When Summer Ends

by Jessica Pennington

  River Depot is still open—the double doors to the gift shop and general store are still flung wide, the concession stand is still bustling with activity, kids and adults clutching ice cream cones. But everything on the waterfront is shut down. Ellis said canoers can’t be trusted to get back by dusk, so thanks to their ineptitude, we don’t ever work the boats past seven o’clock. Yet here we are at eight o’clock, back at work, while a different crew handles the night crowd.

  When I pull in, Aiden is walking away from the parking lot, toward the back of the building, and I follow. I don’t want him to feel like I’m chasing him, so I don’t rush. By the time I turn the corner, he’s talking to the tall blonde whom Ellis introduced as Avery. There’s a tattoo trailing up the inside of her forearm. I nod at Aiden as I approach, and get a warm smile. But instead of talking to him, I turn to Avery.

  “We didn’t really get to meet this morning.” I stick my hand out. “I’m Olivia, but you can call me Liv. What was your name?”

  Next to her, Aiden smirks.

  She smiles. “I’m Beth.”

  “Oh.” I feign confusion, and her eyes widen in realization. “I sort of remember it being Allison or Avery, or Addison, or something.” I raise my brows and smile.

  “Busted,” she mutters.

  “And on my first day,” I chide.

  “Sorry, Ellis put us up to it.” She smiles sweetly. “We never would have remembered all of those names, anyway.”

  “Well now that I know your name, I have to know what your tattoo says.” I point at her forearm, where a delicate trail of black script runs from wrist to elbow.

  “It’s a line from a Frost poem.” She glances down at it like she needs to check that it’s still there. “But you can barely read it.” Then, just as she turns to walk toward the others, standing by the river, she adds, “freshman year,” with a dramatic shake of her head, as if that’s enough of an explanation. Don’t judge, Olivia, you let dice tell you what you were doing tonight.

  Aiden steps forward when she leaves. He nods at the girl Beth is approaching. Allison. She’s short and athletic-looking, and her braids aren’t gathered in a ponytail now, like they were this morning. In this light I can see the little glints of gold that are woven in.

  “And Allison is Jaz,” Aiden says. “Jasmine, but Ellis says everybody calls her Jaz. The two of them go to Western but are home for the summer.”

  “And Adam?” He’s standing near Ellis, by the river, both of them with paddles in their hands.

  “That’s Troy,” Aiden says.

  From the back, Troy and Zander could be twins. They have the same athletic build, the same blond hair cut short. I half expect it to be Zander when he turns around, but Troy doesn’t actually look anything like Zander. His face is rounder, the skin along his cheeks slightly scarred from acne. And he’s missing the blue eyes. Aiden and I wave when Troy catches us pointing at him.

  Ellis motions me and Aiden over, and then the whole group is moving, shuffling away from the boathouse, through the wooded area and back toward the river. We bypass the main launch and go down a little path two hundred feet or so to the left, until I can see the shiny water glinting through the trees. There’s no dock here, just a cleared patch along the bank where three canoes are pulled half out of the water, paddles piled up on the grass in front of them. Beth picks up a paddle and steps into the middle canoe. The boat barely rocks as she steps in, like she’s light as a feather and not this towering skyscraper of a girl. Troy follows behind her, guiding the back of the boat into the water as he steps in.

  Ellis is holding a paddle and waves me over. He places it in my hand, like he’s not sure I’ll take it, and nods toward the front of the canoe. I sling my bag into the middle of the boat and immediately regret it. I gave the “don’t leave anything sitting in your canoe if it’s not in a plastic bag” speech at least twenty times today. Crap. I twist suddenly, sending the canoe jarring to one side, as I try to reach for the bag. Ellis laughs.

  “It’s fine, Olivia”—he must see the panic in my face—“we just say that for liability. As long as you don’t tip, it’ll be fine.”

  I smile before turning back toward the river. The boat jerks a little as the back plops into the water, and I brace myself with the paddle stretched across me.

