When Summer Ends

by Jessica Pennington

  “Yeah.”

  The only thing I know about eye diseases is that my Oma is always complaining about her cataracts, even though they were supposed to get cut out a few years ago. And my neighbor used to have a little yippy dog with some sort of eye thing. She told me after I mentioned that the dog had the weirdest opaque eye color. Not an eye color, just diseased, she’d said.

  “But you don’t wear glasses.”

  “Glasses fix the lens of your eye. It’s the back of my eye—my retina—that’s messed up. Glasses won’t help.”

  “You know a lot about eyes?”

  “I do now,” Aiden says. “More than I used to, at least.”

  “Can they cut it out?”

  “No, it’s not like that. It’s only my eye in there, it’s just not doing what it’s supposed to. It’s more like there’s arthritis in my eye; like my eye is attacking itself so it’s swelling up in there.” He pushes a hand through his hair, like this whole conversation is stressing him out.

  “Is it bad?”

  “It’s not good.” He rolls onto his back, so I do too. “I’m probably not going blind though. Not anytime soon.”

  I hadn’t even thought about that being a possibility. “That’s good.”

  “I’ve been getting shots. That’s why I had the black eye a while back. I thought I could keep playing.”

  I shudder. “I can’t imagine getting a shot in your eye.”

  “Honestly, it’s not as bad as you’d think. You can’t see it coming at you, and they numb it first. Plus it’s not nearly as bad as taking a baseball to the face.” He’s tapping his hands next to him on the blanket. “But yeah, it’s creepy. My mom can’t watch.” Our fingers touch between us, and he runs his fingertips up and down the length of mine. It’s distracting, and I can’t help but think that’s probably intentional.

  “So that’s why I’m your summer chauffeur?”

  “When you say it like that it sounds really shitty.” He fidgets. “I thought you had a boyfriend, and I wanted to hang out with you … but I also needed a ride…”

  “It’s fine, I loved going to ArtPrize. And your car will come in handy for my cross-country road trip next month.”

  His head pops up. “Really?”

  I laugh and poke him with my arm. “No.” I feel like I owe him something for his confession, so I blurt out the worst problem I can think of. “My mom’s trying to be a mom again, and it’s really weird.”

  “I caught on to that.” We both laugh, and it bounces off of the bricks around us and settles into the darkness.

  I think about telling him that I’m moving at the end of summer. I should tell him. Except the words feel stuck in my throat. Eight more weeks with Aiden doesn’t feel like nearly enough, and the thought of it grips my chest and squeezes. I like the Olivia I am with him. And I can’t help but think how different things would be if he was the one I had met years ago. Why did we have to meet the summer before I move away? I tuck the thought away and force myself to just focus on this moment, lying next to him, feeling like we have so much ahead of us. Tomorrow I’ll worry about how I’m going to stay—or how to tell him I’m leaving.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  AIDEN

  “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we—” Olivia’s voice is teasing and excited.

  I poke her in the back with my paddle. “We’re close.”

  “You said that at the last turn in the river,” she says. “I’m starting to think you don’t actually know how to get to your secret art spot.”

  “What if it’s so super-secret I can only get there by accident?” I promised Olivia that I’d show her my art spot in the dunes, and today I’m finally doing it. She’s in front of me, paddling in a way that’s actually helping us get somewhere, which is a fun change from the first trips we took together. When I spot the crescent of sand that dips into the shore and leads the way to my favorite spot, I point my paddle toward the bank.

  Olivia squeals, and I’m a little nervous that this trip is going to be a total letdown after what she’s built up in her head. I think she might have envisioned a unicorn up there, or something. I get out and pull the canoe out of the water, helping Olivia walk up to the bow and out onto the sand. Unlike the other spots I’ve taken her to, this hike is short; through a patch of trees and then up one dune that slopes gently upward.

  “Is it just me, or am I getting better at this?” she asks as we get near the top.

