That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  It was hard for Hazel to tell whether Eve was harboring any disappointment with Hazel’s declining to participate or whether she had swiftly moved on to more important things.

  Hazel observed quietly as Eve guzzled down beer after beer between painting her eyes and cheeks and lips with makeup. Neither Hazel nor Eve lost focus for a moment.

  And then, Eve’s phone vibrated against the floor. Eve’s spine straightened even further and she gave herself one last look in the mirror before snatching the phone and hopping up into her bed.

  “Don’t make a peep!” Eve said, looking back at Hazel for an instant before returning her attention to the phone.

  As the phone vibrated in her hand, Eve lay back against her pillows and then pulled a few strands of hair in front of her face. She found a moment of stillness, exhaled, and then pressed the green answer button on the phone.

  “Hey,” she said casually.

  Hazel waited to hear the sound of this famous Connor Samuelson. She expected something raspy and upbeat. Youthful but mature. But she just heard nothing.

  “Hey,” Eve said again, with the same tone, staring into the face of the phone.

  “Ughhhh!” Eve grumbled, ditching the casual glamour look and throwing her phone down into the bedding. “No service!”

  The phone rang again and Eve held it up in front of her face.

  “Hey,” she tried again. But this time with a little more panic in her voice.

  This time a sound did emerge from the other end of the phone but it was chopped and crackling and garbled.

  Eve brought the phone close up to her lips. “Helloooo!” she said, now without any trace of collectedness. Another spotty jumble of words escaped the phone and then got cut.

  Eve collapsed over her phone and pressed her entire face and chest into the comforter of her bed.

  “I fucking hate this place!” Eve yelled again. Her words were muffled by the sheets but Hazel could tell that they were hot with ire.

  Hazel got up from her spot on the floor and scurried into the bathroom, trying to get out of the path of Eve’s rage. As she slipped behind the door, she saw Eve’s phone fly across the room, denting the wall and falling to the floor with a thud.

  “I seriously fucking hate it!” Eve shouted. This time her words were clear and open to the air for all to hear.

  “Who lives like this without cell service or Wi-Fi?” she continued. “Seriously! It’s like you don’t want to have a life.”

  There was a moment of silence and Hazel contemplated whether it would be a good time to head back into the room.

  But then she heard Eve’s words ring out again.

  “Everyone here is a huge fucking loser,” she shouted manically.

  Hazel pressed her back to the door and tried to ignore everything happening on the other side of it.

  “A hu-u-u-ge fucking loser.”

  Hazel brought her hands to her ears and pressed them tightly against her head, hoping to prevent hearing another sound.

  “Get me the fuck out of here!”

  There was a moment of silence that filled Hazel with relief. But then Eve filled it again with more sharp, piercing words that ripped right through her.

  “These summer visits are a fucking scam to my parents, anyway. What the hell am I still here for?”

  No matter how hard she pushed her hands into her ears, Hazel could not keep out the ferocity of Eve’s words.

  28

  When Hazel woke up the next morning, she felt a new force in her bedroom. A new force everywhere. The house felt more vulnerable. Unshielded and permeable. Everything still felt tired. Her bones, her shoulders, her neck, her back, her heart were still tense and knotted. Hazel had stirred through the night, thoughts of this new family in this cabin by the lake disintegrating ricocheting and clanking around in her mind.

  Hazel rubbed her eyes, sat upright and looked toward Eve’s bed. It was empty. An intentional signal that Eve was no longer interested, Hazel thought.

  Hazel moved into the bathroom and splashed water over her face. She heard the hum of chatter down the stairs and followed the sounds to the kitchen.

  Eve and Silas were sitting at the table and Hazel stood quietly at the bottom of the staircase, observing. Was she welcome there?

  Silas brought a mug to his lips in between his conversation with Eve and made eye contact with Hazel over the edge of the cup. He brought his mug down to the table gently, revealing a full smile.

  “Whatcha doin’ over there, Hazel?”

