The Goodbye Summer

by Sarah Van Name

  Anyway, the upshot is that Jenny is really pissed this morning. I come in one minute late, and she gives me the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen. Slams down the phone from some conversation about the event space (which, to be fair, isn’t her job), says, “Hope you had a nice weekend,” and walks into her office without another word.

  The door closes behind her. Almost immediately, I hear the dulcet tones of sitcom voices on her computer. Then she turns down the volume, and the store is silent.

  I sigh and lean against the back bookcase. I check the secret chocolate bar drawer, where I’ve kept a stash of chocolate ever since my first day working here, and am dismayed to discover that the candy is gone. Jenny probably took overtime to look for it, just to spite me. Not that I need any more sweets after this weekend. The leftovers, as always, were prodigious. At my mom’s insistence, I left two trays of blue-and-red cupcakes in the cramped JAC break room this morning.

  I text Georgia to tell her about the cupcakes, and she responds with twelve smiley faces. Then I check my texts with Jake. He hasn’t messaged me yet this morning, and I’m not sure what to do. I want to talk to him, but I don’t want to make the first move. I’m mad at him—or if not mad, upset, or if not upset, frustrated—and I want him to apologize.

  Last night, Jake got back into town, and I was so fucking excited, so happy to see him and snuggle and have sex. But first, his roommates wouldn’t leave to give us privacy, which annoyed me. And when they did leave and we finally had some time to ourselves, he told me about his weekend. That made everything worse.

  It sounded perfect: the fireworks, the beer, the party in the sand. He talked about the guys and girls who came stumbling down the beach from the other houses, and I could see them in my imagination—the kind of boys who wouldn’t have given me the time of day, the kind of girls who are prettier than me. The night after the party, they slept until noon and got pancakes and bacon at a diner down the road. He let it slip that he was awake when I was texting him that afternoon. Turns out he was just ignoring me.

  He told me they ran into the ocean and swirled their hands around in the water and saw bioluminescence. I didn’t know what that was. He told me it was tiny particles of seaweed that glow in the dark, bright green if there’s no moon. It collects around the motion you make. We don’t have any of it at the aquarium, I’m pretty sure. I think I would have noticed.

  He told me all of it, and I listened. But as I listened, I also thought about my Fourth of July weekend, lying on my bedroom floor making paper flowers with Georgia, frosting cupcakes, getting tipsy on champagne. At the time, I had felt so open and free and happy. I had been okay with Jake being far away. Our phones connected us like a thread across the miles. We echoed each other: When he had to go hang out with his friends, I had to go be with mine. When he was drunk, I was drunk. We were with each other, were each other, even though it was the longest I’d gone without seeing him since school let out.

  But now my entire weekend seemed so childish. Family day. Drinking in my parents’ house, the pimple-faced boys who had set off the fireworks. It was high school, it was stupid, it was nothing like the freedom to which Jake was accustomed. The kind of life he had at the beach, without parents supervising him, without my too-young presence dragging him down.

  He talked about the girls taking off their T-shirts to go into the ocean, and I was not sure anymore if he wanted to share that freedom with me.

  Many minutes later, after the sun had set and the only light coming in through the porch was dim and gray, he finished his story. There was a long pause. He sighed contentedly, a sigh that turned into a yawn.

  “Great weekend. Really great,” he said, wrapping up. I didn’t say anything.

  Then, after all that time, he asked me how my weekend was. In retrospect, maybe he didn’t say it dismissively. Maybe he really did care about the frozen yogurt with my parents and the college book and the cake. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt as if he had moved beyond me, like he had walked into the dunes and left me staring out the window of some spindle-legged beach house, alone.

  So I just shrugged and said it was fine. We sat in silence for a minute, staring at the blank TV. Someone had left the game console on. It whirred quietly, maintaining the stasis of some shitty video game so the boy playing it could come back any time and pick up where he left off.

