Page 19

July falls into August like time pushed it off a cliff.

The car screeches to a halt when we turn onto Adriana’s driveway, an hour inland from Piper Island. Adriana is the twins’ friend from school who moved away in sixth grade. I’d never met her, but the twins stayed friends with her all these years. She invited the six of us for the night to celebrate the slow unwinding of summer since she heads off to college two weeks before the rest of us.

The house borders a lake, but it’s not on stilts like the waterfront houses in Piper Island. It doesn’t have to be. There are no storm surges, tides, or rip currents here.

“The drive here was unbearable,” Holden says from the front door. “Has this town ever heard of paved roads?” He pulls Adriana into a hug, kisses her cheek, and walks to the kitchen in one motion.

Adriana rolls her eyes, looks at Haven. “How do you live with him?”

Haven shrugs. “Painkillers.”

I formally meet Adriana, then we all follow Holden inside. The living room bleeds into the kitchen, both overlooking Lake Lockwood from the sliding glass doors. In the kitchen, the sun glints off the refrigerator. Adriana’s dad shucks corn at the sink. Her mom chops raw potatoes. A game show streams from the TV. This snapshot of domestic bliss is too potent.

We set our things down on the hardwoods. I text my mom and Blair that we made it in one piece, then leave my phone zipped in my overnight bag. I help myself to a carrot stick from the veggie platter on the granite island, occupying my hands, still antsy for a text back from my dad.

“You guys need to meet Mia and Tanner!” Adriana leads us to the tiled outdoor patio.

A girl walks barefoot on the patio, hands out to keep her balance, her brunette hair cascading behind her. A boy sips a Coke at the picnic table. His sun-bleached brown hair tells the story of summer days spent at the lake.

We exchange hellos, then shift into the lull of new people in new places—the push and pull of what to do and say next. Holden settles us into the day, heading down the dock with a fishing rod and his tackle box. Mason runs past him to cannonball into the water, Adriana right behind. Jorge challenges Holden to a fishing competition. Mia takes Haven on the jet ski. Tanner catches up to them somewhere on the lake.

That leaves me and Everett on a swinging bench on the dock, taking turns with a bottle of sunscreen.

The lake is sweet tea. The sun’s late morning position has driven away the early dawn locusts. Splashy sounds ring out around us: Holden’s bobber, Mason and Adriana vying for the same watermelon float, something from behind us plopping in the shallow water. It’s comforting to look at a body of water and see the land on the other side. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the water was still, a postcard of peace and domestic bliss.

Everett takes it all in with me.

“This reminds me of a lake I used to go to in Illinois. We stayed for one week every summer when Dad finally took off work. We spent all day swimming and grilling at the beach. Dad tried fishing every day. He never caught anything, but he always told us fishing is about the company you keep, not the fish you catch.” He makes his voice deep like Hank’s, then laughs at himself, Hank’s corny adage, or maybe both.

I laugh because he does. “You think that’s why he picked Piper?”

“Mom always loved North Carolina’s lighthouses, always did puzzles of them and collected souvenirs, so my dad made it happen for her.”

I look out at the lake and imagine I’m Everett. I take in how the ripples catch the sun’s rays, how small the pine trees look on the horizon, how water dances carelessly on the surface. I feel the memory like it’s my own. What’s it like to watch your dad suck at fishing but still believe your presence is the reason the moment is perfect?

“I’m glad.” I wipe a line of unblended sunscreen into his forehead with my thumb. My mood ring catches in the sun.

“Thanks.” He smiles.

I point to the only cloud in the sky. “That cloud looks like an upside-down hot dog.”

“It even has mustard on it.”

“I hope you mean ketchup.” I smirk, searching for a way to disagree, like old times.

The cloud changes with the wind. We race to tell stories about it, read it like a fortune. An octopus riding a bike. Apple pie. An elephant playing tennis. An umbrella pitched on a mountaintop.

Tanner, Mia, and Haven come back into view. They cut the engine in the no-wake zone and bob back to us. Haven jumps into the water.

“Anyone want a ride?” Mia asks.

“I don’t really…” I bite my cheek. “Swim.”

“This isn’t swimming. It’s jet-skiing.”

“Your life jacket begs to differ.”

She makes a face like she can’t argue, but she keeps prying. “I swear you’ll be okay.”

I sit up a little taller, pseudo confidence in my voice. “Pinky promise?”

“Yes,” Mia says. “If you want, Adriana can take you.”

Adriana nods from a watermelon float in the water. “Pinky promise.”

A million thoughts race through my mind, now that the possibility is upon me. What if something goes wrong? Am I prepared to meet water again? Is the risk worth the potential fun?