  “You’re so excited about this, I’m actually having second thoughts about showing you,” I say.

  She stops where she is and smacks my arm. “Aiden Emerson, you better not be a pony-promiser.”

  “A … what?”

  “It’s someone who breaks promises,” she says, taking a few more steps. “When I was a kid we used to get those sweepstakes forms—you know, the ones you get in the mail—and I’d peel off all of the little magazine stickers and send them back in, and my mom would always say that when we won, I could get a pony.” She laughs but it sounds kind of sad. “So I always thought getting a pony was actually this inevitable thing, until I got older and realized that a million other people were entering that stupid contest. And that—you know—we were never going to win.” She looks at me sternly. “Pony promises.”

  “In that case I think I should probably be up front, and tell you there is absolutely, positively, no pony waiting for you up there.” I laugh, and she stops to smack my arm again. I grab her hand and pull her more quickly, until we’re trudging through the sand in a slow-motion run. When I can see the top I bring us to a stop and lower my voice. “Are you ready for this?”

  “I think so,” she whispers, and I push her up the last few feet, until she’s standing in my favorite spot. She looks at me and smiles, and now—at the top of this hill overlooking everything—she has officially invaded every part of my life.

  OLIVIA

  I’m not sure what’s wrong with our real estate agent, but she seems determined to have me out of bed by eight on the weekends, regardless of my work schedule. The last three weeks it’s been a steady stream of home-gawkers milling through our house on weekend mornings. It’s really throwing off my routine, which now includes morning tea. So I’m not surprised when Mom says, “We gotta get out of here,” but I am surprised when she tosses me her car keys and says we’re going to the weekend market on the bluff. My options are limited, so we take our mugs of tea with us and drive the five minutes to Riverton’s little downtown shopping area.

  Vendors are set up on the bluff that runs along one side of the town, overlooking the buildings below it and the lake in the distance. The area is split in half by a giant set of brick steps that lead to the shops and restaurants that lie below. On one side of the stairs the market features little tents full of local fruits and veggies, each with a banner displaying the local farm of origin; on the other, antiques fill tables and tents, old pieces of rusted metal and colorful glass spilling out of each little nook.

  I stop at the very first booth we see and trade two dollars for a little paper box full of fresh raspberries. Mom picks a berry out of my box and after some grumbling from me about her stealing the food I bought with my hard-earned summer cash, we wander through booths. Antiques really aren’t my thing. Most of the time it just looks like old junk to me. What am I going to do with old farm tools, or eighty-five blue mason jars? Mom spends a lot longer in each booth, moving things around, inspecting items, and wondering out loud what things were used for, and asking the seller if she can’t figure it out. I do a quick walk through each space, and if nothing bright and shiny catches my eye, I move on.

  So I’m about four booths ahead of my mom when I see the little pile of teacups. There’s a whole stack of them, all white with different colored designs in pink, yellow, green, and blue, with little trails of gold or silver wrapping round their rims and handles. I pick one up, running my fingers over the floral pattern painted across it. I wave a hand at my mother, directing
her to my booth like an air traffic controller.

  “What did you find?” my mother says excitedly as she joins me in the booth.

  I hold up one of the teacups. “Check it out.”

  “Oh, Livi, we have to get them, they’re gorgeous,” she says, picking one of them up and turning it in her hands, examining the fine details like I did. My mother hasn’t called me Livi in years, not since before I lived with Oma. But now doesn’t seem like the time to argue; we’ve come to a peaceful ceasefire the last few weeks since Aunt Sarah’s been gone.

  I pick up one of the cups and check the little white sticker on the bottom. “Yikes. They’re twelve dollars.”

  “These are old, they have real gold plating,” she says, her voice reverent. “Just pick out your favorite.”

  I only make ten dollars an hour at River Depot, and ever since I started I can’t buy anything without thinking about how many canoes I had to drag around to pay for it. And this seems like too many for a cup. I put the teacup back down. “It’s okay, my mug is fine.”

