence posts and telephone posts. Browns and yellows everywhere else, like the exciting colors all got used up.

“Can’t we stop at Grandma’s for pancakes?”

Dad’s head turns toward Mom. His eyebrow arches.

She bites her lip. No answer.

Maybe they plan to surprise him. Maybe they are driving right now, right this very minute to Grandma’s house in town. “My cozy cottage,” she calls it. The front yard has a low fence, only as high as Eddy’s knee. Aunt Mimi’s dog is allowed in Grandma’s front yard, but only if the gate is closed.

Eddy presses his hands against the window, which is smooth but unpleasantly warm. But no, wait—this is not the way to town. Not the way to the swimming pool, the grocery store, or Grandma’s.

One car follows another and another. They’re all driving to the same place, away from the town. The line of cars reaches a fenced-in place, a strange kind of parking lot, with a high fence, black rods taller than Dad.

They drive through an open gate onto a short gravel road, then everyone gets out of their parked cars. Eddy can’t see why the interest in this place. Stones and gravel and grumpy adults. There’s an arch over the top of the gate.

Eddy can’t read big words yet, but he knows his letters. He leans his neck way back and squints against the ball of sun in the sky. The letters are hard to read from this angle.

M-E-M-O-R. Those are all the letters he can make out before the pale girl comes to stand beside him.

She is chewing on the end of her hair. “I lost mine last summer.”

Eddy walks away, his heart beating faster, wondering what she means by “mine” and “lost.” He goes to see Dad, who might help him understand, except Dad is talking to the same neighbors as before.

Dad accepts a cigarette from the first man. “Oh yeah, we coulda waited. But the heat just goes on and on.”

The second man strikes a match and holds it to Dad’s cigarette. “Remember last year, when we lost power for a whole weekend?”

“The heat strikes down so many, what can you expect?”

The first man gives an unfunny laugh, dragging on his cigarette.

The second man shakes his head. “Yeah, Jarrett’s was forced to run three services, boom-boom-boom, same day.”

“I won’t forget the smell. No sirree.”

Eddy hears a purse click open. His heart is racing. There is something everyone knows but him. And he’s not sure he wants to know. “Mom, can we go now?”

She clicks her purse shut. “Oh, Eddy,” she sighs heavily and puts her hand on his arm. She is about to tell him something but at last minute she stops and slouches away.

The girl is standing there, watching him, and blinking her red eyes. “They were best friends, you know. Your grandma and mine.”

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