The Goodbye Summer

by Sarah Van Name

  We spend most of the night like that. I snuggle into Jake and Georgia snuggles into the other side of the couch. I feel bad for making her the third wheel, but it was unavoidable. And once Craig and Joe get home, they keep her occupied. They’re neither smart nor cute, but they’re funny, and we laugh at the jokes they make about commercials.

  Sometimes I wonder why Jake lives with them. He doesn’t dislike them, but they’re not close friends either, and if I had a choice of roommates, I don’t think I’d want to live with anyone I didn’t really like. But this place is temporary, and it makes sense. You do what you can with what you have.

  The movie finishes, and we watch a couple episodes of some terrible sitcom before Georgia leaves to make her ten o’clock curfew. Jake convinces me—without much effort—to go back to his room, and then he takes me home and kisses me goodnight.

  I get a text from Georgia as I’m brushing my teeth. Which is weird, actually. We don’t talk much at night, and she is not part of my bedtime ritual, which Jake and I spend together through my phone. Georgia usually goes to bed early. She likes to swim laps before work on morning pool days.

  You up?

  Yeah, of course

  I wash my face and change into my pajama pants before she texts back.

  So meeting Jake was awesome

  :) :) :) he’s so great

  yeah he definitely is

  his roommates are nice

  it was a little weird tho

  right? idk

  I look at the screen for a long time, the side of my face pressed into the pillow. She texts back before I respond.

  ugh idk

  forget about it

  no no no

  it is a little weird

  I mean basically different friend groups right?

  yeah

  he’s really really great

  good night Caroline

  night Georgia, sleep well

  you too

  I don’t fall asleep, though, not for hours. I try not to think about what Georgia was thinking, sitting there beside me on the couch all night. A little weird, right? I try not to think about how she might judge Jake—for his lack of higher education, his shabby house, his crude jokes. I try to empty my mind until it is a calm, dark ocean, lulling me into sleep.

  I fail.

  At 2:00 a.m., I give up and go outside to the back porch. In other, older summers, Dad and I would camp out here together, setting up the tent and reading stories by flashlight. In the past few years, I’ve come out by myself some nights with a sleeping bag. This is the first night I’ve been out this year.

  I lie on the splintered wood, looking up at the sky, watching the trails of late incoming planes. I try to imagine myself into the future: Jake’s arms around me and the cool of the truck bed on my legs as we rest together somewhere in the desert. But it’s like finding the last puzzle piece when it’s fallen under the table. I know what it should look like, but I can’t place it.

  So I count the stars instead, squinting at the sky. I don’t know the planets, so I count them all the same. I don’t remember reaching a hundred, but my mother finds me there in the morning, curled up with a crescent moon of mosquito bites down my thighs. When I wake, I don’t know where I am. All I see is her silhouette and the pale morning sunlight behind her, making her skin glow like an angel’s.

  “Oh, my baby,” she murmurs. “You gotta bring out something to sleep on next time, you’ll get splinters.” I lean on her as we go up the stairs together, and she puts me to bed for a few more hours of rest.

  July

  Chapter 6

  Jake and I decided to leave back in April. It was unseasonably cold, nearly freezing, a Saturday. Mom dropped me off at his place after lunch. His roommates had turned off the heat after a recent warm stretch, and the house was damp and chilly. Jake and I snuggled together in the sunken couch and watched cartoons.

  We’d talked about leaving before. Phantom plans, spun-sugar nothings, while we lay on the back porch or texted between my classes. We used words like someday and maybe and after I graduate, and we never talked about where I might apply for college. We sought our future lives like you look for shapes in the clouds. Like everyone does.

  And it bothered me, being so ordinary in our dreaming. When I told my friends at school about how Jake and I talked, all the things we planned, some of them laughed; others just smiled sympathetically. “But after college, right? And there will be so many college boys… I mean, you won’t be with Jake forever,” Chandler said to me. Fury bubbled up inside me; I turned away, said, “You never know.”

  That day in April at Jake’s house, a tourism commercial for Minnesota came on. We were laughing at it—what do you tour Minnesota for, anyway?

  Then Jake said, “You know, we could just go and live there.”

  “Minnesota?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Oh, we should live in Paris. I would love to see the Eiffel Tower.”

  Jake muted the TV and twisted his body to face me. “No, Caroline, I’m serious. Why don’t we just go? To Minnesota? Or wherever, not Minnesota. Anywhere. Anywhere in the States, at first, I guess. Anywhere we can drive to.”

  I looked at him for a long time. His face was inches away from mine, and his eyes were earnest and determined. In that moment, I could feel the future unraveling and reshaping itself.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “We can’t. I’m in school.”

  “Oh…” Jake sighed and started absently cracking his knuckles. “After the end of the semester, then.”

  “Not after graduation?”

  “What’s the point of graduation?” he said. “Just another bullshit year in school. You can get your GED, and it’s exactly the same as a diploma. It’s not that hard. Do you even like school?”