  Mom shakes her head. “Don’t be silly. We need teacups. And I’m independently wealthy now,” she says, using my words. “Just pick out your two favorites and I’ll pick out a few too.”

  I run a finger along the rim of a teacup. Am I going to let my mother buy me something?

  She picks up two cups, a yellow and a green, both with silver rims and handles, and I pick a matching pair that are pink with gold. In the grand scheme of life, my mother owes me a lot of presents, so this is like back pay. Don’t overthink it, Olivia. I set my teacups in front of the seller, next to my mother’s, and she hands him a few bills.

  He’s handing her change when she says, “Aiden seems nice.” It’s been a few weeks since she met him, and it’s the first time she’s brought him up.

  “He is,” I say, taking the little brown bag of teacups when the man holds them out to me.

  “That’s good.”

  I expect her to keep peppering me with questions like Aunt Sarah would, but we just keep walking from booth to booth. At the end of the bluff Mom spends way too long sifting through vintage camera equipment. She tells me about the old camera body she’s buying, and how film is actually making a resurgence. About how she’s shooting a couple of weddings with film. And I realize this must be why she gets home so late on the weekends.

  Before I know it it’s ten o’clock, and we’re able to go back to the house. We wash the teacups and put them in the cupboard next to the canisters and the little jar of rock sugar. And even though they don’t all match, they actually look really pretty together in our cupboard.

  AIDEN

  My parents finally noticed that my car was missing. I knew it would be those damn lawn chairs that gave me away. I had gotten a text from my mom while Olivia and I were out. She was irate, thinking I was driving around town half-blind. When I got home Dad smacked the table, telling my mom, “Yes! I told you I saw it at the grocery store last week!” He pointed at my mother and whooped like he’d just won some sort of exciting contest. But once she knew I wasn’t using my car as a weapon of mass destruction, all my mother wanted to know was why I was at the grocery store with a girl. And her reaction was exactly what I expected.

  So now I’m in the car that started this whole mess, sitting next to Olivia in the parking lot of the state park. A double kayak is strapped to the roof. I’m about to push my door open when I spit out what I’ve been thinking about for the last five minutes. “My mom wanted me to invite you over for dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Nervous laughter wants to bubble up and I choke it down. I was hoping this wouldn’t be awkward, but it’s as bad as I imagined. “I don’t know, because she’s heard me talking about you.” I pull at the baseball cap I’m wearing. “And she likes to feed people. I swear, it’s like one of the great joys of her life.” I wish Olivia would say something so I could shut up. “She still makes me breakfast every morning.”

  “Seriously?” Olivia is looking at me like I just sprouted a third arm and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

  Just shut up, Aiden. “Yeah. I mean, only when I’m around, obviously.”

  “God, it must be awesome being a boy. No one has made me breakfast since I was … nine.” Even though the words sound judgmental, Olivia doesn’t. She sounds disappointed. She’s also just sitting there, behind the wheel of my car, looking at me like she’s the one waiting for something.

  “So…” I drum my hands on the dash. “… Food at my house … that sounds good? Or horrible?” I adjust my hat again. “Or I can just leave and pretend this never happened.”

  She laughs. “When?”

  “We always do family dinner on Wednesdays. Maybe next week?”

  She nods, and I feel like I can breathe again. This dating stuff is more stressful than the bottom of the ninth.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  OLIVIA

  Aiden is late, so I’m sitting on one of the rusty old canoes behind River Depot, scrolling through photos on my phone. When I make it past the photos of me and Aiden out on the lake, and me and Emma in our red uniforms, and the glowing ruins, there’s a photo of me and Zander. Just a selfie, taken after a baseball game. It feels like a century ago that I was sitting on his bed, suggesting I move in with him senior year. The thought makes me realize that I may not even see him before I move. How weird is that, having loved someone for so long, and then they just drift away into the ether?

