Page 3 of The Summers of Us

Stay up all night.

Have the best summer ever.

“It’s perfect,” I said when she asked what I thought. I didn’t have any of my own ideas to add, so I clicked the pen in and out to fill the silence.

“If you get an itch to add anything, it’ll be up on the fridge for you.” Blair rocked Hadley on her hip. “Now, what do you want to do first?”

June 13

“Quinn!” Blair pulls me into a bear hug.“I had no idea you’d be here so early!”

When we pull back from the hug, I take her in: brown hair strewn about like a dandelion puff. Eye bags swollen. Everything red where it should be peach.

Inside the house, shoes gather in clumps around the front door. Half-empty cups leave condensation rings on all the tables. Blankets and pillows lie across the couch in silent battle. A dust bunny in the corner has grown into a rabbit. It smells mostly of mildew, greasy fast-food containers, and a bloated, leaky trash bag.

“Do you want lunch?” Blair leans against the kitchen island. Stacks of unopened mail have made a home that the itinerary must have run away from. No pink, sparkly words wait to be inevitably crossed out come August.

“I can heat up something, or we can go to Hammerhead’s, or I can give you some money for groceries.”

“I’m not hungry, but maybe we can go get ice cream later?” I write up an itinerary with my voice instead. It doesn’t come out pink or sparkly. “Everyone’s coming over later for a bonfire.”

Blair smiles. “Sounds good. I’ll leave you to it.”

I walk down the hallway to my room, leaving Blair to retreat to her burrow in the middle of the blanket and pillow war.

I shove my clothes into my dresser, then crack open the window and throw myself onto my bed. I close my eyes to unwind to the sounds of the world outside the window. Distant seagulls whine, pine trees rustle, katydids click.

The sounds of my favorite season.

The sounds of my favorite place.

I just wish they still had the power to fix me.

June 13

This time last year, my five best friends and I kicked off summer on Mason’s boat,Kingfish. He zipped us around the marsh grass while the water slipped into the color of sky. I watched Holden and Jorge fly off the tube while I wrestled the wind from my hair. Haven and I danced to steel drum music. We ate at the restaurant on the land side of the sound where people tolerated iffy popcorn shrimp and cold French fries for the view of distant trees and salt grass, everything pink and orange and red where the sun pulls down.

I looked at Everett, orange soda still fizzing on my tongue. The sun drew white sheets on the water and painted Everett’s face golden.

I was free. Kelsie and Everett were broken up. That summer was my oyster, so to speak.

He looked at me at the same time I looked at him—warm, like the leather seats baking my skin.

They all must be doing something like that now, finishing up a perfect day inside the beginning of the sunset, toasting to our last summer before college. Smiling. Swimming. Cracking jokes.

This is what replays in my mind on Blair’s kitchen floor, elbow-deep in a pail of suds, scrubbing the brown grout until it at least begins to resemble white. It’s a realCinderellastory, except I’m Cinderella, the evil stepmother,andboth stepsisters all at once. I told them to go without me today. I didn’t think I’d be doing this instead, but things have a funny way of changing.

Sometimes, they change like the tides, slowly and gradually—a face aging with each new wrinkle. Sometimes, they change like a rush of water through a river, abruptly and suddenly. And sometimes, you don’t even notice the change until you’re wearing a dusty old pair of knee pads because it hurts to be on the ground like this.

Then you realize how quickly time passes when you’re occupied with other things.

A knock at the door pulls me from my trance. I wipe fallen hair from my face with a sudsy hand and open the door.

Everett Bishop.

“Welcome back, Quinn,” he says like he was in the middle of rehearsing it. He smiles with the right side of his face and brushes moppy black hair off his forehead.

The look on his face says what he couldn’t last summer—what he still can’t say now. There’s sorrow behind the stars in his eyes, and maybe a little bit of those galaxies I found there last summer, too.

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