When Summer Ends

by Jessica Pennington

  I twist open the canister and scoop the tea into one side of the ball, then twist it shut. Mom sets a mug of hot water in front of me and lifts the little silver ball by its chain, lowering it into the mug. She twirls it around in the mug, bobbing it up and down until the water is dark.

  “How long do you do it for?” I ask.

  She holds the chain out to me and I take it, doing the same motion my mom was. “Just depends how strong you want it,” she says. She reaches into the cupboard again and pulls down a little glass jar. “You can add some rock sugar if it’s not sweet enough,” she says, setting the jar of brown crystals in front of me. “Just play around with it.”

  I dip the ball a few more times before pulling it out and setting it on the little ceramic spoon rest next to the oven. It’s pretty bitter, so I tip in a few sugar crystals and stir it with the spoon. I take another sip, and the hot liquid fills my mouth with delicious flavor. “Mm.”

  “I knew you’d like it,” Mom says, and my first thought is to comment on how there’s no way that she’d know. But I don’t, because I’m still tired and my tea is delicious, and it’s hard to be mean when I know I have to see her every day. I sit down at the little table and we sip from our mugs in silence until Mom finally breaks it. “How was the thing this weekend?”

  She doesn’t know what a loaded question that is at this point. If she had asked me Sunday, I would have said it was unequivocally one of the coolest things I’d ever done. But after a few days of radio silence, it’s starting to lose some of its magic. “It was really cool,” I say, finally, because it’s true. Even if I went with a jerk, the event was amazing.

  Mom nods, and I hope she won’t ask me about details. Instead, she looks down at the mug between her hands. “We need teacups,” she says. “This is embarrassing.”

  “I like the mugs,” I say, taking another sip.

  She laughs, and I don’t get it, but I just keep sipping my tea.

  * * *

  Late morning I shove a bottle of water, my notebook, and some fruit into a bag and ride my bike to the state park. I’ve never been here before but I expected it to be busier for some reason. Maybe because Aiden made it sound like such a hotspot. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here. Maybe I secretly hope to run into him. Even though I know he’s working today. We were supposed to be off on the same day, but he owes Ellis for Monday.

  I’m not brave enough to hike out into the dunes by myself, so I lock my bike up and walk toward the little peninsula that juts out into the tiny lake. I haven’t been here since I was a kid. It felt bigger then. I’m not even sure I can call this a lake and not a giant pond—the water is shallow, not deeper than my knees for as far as I can see. A quarter of the lake is engulfed in lily pads. The grassy peninsula that pushes out into the lake is crowned by a giant weeping willow, the branches reflecting in the water all around it. I sit under the tree and toe my shoes off. My notebook on my lap, I stare out across the water.

  This stupid unnecessary drama with Aiden has forced me to think about Zander. We broke up two weeks ago, and I made out with a guy in a stairwell that I basically just met—really met—last week. It took Zander years of us being friends for him to kiss me. It took Aiden one day alone with me. I’m not sure if that means Aiden is just a ho, or if Zander had to really convince himself over the years that he wanted to be with me.

  I’ve drifted into a hazy state, the kind where you’re looking at something but don’t really see it anymore, and there are no discernible thoughts in your mind, when my bag buzzes beside me.

  Emma:

  What happened?

  Olivia:

  Crap, I’m sorry. Completely spaced.

  I was supposed to meet Emma at The Cherry Pit for her lunch break. I check the time and realize I’ve been sitting here for almost two hours. This lake is like the land of no time. It’s probably a good thing I don’t spend more time outdoors, or my whole life would just rush past me in a blur of moments I don’t even remember.

  Olivia:

  Still nothing.

  Emma:

  I can’t believe you’re this pissed.

  Olivia:

  This is a completely douche-canoe thing to do. You’d be pissed.

  Emma:

  True. But you’re the girl who just broke up with the ‘love of her life.’ Two weeks ago you didn’t want anything to do with guys.

  Olivia:

  And I still don’t. Definitely not.