  It makes me want to text him. To tell him all of the things I’ve been thinking about the last month—how much of a mistake we were. But when I think about texting him, I just jot it down in a note on my phone. Because I don’t need to open that door. When Aiden and Ellis come around the corner, I’m just finishing a note. Aiden is smiling as he run-walks down the hill toward me, barreling ahead in an almost uncontrolled way. He kisses me on the lips and then pulls me behind him toward the river, only pausing for a second. At the river, we come to a stop, still hand in hand.

  Even though we’ve been hanging out—and kissing—for weeks now, it’s the first time he’s kissed me in front of anyone. And my face must show it, because he looks at Ellis and then me. “What?” He shrugs and smiles, his eyebrows pulled together in confusion and amusement.

  “Nothing.” I smile, and shake my head, because it feels like we might have just had a very official couple-making moment. Did we? When Zander and I got together we had a talk. A really awkward talk that was way too long and was all my fault. Because I needed to know that we were making the jump from friends to a couple. That something official had happened when he kissed me that day. I needed confirmation that I wasn’t going to show up to school in two days and find him making out with some other girl in the hallway. But there’s nothing that makes me want to interrogate Aiden or ask him for a label. A tiny little voice in the back of my head reminds me that we don’t need one anyway, because I’m leaving in four weeks.

  Unless something changes.

  It’s the first time I’ve really let myself think what could keep me here. A miracle. Maybe Aunt Sarah won’t like Arizona. Our house has only had a few showings—it’s small and the bathroom still has old pink tiles everywhere, and there’s almost no backyard, so maybe it won’t sell. Maybe she’ll hate her job. The last time I talked to her, she sounded more stressed than usual. Mom said that in her own time in Arizona people weren’t as friendly there. I didn’t think much of it, because Mom is either in love with someplace or thinks it’s the seventh circle of hell. There’s no in-between. But maybe she’s right, maybe Aunt Sarah’s not just stressed, maybe she’s lonely. And that brings up a little twinge of guilt in me, too. Can I just ditch Aunt Sarah in a new state and stay here?

  I’m sitting in the canoe, and I can’t even remember walking away from the building or getting in. But now I’m paddling. I’ve gotten better, thanks to Aiden. He doesn’t tell me You don’t have to paddle if you don’t want nearly as often as when I started.
I thought he was just being nice then, but now I know it was because I was slowing us down, dragging my paddle like a limp noodle along the canoe. Tonight we’re headed back to our beach and we’re all camping out. I’m a little nervous about staying in a tent with Aiden, but we’re also going to be tent-to-tent with Ellis and Jaz—who are very much not a couple—so I think it’s probably not going to turn into some wild party out in the woods. I catch a glimpse of the blue cooler up ahead. Hopefully. As long as things don’t get out of hand with the cooler full of beer that Ellis loaded into his canoe. I haven’t drank since Emma got me tipsy on two glasses of champagne at her cousin’s wedding last summer.

  By the time we get to the beach the sun is setting, and as we walk off of the sand and into the trees behind it the orange of the sky seeps in through the cracks and washes everything in sepia.

  Aiden puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s set up the tent before it gets dark?”

  I nod, and follow him toward an open patch of ground where the stubby grass spreads out into a wide half-circle before bleeding into sandy patches along the tree line.

  Aiden points toward the flattest patch, almost entirely covered in grass. “Here.”

  Ellis yells at us from near the bluff. “You’re doing that crap already? Don’t tell me you’re already one of those couples that holes up by yourselves. Are you going to be in your tent the whole time?”

  Couple.

  Did Aiden say something to him, or is this just Ellis teasing us like usual? I don’t know if hearing that word should make my heart soar, or sink down into my stomach, but right now it’s doing a little of both. It feels like it may rip right through my chest in its commotion.

  “Nah, man. I just don’t want to get stuck with that crap spot over there.” Aiden nods over to the spot left next to us, where Ellis and Jaz will have to put their tents.