“You can do it, Quinn!” Haven calls out after she settles onto the float with Adriana and Mason, nearly knocking them off in the process.

Mason does something similar, whooping and beginning a chant of my name.

A past version of me would have called this peer pressure—which it is—but my friends have always wanted the best for me, so maybe peer pressure isn’t always a bad thing.

I look at Everett, silently seeking his approval. He gives me a droopy smile and shrugs like he wants me to have all the fun in the world but is too afraid to say so. If the idea makes Everett smile, then I don’t care that my name is Quinn Kessler. I deserve some fun.

I’m not sure what fully compels me to do something so risky, so outside my comfort zone, but a voice deep within me reaches out and says, “you deserve a rollercoaster.”

I pull a green life jacket off a nail in the shelter. It smells of mildew and barely zips over my chest, but it’s too late to back down.

The lake roars with applause. I shake my head bashfully. It feels like I’m on stage at Holy Mackerel.

I step down on the footrest and throw my leg across the seat, holding tight to Adriana.

Adriana cranks up the engine while I wave my goodbyes to everyone on the dock. I stick my tongue out at Everett, smiling more than my mouth can contain. Once we’re past the no wake zone, she accelerates slowly, then speeds up once I’m more accustomed to the rush.

The water is a sleek glass sheet, the jet ski the blade that slides it clean down the middle. There are no ripples in the water, so we glide across the smooth surface.

I forget to be rational, confident enough to say things I’d normally never even think. “Go faster!”

She obeys, leaving my words hundreds of feet behind us. The lake stretches ahead. The wind rushes straight into my open-mouthed grin. My eyes sting from the bright sun and the water droplets that shoot into my eyes when we bounce over the wake of a speedboat. We’re a single unit that lifts off the seat for a second of reckless abandon. So this must be what a rollercoaster feels like.

When we land, I feel it all at once.

Freedom hugs me tightly.

Tighter than the anchors that have held me down all these years. They’re gone now; I can feel it. They flew clean off my shoulders right around 40 miles per hour.

“Can I do a trick?” Adriana shouts.

“Yes!” Adrenaline screams back.

The rev of the engine responds for her. The wind slaps my face. It’s hard to keep my eyes open, but I do anyway and watch Adriana jerk the steering wheel completely around.

I lift from the seat.

Sky and water blur before my eyes.

My body shatters the surface.

The anchors return.

Water hugs me tightest of all.

For the first time since my late-night swim with Everett last year, I’m in the water. I forget how to resurface, but my life jacket does its job, pulls me back into the world Hadley wasn’t. I feel like I might die, my breath confused and quick. I wipe my eyes open and try to move forward, but my legs are stuck in Jell-O.

Adriana swims to me, grabs my life jacket. “Quinn, are you okay?”

I nod.

She pulls me back to the jet ski, now idling in the water. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to break my promise. I thought you were holding on tight enough and you gave me the okay and I’m just so sorry…”

I listen to her babble the whole way back to the jet ski. I’m not mad at her. I’m not mad at the water. Or the jet ski. I’m mad at myself. How could I ever think I’d be able to walk the Earth not shackled to anchors?

Adriana doesn’t exceed 15 miles per hour on the way back. I pant into her back, squeezing my eyes so tightly they wrinkle, trying to ignore the lake water streaking down my legs and how sore my ankle feels when I put pressure on it.

I can’t ignore it; it’s what I deserve.

When we get back to the dock, Adriana cuts the engine, jumps in, and pulls the jet ski flush with the dock.

Haven jumps up from her towel, helps me onto the dock. “Did you fall in? Are you okay?”

I must look as distraught as I feel. Adriana hands me a towel. I wrap up in it and wring my hair out onto the dock. “It’s no big deal.” If I keep telling myself that, maybe it will become true.

Adriana mouths another “I’m sorry.” I shrug it off like the nothing that falling into a lake should be. She walks back to the backyard where everyone but Haven plays cornhole.

“I promise it was fun,” I say to Haven.

“I believe you.”

“My ankle is a little sore, but really, I’m fine.”

“I know.” She smiles and lies back down to return to the sun and the book slumped over her towel.

I fan my towel next to hers and lie on my stomach, resting my forehead on my arms.

“Let me read you a story.” Haven pages to where she left off.

I don’t know what happened earlier in the book, but there’s something about the curl in her voice that makes me feel like I’ve been with it all along. The story is just like Haven: all summer, no worry, the tiniest bit of romance. It’s about a girl who works at a sleepaway camp trying to get the super-cute-but-grumpy counselor to fall in love with her. It’s obviously something that would only happen in a syrupy beach read, but there’s a reason syrup sticks to everything it touches.