  I thought about the long, lonely seven hours of moving from class to class. Broken pencil stubs and repetitive math problems. Report cards and parent-teacher conferences. I liked reading and my English classes, but that was about it. “No,” I admitted.

  “Exactly.”

  “But what about money?”

  “I have money.”

  “You haven’t been saving it, though.” He looked like he was about to get defensive, so I quickly added, “I mean, you’re doing great, but you haven’t been really saving to the point where we’d be able to live off it. And I haven’t saved much either. I think we’d need a little more if we wanted to leave.” My heart expanded in my chest as I said the words—if we wanted to leave.

  “But do you want to?” he said, and he grabbed my hand. “Do you want to go somewhere and have a life with me?”

  I tried to memorize the asking of this question. The exact soft tone of his voice, the cool dusty scent of the room around us, the sound of the rain as it began to fall on the roof.

  “More than anything,” I whispered.

  And so we worked it all out, there on the couch as the rain turned from a drizzle to a thunderstorm and the skies got dark. I would get a full-time summer job, and he would try to take some extra shifts, and we wouldn’t get fast food so much. We’d leave at the end of the summer: September 1, the first day of senior year.

  That night, I got home fifteen minutes after curfew. Earlier in the week, Mom and I had fought about my grades. I’d gotten a C– on a chemistry test, which barely mattered because it only brought my average down to a B, but still, she was furious. The week before, she had made me cancel a date with Jake to have dinner with her and my dad and Vivian, claiming she’d told me about it in advance when she hadn’t. And now, she gave me a lecture on personal responsibility that lasted what felt like hours. Through every word, all I could think was that soon I would be free of it all.

  I’m thinking about it now because I have to lie about it. It’s July 3, just past the tw
o-months-’til mark, and my legs are still itchy from the rash of mosquito bites I sustained after sleeping on the porch a few nights ago. Scratching is a welcome distraction from the dinner table, where Georgia and my parents are talking about college.

  “Well, I took the SAT for the second time in May, and I did well—really well—but there were some points left on the table,” Georgia is saying, “so obviously I’ve been practicing, and I’ll be taking the test again in October. My ACT score is great, so that’s done, thank goodness. And I haven’t started my essays yet, but I have a bunch of topics I’m sketching outlines for, that kind of thing. Most colleges haven’t released full applications yet. But if you read the books, you start to find patterns in the kinds of questions they ask. So, I’m not, you know, resting easy or anything, but I’m not too worried about it.” She takes a moment to catch her breath.

  I’m a little irritated, but mostly I’m thankful for Georgia’s enthusiasm. She draws my parents’ attention, which is welcome—their faces are turned toward her as if in worship. I know they would love to hear all that chatter from me. I used to read all those college books, when I was a freshman, already thinking about what would come next. But for obvious reasons, I haven’t picked them up recently. If I do go to college, it’ll be later, after Jake and I have settled down.

  My parents have trouble understanding. Mom especially. She’s read all kinds of studies about the importance of a college degree, and she sees it as a hard requirement for me. I used to think so too. But there are so many different paths she can’t see, ones that don’t involve four more years of academics that aren’t necessary in the life Jake and I are choosing.

  She talks about it all the time. But I can’t bring myself to concoct some elaborate lie about where I’m looking and what my goals are, so I just shrug and deflect whenever those questions come up. After I made a good-not-great score on the SAT at the end of last year, she started leaving SAT prep books on my bed, which actually works out okay because Georgia likes me to quiz her. Georgia’s never asked why I don’t ask her to quiz me back. When we’re out on the porch, lying on our stomachs with the college books in front of us—in front of her—my mom smiles at us from the kitchen.

  Dad is a little calmer about it. When Mom starts to nag me, he just says, “Come on, Cathy, she has time.” Then he gives me a hug. “You have time, Caroline,” he says to me. It hurts more, not telling him.

  Right on schedule, as Georgia takes a bite of her asparagus, Mom sets her gaze on me.

  “Now I know Caroline’s been looking at colleges, but she’s been very secretive about it,” she says, her eyes flicking between me and Georgia. “When we did our tour of in-state schools earlier this year, she wouldn’t even tell us which one she was most interested in. Has she said anything to you?”

  Georgia glances at each of us in turn, as if she’s prey trapped among predators. I take a long drink of water. That trip was awful. The campus tours were all the same, and a series of thunderstorms followed us around the state, so we were always slightly damp.

  “Um,” she says, swallowing her food, “I don’t think she’s decided yet.”

  “Yep, haven’t decided yet. Sorry,” I say, attempting nonchalance. Mom sets down her fork and looks like she’s about to really launch into it, but Dad gets there first.

  “Georgia, how are you feeling about attending your first annual Weaver Fourth of July party tomorrow?”

  “Oh, great,” she says, perking up. “I’m really excited. Caroline says it’s huge.”

  “A little bigger than our house can allow at this point, I think,” Dad says, and Mom butts in.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s going to be great. Georgia, we’re so excited to have you. I really think it’s going to be the best party ever; you two have been so helpful with the decorating.”