  Emma:

  Hey, at least if you move, you won’t leave a broken-hearted Aiden Emerson behind. That boy has broken enough lately.

  I laugh out loud, and the little girl and her grandpa fishing on the opposite side of my giant tree give me a dirty look, like I’m screaming in the middle of the library. Newsflash, kiddo: If there were fish in this foot-deep water, you’d see them! The idea of Aiden Emerson in a puddle of broken-hearted tears because of me is ridiculous. Right up there with me spending my day off sitting in the grass like some nature-crazed lunatic.

  Olivia:

  Thank god we avoided that.

  Emma:

  You’re a heartbreaker, Olivia Henry

  Olivia:

  Only on Wednesdays

  Another hour passes, and the little girl and her grandpa are gone. Fishless, despite my having been quiet for the rest of my time as their peninsula neighbor. I’m lying in the grass, my clothes soaking up the heat of the afternoon sun, when my phone buzzes. Excitedly, I roll onto my stomach, to see if Emma is getting off of work early. But it isn’t Emma. It’s a text I’ve been waiting for, for two weeks now. Except now that it’s here, I wish it weren’t. Because I don’t know what to make of it. And I don’t know how I feel about it. But I’m definitely not answering it.

  Zander:

  I miss you.

  After an afternoon of grass-sitting, sun-soaking, and boy-cursing (both new and old), I’m in the kitchen in my ratty old shorts and a tank top when I get a text from Ellis, inviting me to a bonfire. Part of me wants to just hole up in my room and show Aiden that if he wants to avoid me I can avoid him right back. But the other part of me hopes that if I go, he’ll be there too. I’d love to see the look on his face when he realizes he’ll be trapped in the woods with me, after spending half of the week avoiding me. Still, a very equal part of me loves the idea of just lying on the couch and waiting for Emma to get off of her dinner shift. Except there’s a 95 percent chance she’s out with Mani before she even thinks to text me. And I don’t even blame her.

  Throwing myself back onto my bed, I look up at my ceiling, covered in tiny blue clouds and yellow stars. Aunt Sarah and I decorated it the summer I was eight, when I was spending a lot more time at her house on weekends when Oma needed a break, and Aunt Sarah wanted me to have my own room. We made stamps from cut potatoes, and I’d dip each one in paint and send them up the ladder to Aunt Sarah, who would press it onto the white ceiling. Some are light blue and some are dark, because eight-year-old Olivia didn’t know anything about consistency. I sort of love that they’re all so different.

  I let out a deep sigh, because I know what I need to do. The old Magic 8-Ball is still sitting on my desk, and I grab it and sit on the edge of the bed again.

  Should I go out tonight? Shake shake shake.

  The dark blue liquid sloshes around and the white triangle appears in the window, surrounded by tiny bubbles.

  Without a doubt.

  I’m starting to think fate has a real problem with homebodies.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  AIDEN

  “What’s the deal with you and her?” Ellis points to Olivia walking up ahead of us with Beth and Jaz, and I smack his hand down.

  “Shit. Stop.” Not that she’s going to see us behind her, but still.

  “What?”

  “Stop acting like you don’t know. That you didn’t set this whole thing up. You told me she wasn’t coming.” I stop and turn toward him. “Tell me you don’t know.”
r />   “Okay.” Ellis shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “God, you’re obnoxious sometimes.” Ellis has been this way since we were kids; getting into my business, trying to fix things to the way he sees them. And for some reason the way he sees things is me and Olivia. Together. There’s no other reason that the two of us are constantly scheduled for the same days, and always at the docks together. The only others paired up so consistently are Beth and Jaz, and they flat-out beg Ellis to put them together.

  “I know you weren’t sick and I had to work on my day off,” Ellis says. “I know you’re avoiding her. And I know you’ve got a real stick up your ass about something.”

  I grunt.

  “And you’re pissy. Like when you were a kid and didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas.” He kicks a stick that’s in his path. “It’s like—”

  “Don’t even say it.”