  His arm felt heavy around my shoulders. I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to have asked me how my weekend was first. I wanted him not to have left me to the unfettered mediocrity of my family’s traditions. It was a long time before I said anything, and when I did, it wasn’t nearly enough.

  “I missed you,” I said.

  And he, thinking that was all, cuddled me into his arms and said he’d missed me too, and started talking again about that long beautiful series of sea-salt moments and the places where he thought I might have fit into them. It made me feel a little better. But only a little. Because I had not been there, and someone else had filled the space I could have taken.

  We had sex, and it was nice. He whispered to me how sexy I was while the tension built between my legs and then dissipated after he was done, and he held me close and told me he had missed me so much. Still, though, when he took me home and kissed me at exactly eleven o’clock, I closed the door behind me feeling as if something vital and elastic had snapped between us, leaving a lot of little strings frayed and wanting, waiting to unravel.

  I got out my phone in bed that night. The last thing I’d texted Georgia just a few hours earlier was: JAKE’S HOME THANK GOD, to which she had responded: cool! I wanted to talk to her now, but I didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have a boyfriend, had never been in a serious relationship. She wouldn’t understand.

  Besides, with JAC launching back after a three-day weekend the next day, she was probably asleep. I knew she would wake up for me—we had made a pact with each other, to always turn on text sounds instead of vibrate before we went to sleep, in case one of us needed the other—but I didn’t want to make her. Nothing was wrong.

  So I didn’t text her. I didn’t text Jake either. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the light fade slowly from the glow-in-the-dark stars my mom had put there when I was seven. I lay there thinking and not thinking, getting sadder and sadder. I felt somehow already tired from the week ahead, until I turned and saw the clock click to 2:00 a.m.

  When I saw the time, three numbers lining up so neatly and simply—two zero zero—sensibility kicked in, and I tried to turn off my brain. I pictured erasing it like a whiteboard. I didn’t think it worked, but it must have because I woke up at eight with a headache and the sun was out. It’s 10:30 a.m. now, and I still haven’t texted him. He hasn’t texted me. I don’t know if he’s mad at me. I don’t know if I’m mad at him.

  But I don’t have a ton of time to ponder because apparently everyone chose the Monday after the Fourth to expose their kids to the wonders of the ocean. I hear the familiar sound of approaching laughter, and the doors to the aquarium open and unleash a flood of freshly toured families, all of whom head straight toward me.

  Simultaneously, an enormous group of children are giggling their way to the activity room: the JAC kids, back from their long weekend. Georgia brings up the rear, as always, chatting with a dark-haired little boy. She catches my eye and grins before returning her attention to the kid, who is fully absorbed in whatever he’s telling her. But then the first child walks through the doors of the store, and I don’t have time to wink back at her.

  The sudden influx of customers means I can’t catch my breath for almost two hours. As soon as one group leaves, another comes in. They buy chocolate, posters, books, and postcards, and they ask questions about what animal this is or why we don’t have that thing in stock, and I’m too busy to be bored or sad.

  At one, my lunch break hits, and Jenny emerges from her office to reluctantly take
over the cash register. I walk through the tour group, looking alien in the filtered blue light of the aquarium, and past the sad, locked offices of the administrative hallways, all the way down to the concrete patch behind the building.

  I’m the first one there. Sometimes this happens. They have trouble corralling the kids, or the pizza hasn’t come yet, or the other half of the JAC counselors were taking too long to return from their daily trip to the sandwich shop.

  So I lie down on the ground and savor the warmth. Jenny keeps the store at a reasonable temperature, but there’s nothing like the heat outside, relentless and consistent, to wake me up from a stupor. I hold up my phone to block out the sun and squint. Jake still hasn’t texted me. Maybe he’s just been extra busy—he mentioned last night that they’d be short-staffed as people call in sick with hangovers. Either way, I’m feeling okay about the whole thing, and I miss him a lot. So I text him hey love, how’s your morning and instantly feel relieved, as if my chest had been tight all morning and it’s easy to breathe again.

