The Goodbye Summer

by Sarah Van Name

  At the end of that night, I wish it could be my birthday all the time. No one would make me talk or think about any of the things I want to ignore. We could keep everything light and easy and good.

  They give me a blue sundress wrapped in gold paper when we get home. I go into the bathroom to try it on, and my parents applaud when I come out to show them. Dad is very proud; he was the one who found the dress, not Mom. I don’t know where they got it or how much it cost, and they won’t tell me, but it is beautiful. It is soft cotton, just stiff enough to stand up against a little summer sweat, but light enough not to be hot. It even makes me look like I have boobs. I almost text Jake a picture, but I want him to see it in person.

  Instead, I text the picture to Georgia in bed that night, my belly full and the covers pulled up warm over my chest, and she replies fast.

  hot damn

  you look fucking incredible

  nice earrings btw

  :) :) :)

  i see why you like having big birthdays

  the last couple days have been sort of amazing

  right tho???

  bdays are the best

  speaking of…

  She texts me a selfie—she’s wrapped in the robe I got her for her birthday and sporting an enormous, goofy grin.

  omg!

  it’s the softest thing I’ve ever touched

  THANK YOU

  you’re welcome!!!

  god I’m so excited about Great Adventures

  next weekend will be SO GOOD

  It’s all we talk about at lunch. Not just me and Georgia, but the whole group. It’s partially because of how exciting the trip is, but it’s also because we have a silent collective agreement not to talk about what will come after. Neither Serena nor Georgia are excited for the summer to end, so no one is talking about the upcoming semester—though, of course, I’d have to fake joining those conversations, anyway. Dave and Devin are leaving for college at the beginning of September, and they are excited, I’m sure, but I can tell they’re nervous too. They change the subject when I ask about it. Matt doesn’t talk about what’s coming next for him either, because as far as I can tell, it’s nothing in particular. I know that I can’t talk about what I’ll be doing, so I don’t even try. Honestly, I don’t want to.

  Then there’s Toby, who is staying at the aquarium. The summer rush ends shortly after the camp does, and all of us are leaving. He’ll be eating lunch by himself.

  Or maybe with the other tour guides, I guess, but they’re a pretty sour lot. They don’t like him because he’s young and happy, and also maybe because he lies to the visitors. Some of them take the job really seriously. One time, he told me, he got yelled at for fifteen minutes straight about the reproductive habits of sea turtles—he’d told a group they made babies by removing their shells and rubbing their butts together. Starting September, those tour guides will have to be his friends again.

  For a few days, the Great Adventures trip even manages to take over my conversations with Jake. We carry on two different one-sided talks at the same time. He tells me about an opening at a grocery store near his dad’s town, and I talk about our carpooling arrangements for the party. He says he’s found a townhouse he likes, and I describe how Georgia’s trying to convince Matt to come on the roller coasters, but he’s surprisingly too scared of heights to do so.

  Not that Jake’s coming on the trip, mind you. When I asked the group whether he could join us, everyone got quiet. After a long pause, Toby shrugged and said, “Sure, boyfriends and girlfriends welcome.” But if you don’t count the girl Toby cheated on Serena with, which I don’t, only Dave and I have significant others, and Dave’s girlfriend is already at a college pre-orientation program. No one seemed happy about Jake coming, really, and I understand why. It’s a party for us, to celebrate us as friends.

  But it’s not fair for me to do something like that without at least inviting Jake, so I ask him anyway. Fortunately, he has a shift that is nonnegotiable—taking over for several older folks who need to do back-to-school stuff with their kids.

  He does get pissed at me after a couple days, though. “Caroline, you’re talking about something that I have no interest in. I mean, I know it’s interesting to you, but I don’t get to go, so it kind of sucks. I’m talking about our future. Don’t you want to discuss that at all?”

  He’s right. It just feels, recently, as if he’s much more invested in the move than I am. That it’s something he is doing, and something that is happening to me.

  We’re both doing it, though, and it’s happening to both of us together. So when he asks, I give him my best I’m-sorry face and say, “Yes, love, I want to talk about it.” And we go over it all again.

  It’s getting to the point where we’ve figured out all we can before we actually get to Kentucky. But he’s always coming up with another detail: what snacks we’ll bring in the car, what he wants to name the chickens, where his dad goes to church, what their favorite barbeque restaurants are.

  I swear if he applied this level of micromanaging to the majority of his life, he’d be running the world. I’ve never seen him get this interested in anything.

  “Dad thinks I’m really gonna like his girlfriend,” he tells me, and I picture the three of them in a family picture, Jake between his dad and LeeAnn, me holding the camera. “There’s a bar where Dad always goes to play pool, and he’s gonna teach me how to do it,” he says, and I imagine the two of them standing in the smoky room, hands blue with chalk dust. “He’s planning to cut down his own Christmas tree this year, from the land,” he murmurs as we lie in bed after sex. Father and child together in my head, hands brown with dirt, the scent of pine.

  I have never seen a picture of Jake and his dad alone together. There are no pictures of his parents in his house or his wallet, and the few times I’ve been to his mother’s house, it’s all her side of the family: glitzy gold frames stocked with cousins, aunts, friends, and, of course, Jake and his older brother. The only image of his dad I’ve ever seen is in a wide family portrait of his mom’s family, taken at Easter over a decade ago. Jake is a freckled, beaming boy in the front row. His dad is in the back, hands tucked into his pockets, jaw jutting out in an animal grin.