  I expect to push out into the water, but I’m just sitting here. I turn to find Ellis still on shore, squatting with one hand on the canoe, keeping me from drifting away. He nods at Aiden, who is walking over with a paddle.

  “I guess we’re official canoe partners now.” Aiden smiles.

  Jaz steps into the front of the last canoe and Ellis sits down behind her, pushing them out into the water.

  Aiden steps into the canoe, and he’s not nearly as graceful as Beth—we lurch to the left and then bob to the right, swaying gently side to side until we’re gliding out into the center of the river. We’re headed straight for the opposite shore, until I feel us come to a hard stop as the front swings unexpectedly to the left. We’re perfectly lined down the middle of the river now, Beth and Troy up ahead, and Ellis and Jaz alongside us. It’s unnerving, being in front and not being able to anticipate the motions of the canoe. If I knew how to steer—if I knew how to even hold a paddle properly—I could be in the back. I could be in control.

  “How do you even do that?” There’s a sort of awe in my voice that was unintentional, though totally warranted.

  “Just think of your paddle like a rudder. From there it should be pretty instinctual.”

  It’s also really weird having a conversation with someone behind me, because I don’t even know if he’s being serious. “Instinctual to anyone who has … used a rudder?”

  Aiden laughs, and I swear the whole canoe sort of vibrates under me. “How could you grow up in Riverton—with the lake, and the river—and make it this long without canoeing? That’s the kind of avoidance that takes actual effort.”

  “I think I canoed once when I was nine,” I correct him. “My Aunt Sarah isn’t much of an outdoor person.… None of my family is.”

  “What kind of person is she?”

  “The board-games-and-movies-until-midnight kind.” The popcorn-for-dinner-on-Friday-nights kind.

  “And Zander’s never taken you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t have to paddle if you don’t want to. You should just enjoy the scenery, if you’ve never been on the river before.”

  I do what he says and set the wood across my lap. “I saw the river this afternoon, remember?”

  “Not like this.” He says it ominously, as if at some point it’s going to open up like something out of a fairytale, and the swirling cyclone of the river will just suck us down into a vortex of talking rabbits and unicorns. In a fairytale we’d either be transported somewhere magically wonderful, or to the complete opposite. What is my magical place? I hate that the first thing that pops into my head is Zander. Or, more accurately, Zander and the lake house. That is probably one of my favorite places. And I can’t help but wonder what everyone there is doing right now. If anyone wishes they would see me in a few weeks at Fourth of July.

  The thought of it squeezes my heart a little—I always loved Fourth of July with Zander and his family. Watching the fireworks at this little beach in town with an old lighthouse, and setting off sparklers on his parents’ beach blanket. When we were finally together, kissing through the finale. This will be my first Fourth of July without him. The first one I can remember, at least. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it—I have a feeling that when the fireworks explode, my heart will too.

  Aiden’s voice brings me out of my demented daydream of rabbit-filled vortices and ex-boyfriends. “Do you always ride your bike? You don’t have a car?”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “You live nearby, then?”

  “Not too far, I’m downtown. It’s doable.” It’s going to be much worse when July and August hit and the humidity makes the ride feel twice as long.


  “Maybe your mom will buy you one.”

  “I hope not.” There’s a long silence and I’m surprised Aiden isn’t grilling me, trying to pry apart my relationship with my mother, see how it all fits together. People are fascinated by dysfunctional families. It’s like everyone wants to dissect you and see what screwed you up so bad. Not so they can fix it, just so they don’t do the same. They want to look at you in all of your screwed-up glory and be glad they aren’t you. “I don’t want anything from her. She’s never given me anything, and now I don’t want anything.”

  I probably wouldn’t have said it if I had been looking at him. But I said it to the river. To the tall grasses growing alongside the water, creeping into the shallow water. To the dunes that are starting to jut up behind them, growing up up up, taller and taller with each stroke of the paddle.

