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FULL CELIA GILBERT , or the Tragic Fate of My Tennis Racket

Lovesick Falls had been my idea. I’d never been there myself, but I knew about it because Touchstone had been, and because of the theater festival that happened there over the summer, one big enough to attract minor stars and minor enough to discourage a big fuss. The town was a tiny blip beside the Russian River, nestled in a national redwood forest. One especially gray lunch period in February, Touchstone mentioned visiting his uncle-who-was-not-his-uncle at the cabin he owned, and I had an epiphany. If I were the sort of person who believed in visions—in other words, if I were more like my mother, who wrote horoscopes for a living—I would’ve called it just that. The idea just came to me, like a solution to a problem I didn’t know needed solving, one I knew straightaway was the right answer. If my life had been a math test, I would’ve put a box around my Lovesick Falls idea and moved on to the next problem without double-checking.

“We should go there,” I said. “The three of us. To that cabin.”

“Were you listening to any part of my story?” Touchstone said. His endless freckles were paler in the winter—Touchstone was the most freckled person I knew, with freckles on his eyelids and freckles on his lips—and with the lack of sunlight, his reddish hair tended more toward brown. He’d recently been diagnosed with a gluten allergy and was picking at a sad salad. He looked—we all looked—like he needed a little fresh air.

“Touchstone. Do you think we could go there?” I said.

“I can ask about staying a weekend. Maybe when it gets a little warmer.”

“No, like, for the summer. We go, we get jobs, we live. You don’t have summer plans yet, do you?”

“My mom’s office,” he said slowly, and I could see him, in a matter of seconds, coming around. He worked last summer as a receptionist at his mom’s orthodontist practice, making sure the wicker elephant was stocked with toothbrushes and taking photos for the Wall of Smiles, which he claimed had started giving him nightmares.

“I mean, I’d love not to stare at teeth all summer. You spend enough time looking at them and you start to feel your soul being sucked from your body.”

The idea was halfway built—I could feel it tingling in the soles of my feet. It was called Lovesick Falls, for God’s sake—with a name like that, who knew what sorts of things were possible? We had to go there. “Ros? What about you?”

Throughout this conversation, Ros had been lightly carving words into the lunch table with my (actually kind of nice) pen I’d lent them. They’d gotten as far as fuck the pat . I knew they didn’t have summer plans. On the contrary: Ros had quit everything in the past six months, first swim team, which we did together, then lit mag, then writing poetry, then choir, then smiling, until Touch and I were the only two things remaining from their life before their dad had left.

It was kind of impressive, actually, this quitting. I’d quit exactly one thing in my life: tennis, in ninth grade. After one especially bad practice, my mom came home and found my tennis racket in the trash can. That was the end of that.

But Ros—who, really, could blame them for the quitting? At the end of our sophomore year, right around the time my feelings for Ros started to change, their dad had split, taken off for Delaware with his physical therapist, smack-dab in the middle of our exam period. I still blamed him both for destroying my best friend’s life and for the B I got on my history final. One day he was there, and then he was just gone , this man who’d cooked pancakes on Saturday mornings and who’d once lent me a pair of socks when my feet got wet. I still had them, balled in the back of my drawer. I didn’t know what to do with them. The socks, I mean. It seemed rude to throw them out, but what was I going to do, ask Ros for his address? I wasn’t even sure if they knew it.

On top of all of this, everyone—our teachers, our parents, even this random woman my mom made us stop and talk to when we were walking the dogs—kept telling us that junior year was when everything started to count. Personally, I found this infuriating. What had my life been up until this point: rehearsal for the real thing?

“No plans,” Ros said. They kept their—my—pen moving.

“I hope you’re not taking a stand against patisseries,” I said, with a kind of coaxing smile.

They looked at me for a second, their eyes sharp. Their eyebrows were thick and untouched, the left marked by a burst of white hairs where their brow curved and turned toward their nose—a lack of pigment they’d been born with, which we called Ros’s snowbrow. For a second, I thought I saw the old Ros lurking there—the one who would joke with me, who might, say, bang the table and shout, The patisseries must go! —but they dipped their head and went back to carving, moving on to the r .

The bell rang. Well. At least they weren’t taking a stand against baguettes.

I drew up a proposal during our next class, when I should’ve been listening to Ms. Wagrowski explain angular acceleration, which I needed to learn not only for my sake but also for Ros’s, who’d eschewed note-taking in favor of more carving—lightning bolts this time. That pen would never be the same. I looked up how to write a contract on my phone, and by the end of the period, this is what I’d come up with:

A VERY MODEST PROPOSAL for a VERY MODEST SUMMER of VERY MODEST FUN and VERY SERIOUS FRIENDSHIP

We (Celia Gilbert, Ros Brinkman, and Andrew Touchstone, henceforth referred to as “We” or “The Triumvirate”) propose spending the dates of June 8–August 24 (henceforth to be referred to as “The Summer”) in the town of LOVESICK FALLS, taking up residence at 6 CORBIN LANE (henceforth to be referred to as “the cabin”). The Triumvirate believe we have proved ourselves to be responsible, intelligent individuals and feel spending the summer at the cabin could benefit us on a number of levels, including

I. Personal growth

a. As we prepare for college (after all, junior year is when everything begins to count), it is important that we gain independence by

i. Preparing meals other than instant (gluten-free) mac ’n’ cheese

ii. Finding (and securing) employment

iii. Managing our own schedules

II. Physical health

a. Myriad opportunities for outdoor activities

i. Hiking

ii. Swimming

iii. Canoeing

b. A break from city pollution

i. Even though the Triumvirate reside in what is technically a “suburban” region, pollution levels are much higher in these regions than in Lovesick Falls (see appendix 1)

III. Mental health

a. Trees have been said to promote neuroplasticity (see appendix 2)

b. The Triumvirate could really use a change of scene

I included a breakdown of a budget and printed out a map with all the nearby hospitals circled, and I showed it to Touchstone and Ros that afternoon.