  “It’s like that year you wanted that ugly green baseball mitt, but your dad got you the navy one instead.”

  “I wasn’t pissy.”

  “Please. You were the most passive-aggressive ten-year-old ever.”

  “I screwed up,” I say, hoping he knows I’m not talking about the mitt, so I don’t have to say it.

  “You can’t avoid her all summer. It’s been hard enough keeping you apart for a few days. The Depot isn’t exactly Disney World, I can’t keep you on opposite ends of the park.”

  “It’ll blow over,” I say, and I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.

  “I hope so. Because if I have to choose between you and her—” His voice is teasing.

  I laugh. “Understood.”

  OLIVIA

  It turns out Beth is building a tiny house with her dad in her free time. She pulls the pictures up on her phone and starts sliding through them as we walk.

  “The stairs are going to have little cubbies under them,” she says as she shows me a photo of the hollow stairs that ascend into the loft over what will eventually be the kitchen. The more I work with Beth, the more I can see her living in some tiny house built on a trailer, with a weird little toilet that doesn’t flush and a special window where she grows her own lettuce. It totally fits the I-could-be-happy-anywhere aesthetic she has going on.

  “Where do you just hang out?” I tip my head, trying to see what she does in the photo.

  “Anywhere. There’s a ton of space.” She smiles and puts her phone away. “I’ll have everyone over once it’s done.”

  Beth tells me her parents have rented a little plot of land near her college, and how it will save her so much money in housing costs and student loans. “I’ll just sell it when I graduate,” she adds.

  I’m not usually jealous of dads—maybe because I’ve never had one and I don’t know what I’m missing—but I’m jealous of Beth’s dad. I don’t even want a tiny house—with their weird little composting toilets and each space repurposed for four different things—but I wish someone wanted to build one with me.

  Ellis said we were going to River Depot’s new building—the one they’re all referring to as the Annex, since it doesn’t have an official name yet. It won’t open until next summer. When we get to the right spot along the river, Ellis and Aiden start piling sticks up in a sandy spot away from the frame of the building.

  “I thought this was going to be a river boat,” I say to Ellis, who has an armful of sticks. “Where’s the boat?”

  Ellis opens his mouth, but it’s Aiden who speaks. “It needs a lot of work, it’s getting rehabbed at one of the marinas. They’ve got it indoors until it’s ready to go.”

  I have more questions, but not for Aiden. “Ah” is all that comes out of my mouth.

  Aiden’s face drops and I turn to the river, where Beth and Jaz are already sitting on weathered wooden benches. There are two—one on either side of the charred circle of ground—and on either side of those is an old canoe. They’re the kind so skinny they seem unlikely to fit an actual person in them. Not like the wide boats the tourists use that seem almost impossible to tip. I sit on the overturned boat and cross my legs in front of me. Ellis is dropping a few larger branches onto the pile, and using a lighter to start tiny fires on the ends of sticks. Some of them don’t take off, but others do, and it’s sort of magical looking from a distance, all of these tiny sparks of flame suspended in the air, slowly growing and bleeding into one another until they consume the sticks and fill the air with heat and warm light. I’m staring into the fire, letting the dancing light lull me into a daze, when my view is obstructed by the outline of a very annoying boy.

  “Come with me?” His voice is hushed and low and he’s already got me by the hand, pulling me up off of the canoe.

  Aiden tugs me into the woods—out of the glow of the fire and into the darkness of the trees—and I’m having flashbacks of the warehouse and the stairwell, and his hands. His lips. My stomach is twisting into knots at the thought of it. And I hate how good his hand feels around mine right now. The same hand that hasn’t even bothered to text me all week. The hand that probably crossed out my name on the assignments board. I pull my hand out of his and it brings us to an abrupt halt, about thirty feet from everyone. Cloaked by the trees and the darkness, and the heaviness hanging around us.