  “Badass,” Aiden mutters, and I’m not sure if he’s talking about me, or the fact that it feels as if we’ve been transported to some other place. We’re farther down the river than this afternoon—we forked left instead of right this time. The dunes are looming over us on either side now, and it’s like we’re in another country, another time, another reality.

  The sky is darkening and the sun has slipped behind the dunes, out of sight, leaving a warm glow over the crest of sand. The river narrows, and the two other boats aren’t far ahead of us. It feels like everyone is charging forward, faster and faster, and I’m not sure if we’re racing one another, or something else, but then I see it. The dunes slope down, down, down, fading back into dune grass and then to sand. We come through a last bend, and the sky opens up. The sun is just creeping down below the water, and it looks like there’s a fire burning below the blue expanse of the lake.

  “Holy crap,” I say.

  “Aren’t you glad you’re a boater now?”

  The way the river is angled, cutting into beach, running parallel to the lake shore, it feels like we’re paddling right into the blaze. It’s nothing like seeing the sun set from on land. “How have I never seen this before?”

  “Hanging around with the wrong people, I guess.”

  I laugh, because he’s right. “What beach is this?”

  “I’m not sure what it’s called. It doesn’t have public access, you have to hike through the state park to get to it.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t hike either?”

  “Not unless you count the summer after sixth grade, when my Oma made us trek around her subdivision every morning with a bunch of other grandmothers.”

  Aiden laughs. “I don’t.”

  “If I’d known this is what I was missing, maybe I would have.” The earlier parts of the river were full of rocky shores and little crops of dune grass spreading down into the water, but now the river is cutting through nothing but sand, the water getting deeper and darker. Ahead of us, I can see the mouth of Lake Michigan, and beyond it a curved bay, with giant dunes at the peak.

  “Now we both get a rest.” Having Aiden behind me is like having an invisible narrator the whole trip.

  Tonight was the first thing I officially put in the hands of fate, and I can’t wait to use this in my essay. I’m making a mental note of the colors and the way it feels to be this close to everything.

  I peek back at Aiden, careful not to tip myself like last time, and his paddle is across his lap. We’re still moving—picking up speed, actually. It’s sort of soothing moving along like this with no effort. But it also makes me just a little nervous. It must show on my face, because Aiden smiles and tips his head up ahead. “The current’s going to pick up until we’re sucked out.”

  “Sucked out?” I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe I should have worn a life jacket. We tell all the tourists that they have to wear life jackets, but no one was, so I didn’t either. Do we even have one of those red cushions in here? I slide my paddle beside me and rest my hands on either side of the boat. If something happens, I’ll be no help with it anyway.

  “Sucked was a little dramatic. Don’t panic.”

  There are waves up ahead of us, slicing in different directions, with little white peaks like on top of my Oma’s lemon meringue pie. It doesn’t look conducive to boating, but Beth and Troy just crossed through unscathed, and Ellis doesn’t seem to be panicking in front of us. He’s sitting with his paddle across his lap, like I was before Aiden made his poor word choice. I focus on the red sky instead of the water, and it’s hard not to relax. A few more feet and I’ll leave the river behind me for the second time today. I’m starting to rethink where my favorite place is.

  AIDEN

  “Is this a private beach?” Olivia glances up toward the massive, cotton-candy-colored houses set on top of the bluff just north of us as she asks Jaz, who is pulling a towel out of her tote bag. Olivia looks nervous. She always looks kind of nervous, like she’s waiting for something to go wrong. Or she’s trying to anticipate what she should do in any given situation.

  Jaz shrugs. “I think so.”

  “We’ve only been arrested once,” Ellis chimes in.

  Olivia’s head snaps to me. She doesn’t trust Ellis anymore—not after what I told her about the A-names—but he doesn’t know that. So I decide to play along. “It wasn’t a big deal.” I shrug. “Twenty hours of community service actually goes by pretty fast.”

  Ellis looks over at Beth and Troy, who are grabbing bags out of the canoes, and I wink at Olivia.

