One Last Time

by Beth Reekles

  So much for a fun final summer of freedom before college.

  My hand found Noah’s as we headed up the porch steps. The white paint peeled and the bench by the door looked even sorrier than it had last year. It always felt like it would break the second you sat on it—although it hadn’t failed us yet. The sand on the worn floorboards crunched under our feet.

  The beach house was, in all honesty, a little cramped and kind of old. In contrast to the Flynn house—with its classy furniture, the on-trend colors of the walls and kitchen cabinets, the spacious, sprawling rooms—the beach house was packed full of mismatched furniture, and everything was faded. Hinges creaked, hairline cracks ran through the paintwork…

  But, just like the Flynn house, it felt like home.

  I could already imagine, a little bitterly, how it would be described in the listing by the realtor: charming, full of character, compact.

  Resentment bubbled through me as I imagined realtors combing through our beloved beach house, finding the flaws in this place we had all cherished for years.

  “We’re here,” Noah called as we stepped inside.

  His mom popped her head out of the kitchen. Her hair was piled up in a clip, untidy but practical, and she was wearing a pair of old jeans and a pink T-shirt. “Oh, great! Perfect. Noah, your dad’s cleaning up outside. Go give him a hand, would you? Elle, Lee’s made a start on your room. You should probably go help him out.”

  Instructions doled out, she vanished back into the kitchen. Pans clattered and cabinet doors banged shut.

  Noah gave me a brief kiss on the cheek and sighed as he drew away. “Guess we’d better get to work.”

  “Guess so.”

  I walked down the hallway, my eyes skimming over the photos cluttering the walls. I was so used to them that I’d barely noticed them the last few years, but now I drank in every one. June always printed the photos she hung here in black-and-white—making them possibly the fanciest-looking things in the whole beach house.

  It hurt to realize she hadn’t hung up any new ones this year, from our last summer at the beach house. Most of the photos were of me, Lee, and Noah, but there were a few of all five of us. I inched down the hallway, remembering the moment we’d taken every photograph. Every dinner outside, every day on the beach…that year we were fourteen and Lee got sunburned all over his arms, the first year Noah had tried to help his dad out with the barbecue and burned everything but we’d all eaten it anyway so he didn’t feel bad. That first year I’d had boobs and had covered them up with a T-shirt the whole summer, but Lee had stuffed a bikini top with tissue and walked around the beach wearing it for an entire day, trying to make me feel better. The last summer before Noah started middle school, where he looked so scrawny and gangly he was almost unrecognizable.

  I watched us get smaller and younger and no less crazy or fun.

  There was a photo, near the top of the gallery wall at the far end, of me with my mom and dad on the beach. Mom was a few months pregnant in it.

  She kinda looked like me, I thought. Darker skin, darker hair, rounder hips, and my brown eyes. Brad got her eyes, too. And her curls.

  We looked so happy.

  I suddenly felt grateful that I wouldn’t have to see a picture of Dad and mystery woman Linda playing happy families on the wall one day.

  Tearing myself away, I strode past Noah’s bedroom door, past the bathroom between our rooms, to the open door of mine and Lee’s room.

  Apparently I was not allowed to share a room with Noah here, but Lee and I had always shared a room at the beach house. It would’ve been weird not to share with him last summer.

  I guessed it wouldn’t even be a thing this year, since they were selling the place.

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, hey,” Lee replied from a pile of towels and clothes in front of his dresser, sounding dejected. His voice was small and flat and he peered up at me with wide eyes. That puppy-dog face that (almost) never worked on me. “I didn’t hear you guys come in.”

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Helping Mom in the kitchen.”

  I crouched down on the floor next to Lee, in the pile of stuff. The dresser drawers were all pulled open, more things spilling out. “So what’s the plan today?”

  Lee looked down at the piece of fabric in his hands, reciting in a monotone, “Go through everything. Decide what to donate and what to throw in the trash. Decide what we’re keeping. Clean up as we go.”

  Staring at Lee’s side of the room and the carnage that had erupted around his dresser, I said, “That sounds like more than a day’s work.”