  He replies almost immediately with a comforting buzz: super busy baby cant talk now! txt you later. I close my eyes. The sun is warm on my eyelids and my chest and the tops of my feet. The mosquitoes haven’t gotten to me yet. Jake’s not mad at me.

  I hear a door slamming and a burst of familiar laughter. I crane my head up to see Toby walking through the door, his face obscured by a stack of pizza boxes piled dangerously high. My usual lunch crew follows close behind. Georgia is already holding a slice.

  “Caroline!” Toby exclaims, setting the pizzas on the ground. The counselors sit in a circle around the boxes and pass them around. “What the hell is up, you beautiful creature? Oops, don’t tell Jake I said that.”

  Serena peels off her T-shirt to reveal her bikini, lying on her stomach and adjusting the straps. She arranges her book in front of her—this time it’s a different hardback, even thicker than the last—and props herself up on her arms. She’s the only other person who doesn’t eat pizza every day. I feel a strange mix of envy and companionship around her. I have no idea why she became a counselor, though; she seems singularly unsuited to the job. When I look away from her, Toby has already started talking to someone else.

  “How’s the first day back?” I ask Georgia. She’s just taken a bite of pizza that comprised about half the slice, and apparently it’s too hot, because she groans in response and flutters her hands around her face. Tomorrow she’ll complain about the roof of her mouth hurting. Matt, who is just opening his box of pizza, butts in.

  “Well, Georgia here has quite the admirer,” he says, grinning at her.

  “Oh yeah?” I take out my container of blueberries. Georgia attempts to swallow and speak, but there’s still too much food in her mouth. All I get is a muffled ughhh sound.

  “Oh, yeah. He’s very into her. Quite the gentleman. He is, ah…” He turns to Georgia in mock puzzlement. “Has he yet reached the age of five?”

  “Fuck you,” Georgia spits, wiping her face with the back of her hand and blowing on the remaining half slice of pizza. “God, the poor kid. I feel bad for him, but he’s also the worst.”

  “He…” Matt dissolves into laughter. “He brought her flowers. From his mom’s garden. Except obviously he wanted to keep it a secret, because, you know, forbidden love—” Georgia attempts to swat him, and he dodges away. “So in the middle of pool time, he gets out of the pool and goes to his backpack and takes out these flowers that have been all crumpled up at the bottom of the bag, so they look trashy as hell. And he brings them to Georgia, all serious, and he gazes up at her—and she’s on the lifeguard deck so he can barely even see her—and he says—”

  “‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the world and I would like you to be my girlfriend,’” Georgia finishes. She shrugs helplessly. “The fuck do you say to that? I couldn’t take the flowers, that would have made things even worse. He had to go throw them away. And then you could tell he was trying not to cry. He’s such a sweet kid.”

  “Sweet kid, huh?” Matt says, raising one eyebrow.

  “I cannot stand you.”

  “So wait,” I say, “is there a policy for that?”

  “How to talk to a four-year-old with a crush on the hot counselor?” Matt says, laughing. Georgia rolls her eyes, but blushes a little too. Serena looks up briefly, her expression unreadable, and sets her head down again. “No. No, there is not.”

  “I felt so bad for him. So bad,” Georgia sighs. She turns to me, waving a piece of pizza in my face, and I shake my head. “Suit yourself,” she says, taking a bite. Her mouth full, she adds, “Distract me from this humiliation, Caroline. Tell us about your day.”

  “It’s been really busy, actually,” I reply after swallowing a mouthful of blueberries. “I don’t know what it is, but there were way more big tours than usual today, and everyone wanted to buy shit. Some of them were real assholes,” I say, remembering a guy at the back of the line who had yelled at me to move faster, and then, when it was his turn at the front, argued about the price of his plush turtle. “It probably would have freaked me out a month ago, but today there was so much happening that it was just like, well, so it goes.”

  “That happens to us all the time,” Georgia says. “Specifically with this one guy, actually. Older dad. He really hates Matt—”

  “Because of my long hair, probably.”

