The Summer of Everything

by Julian Winters

  Wes stares at his Chucks tapping against the wood beneath. The pier’s a century old. It’s probably in millions of tourists’ photo albums. He ponders whether the architects imagined this incredible structure being nothing more than someone’s phone screen wallpaper. Endless history exists here. It’s a landmark in Santa Monica’s story. On some levels, Wes thinks the same of the bookstore.

  Will Once Upon a Page earn a Wikipedia page after it closes?

  His brain works in mysterious—also, destructive—ways.

  Wes pulls one leg to his chest and rests his foot on the edge of the bench. Down the pier, Nico stands in line at a food cart. Wes hopes he gets funnel cakes. He also hopes he’s doing a stellar job at being covert while staring at how soft Nico looks in his glasses with flat hair and an ash-gray hoodie. He amazes himself at being able to pine while the world is on fire.

  “Hey. Aren’t you that guy from the bookstore?”

  When Wes lifts his head, he isn’t expecting much. He’s definitely not expecting a guy that’s easily three inches taller than him with tan skin and sharp features. He’s beaming at Wes, one side of his mouth higher than the other.

  “Uh.” Wes shrugs. “I guess?”

  The guy laughs. He pushes fingers through his dark hair. It’s long on top, as if he could pull it into a topknot. “Oh, right. You don’t know who the hell I am. Sorry.”

  Wes’s brain short-circuits, staring into this guy’s charming brown eyes. “I’m not really good with faces,” Wes says. “A lot of people come through the store.” An obvious lie. “Should I know you?”

  “Nah. I’ve never been to the bookstore.”

  “Oh.” Wes raises an eyebrow. “So…”

  “I follow coopsarrow on Insta,” the guy explains. “He posts a lot about the bookstore and you.”

  “Uh huh.” Wes exhales.

  Note to self: remind Cooper what “digital consent” means.

  “Coop’s good friends with my cousin too. He’s big time in their community.”

  “Their community?”

  “Yup.” But the guy doesn’t clarify, so Wes supposes it’s something he’ll have to ask Cooper about.

  “So, I’m famous?” Wes jokes. He can’t wait to tell Leo and his parents he’s ditching college to be a social media influencer.

  “Santa Monica Escapades all day.” That laugh returns. Strangely enough, Wes is falling in love with it.

  “Manuia.” He extends his hand to Wes. “Everybody calls me Manu, though.”

  “Manu,” Wes repeats. He likes Manu’s grip; strong and purposeful. Not at all like a creepy Instagram stalker. “I’m Wes,” he says, then feels like an idiot because, duh, of course Manu already knew that. “Officially. I’m Wes, officially.”

  “Officially Wes,” Manu says, beaming.

  Wes smiles nervously. He considers complimenting Manu’s wardrobe choice: a tight, vintage Gameboy T-shirt. But just because Wes is a total nerd doesn’t mean he’s advertising it to attractive strangers.

  “I’ve been meaning to come by the store,” Manu continues. “My cousin says it’s great.”

  “Yeah. It’s sweet.”

  “Maybe I could get a tour?”

  “From Cooper?”

  “Well. I mean, sure. If you’re not, like, around?”

  “I usually am,” Wes says. “Actually, I’m always around these days.”

  “Good to know.”

  Wes considers Manu. His thumbs are hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. He’s almost leaning in Wes’s direction, as if he might sit down, as if he’s possibly waiting for Wes to offer him a place on the bench.

  Wait. Is Manu flirting?

  “So, yeah,” says Manu. “Maybe I’ll drop by sometime?”

  “That’d be dope.”

  “Dope,” Manu repeats and, if the lighting was right, Wes could swear Manu’s cheeks were darker. But it’s hard to tell from his position on the bench. Should he be asking Manu for his number? Or Instagram name? Could he slide into Manu’s DMs?

  Is Wes cool enough to slide into his own DMs?

  “I guess I’ll see you around, Officially Wes.” Manu gives Wes a small wave, then hesitates before spinning on his heels to walk up the pier toward Ocean Avenue.

  Perfect. Puberty hit like a tornado at thirteen and, five years later, Wes still hasn’t grown a pair.