  His mouth twitched. “Here’s hoping. Hey, check these out.” He held up the thing in his hands—a teeny-tiny pair of swim shorts. “Age six to seven.”

  “Holy crap. When was the last time you cleared your shit out?”

  “Me?” he scoffed. “I bet you five bucks you’ve got a training bra in your dresser.”

  “I’m gonna take that bet, because there is no way I’ve left stuff here that’s that old.”

  He grabbed a towel from the pile, holding it up as I got to my feet. “And look! Remember this one?” The towel was covered in a giant picture of Mater from Cars. “We got it for Brad that year, but then I puked on it after I bet Noah I could eat more ice cream than him.”

  I laughed, remembering. “Didn’t he eat, like, eight ice creams?”

  “Nine,” Lee corrected me. “Believe me, that memory is seared into my brain forever.”

  I laughed again, peeling myself away from Lee’s stuff to go through my dresser. I opened the top drawer. A few T-shirts, a bikini I left here last year, a bottle of sunscreen, some tangled headphones, and a whole lot of sand.

  I started going through the T-shirts. Most of them were old graphic tees—one was a hand-me-down from Noah that I’d definitely stolen from Lee at some point. Holding it up in front of me, it was still a little on the big side. I folded it back up and placed it carefully on my bed, starting the “keep” pile.

  The second drawer was more T-shirts, some shorts, a sundress I didn’t even remember but was definitely too small for me now. I found a snorkel and put it on to pull a face at Lee—and found him wearing the teeny-tiny swim shorts on his head and the Mater towel tied around his neck like a cape, sending me into a fit of giggles.

  All of my drawers were half empty. I found a book, some earrings, old rope bracelets and anklets. A few odd playing cards and a Ping-Pong ball, which really baffled me because I didn’t remember us ever having Ping-Pong here. A couple of towels I’d used for the last few years that, now that I was looking at them with a critical eye, were scratchy and starting to become threadbare. They smelled like summer: like sea salt and sand and lemonade.

  I clung to them for a minute before adding them to the trash bag in the middle of the room.

  When I finished sorting out the bottom drawer, I bent down to make sure I’d gotten everything and ran my hand around inside. Sand and bits of fluff brushed against my fingers, and then, right at the back, caught on the drawer, a piece of fabric.

  Oh my God, I thought suddenly, that was why this drawer always jammed when I tried to open and close it—which, in turn, was why I’d just found so much crap in it that I’d never bothered to clean out before.

  My fingers scrabbled at the fabric and I knelt down to tug on it, grunting as I felt it finally break free, and fell backward into my donation pile. (Which consisted of one dress and a pair of shorts that had never fitted me right but I’d always thought were cute.)

  “Ha!” Lee crowed as I straightened back up to look at the offending garment. “I told you, Miss High-and-Mighty! ‘I don’t have anything old in my dresser’!”

  I threw the now-broken training bra at him, knocking the swim shorts off his head. “That so doesn’t count.”

  “Uh, yeah it does.
Five bucks, Shelly.”

  I poked my tongue out at him—and then took a second to assess his progress. I didn’t think I’d done too bad. The keep pile was pretty small—most of the stuff I’d gone through had only been good for the trash, but it hadn’t taken me very long.

  Lee, however, didn’t seem to have made any progress.

  “Is that all your trash pile?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I already knew the answer.

  “None of this is trash, Shelly. You take that back.”

  “Those sweatpants have holes in them, Lee.”

  He held them up, examining them more closely. “They’re artfully distressed. It’s fashion. Something you wouldn’t understand.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Lee, come on. I know this isn’t fun, and the whole cleanup thing sucks, especially because of why we’ve gotta do it, but it’s just some old clothes.”

  “They hold memories, Elle.”

  “Oh yeah? What memories does that pink polo shirt hold for you that makes it so hard to get rid of?”

  “That time my mom trusted me to do the laundry and I messed up royally.”

  I shook my head. “Well, pick up the pace, okay? I don’t wanna have to go through more of our stuff by myself. And if your mom comes here to find out what’s taking so long, she’s gonna put all of that in the trash.”