  Hazel’s belly warmed at the levity in his question. She took a step closer toward the kitchen. She could feel that force shifting. She could feel a comfort, a warmth, return to her.

  “Come have a seat—we’re making some plans for the day.” Silas patted the seat at the table beside him, slamming his big palm into the chair.

  Hazel took another step forward. Still gingerly.

  “What is with you today, kiddo?” Silas got up from his seat and walked to meet Hazel in the corner of the kitchen. He looked into Hazel’s eyes. His own softened at the corners as he did. And it melted Hazel’s core. He did care. Her lips pressed into a smile. Silas’s green eyes lit back up as he rubbed his palm on the top of Hazel’s hair and then brought his arm around her shoulders. He walked with her to the kitchen table and they both sat down.

  “Someone was snoring last night!” Eve said, looking at Hazel out of the corner of her eye.

  “Oh, shut up,” Hazel retorted, emboldened from Silas’s pat on the head, and then snatched a piece of toast from Eve’s plate and bit down on it tauntingly.

  “I made that for you, you dork!” Eve said with a big proud smile.

  “Well, it is delicious,” Hazel replied, trying to be casual.

  It felt good to be the subject of Eve’s anything. Toast, taunts, smiles. Anything but quiet.

  “I thought we could go to the craft fair today?” Silas interrupted. The girls turned their attention toward him. Eve lit up.

  “Really?! I heard that place is cool!”

  Silas nodded confidently.

  “I also heard that’s where you met my mom,” Eve added. “Is it true?”

  Silas shifted in his chair and rubbed the scruff on his chin as if he needed to pull a response from his own lips. He cleared his throat, still squirming in his place.

  “Well, is it?” Eve rushed.

  “It is,” Silas answered earnestly, but through a tension in his throat. “It is actually where I met both of your mothers.”

  Hazel felt her tummy do a flip. This was the first moment it occurred to Hazel that her mother was anyone else’s before she was hers. That her mother had a life, and possibly a love, before there was Hazel. Sure, she understood the biology of it, but she had never considered the story. She had never considered that this man before her, her father, and her mother had ever shared anything. A first glance, a romance, an anything. It made her feel more connected to her mother to think that there were so many parts of her story before Cam and the twins came into the picture.

  “We-i-rd,” Eve said, interrupting the tense silence with eyes wider than ever.

  It brought Hazel back to reality.

  Silas pressed his lips together and rubbed the scruff on his chin some more. He wasn’t squirming anymore, but there was a self-reflective glint in his eye. An embarrassment, perhaps. A sadness, perhaps.

  “You’re going to have to tell us that story sometime,” Eve declared.

  Silas chuckled and shook his head back and forth in Eve’s direction. “You can ask your mothers about this one,” he said, raising one eyebrow.

  “I will!” Eve challenged back, surely telling the truth. She whipped out her phone and looked up at Silas.

  “First of all, I know your phone doesn’t work here. Second of all, you watch too much reality television, prin
cess.”

  Eve’s shoulders slunk and Silas stood up and rubbed the top of Eve’s hair.

  “I hate when you do that, you know,” Eve said as she tried to duck away, still smiling. “It’s such a dad thing.”

  “Well, I like it,” Silas said. He paused, apparently catching his own earnestness. “Go ahead and get dressed. We’re leaving in fifteen.”

  Eve hopped up to stand on the seat of her chair, raised her arms and began swaying her hips around. “We’re going to the market. Woo!”

  Silas rolled his eyes but was charmed as always by the theatrics.

  “Get down, ya weirdo,” he muttered as he left the kitchen. “I’ll wait for you in the truck.”

  * * *

  The market was full of everything. People and food and things and energy. Flimsy white tents lined the street in rows and rows. People poured out of tents and walkways in every direction. Piles of leafy greens were stacked on tables. Fruits in purples and reds and oranges overflowed in their baskets. The sun was bright and the warble of chatter filled the air. Hazel barely managed a single deep inhale before Eve grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. Her hand and arm and eyes pulsed with energy.