  “Was that guy just flirting with you?”

  Wes is startled when Nico flops down next to him; his throat barely contains a yelp as their shoulders brush.

  Get it together.

  “Doubtful,” Wes replies, slouching on the bench.

  Nico hums, picking off an edge of golden funnel cake that isn’t piled with powdered sugar. “Looked like he was.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “Not your type?”

  He’s not you. Wes really hates the way his brain works. “We were just talking. He’s a friend of Cooper’s. It’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” Nico asks, chewing. His mouth pulls a little south, as though he’s concerned or disappointed.

  What would he have to be disappointed over? Wes’s inability to go after a semi-sure thing rather than having to create a plan just to ask his best friend out?

  “Don’t worry,” Wes says, exhaling. “He won’t be stealing your permanent position as my plus-one to all future formal events.”

  “Good.” Nico tears into more funnel cake, chewing with his mouth open.

  How is he gross and attractive at the same time?

  Defeated, Wes stares down the pier.

  A man strums his guitar for passing tourists. His case is open, slowly filling with crinkled dollars and shiny coins. Eventually, a raspy voice accompanies him. It takes Wes a second to realize it’s Anna. He didn’t know she could sing. He didn’t know she’d be so bold, but here she is, singing Adele like some indie pop artist trying to gain cool points.

  Wes spots Cooper whooping from the small audience forming around them. Kyra’s next to him, a dreamy expression softening her face.

  “Wesley, I—” Nico doesn’t finish. He peers out at the water, nose wrinkled.

  “I’m sorry about earlier. About…”

  “Losing your shit?”

  “Losing my shit,” Wes confirms.

  “I get it.”

  “You do?” Wes can’t curb the surprise in his voice.

  “The bookstore means a lot to all of us, but it means everything to you. It always has. You’ve been in love with that place since day one.”

  Wes has. Since the moment Calvin walked him through that glass door, around the cardboard stand advertising his mom’s newest book, to the comics corner. He sat down, cross-legged, with Wes and let him have at it for two hours. He never said a word. Not until he asked Wes which one he would like to take home.

  “All of them!” Wes wanted to eat, sleep, and daydream on that gray carpet.

  “It’s like a breakup,” Nico says to the ocean.

  “Sorry. I don’t know that word,” teases Wes.

  “Lauren Walsh,” Nico reminds him. “Angela Barry. Khalia Pressley.”

  “Okay. Point made.”

  So, Wes had a little bit of an issue with rejection in middle school. He failed to master the art of “no” whenever a girl asked him out. They were all fictious arrangements: holding hands in the halls; kissing on the cheek after class; writing the most dramatic poems via texts. And every girl would break up with him after two weeks.

  It never bothered Wes. He didn’t recognize who he really wanted to date until much later.

  “Anyway,” Wes says. “It’s worse than a breakup. It’s like a—”

  “Death?”

  A chill crawls over the back of Wes’s neck, seeping down his spine. He doesn’t want to compare losing Once Upon a Page to death. N
ot to Nico.

  “I get that too,” whispers Nico. “Either way, it’s like someone reaching into your chest and ripping out half your heart. How do you survive with only half a heart?”

  Wes doesn’t know.

  Nico’s fingers are white from picking at his funnel cake. He raises a chunk. “Want some?”

  Hesitation claws at Wes. He leans forward, and Nico pops the greasy, doughy piece into Wes’s open mouth. He chews slowly, grinning. Nico matches his expression. They’re twin white-bearded friends on a bench in the middle of a neon-lit pier while Anna sings Adele’s melancholy “Someone Like You.”

  “Hey,” Nico says around another bite. “Peanut butter, orange soda, or High Mountain oolong?”

  Wes wants to laugh at these ridiculous choices. First of all, Nico knows Wes isn’t going to choose that artificial abomination this world calls orange soda. Second, he knows Wes has recently developed a love for oolong tea thanks to Kyra and Brews and Views’ ever-changing menu.

  But Wes says, “Peanut butter,” because it’s his go-to snack.

  “I knew it,” Nico says, like always.