  Grumbling, Lee tugged the towel-cape from around his neck and bunched it angrily into a ball before shoving it into the already-pretty-full trash bag. I took a second to go get another one. Judging by the amount of stuff Lee had been hoarding in his dresser, we were going to need it.

  In the kitchen, June and Rachel were sitting, drinking tea, laughing about something.

  “Found this in the back of the cupboard,” June told me, tapping her mug. “Lavender and orange. You want some?”

  That would explain the funky smell hanging around here, I thought, and tried hard not to wrinkle my nose.

  “Er, no thanks. Just came for another one of these.” I waved the black trash bag I’d just torn off the roll, and my eyes fell on a plastic box and a roll of Bubble Wrap. “Are you packing up everything today?”

  “Oh, no. I doubt we’ll even really make a dent in it today, sweetie. We just thought it’d be a good idea to get started as soon as possible. Besides, we can’t pack up the kitchen yet—not if we’re going to be back and forth here all summer while we sort everything out and get this place ready to sell.”

  “Right.”

  It wasn’t much consolation, but it was something, I guessed.

  I slunk back to the bedroom before I got roped into a conversation about how much work the beach house needed. It didn’t need any kind of work.

  I mean, sure, every other summer Lee and I would paint the porch, just for it to peel off again a while later. And yeah, okay, maybe this place was always full of sand, and the bushes and scrub outside by our path to the beach were always overgrown, and maybe the kitchen window leaked when it rained sometimes….

  But it didn’t need anything. This place was just perfect the way it was. It was ours.

  Back in the bedroom, the piles of stuff I’d set aside drove the air from my lungs. Lee had even managed to separate out a couple of piles, although his keep pile was still pretty large. Wordlessly, I set down the new trash bag and then moved to the closet we shared.

  A blown-up beach ball fell out, hitting me in the face and then collapsing on the floor with a wheeze, deflating slightly into a misshapen lump.

  I kicked it to one side and Lee immediately piped up, fixing me with an accusatory look. “Hey, make sure you don’t put that in the trash. That’s a good ball.”

  “You want me to donate it?”

  “No. Keep.”

  Well…I mean, it was a good ball….It had been our most faithful volleyball and soccer ball, as required, for several summers—we’d had to switch out a real ball for this inflated one after everyone realized that whenever I tried to join in a game, I mostly just got hit by the ball instead.

  But, nope, we had to be ruthless. I nudged it onto the trash pile, hoping Lee didn’t notice and try to keep it.

  I had more stuff than Lee in the closet. We both had windbreakers in there—and another one each right at the back of the closet, a clichéd pink and blue pair, which, judging by the tags, we’d gotten when we were ten. After rummaging through some of the clothes—everything going into the donation pile except for the jeans Lee had left here last summer that he thought he’d lost and a jacket of mine I’d forgotten all about that miraculously still fit—I went on my tiptoes to scout out the top shelf.

  “Hey, Mr. Sentimental, come give me a boost. Put those football muscles to good use.”

  Lee sighed loudly, muttering about how I was interrupting his flow (he’d been looking at a bunch of receipts he’d just found and there was zero flow going on), but he didn’t hesitate to crouch down as I stood on the bed. I climbed up onto his shoulders and he carried me the few steps back to the closet. Lee had spent last summer working out and beefing up a little, and after being on the football team throughout senior year, he’d built up some serious muscles—which were definitely coming in handy right now.

  “Don’t you dare drop me.”

  He swayed, and I smacked the top of his head, making him laugh.

  “Anything good?”

  “Um…” My face scrunched up at the layer of dust on the shelf—and how did sand even get all the way up here? I pulled out an old beach bag, another towel, a collapsed neon-green rubber ring, and some old floaties. I tossed them all onto the floor near the trash bag.

  “Oh my God!” I cried, leaning forward and reaching in with both hands for a stuffed bear, gray with a tartan bow tie…and still fluffy! I gently brushed some of the dust off before nuzzling the bear against my face and then holding it down in front of Lee’s. “Look! It’s Bubba! I thought I’d lost him years ago.”