  The annual Fourth of July party is one of my mother’s finest achievements. It’s her favorite holiday by a mile. She’s already festooned the house in classic Americana. Red, white, and blue paper decorations cover every available surface. Fairy lights—separate strings of the same three colors that Georgia and I helped braid together a few days ago—are draped around the back porch, though my mom’s elaborate rules say we can’t actually turn them on until tomorrow.

  Tomorrow is for baking. Cupcakes with American flags on top, a huge white cake with blueberries and raspberries, pigs in a blanket, homemade cheese crackers. Georgia’s sleeping over tonight, and since JAC takes the holiday off and Mom made me ask for the vacation day early, we’ve been enlisted to help.

  “Yeah, Caroline says it’s a really big deal. I’m thrilled,” Georgia says between bites. “We’ve never done a whole lot for the Fourth, so this is new to me.”

  “Well, your parents are welcome to come!” Mom exclaims. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. You should invite them. I’d love to meet them.”

  Georgia reaches up to tighten her hair tie, a nervous tic that leaves the back of her head looking like a rat’s nest after a long day at work. “That’s really nice of you, Mrs. Weaver, but they’re visiting my grandparents.”

  “Without you? Not much fun to be apart as a family on America’s birthday.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” Georgia fidgets, and I wish I could help her, but I have no clue how to jump in. “I always used to go with them, but it’s a superlong flight, and it’s always really boring. Independence Day parties at nursing homes aren’t that exciting. So,” she says, smiling, “I managed to convince them that all the travel would make it too stressful to go back to work on Monday. And y’all were kind enough to invite me here, and this party looks like it’s going to be beyond incredible.”

  My mother considers this information, clearly torn between reprimanding Georgia for abandoning her family and accepting the pre-praise for her event. She chooses the latter. “Thank you, honey,” she says. “But please tell them they’re always welcome to come over if they’re in town.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Weaver. I’ll let them know.”

  “We’ll invite them for dinner,” Mom says, starting to clear the plates. “I just think it’s not right that their daughter is over here all the dang time and we’ve never laid eyes on each other.”

  Georgia makes a noncommittal noise and scoops the last piece of lettuce from her salad bowl.

  “Mom, I think we’re gonna go up to my room and work on some of those tissue flowers,” I say.

  “Sounds good,” she says, “but make sure you alternate red, then white, then blue. Last year you made them all one color, and they didn’t live up to their potential.”

  “Got it,” I say, and Georgia and I hustle out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  “Are your parents really visiting your grandparents?” I whisper as we leave.

  “Yeah,” Georgia says under her breath. “I’ve gone with them every year too, and it really does suck. All their food recipes are from the fifties. The serving tables are basically an endless plain of Jell-O.”

  “I’m kinda surprised they let you stay.”

  “Well, I still have to take my SAT practice test on Sunday.”

  Red, white, blue. We aren’t very good at it. I turn on the radio, and we wrap and fold until we’re drowning in crumpled tissue paper and a few halfhearted flowers. Georgia teaches me a different technique than the one my mom showed us. It works okay, but the colors cluster, not alternate.

  I lose my phone under a pile of blue and scramble to find it when it buzzes. It’s a video from Jake—he and his roommates and Toby are at the beach. I scoot closer to Georgia, so she can see my phone. The video opens on black and Jake’s voice saying, “Here we go!” and then there’s a blinding purple flash and hoots from the boys. The camera tilts up to capture fuzzy explosions of light.

  “That’s so cool,” I whisper, half to Georgia and half to myself.

  I wanted Jake to come
to the party. I invited him, obviously, for the second year in a row. He hadn’t been able to come last year—he got hooked into a double shift at work—and as silly as my family’s traditions are, I wanted him to be a part of them this year. I wanted him to see how we decorated the house and for him to shield me from the worst of our neighbors. I wanted to kiss him under the fireworks.

  But Craig and Joe beat me to the punch. I walked into Jake’s house one day in May after school, and they were all talking about the trip to the beach. This was their tradition, apparently, going on four years. This year, they’d invited Jake and Toby, who had enthusiastically accepted. Later that night, I asked Jake if he would go to my family’s party instead.

  He was taken aback. “I’m sorry, babe, but I already said I’d go with Toby and them.”

  “It’s a big deal,” I said, my voice wavering.

  “Well,” he said, looking down, his shoulders falling, “if it really matters to you…”

  I didn’t want him to be sad. “No,” I said, “no, it’s okay. It’s just a party.”

  “But you could come with us!” he said. His eyes lit up. “The guys wouldn’t mind.”

  All May and the beginning of June, I fantasized about the possibilities. We could play in the water, have sex on the sand. It would’ve been our first road trip together, a whole day of driving, which would have helped prepare us for September. After I started hanging out with Georgia a lot, Jake said she could come too. Craig’s stepbrother’s house even had an extra room for me and her—well, for her, and for me to tell my parents I wouldn’t be sleeping with Jake.

  But when I finally worked up the courage to ask my mom, she didn’t even blink before she said no. She said she wasn’t comfortable with me sleeping over with Jake, and she needed me to help set up for the party.