  She smiles, then smooths her expression and her voice is serious. “Tell me about it.” She pulls the strap of her bag over her head and drops it in the sand. “And those orange suits are pretty itchy, right?”

  Her voice is deadpan, her face serious, and oh my god, she just walks away. Ellis looks at her in shock, her back to us as she saunters down the beach toward Beth, who is spreading a blanket out on the sand.

  Ellis turns to me like I have the answer, and I just shrug. Serves him right.

  OLIVIA

  I’m sitting on the blanket when Ellis and Aiden come over. Jaz is in water up to her shoulders, her hair now wound into a braided knot atop her head. Beth is shimmying her shorts off, about to follow. Ellis pulls his t-shirt over his head and he and Troy race toward the water, charging through the shallow waves, their knees jabbing high like an army tire drill.

  Aiden sinks down next to me, and the blanket shifts. He leans forward, his elbows resting on his bent knees, and his eyes are fixed on the water, like he can see something out there that I can’t. He looks out at the water the way Zander used to stare at a football game on the TV. He looks focused, content. And while he appraises the water, I check him over. The little white bandage by his eye is gone since yesterday. There’s yellowing across the top of his cheekbone, but the bruising is almost gone too. He’s wearing a navy blue baseball t-shirt I recognize from Zander’s own wardrobe and a pair of khaki shorts. Why do khaki shorts look good on everyone but me? I’m sitting on a beach blanket with Aiden Emerson. Former baseball star. Current king of the rumor mill. Coworker. Owner of the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. I read once that green eyes are actually the most rare, and they only seem common because most people confuse hazel with green. But Aiden’s are definitely green, and it makes him seem even more mystical. Get a grip, Olivia. He’s a guy, not a unicorn.

  “What’s up, Olivia?” The way he says it—the hint of amusement—I know I’ve been caught.

  He smiles and his teeth are straight and perfect, except for one on either side that’s twisted just a bit. It almost looks purposeful in a way, the perfect symmetry of the imperfection. His brown hair shines gold in the light, and it brushes across his forehead.

  I’m trying not to stare, but his head cocks toward me and his eyes are sweeping over me now. Not in a creepy way, like guys who blatantly check out your ass, but in a very thoughtful way, like when I’m thinking about how to turn someone into a character in a story. I always try to find a flaw about them—something small and special that makes them unique, like Aid
en’s oddly beautiful crooked teeth. I wonder what my flaw is—what would make Aiden stop for just a second longer.

  “Sorry, bad habit,” I say, looking away.

  It’s probably the freckles. I have these three rogue freckles on my otherwise pale right cheek, and they make a nearly perfect right triangle. Emma measured them last year for our geometry homework, and hasn’t shut up about it ever since. I honestly never really thought of them before, but now I feel like they jump right off of my face any time I look in the mirror.

  Aiden looks back out at the water, and I pull my worn blue Moleskine out of my bag. It’s always in there—ever since Aunt Sarah gave it to me last Christmas—but I love it so much I don’t even write in it that much. I feel like I have to save it for only the most special of ideas. And I use it if I’m going to be writing in public. Because there’s something much more legitimate about writing in a Moleskine than one of the ratty old school notebooks I would use at home. I had planned to use it at Lake Lights this summer, when I was out on assignment, taking notes on events and writing down names. Where would I be right now if I were working at Lake Lights? Probably not sitting on the beach next to Aiden Emerson.

  “You draw?” The way Aiden’s voice hitches up, I know what answer he’s hoping for.

  “No.” I tap the page with my pen, unsure if I’m going to tell him what I actually use the notebook for. There’s something weird about telling people you write. Because they automatically assume you want to share it with them. It’s like opening this door into your heart and inviting people to walk in and poke around. Even though I want to be published someday. Even though I post short stories online, and I’ve submitted them to contests—I hate sharing. Especially in person. But I don’t have anything here that Aiden can see, anyway, and I really want to jot down some notes about the river at sunset for my essay. “I write.”