  He turns toward me, and he feels uncomfortably close. Closer than he’s been since the kiss. “I feel like you’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad—” It’s almost true. I’m not mad in the same way that Aunt Sarah isn’t mad when I forget to take the trash out. I’m not mad, in an “I don’t know if I have the right to be mad, but I am anyway” sort of way. “—I’m … disappointed, I guess.” For someone who grew up without a real mom, I sure do sound like one right now.

  “I’m sorry.” He stubs his toe down into the ground and shuffles pine needles and sand around with the toe of his sandal. “Last weekend at ArtPrize … I was out of line. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I knew you had a boyfriend, and I shouldn’t have been an ass.” He shoves his hands down into his pockets and tips his head up toward the sky. “I got caught up in everything. That performance was intense, and it seemed like you were into it too. But I felt like shit about it.”

  I can’t help but let my eyes follow his. The inky sky shows in patches between the trees, and there are little clusters of stars visible, mixed in with clouds so thin they’re just barely veiling the little points of light.

  Aiden’s chest slowly rises as he takes a slow, deep breath and lets it out. “I was hoping if we had some space for a few days, we’d just forget about it and never bring it up again, and we could still be friends and everything, but…”

  “But I’m mad?”

  “Yeah.” Aiden is looking at me now—looking me right in the eyes in a way that makes me want to run. “So I’m sorry.”

  I cock my head to the side and look him in the eyes. “It sounds like you’re only sorry because I’m mad.”

  “I am sorry that you’re mad.”

  “But you’re not sorry that you kissed me.”

  “I mean…” Aiden hesitates, and glances down quickly, like he’s not sure what to say. “I am. But also, you didn’t stop me.” He stubs his toe into the dirt again. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  I laugh a little—I’m nervous, and surprised by the turn this whole conversation has taken. “You should have called me.”

  “What?”

  “After you kissed me.” I raise my eyebrows and lean into the scolding-mom vibe I’ve got going on. “You should have called me. You shouldn’t have avoided me like I was some stranger you hooked up with at a party and would never see again.” I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, being so honest about what I want from him. Maybe it was all the time we spent together on Saturday, talking about art, and how it made us feel. “That’s why I’m mad.”

  “You’re not mad about the kiss?”

  “Zander and I broke up, Aiden.” I don’t know why I say it. Why after all of this time it finally feels ready to fall out of my mouth. I�
�m also not sure why I didn’t say it sooner. Maybe it was the text today. The fact that it didn’t light me up like I had thought it would. I had been disappointed that the text was from Zander and not Aiden.

  His eyes are glowing with a certain heat, but the way he’s looking at me, I’m not sure if he’s excited or mad.

  “We broke up right after school let out,” I say.

  “You never said anything.”

  “You never asked. I didn’t exactly plan for us to be the kissing-in-stairwells kind of coworkers.” It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. “And I don’t go around announcing my personal problems to the world—”

  “Only when the news crews show up?”

  I laugh. “Right. Only then.”

  There’s a long silence—I can hear the fire popping, the hushed voices in the distance.

  Aiden puts his hand on my wrist, and lets his fingers trail down to mine. He leans imperceptibly closer and his voice is soft. “Can I kiss you?”

  A million things go through my head—how angry I was at him this week, the text from Zander, and the fact that I could be leaving. I want to kiss Aiden right now—more than anything—but I also remember how I’ve felt the last few weeks after everything with Zander. The idea of going through that again at the end of summer is crushing. Kissing Aiden is almost certainly the wrong decision. Of course, at one point I thought dating Zander was the right decision. My personal judgment obviously can’t be trusted.

  Aiden must see the doubt on my face. “Shit. You can just say no if you want.” He rolls his head back and looks toward the fire in the distance, like he might bolt. I grab his forearm and pull lightly.

  “No, I just—”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Aiden puts his hand out and grazes mine with his fingertips, sending a chill through me. “Rock, paper, scissors.”

  I laugh, and Aiden smiles.

  “I guess coin flips are more our thing, aren’t they?”