I let the words stick to me as the story and the sun lull me into a half sleep that might put me into a permanent one in this midday weather, my body failing as the heat takes me. If I do wake up, I’d have towel prints on my arms, a headache burned into my brain, skin that’s only white when you poke it.

So I don’t fall asleep. The Mom side of me actually believes I’ll die. Instead, I focus on the lake swaying under us. The joy I find in a little thing like that must be the Dad side of me.

Then I realize it’s been hours since the last time I thought about checking my phone.

For that, I can at least thank the lake.

Later, while the boys take to the jet skis, Haven, Adriana, and Mia balance themselves on the watermelon float. I lie on my stomach at the edge of the dock, dangling my hand into the water as a half-assed truce. After a whole plate of seafood boil and a large slice of tres leches, all I want to do is laze.

Mia tells us about the night she and Tanner kissed at a gas station and then decided it was just the heat of the moment.

“You know what I think?” Haven stretches a wet hand to the sky and watches the water drip off her fingertips.

“What?” Mia asks.

“I kind of get the impression that he likes you,” Haven says. “I bet that gas station kiss meant something more to him.”

“Dude, I’ve been telling her this all summer!” Adriana exclaims.

“Are you kidding me? We both agreed it was awkward. We only kissed because we were drunk on the beauty of graduating high school or some bullshit like that.” Mia laughs, splashing one foot in and out of the water like a nervous tic.

“Yeah, in the gas station parking lot.” Adriana snickers. “But seriously, that kiss meant something to Tanner.”

Haven sprinkles water on her chest. “You could see it on his face when you were talking about it earlier. I see it on Everett’s all the time. You and Quinn are just alike.”

“Okay, we don’t have to bring that up.” I splash Haven who doesn’t seem to mind.

“I was going to ask you about that.” Mia looks at me. I don’t know if she really was going to ask or if she just wants the heat off of her, but she persists. “You like each other, don’t you?”

“Everett and I are...complicated. Well, it’s more like I’m complicated, but that sort of makes us both complicated.”

“Yes, they like each other,” Haven says, filling in my story gaps like she’s reading from her book on the dock. “But Quinn has her reservations and we forgive her for it.” She leaves it at that.

“It’s hard to be vulnerable.” I nervously trace shapes on the surface of the water—a sea turtle riding a bike.

“I get it.” Mia looks at me. “Sometimes I feel like I’m floating outside my own body, but it’s easier to float than let anyone catch me.”

Nobody’s ever put it that way, but that’s how it feels to be the girl who sees thorns before roses, clouds before a blue sky. The girl whose parents spun pain into her bones.

Sometimes it’s easier to float.

As the sun says its official goodnight, the warm cloak of summer strips down to an outfit reminiscent of a brisk autumn morning. Cicadas chirp the trees’ steady heartbeat. Frogs sing ribbit songs from the marsh.

After an intense dragonfly-catching competition and a tiebreaker round of cornhole, we sit at the edge of the dock for the last snatches of sunset.

I cross my legs over Everett’s lap on the swinging bench. Adriana, Haven, and Jorge sit with their toes in the water. Holden and Mason are both cross-legged on a towel. Tanner lies with his head in Mia’s lap as she brushes her hands through his brown hair. I raise my eyebrows at her. She does the same to me. Touché.

The sky casts a purple haze on Everett’s face. Everett strokes his thumb over my ankle and asks me if it hurts. It’s still humming from earlier on the jet ski, but I’ve been using it all day so I tell him it’s okay.

His absentminded touch makes me feel like I’m floating.

I study how he watches the lake with such intent. I look at the low-hanging band of indigo clouds on the horizon and try to guess what picture he’s imagined from them.

Everett must have read my mind, because he turns to me, smiles softly, then whispers, “They’re quill pens.”

“They certainly are.” I smile, my voice a soft purple dusk.

This is about as close to a perfect moment as I’ve felt since last summer, one of those moments I have to remind myself to be fully present in. If I don’t, it’ll pass me by like a dragonfly zipping through dusk before I have the chance to trap it in a mason jar. But I don’t need to catch the moment yet, only sit inside it and feel the lull of tired conversations between lake people and beach people.

We take turns swatting mosquitoes off our skin, listening to Adriana strum “Brown Eyed Girl” on her guitar.

Dock lights turn on in the distance like earthly stars, signaling that it’s time to go inside, shower, and make our beds in the living room.

When I stand up, pain seethes an angry snarl in my ankle. It’s an unbearably loud sensation that forces me to lift off my foot as soon as it strikes. In one motion, I fall on the dock with only my palms to brace my fall.

“Are you okay?” Everett pulls me up.

“I think I sprained my ankle on the jet ski.” I lean into Everett as we walk into the house, but only because I can’t stand on my own.

Pinky promise.