  Wes isn’t in the mood to call him on his shit, not after the day he’s had.

  “You’re so predictable.” Nico nudges Wes.

  Did you predict I’d fall in love with you?

  Wes’s brain is a disaster. He can’t take his eyes off the way Nico’s index finger pushes his glasses up his nose, leaving a white streak behind. He’s licking sugar from his thumb. It should be gross—it is gross—but Wes’s heart refuses to use that as motivation to just say what he’s supposed to say.

  Stick to the plan.

  “Gents, I must say…” Cooper leans over the back of the bench, his face swooping in between their shoulders. “… this is becoming the best summer of my life.”

  “All sixteen years, huh,” Kyra says. She’s arm in arm with Anna as they stand behind Cooper.

  “There’s no age on souls,” says Cooper, smiling lazily. It’s not hard to deduce he’s stoned.

  “It’s a pretty wicked summer.” Nico slings an arm around Wes’s shoulders.

  “Did we all miss the part about being jobless and one of this city’s greatest monuments being shut down?” Wes asks, his throat tight.

  “Isn’t a monument something people build in memory of a person or place?” Kyra inquires.

  “Thank you, Google,” huffs Wes.

  Teasingly, Kyra nudges the back of his head. “Shut up.”

  “Don’t give up, young son of Queen Savannah,” Cooper says. “It’s not over. We’re in the endgame now.”

  “Did you just quote Infinity War to me?” Wes says, offended.

  Cooper’s mouth stretches as if it’s made of taffy.

  “He’s right,” Anna agrees. “If Mrs. Rossi hasn’t told us, then maybe there’s still a chance.”

  Okay, they’re both stoned.

  “Can we not talk about this right now?” Cooper requests. Wes couldn’t agree more. Let’s never talk about Once Upon a Page being shut down. Ever. “Junior year is on the horizon. Another one hundred and eighty days of math and science-y stuff. I just want to chill with my friends. My homies. My peeps.”

  Wes thinks Cooper’s the kind of kid who never checks his Halloween candy before ingesting.

  Before he knows it, words are being tossed around—something about hashtags and selfies—and Wes is squeezed between four people on the bench as Cooper plops into his lap. Phone extended, Cooper shouts, “Say ‘peeps not creeps,’” and then a flash. Another flash.

  “Wicked,” Cooper says, dethroning from Wes’s knees.

  Wes’s phone buzzes in his pocket. With Nico on one side and Anna on the other, he has to wiggle to reach it.

  New notification from coopsarrow.

  He’s tagged everyone in the post.

  The selfie’s respectable. Pacific Park shines in the background. Cooper must’ve used a photo-editing app to remove the flash’s red-eye effect. Kyra and Anna are smiling goofily. Cooper’s beaming as if he’s physically walking on clouds. Nico’s glasses are crooked; his mouth gapes, white teeth blinding.

  And there’s Wes, staring at Nico, mega heart eyes included.

  “Hashtag love it,” says Kyra as she double taps her phone.

  “Ultimate squad,” Cooper announces. “We’re just missing El’s Bells and Zay.”

  Wes can’t take his eyes off how he looks at Nico in the photo. It’s so obvious. How could Nico not see it?

  Hashtag Best Friend Crushes are the Worst.

  Chapter Nine

  Returning home after leaving the pier, Wes is surprised to find Ella sitting on the green sofa, feet under her, phone squeezed between her hands and dark trails down her cheeks.

  “Hey,” he says cautiously, nudging the door closed with his foot.

  Ella’s eyes are wide and glassy. “Sup.”

  “Okay.” Wes toes off his shoes, moving guardedly as if she’s a velociraptor ready to claw out his organs. Ella’s not that scary—thirty percent of the time—but she never cries. He’s certain she has cried, probably as an infant, but he’s never witnessed it firsthand.

  She sniffles. Her nose is red.

  “Ella?”

  She exhales loudly, clearly annoyed by the way Wes is tiptoeing closer. “Chill out, super-geek, I didn’t just fail to raise a hell demon to run for mayor while I exact revenge on the girl who left me for dead.”

