Page 32 of The Summers of Us

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Except it did. Not that boys couldn’t be nice and be talked about without it meaning anything, but it was different with Everett. Blair didn’t have to know that, so I rolled denial from my eyes and huffed dramatically.

“Whatever you say.” She dotted a pinky over her eyelid to fix her eyeshadow in the mirror, the same way people checked their teeth for food or lipstick stains before a date. But she wasn’t going on a date.

And neither was I.

It was just a day at the aquarium.

So what if I caught myself in the same mirror checking my teeth for lingering bits of breakfast? So what if I wiped the summer sheen off my cheeks and wished I’d snuck some mascara and lip gloss from Blair’s bathroom? So what if I paired cutoffs with my fanciest linen tank?

The reason we were going to the aquarium at all was that Blair won four tickets in a SUNY 95.1 radio contest, and she begged me to bring a friend. My first thought was Haven, but the Rivera-Sanchezes were in Mexico for the first two weeks of summer. That left Everett. Sure, I could have invited Mason or Jorge, they werefine, but they weren’t Everett. Everett justgotme. Ever since we met, we’d taken what was strange about each other and found a way to fit in those curves.

Blair pulled into the driveway of his beautiful house. Everett was the only one of us that lived oceanfront. Even Mason, whose parents could have probably bought the whole island, didn’t live close enough to sleepwalk to shore. Everett lived close enough to have to turn his lights off at night for the baby sea turtles.

Everett walked to the car with his fists shoved in his pockets and his head down, looking up just in time to open the door.

“Hi,” I blurted from the back seat.

He fastened himself into the passenger seat and turned around. “Hi, Quinn.” He smiled at me, then hung over the seat to tap Hadley’s knee. “Hi, Hadley.”

It was weird seeing him up front next to Blair at first, but I quickly got used to it. With me in the back looking out for Hadley, it was easier to keep my eyes on everything else too. Everett Bishop was in my car. Sitting next to my aunt. Teasing my cousin. It had been less than a minute and already he’d wedged himself into my family for the day. It was real now. I slunk my sweaty thighs down the polyester seat and hoped it made me invisible. I checked my face for redness. Wiped more sweat off my forehead and onto the seat. Wished I could do the same to Blair’s eyeshadow.

“So, Everett. What’s your story?” Blair asked protectively, filling the empty shoes of my father.

Isn’t that what dads were supposed to do? Grill anyone that got too close until they looked like blackened shrimp on a barbecue skewer?

Oh my God, Blair.I slapped my hand on my forehead and pressed my head against the cool window. She was supposed to be the cool aunt. When had she become so lame? How did she expect him to tell her his life story on the way to an aquarium? Where would one even begin?

But Everett didn’tlookfazed; he hadn’t a complaint on his breath. “I moved here from Chicago last March.”

Everett decided his life story began in Piper Island, or maybe he thought that was all Blair cared about. Maybe that was allhecared about. He told her about transitioning mid-year into the local middle school, trying and hating sweet tea, how long it took him to get used to southern humidity and moody weather.

“There was a point when Quinn actually knew more about Piper than me.” He turned around and smirked at me.

I scoffed playfully and wondered how much of my face he saw—if he saw the sheen the way Idid.

“I’m sure you caught on fast, just like Quinn did, huh? It’s pretty amazing here.”

“Especially in the summer. Even with all the tourists.” Everett looked at me again, his eyebrows raised in the beginning of a laugh.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a tourist. I’mlocal adjacent. It’s different.” I checked myself in the mirror. Resented the rosy cheeks staring back.

“All I’m saying is that tourists love the aquarium.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Haven loves the aquarium.”

“Haven is Haven,” he said.

I couldn’t argue with that.

When we got to the aquarium, we stammered into a heat that was like a desert mirage snarling off the sidewalk. Fish statues hung suspended above a wishing fountain. Everett walked next to me as Blair held Hadley’s hand over asphalt so hot it could melt the shoes off our feet.

Once we got past the ticket booth, Blair told us to meet her and Hadley in three hours. We hadn’t discussed this before, but Blair must have had her own idea of how today was going to go. The way she looked at me, eyes shiny like her abalone eyeshadow, told me she wanted me to be alone with Everett, playing Cupid in a world where Cupid should be shot.

I sharpened my eyes at her but softened them before Everett noticed. I smiled at both of them and hoped Blair could see through to the disdain. “See you in three hours.” I surprised myself with how normal I sounded when I would have preferred to lie out on the sidewalk and cease to exist.

But instead we set off into the freshwater exhibit while Blair and Hadley stayed back to “use the bathroom first.”

The air in the room was thick. If you breathed in too much, your lungs couldn’t hold it all. It was so warm and damp that our clothes clung to our skin like wet bathing suits. It was thick and warm and damp—the perfect air for two people who didn’t know how to act around each other.

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