  “Oh my god, those honey sticks! I haven’t had those since I was a kid!”

  Eve pointed straight at a modest white tent a few yards away. The centerpiece was a single rickety foldout table lined with bell jars, each jar with its own brightly colored collection of plastic honey-filled straws. Each jar was labeled with its flavor in hastily written cursive with a thick and apparently unforgiving black marker. Shades of purples and reds for watermelon, or grape, or cinnamon. Shades of yellow and green for green apple, or lemon lime, or banana. Even blues for blueberry and blue raspberry.

  Eve looked up at Silas with longing and earnest eyes.

  “Can we get some?”

  Eve looked and sounded so small, so young, so daughterly standing there next to Silas, neck craned back, asking for sweets.

  Silas smiled, dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a big handful of change. He extended his palm and Eve, and then Hazel, picked the quarters and dimes out from the pile and dashed over to the tent.

  Eve delicately pulled a stick from the jar labeled Root Beer. She held it up in front of her eyes and tilted it back and forth, the light passing right through the deep brown honey until it was translucent at the edges. It looked holy. Meaningful.

  Eve whipped her hair around and thrust the stick in front of Hazel. She held it triumphantly between Hazel’s two eyes, centimeters from the bridge of her nose. Hazel found her eyes inadvertently crossed as she stared at the thin stick.

  “You gotta try this,” Eve urged, almost short of breath in her excitement. “I don’t care what anyone says, root beer is by far the best flavor. You want one?”

  Before Hazel could nod, Eve had drawn another root beer stick from its jar and turned to the woman behind the table, who glanced up from underneath the wide brim of her straw hat once she felt Eve’s energy turn her way.

  “How much for these two?” Eve asked eagerly.

  “Twenty-five cents a pop. So that’s fifty in total.”

  “Twenty-five cents?” Eve uncurled her hand to count the coins in her palm. “We can get like ten more!”

  Eve immediately turned her attention back to the row of jars, manically pulling sticks from their jars and clutching them in her grip. Hazel just stood and watched. As Eve moved down the table, she would pull out some more and return others to their places, until she presented a pile of assorted honey sticks—no single color repeating except for the root beer—in front of the woman at the table.

  “We’ll take these!” Eve declared, stomping one foot down into the asphalt and completing one decisive nod.

  “Okay, then,” the woman said with an upbeat relief in her voice. “That’ll be $2.50. I’ll throw in those root beer ones for free.”

  The woman winked and Eve’s eyes lit up again. Eve shuffled coin after coin from her palm onto the table until she made up the change and then squeezed Hazel’s hand again and took off down the row of tents.

  “Thanks, lady!” she yelled as she darted away, before pulling Hazel through the crowd. Eve’s excitement was contagious, infectious. Hazel felt alive and spirited with her hand in Eve’s hand, even as her feet clomped awkwardly beneath her.

  They landed at an emptier spot behind the tents and Eve pulled out the two brown root beer straws. She pinched her index finger and thumb around one edge. A gentle click ensued. Eve smiled and then placed the end of the stick in her mouth and then slid her fingers up the straw, pushing the honey onto her tongue. She closed her eyes and her shoulders sank down.

  “They are. So. Freakin’. Good.”

  Eve squeezed another bit into her mouth.

  “My mom used to bring these back for me from her trips.” Eve’s voice had lowered and calmed. The corners of her eyes and mouth softened. “She would come home after a few days away and I would run into her arms for a big hug and she would crouch down and let me bowl her over. I wouldn’t even let her put her bags down. And after a few seconds of her arms around me, squeezing my little body so tight, she would reach back over my shoulder with two root beer honey sticks. One for me and one for her. And we would pop them open and eat one.”

  And then, as if distracted from her own story, Eve’s shoulders perked back up and her hip popped back out to the side.

