Page 5 of The Summers of Us

I decide on the truth without the tears. “I miss last summer.”

I feel it on my face, wide and unrelenting and real: a smile. I haven’t smiled like this since the Ferris wheel. Visions of white moonlight and sugared air and Everett smiling next to me dance in my memory. That night taught me that joy is a prequel to everything after; pain waits at the bottom of the Ferris wheel.

My brain remembers this at random times, grants me a punishment for joy. It shoots my smile down, flicks my shoulders into a slump, curses my heart to the bottom of the ocean. The sinking feeling in my stomach isn’t a welcome one, unlike the flutters of cotton candy and our first kiss.

“I can’t really explain it, but there’s this feeling I get when I think about our time last summer, you know…” I lower my voice to pretend I’m not acknowledging it. My throat feels raw despite my efforts to fight crying. “…before.” The tickle inside my nose spreads to my eyes, and tears fall anyway. “I’m scared I will make it happen again.”

Everett clears his throat. “Quinn, you’re allowed to be happy.”

“I know.”

Ido—but it feels like a bomb ticking out of time, like chanting “Bloody Mary” in Haven’s mirror, like finding a sick, stray dog on the side of the road. Stop it at the last second, don’t look it in the face, don’t call it by its name:

Happiness.

If you acknowledge it, there will be no more to spare.

I toy with a stray pine needle—better the pine needle than the skin around my fingernails.

I fixate on a cluster of stars I don’t actually know the name of. I’ve never wanted a shooting star more than right now. The night is perfect for one—a new moon, no light pollution from Blair’s street.Stars, please give me this. Let me wish for happiness.

Everett makes a subject-changingtsksound between his teeth. “What’s made you happy lately?”

Happiness is so fleeting to me, such a noticeable rise from my usual lows, that I remember every positive moment vividly. High school graduation, me and my mom skipping niceties and attacking my cake with forks, a call with Haven while I packed for this summer. Today brought a spike in joy, so Ibrace more strongly for impact.

“The sailboat billboard on the highway before the causeway. You know, the one with the rich people eating hors d’oeuvres? It’s always how I know I’m getting close. Then when I got on the causeway, I rolled the windows down. It’s tradition.”

“I still remember the first time I saw the ocean over the causeway. I think I might have cried.”

I laugh. “Did you write a poem about it?”

“Of course,” he jokes.

I recite old poetry off my lips, my tone sarcastically wistful. “Waves crashing on the shore, stealing shells and bringing more.”

“Where’dthatcome from?”

“An actual poem I wrote when I was eleven.” I giggle and hide my face in my hands despite the darkness. Happiness becomes me. I don’t try to stop it or brace for impact.

“You’ve always been such a sap.”

“So have you!”

“You have to show me the whole thing.” He laughs. “Now I wish I’d actually written a poem, so I could be a bigger nerd than you.”

“Shut up.” I throw the haggard pine needle at him. “What’s madeyouhappy lately?”

“The look on Jorge’s face when I officially beat him out for valedictorian.”

“I bet he was happy for you.” Then, because Ihaveto, I add, “Nerd.”

“Being a nerd sucked when I had to give a speech at graduation.”

“Please tell me you went up there and sang ‘The Piña Colada Song.’”

“Every last word. They had to boo me off the stage. I can’t figure out what they didn’t like about it.”

I laugh, ear-splitting and real. “I think I have an idea.”

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