The Hidden Summer by Gin Phillips Page B

And next to my four-leaf clover, I see another four-leaf clover. And another. We keep looking and realize that about half of these clovers are four-leaf ones—it must be the luckiest spot in the world. We pick a handful each, but there’s really no point to hunting for them. It’s no challenge. But more than that, the only reason to pick a four-leaf clover is to make it yours. To claim it. We don’t have to claim these lucky clovers—they’re all ours. The whole wavy green field is ours. All of Lodema is ours.
    We never make it to the Chevron for those root beers. We unpack our lunches in the middle of the clover field, and I lick ham sandwich off my hands as I bury my toes in clover. Lydia pulls off long strips of cheese and drops them into her mouth. I savor every one of my strawberries, and when I notice an ant crawling over my finger, I set her down near a bread crumb. She seems pretty excited about it. I watch her tear off a bread chunk and carry it off, making her way around giant stems and leaves that must seem like a forest of redwoods to her. When you watch an ant for a while, the world seems like an enormous place.
    “Do you think a day seems longer to an ant?” I ask Lydia.
    “Because it’s smaller than us?” asks Lydia.
    “Maybe,” I say. “I mean, an inch seems longer to them. Maybe time is sort of like distance. It all seems bigger when you’re tiny.”
    “I think they probably have no sense of time.”
    “When we were smaller, time went slower,” I say. “Remember how long the summer used to seem? Or how long one afternoon could seem? When we were in kindergarten, nap time took forever. And holidays felt like they lasted for years. Now everything moves faster.”
    “Would you rather it move slower?” asks Lydia.
    I think about that. Normally I would say no. I spend most of my life wishing for time to pass as fast as it can, hoping I’ll speed along from one grade to another and finally be a grown-up, free to go wherever I want and do whatever I want. But sometimes when we’re out here with the wind blowing and the baby birds
eep-eep
ing, I wouldn’t mind if I could stop it all and just sink into one perfect moment like a fizzy bubble bath and stay there for good.
    “That would be a cool power to have,” says Lydia, like she’s reading my mind. “The power to freeze time. To make one single second last as long as you wanted. Like the first bite of homemade ice cream or a Krispy Kreme donut. Or sliding down a waterslide and sliding and sliding and sliding and never stopping.”
    “Or rolling down the hill at Hole Six,” I say.
    Lydia starts to say something else, when we hear a rustle in the grass off to our left. It’s so quiet that I think it’s the wind at first. But the rustle is coming closer, and it’s not a steady sound like the wind. It’s uneven and clumsy and sounds suspiciously like someone walking—no, stomping—through the grass. And then I hear a few words of a song.
    “No matter how hard a prune may try, he’s always getting wrinkles,”
sings a high voice.
“A baby prune’s just like his dad, ’cept he don’t wrinkle half so bad.”
    It’s a kid’s voice. A little kid, singing with total confidence like you do when you’re in the shower. Lydia and I look at each other and don’t move. I guess neither one of us knows where to go. And as we sit there, not making a sound, a little boy bursts through the tall grass into our clover patch.
    And then he screams. Loud. Like he’s falling off a building or being attacked by bees. It’s one quick, panicked
ahhhhh!
Then he takes a breath and screams one long word, and it’s not a word we expected.
    “Mo-ommmmmmmm!” he calls.
    “It’s okay,” Lydia says, sounding as panicked as he does. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”
    “We just came to pick some clover,” I say.
    He stares at us, not screaming anymore, which is good. I worry that maybe he’s just catching his breath to let loose again. I figure