  “Ew, I was such a loser running at her for a hug like a little baby.” She turned her attention to Hazel. “Want one?”

  “Sure,” Hazel replied, pulling the stick from Eve’s outstretched hand.

  Hazel popped the edge of the straw open and squeezed the smallest drop of honey onto her tongue. It was so sweet and full of flavor.

  “These are good,” Hazel exclaimed and pulled her fingers up the tube to enjoy some more. The viscous honey swirled around her tongue. She quickly reached the end of the stick.

  Eve extended her hands out with the full pile of purchased straws. More greens and yellows and reds and blues but no dark brown root beer.

  “I don’t want to even try another flavor!” Hazel joked in a moment. “The root beer is just so good.”

  “Well, that can be arranged,” Eve replied and reached into her back pocket for two more straws, curiously separate from the rest of the pile.

  “Whoa, where’d those come from?” Hazel asked, her voice a bit shaky and nervous as her stomach did a turn.

  “Stole ’em,” Eve said casually, but her eyes were aglow again.

  “Very funny,” Hazel responded, now relaxing a little bit.

  “I’m serious.” Eve looked firmer this time. More insistent. Something started bubbling within Hazel. First in her belly and then it made its way up to her chest. Her heart was beating faster and her ears were hot.

  “What the hell, Eve. Give those back!”

  Eve remained nonchalant, with her hip still popped out to one side.

  “What’s the point? They’re basically free, anyway.”

  Eve flipped her long hair from one side to the other and then rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t be such a prude, Hazel. It’s just fun. Trust me. You get a little rush when you do it!” Eve’s eyes widened and bulged when she said rush. The greens in Eve’s irises swirled and raved.

  “I don’t trust you!” The words leaped off Hazel’s tongue before she could catch then. Hazel was surprised they were even within her at all. But the way they burst out of her, the way they were flung like a dagger right at Eve, she knew she must have meant it somewhere.

  Hazel and Eve locked eyes for a moment. Just long enough for the weight of the words to thicken the air between them. Just long enough for the words to begin sinking into their chests.

  Hazel interrupted the stillness and abruptly grabbed the sticks from Eve’s hand. She marched confidently back
in the direction of the tent they had just come from. Her legs and arms were tingling. Her mind was racing and her heart was beating. She expected to feel Eve’s hand on her shoulder any moment. Yanking her back. Trying to convince her to play along with her antics. To bewitch her with her hair and her fun and her everything else. To step further into her world and ignore her own.

  But there was nothing. And Hazel found herself back in the tent, looking at the rim of the straw hat of the woman behind the table. Hazel slammed the two honey sticks onto the table.

  “We ended up with too many,” Hazel said, waiting for the woman’s head to turn up. But she continued to stare down.

  “It was an accident.”

  Still nothing.

  “We didn’t count right, I think.”

  The woman brought her hand to the honey sticks and slowly pulled them toward her. She looked up from beneath her hat. She had kind brown eyes. They were big and full. Earnest. Wise.

  “Your friend seems like trouble,” she said plainly, and then turned her head back down.

  “She’s my sister, actually,” Hazel said with more pride than she expected. More pride than she wanted to embody.

  29

  Hazel turned from her position and looked Eve’s way, but there was just an empty space where she had been standing. Hazel turned her head further around toward the place where she’d left Silas. The space was filled with people walking back and forth. It was just her in this whole big place. This whole new world.

  Still buzzing from the confrontation with Eve and the things that oozed out of her, Hazel inhaled and try to take it all in. All the people and things and energy.

  She observed all these people at the market in the morning. Saying “good morning” as they passed each other in their rows. Sifting through the basket of apples until they found the perfect one. Trying on earrings and bracelets and scarves. Showing them off to their partner with a tilt of their head and a smile. Exchanging dollars and vegetables and handshakes and hugs. She thought of where she usually was while all those things were happening: tucked away in a creaky old house with Eve and Silas. Hidden away at the end of a long dusty road amid towering, draping trees.