  Mom and Dad had gotten me Bubba when they’d brought Brad home from the hospital after he was born.

  “He’s gonna look great in your fancy-schmancy dorm room at Berkeley,” Lee told me.

  “Ha-ha. Right. Yeah.”

  Why was it suddenly so hard to picture the dorm room at Berkeley that I’d been dreaming of for years?

  “So…” He took Bubba, his other hand gripping my knee to make sure I didn’t fall. “Toss, right? Trash bag, meet Bubba. Bubba, meet trash bag.”

  “No, Lee!”

  I made a grab for Bubba and Lee laughed as he held him just out of my reach. As I bent down, arms flailing for the bear, Lee started moving about the room. I shrieked, grabbing at his hair. “Put me down! Put me dowwwwn!”

  Lee bent forward and tossed me onto the bed, my stomach flipping as I fell. He gasped for breath between laughs. I grabbed the nearest thing—a floatie I’d just tossed out of the closet—to throw at him, but he just collapsed to the floor, laughing harder, holding his stomach.

  “Looks like you two are working hard,” a voice drawled from the doorway. I stopped mock-glaring at Lee to see Noah leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed, smirking at me.

  “You two had better not be making sexy eyes at each other,” Lee said, still breathless from laughing. He’d thrown one arm across his eyes, the other hand still on his stomach. “Not under my roof, no sir.”

  “Sexy? Me?” Noah scoffed, clutching a hand to his chest and then winking at me. “Always.”

  Lee faked a vomiting noise.

  “Mom wants you guys to come help in the rumpus room when you’re done in here. Which means she thinks you should be done in here by now.”

  The three of us looked at the piles of stuff—mostly Lee’s, although we’d just trampled my donation pile and I was lying on my keep pile.

  “Give us five minutes,” Lee said. He got to his feet, shoved a bunch of stuff back
in his dresser and the rest in a trash bag, and then looked at me. “Jeez, Shelly, it’s like a clothes bomb went off over here. Keep your side of the room clean, huh?”

  Chapter Six

  Once we’d gotten our room cleaned up, hauled the trash bags to the front of the house, and added our donation items to a cardboard box Matthew had left out for us in the lounge, we took a break to sit outside. A can of Pepsi Max sweated in my hand, fresh from the refrigerator.

  Lee’s parents spent a good ten minutes trying to get us back inside.

  Matthew eventually grabbed an old water gun he’d found somewhere, filling it at the pool and squirting us in the faces with it until we caved, shrieking and laughing and shouting in protest as we fled back inside.

  “See.” Lee sighed as we wiped our faces on our shirts and arms on the way to the rumpus room. “This is why it’s so great here. Dad would never do something like that at home. We all need this place.”

  He was right. This place brought out the best in all of us. I didn’t think June or Matthew had really thought about how they’d cope without the beach house.

  We didn’t make a lot of progress in the rumpus room, a spare room at the back of the house we’d mainly treated as a playroom through the years.

  There was a cabinet against one wall housing a bunch of Matthew’s old vinyls and a record player. Lee made a beeline for it before we did anything else, setting up a Beach Boys album to play. A sagging sofa took up another wall, an ancient armchair beside it and a couple of beanbags that had lost any kind of comfort, like, a decade ago. I just knew the closet in the corner would be full of old toys and games. An outdated TV was on a stand near the windows.

  How many rainy days had we spent playing Monopoly or Guess Who? or Battleship or a kid-friendly version of Trivial Pursuit? How many games had we played in here? And then there were the evenings Mr. and Mrs. Flynn just wanted some quiet time and would set the three of us up here with a movie and some popcorn.

  Rachel wandered over to a cabinet and pulled one of the doors open. The handle broke off in her hand and she looked at us in alarm before Lee laughed, reaching for the handle. It was some tacky glass knob, smudged from years of use, that had probably been super modern at one point, the kind of thing everyone wanted. He polished it almost to a shine on his shirt before holding it up.