Page 39 of The Summers of Us

In the ending credits of the day, I didn’t feel lost in its darkness—not with Everett next to me, not with the distant fireflies lighting our way home. The bugs told each other secrets all night long. They were privy to ours, but they’d never tell.

“Today was mesmerizing.” Everett broke the silence. “You’re mesmerizing.”

My cheeks got hot again, presumably cherry red in the twilight. I’d never heard that word before. Boys at school might have called me pretty or cute every once in a while, but mesmerizing had to mean something else entirely.

I gulped down the urge to ruin the moment.

“Nobody’s ever told me that before,” I said.

“Well, then nobody’s ever paid attention.”

“You’re…effervescent.” I laughed despite the chasm in my chest. “EffervescentEverett. Like the name game.”

“I haven’t heard that one before,” he croaked.

I felt like I’d been shaken up in a sand globe, grains of sand swirling around me like summer stars in a time lapse of the night sky, my stomach churning against it. A dark night drowned out by firelight. The sunlight peeking through the perfect curl of a wave. The twinkling sound shells made against themselves.

I wasmesmerizing.

The thought of being noticed made me want to grow and shrink at the same time. To be noticed was to matter; I didn’t usually matter.

But on the bike trail, I did.

Age 14, June 24

If there had been a pit in my stomachsince our day at the aquarium, the entire peach had been there since my second day with Everett.

Hadley’s innocence was the only thing that fixed it, the way she spent her days with stuffed animals and library books and animated movies. I used to spend my days like that before I had to grow up.

I was in the kitchen making lunch for us. I slathered peanut butter on bread, washed green grapes, and stirred up some orange Kool-Aid. The mason jars started sweating the second we walked outside for our driveway picnic. Hadley had been really into picnics ever since we read a book about ants raiding a picnic. She took every opportunity to picnic, even when the sun was blistering, inviting the ants to arrive.

We sat in the middle of the driveway, sucking peanut butter off our teeth and washing it down with Kool-Aid. It was refreshing to spend time with someone so unbothered by the grit on the pavement, the heat that sent a waterfall of sweat down my calves.

The smallest part of me thought spending time with someone who saw the world in so much pink would give my perspective some of that whimsy, too.

Unfortunately, there was not much time left for her to color me pink. Blair would be splitting custody with Hadley’s dad starting in July, and I wouldn’t see Hadley for the rest of the summer. Blair said this would happen more now that Hadley’s dad was sober. I was glad he was back on his feet, at least. For Hadley’s sake.

I was also glad Haven and Holden were still in Mexico. If not, I didn’t know that I would have spent this much time with her this summer. We’d made a summer’s worth of memories in nearly two short weeks. We went to the park where I was glad to find my hidden heart untouched. We raided the candy store until we ate ourselves sick. One day at the beach, Hadley was so eager to find a whole sand dollar that I couldn’t resist planting a store-bought one for her in the sand.

I still pretended it was real when she showed me each night. I’d probably have to for the rest of my life.

When Hadley went to bed, I would stay up late and work on some poems. I’d been trying to write one about Piper Island each summer, but sometimes they turned into something else entirely. Lately, the pages were as confused as they were romantic. My heart fluttered when I wrote of the aquarium, then it shattered in the same stanza.

Reading was the same. The scandalous teen romance books I used to avoid in the library now sat in neat stacks on my dresser. They spoke of breathless days and heart-pounding nights. Of missed connections and outward forces that wove love together. It was exhilarating and horrifying at once to see me and Everett within them.

This new development even gave me the curiosity and courage to do something more unthinkable than holding Everett’s hand. One night, after a poem went sour and morphed into words about my dad, I texted him. It wasn’t sour—though it certainly could have been—but a simple text:This is Quinn, how have you been?

What else was there to say given the circumstances?

I hadn’t seen or talked to him since he left five years ago. I didn’t know if the number Mom had saved in my phone even still worked, but I guessed it was worth the try.

“Will you read the star book again?” Hadley asked when she finished her sandwich, jostling me out of my thoughts. She put her crust down and sipped her Kool-Aid, spilling some into an orange stain on her shorts, but she didn’t care about stuff like that.

While we were at the library last week, me getting yet another romance book, Hadley picked out a picture book about constellations. This began a new phase: an obsession with stars. After this, I would have read it to her nine times in four days.

“Go get it,” I mumbled between bites of her discarded sandwich crust.

Hadley ran into the house. She almost lost her balance on the front steps, then laughed at herself for it.

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