  Wes snorts. Last summer, provoked by a book snob obsessed with a certain poorly written vampire saga, Ella and Wes binge-watched the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series online. It’s an hour’s drive from Newport Beach to Santa Monica, so Ella spent weekends on the green sofa after her shift downstairs at the bookstore. Faith, the rebel slayer, was an instant favorite of Ella’s. Wes leaned more toward Willow because, hello, lesbian witch. But they both agreed season four never happened.

  Ella turns her phone over and over between her hands. “Mom called.”

  Oh.

  Wes has met Victoria Graham on three occasions. Each time, she barely spoke four words to him. She’s not a mean person, simply someone fully focused on her priorities. Wes isn’t one of them. Victoria is a striking woman with reddish-brown hair, wide shoulders, and an affinity for anything pastel. And her words cut faster, harder, more lethally than anything Ella’s ever used to fend off strangers brave enough to look her in the eye for more than five seconds.

  The tension between Ella and her mom is something Wes learned early in their friendship to observe but never ask about unless prompted. Ella claims that, when she was little, Victoria would fawn over her cheeks and chubby thighs. But somewhere between nine and ten, things shifted. Victoria stopped pinching Ella’s cheeks and started “suggesting” Ella join a soccer team or a volleyball club. Ella should try flirting with the boys from the football team instead of hanging with the art club kids. Listen to a little more fun pop music instead of brooding goth rock.

  “Are you—” Wes pauses, rubbing his chin. Choose your words carefully. “Do you want to punch something?”

  Ella sniffs, wiping snot from her nose. “Always.”

  “Cool,” says Wes, dropping down next to her. “Not me?”

  “You’re basically bones and curls. It’d be disappointing to break you without trying.”

  Wes eases an arm around her stiff shoulders. “Did she say something?”

  “She always says something.”

  “Does she want you to come home?”

  Ella’s laugh is this sad, pathetic thing. “No, she’s quite fine without me there to tarnish her image. Why have a daughter in person when you can just as easily FaceTime her to expound your disappointment in her? Technology’s the best.”

  Wes hums. Is it selfish that he wants to talk to his own mother? Despite her constant word vo
mit about writing and publishing and Twitter, there’s something about the sound of his mom’s voice that Wes needs once a day. It’s a comfort.

  With all the madness of the day, they haven’t spoken. She messaged him about depositing money into his bank account for groceries, but that’s about it. Wes does the math. Savannah might be still awake, writing.

  “I can’t wait until summer’s over and we’re moving onto campus,” sighs Ella. “It’s like, for the most part, I’ll be done with them. Four years or more where I’ll be focused on becoming my own person.”

  “You’ve always been your own person.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Wes does. But he also hates thinking about the end of summer. It’s this loud, unavoidable countdown in his head.

  In September, he’ll be at UCLA.

  In September, Nico will be at Stanford.

  In September, Wes is supposed to step out of being a teenaged slacker and become this instant adult who has career goals, relationship goals, money goals. So many goals. He’s supposed to study hard, graduate, get a six-figure job. He’s supposed to prove to the world that he’s responsible and capable of solving things with next to zero stress, but that’s all he sees in adults—stress and money problems and failures.

  Who wants that?

  He should probably tell Ella all of this, but when she says, a grin in her voice, “We’re gonna kick ass at UCLA,” he falters.

  “Go Bruins,” Wes replies, trying to drum up as much enthusiasm as possible. Absentmindedly, his arm tightens around her. Ella snuggles in; her head rests on his collarbone.

  “Oh god, you reek of the hell spawn,” she mumbles.

  “We were at the pier. Anna, Kyra, Coop…”

  “Nico?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ella snort-giggles. “So I missed the crew.”

  You did. Wes doesn’t say it. Thing is, he and Ella fight occasionally. Most friends do. But they don’t do apologies. Well, Wes does sometimes, but Ella definitely doesn’t. He thinks it’s against her emo-punk code.

  “Coop thinks we should…” Wes struggles to finish. It’s been on his mind, what Cooper said at the pier. Fighting for the bookstore. How they’re in the endgame and all that. “He thinks we shouldn’t just give up.”