  “—and he really likes Serena—”

  “Because of my tits, definitely,” Serena adds from beside us.

  “Right, so, the guy always wants his kid to work with women. Who knows why. I’m sure because he just sees us as babysitters. But his kid responds much better if a guy tells him to do something—probably because his dad accidentally taught him not to listen to women—so usually we have him work with guys, because it’s not my burden to bear to dismantle everything he’s learned in his four and a half years in this world. And it just so happens—” Georgia pauses to take a breath and Matt jumps in.

  “That every single time we have any kind of parents’ event, I’m the one this kid asks for. Or I’m helping him in some way. Or whatever. Every. Fucking. Time.”

  “The kid actually really likes Matt.”

  “Because of my long hair.”

  “Sure. But anyway, this dude will see Matt helping his kid color a picture or whatever, and he always gets pissed and invents some bullshit lie, like he heard Matt cursing or shit like that. So, he pulls Matt aside and yells at him—”

  “Like, ‘I don’t want you around my child, you’re a bad influence—’”

  “So, you’ve never actually done anything to upset this guy?” I ask. They have it much worse than I do.

  “Well.” Matt smirks. “One time I cussed at work, and apparently the kid came home and started yelling ‘fuck’ at the dinner table. But I denied that.”

  “Recently,” Georgia continues, ignoring his admission of guilt, “every time this dad sees Matt, he just glares and clenches his jaw for a while. And then he goes to Jamal and says he wants Matt fired, he’s not good around children, so on and so forth.” Jamal is their boss, a short, worried man in his late twenties who seems perpetually exhausted by the logistics of camp, though by all accounts he’s actually a pretty decent guy. “And,” Georgia adds, “he always, always suggests that, quote, ‘someone like Serena’ might be better suited to ‘taking care of my son.’”

  Serena raises herself up on her elbows and tilts her sunglasses down to squint at us. “He thinks of camp like a day care,” she says. “He doesn’t even get why there are guy counselors. Plus, he likes watching me bend over to talk to the kids. One time he came over and put his hand on my ass, acting like he was asking me about the posters we were making. It’s gross.”

  “Right,” Georgia says, nodding at Serena, who resumes her usual position, black sunglasses firmly covering her eyes. “Jamal got mad at Matt the first time—I thi
nk you almost got fired, right?” Matt nods. “But then it kept happening, and now Jamal just tells the guy he’ll take care of it and reminds Matt to stay away from the kid when the parents are around. It’s this stupid vendetta.”

  I wince. “That sucks,” I say.

  Matt shrugs. “It does, but the kid’s all right.”

  “Except that he literally never listens to me or Serena.” Georgia sighs. “It’s so frustrating.”

  “In fairness, I never listen to you or Serena either,” Matt says. No one laughs.

  Georgia picks up a new slice of pizza and nudges me. “Anyway,” she says, “did your mom bother you about looking at the college book again?”

  “Yeah. I actually read it for a while this time. Mostly for your comments.”

  “Wait,” Matt interrupts. “Best of the Nation’s Colleges or whatever? My dad gave me that book. It blows.”

  “Thank you, Matt, it does,” I say, reaching over to ruffle his hair.

  “Listen, the book might be stupid, but college is important,” Georgia says impatiently. “You need it to get a good job.”

  “A bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean anything nowadays,” Matt says, tossing aside the sentence in a dismissive tone that makes me guess he heard someone else say it first. “It’s a waste of time and money. Especially if you’re an artist.”

  “Just because you didn’t get in—” Georgia starts, but Matt interrupts her with a laugh.

  “I only applied to those schools because my parents made me,” he says. There’s a tiny edge of defensiveness in his voice, but he hides it pretty well. “I’m fucking delighted they can’t make me go now. Because guess what I’m going to do come September? I’m gonna draw all the time, and I’m gonna get into one of those shows at the Campbell Gallery, and I’m actually going to spend my time cultivating my art career. Not wasting it in some pointless class.”

  “You know, you could draw now,” Georgia says, exasperated.