“You spelled independence wrong,” said Touchstone.

“What? No, I didn’t. I-n-d …”

“Yeah, I know. I just wanted to see you freak out.”

I elbowed him in the chest. He moaned and lamented his weak constitution.

“They’re really going to be gone this summer?” I asked.

“My uncle said they’re going to be traveling in Europe and would love someone there full-time to take care of the cabin. I guess they have a lot of plants that need watering.”

It seemed too good to be true. “Ros? What do you think?”

Ros looked it over. My heart was in my throat.

“You’ve gone full Celia Gilbert,” they said, and passed the proposal. “I mean that in the best way possible.”

We gathered our parents on a Saturday afternoon in late February and made the pitch, clicking through slides I’d assembled. Touchstone and I did most of the talking, though Ros piped up a few times. The adults had some questions about safety and jobs and money and supervision and trust, and while I pointed everyone toward the budget and an article from SFGATE titled “How Did Lovesick Falls Become a Safe Haven for the LGBTQ+ Community?” Ros looked our parents dead in the eyes, steely gazed, snowbrowed, and said, “ Please. I need a summer with my friends.”

They said yes almost instantly after that. Mr. and Dr. Touchstone gave me big hugs and told me they could tell I was wearing my retainer, and Ros’s mom told me how grateful she was that Ros had a friend like me. Our parents had some suggestions—that we call to check in weekly, that we treat Henry’s house with the utmost respect, that we pick up the phone when they called us—but they were excited for us. Sure, Ros had quit some things in the past few months, but we were, by and large, good kids with decent grades who made heavy use of their planners (me) and had an impeccably organized pencil case (okay, again, also me) and always showed up to class prepared (with the exception of Touchstone, who for a week last year took notes with a grease pencil from the chem lab because I refused to lend him a pen after he lost too many of mine). In three years of high school, there were two detentions between us (the first when Ros had “accidentally” “spilled” acid from our chem lab on known asshole Bennett Vernon’s baseball cap; the second when Touchstone, like a true goober, had been caught making out with Liz Reynolds in the catwalk above the theater. “You know they can see you up there,” I said. “At least I’m getting some action,” he’d said to me. Touché. The most action I got was in my mind, daydreaming about Blade Mendoza (or Ros).

Still: Before we left, my mother couldn’t help but issue me a warning.

“Celia,” she said, joining me in my room while I cleaned before leaving, so everything would be just so when I returned. “This is an incredible opportunity for you and your friends. It’s immensely kind of Henry to let you use his house, and I know you’ll leave the cabin better than when you found it. I love you, and I love your friends. But I do have some reservations that I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. We’d already talked about sex—again, not like I was having any—but she loved bringing it up to prove how open and hip she was.

“I’d like to talk to you about triangles.”

Okay. That was new.

“The triangle is a curious shape,” Mom went on. “In architecture, it’s one of the strongest…”

“Mom, can you just say what you mean and not go all sphinx on me?”

“Celia, it continues to be one of the great ironies of my life that I gave birth to a Capricorn.”

“Well, sorry I came early.”

“Your timeline was your own, and you arrived exactly as you were supposed to. And you know, baby girl, I couldn’t have been happier to see you, tiny as you were, five pounds, three ounces.…”

“Mom, are you crying ?”

“You were just so little once,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Oh, brother.

“Let’s go back to triangles,” I said.

“Let’s,” she agreed. “Three people can be tough to navigate in a friendship.”

I almost laughed. That was what she came to tell me? I, too, had gone through middle school, Mom. My favorite show was Power Jam , which relied heavily on the love triangle between Kenna, Blade, and Louisa to motivate its plot. I knew that three people could be tricky. I also knew my friends.

“Ros, Touch, and I have been friends for forever. I think we’ll be okay.”

“New situations can bring out new things in people. Yes, you’ve known Andrew and Ros forever, but you haven’t lived with them. You certainly have never been on your own with them in such a big way before. Not to mention Ros’s life has gone through some fairly radical shifts in the past year. Just—communicate with us, okay? Keep us in the loop. Be patient with everyone. Be patient with yourself.”

“Okay. I promise to be patient.”

“Celia.”

“What? I promise! I’ll be so patient I’ll make molasses jealous. I’ll be so patient I’ll grow moss.”

My mom hesitated, and for a second, I was worried she was going to say something about the planets. Sometimes, in direct opposition to my wishes, she read my chart and told me things that I did not need to hear, things that became self-fulfilling prophecies, like when she told me how I could expect challenges in travel and for the next six months of my life I diagnosed my car with a flat tire whenever I drove anywhere, inventing challenges in travel where there were none, seeing as my tires were totally fine.

She had the power to get in your head, unfortunately.

This time, she spared me the planets. Instead she clapped her hands together, stood, and gave me one of her warmest, best hugs. I found myself thinking: I would miss her. I would miss this. I hugged my mom goodbye, and I felt, momentarily, weirdly, like I was going to go off to war, and then I thought that that was probably insensitive to people who did go off to war, and besides, this was hardly war; this was meant to be fun , very modestly so.

“Love you, Mom,” I said into her shoulder. The hug went on for a long, long time. My mom was great at hugs.

“Love you, baby girl,” she said. “I’m trusting you.”