Page 38 of The Summers of Us

“I like when people are bowling and they do that little lean to try to move the ball.”

“I like the crunch of pine cones on the road.” I made the noise with the front tire of my bike, hopping over a fallen pine cone.

“I like finding shapes in the clouds. My mom started it once on a long road trip and it kept me busy the whole time.”

I thought of the day at the Boardwalk last year, the shapes we made from the clouds, and how they gave me glimpses of him like a Rorschach test. He saw roses instead of thorns, flames as a magical source of warmth, moon jellies instead of sea monsters.

He viewed the world like it hadn’t yet betrayed him. Maybe it hadn’t.

“I like the word ‘quintessential’ because it sounds like my name. I always use it during the name game at school,” I said.

“Quintessential Quinn,” Everett said ceremoniously. Red splotches emerged on his cheeks.

What image would they conjure up if they were Rorschach inkblots? What would I see if I were Everett?

“I like when people talk about the weather when they don’t know what else to say.”

“I like when it rains at night and the streetlights look all smudged on the windshield,” I say.

“I like the voice people use when they talk to dogs.”

“Is there anything youdon’tlike?”

He looked at me like I’d snuffed out the magic, but he answered anyway. “I don’t like when there’s cool stuff to look at in the checkout line but the cashier stares at me so I feel like I have to buy something. I bought a turtle figurine with a top hat at the pier once because of that.”

I remembered our time at the aquarium a couple days ago. In the gift shop, we’d looked through the mood rings to the dismay of the cashier. It felt wrong to try them on and not buy them, but I just wanted to see how accurate they were. I hoped mine would turn pink forromantic, but both our rings turned dark blue forcalm. I was anything but, so I chalked it up to the warmth on our fingers.

“I love when the trees sound like summer,” I said, snapping back to the present as the symphony around us reached its emotional peak. It sounded like a rain stick, applause, buzzy conversations we couldn’t hear the words of.

Everett stared at the darkening sky and laughed, warm like weather we didn’t need to talk about. “Would you think I was weird if I told you I know which insect makes each sound?”

If my face were a mood ring, it would have turned whatever color indicated hot skin. I knew there were different species, but they sounded the same to me—a glorious conglomerate of summer night sounds lighting up the bike trail. “I would say, ‘Enlighten me, Dr. Bishop.’”

He listened for a moment, mulling over the noises hidden in a clump of trees. “The locust is the easiest to hear. It’s the one that starts and stops and starts and stops.” He held his hand up and yo-yoed with the air like he was conducting their song. Following his hands, I could hear it for myself, the sound of someone pulling on a lawnmower that wouldn’t quite crank. It sounded like if ocean waves could emit radio static.

“The cicada is more constant. Think of it like the background noise. If you’re not listening, you’ll lose it.”

I tuned my ears away from the undulating sound of the locusts. Layered beneath it was a low, twinkling whir. Therewasvariation in the sound, but it was small enough to consider it background noise.

“Like a white noise machine,” I said.

He nodded. I could barely make out the outline of his cheek from the leaves behind him. Summer nights fought as hard as they could, but when they finally came, they struck like a November sunset—fast and all-consuming.

“What about katydids?”

“It’s the third sound. With katydids, you can hear each individual one. They don’t drown each other out.” He waited for a single katydid to make a comment from the trees. “There. Hear it?”

I did, then the katydid after it. They sounded like squeaky boots conversing about whatever squeaky boots conversed about. The sound wasn’t constant like the locusts or cicadas. I couldn’t count on the same chorus every time.

Thanks to Everett, the sounds of summer no longer blended together. I could make out the locust from the cicada from the katydid, and I knew I always would. It wasn’t something you could forget. Nothing shared on the bike trail could be forgotten. My favorite call was the locust—the mostdistinct. Most people attributed the summer night sound to cicadas, but if they stopped to listen like Everett, they’d know it was the locusts.

“I didn’t know Dr. Bishop was a summer insect specialist,” I said.

“I wasn’t until last summer. Nights in Chicago don’t sound like this, so one night when I couldn’t sleep, I listened really closely and finally heard them as different sounds. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep if I didn’t sort it out. I watched videos of their calls and memorized what made them different.”

Everett conjured the vision for me—him lying in bed, plagued with the mystery of night sounds enough to do something about it. The thought was cuter than even his cheeks and his beauty mark and the way he licked his lips when he was in deep thought.

“Summer will never sound the same again.” I listened closely to the sweet music in the trees.

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