Page 49 of The Summer of Everything

Wes pauses. He tugs out his phone and unlocks the screen. It takes him a few tries, but he manages to capture at least three high-quality photos that show the juxtaposition of the dog’s gold fur against the black ocean.

He texts all three versions to Nico.

Instantly, his phone buzzes. Two new messages. Unfortunately, they’re from Cooper.

He’s about to pocket his phone when it vibrates in his palm.

It’s a Pinterest photo from Nico.

Against a plain black background with bold white text, the image says,“If you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working for it.”

What does that mean? Is Nico referring to saving the bookstore? Or is he talking about something else?

To: Nico

??? :|

Sent 8:41 p.m.

Nico’s gray text bubble fills with ellipses. Then it disappears.

Wes has no clue, and no time to decode Nico’s weirdness. But his phone emits adoo-doo-doo-dootnoise and the screen lights up. Obviously, discussions of the Pinterest kind need to be held over FaceTime.

But, when Wes finally answers, it’s not Nico’s face on the screen. It’s an upside-down view of a pair of tiny nostrils. Breath fogs the lens before things go sideways. Images blur across the screen like one of those documentary-style horror movies. All the shaky visuals make Wes want to hurl. He hears giggles and bare feet padding on hardwood floors.

“Hey! Sofía!” Wes can hear Nico’s frustrated voice as the screen finally pauses on a giant Lego castle erected on a glass coffee table. “¡Tranquila!”

After a little maneuvering and more laughter, Nico pops into the screen’s view. “Wesley,” he says too fondly. “Perdóname.”

“Having fun?”

Nico puckers his lips. “I turned my back for two seconds, and Sofía convinced the twins to finish my orange soda. They’re on a mad sugar high right before dinner.”

“Wes! Wes!” He can hear the twins’ matching pitchy voices, but they’re out of frame. “Come over!”

Nico groans, head tipped back. Now Wes has a view up his nostrils. They flare, then shrink to normal size as Nico says, “Your fans have been asking about you since I got home.”

Expeditious amounts of heat surge into Wes’s cheeks. His mouth is stretched wider than the Pacific.

Deep wrinkles shrink Nico’s eyes as he says, “Wanna come by? Mom’s making gorditas.”

You little shit.

In the annals of their history, Sundays at the Alvarez house were Wes’s favorite. They’d catch the Big Blue Bus from Santa Monica to UCLA, walk the campus and dick around Westwood for a few hours, pretending to be college students with goals, before coming home to Mrs. Alvarez’s freshly fried gorditas.

“¡Gordita de chicharrón!” Wes loved the way Nico would shout whenever they walked back into his house, sun-warm and exhausted.

Some Sundays, they’d skip the Big Blue Bus for beach time with Sofía and the twins, Isabel and Camila. They’d build structures almost as tall as the Lego tower on the Alvarez’s coffee table. The twins would always bring their Barbies to live in the sandcastle.

“It’s afortress,” Nico would clarify. “It’s to protect them from the invaders, Wesley, because aliens are obsessed with anything created by Mattel.”

After dinner, Mr. Alvarez would lead them all into the living room, Wes included, for all his favorite, age-appropriate sci-fi movies. Nico would burrow into Wes’s side, one of the twins would sleep across their laps, and they’d crack quiet jokes about the cheap special effects or corny acting throughout the film.

When Mr. Alvarez died, Sunday dinners became rarer. They stopped visiting UCLA too. By senior year, Nico decided Stanford was the college for him.

“They have a highly ranked medical school.”

Nico didn’t have to tell Wes the reason he wanted to study medicine was because of his father. Because, for whatever reason, he thought becoming a doctor meant he could save others from Mr. Alvarez’s fate.

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