Page 97 of The Summers of Us

Happiness is like breathing,

but right now I exhale it pointedly.

It hits me on the beach too warm for February.

I forced it to happen when I stepped into my shorts and sandals.

“It will be summer today,” I told the sky.

It listened.

It sent me weather that made me forget how it felt to be cold.

Give me a sign. Help me understand if you’re still with me. Make the waves wash up a starfish. You always loved saving the ones that were still breathing, even if it meant getting your jeans wet. Peek through the clouds and fix this overcast day. You always thought the day wasn’t real without the sun, but I’m not real without you. Send me a messy patch of wind. You always hated how the wind messed up your hair. You tied your bangs up and never cared how silly it made you look, but I never thought you looked silly. Please. Give me something. I need to know you see me. I need to know you’re proud of me. I miss you. I love you.

You are crispy leaves and rainy days, which is to say you’re sprawling with life even when you think you’re dead. Why don’t you feel the same way about me?

I close the notebook after nearly reading the whole thing. I look at the ocean. This notebook, this stretch of beach, this warm sand—all of it connects me with the people who wrote these letters. That and the pain, joy, love, and loss of life on planet Earth.

There’s no pattern to these strangers’ lives. Some are joyous, some are unexpected sunshine on a February morning, some explain the dark circles stained on the page—tears, dried but still crinkling to life.

We’re all just people, subjecting ourselves to the world and its woes.

We have family and friends and love and fear.

We fear that the universe will take what’s ours; we’re grateful the universe gave us ours to begin with. We breathe fear and gratitude in the same breath. In the same life.

You have to have the highs to have the lows.

We all have ups and downs,rollercoasters, but we shoulder on.

Everett closes his notebook, then looks at me.

“What do you think?”

“I think I’ve never felt less alone.”

Kindred Spirit is a sacred ground. The ghosts of visitors past cling to the dune grass. The breeze remembers those who have come and gone.

“Me too. I knew there’d be a lot of sad letters, but I didn’t expect so many of them to be so happy.”

An oxymoron—love letters living in the same notebook as hopeless letters to lost loved ones. A metaphor for life before and after love. Lifebecauseof love.

Everett pulls something out of his bookbag—a sheet of notebook paper folded and secured withthe sticker from an orange. “I’m going to write in the notebook too, but I wrote this for you.”

In his tall and thin handwriting, Everett wrote:

I’m not ashamed to say I love math more than the average person. Some people might call me a nerd for that, even though they feel the same way about the stars, which is also math, but I’m not one to judge. If you know where to look, almost everything is math. The shape of a nautilus shell can be measured by the Fibonacci sequence. Tree branches are fractals. The circumference of every circle, from bird baths to buttons, can be calculated with pi. Snowflakes crystallize in symmetrical patterns.

A friend of mine believes that the universe is transactional. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is what Galileo (not a friend of mine) once said: “Mathematics is the language of the universe.” Not to go against Galileo, but I know that the universe isn’t always so formulaic. Even though math is the fabric of the universe, the universe is more than just fabric. The universe has organic things like friendship, life, death, and love, which are beautifully random in their occurrences. It makes life scary, but it also makes life fun. In life, you learn that bad things do not follow a pattern. One cannot predict the events of the next day, even if the events of the day before were suspiciously good.

Quinn, your life is not transactional, and that makes it a beautiful thing in itself.

Universally, Dr. Bishop

Freshly fallen tears pool on the letter. The world is a blur beyond my eyes, but these tears are air compared to the ones I’ve poured out these past few days. I catch the remaining tears on my cheeks before they make a mess of Everett’s words. The rest I absorb with my thumb to keep from smudging the black ink.

I smile at him, an oxymoron on my face. “I don’t know what to say.”

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