  When I looked at that picture, I knew who he was without having to ask. There’s a date in the corner, the mark of a cheap film camera. It was taken the year before he left. Jake would have been nine.

  But never them together. No proud poses at soccer tournaments, no parent-night exhibits at school, no Christmas morning snapshots. I asked Jake about it once. He shrugged and said his mom must have put them away, and that was the last I heard. That night, I tacked up an old picture of me and my dad on my corkboard, a snapshot of the two of us from the father-daughter camping group we went to when I was little. Dad kissed me on my forehead when he saw.

  One evening, when Jake has been talking about his dad for half an hour straight, I get frustrated. “I thought this was about us,” I say.

  “It is,” he says, impatient, defensive. “Caroline, you know it is.”

  In that moment, I see him doubly: the boy in the front, smiling big and joyful, and the man in the back, teeth bared and bright. Both of them stare back at me, and in his eyes, there is such a fierce and terrified hope that it makes me afraid, and I have to turn away.

  Chapter 19

  The next week feels remarkably normal, with moments of surrealism that flit in and out like fireflies. I go to work and back to Jake’s house to hang out on the porch, and one afternoon he takes me to the bank, and I withdraw most of my savings. The cash sits folded in the innermost pocket of my purse, waiting for Kentucky. I eat pizza at lunch and Georgia takes me home, and while she flips through magazines and the ever-present college book, I squint at my laptop, looking at the Kentucky town’s official website in private browsing mode.

  It is blindingly
, screamingly hot. Over a hundred degrees every day, the heat index almost a hundred and ten on Monday. News anchors say we’re breaking records. I shower in the morning, after work, and before bed. On Tuesday, Jake gives up on the porch and blasts the air conditioning inside, saying he’ll be gone before the electric bill arrives. At my house, Georgia stays outside with me. Her hair is stringy with sweat, even more so than it’s been all summer, and her skin smells like Dove deodorant.

  I expected the last day of work to be full of tearful goodbyes, but since we’re all hanging out the next day at Great Adventures, it’s a lot less climactic than I thought it would be. In fact, it turns out that our last lunch together was actually Thursday, because on Friday, the camp is having an end-of-summer “gala” lunch with the kids’ parents. Georgia runs a plate of food across the lobby to me before the parents arrive, and it occurs to me this is one of the last times I’ll see her face peering around the door frame. I try to squash that thought as quickly as it comes. I spend my final lunch hour in Jenny’s office, watching sitcoms with her in silence.

  At the end of the day, Jenny trundles out of her office. I am starting to close, going through the familiar motions. She stands there and watches me straighten poster displays.

  “Well,” she says finally.

  “Yup,” I say.

  “You weren’t the worst employee I’ve ever had.”

  “I appreciate that, Jenny,” I say, genuinely touched. I open the drawer of the desk and pull out the gift I got for her. “I got you something.” It’s a little glass bottle, stopped with a piece of cork, filled with artificially white sand and little porcelain starfish and sand dollars. We sell them here, but I tied a piece of ribbon around it to make it feel a little more special. “I made you miss your beach trip, so I figured I should bring the beach to you.”

  She smiles slightly as I hand her the bottle, and I keep cleaning. She stands there for a moment longer.

  “Everything’s gonna be okay with you,” she says. I don’t know whether it’s a question or a statement, and I don’t know exactly how to respond.

  But she’s still standing there. “Yes,” I say. “It will be.”

  “Good,” she says. She walks back into her office, closing the door behind her. I leave the counter sparkling clean.

  That night, I take two Benadryl to fall asleep at 8:00 p.m. I want to be rested for the next day. Even with the medication, I toss and turn for forty-five minutes, texting Jake meaningless shit. I fall asleep hard and fast and wake up before my alarm at 4:00 a.m. My purse is packed already. The whole house is quiet. When I brush my teeth, the bathroom lights feel harsh, and I’m grateful to step back into the dim hallway.

  Outside, the morning is warm and soft and dark. Crickets and frogs sing to each other. I sit on the front steps and wait for Georgia to come pick me up.

  No one is driving at this time. The last night I was awake this late, or this early, was right after Jake asked me to think about Kentucky, and all I remember is that the blankets in my bed felt like straitjackets. This morning, the air is silky and wet, the streets are utterly empty, and my best friend is on her way to me.

  I get a text from Georgia: five min! I respond, stop texting and driving, and put my phone down beside my feet. It buzzes, ok ok, vibrating against the rubber edge of my cheap flip-flops. Apparently the park has water spouts that come up out of nowhere sometimes, so Georgia said not to ruin a pair of nice shoes. I’m okay with it. I still wanna look cute, but given that Jake’s not coming, I guess it doesn’t matter as much.

  Nine minutes after I get her text, her headlights appear around the corner, an arc of yellow as the light hits the trees. It blinds me briefly as she pulls up to our house and idles, waiting. She rolls down her window.

  “It’s time!” she whisper-yells. It feels like we have to whisper, even though normal talking voices wouldn’t wake anyone up. Everything is too quiet for us to speak. I cup one hand around my eyes as I get up, letting my pupils adjust away from nighttime.

  I get in the car and roll down my own window. Georgia looks over and says, “Happy birthday, Caroline.”

  I smile back at her. “Happy birthday, Georgia.”

  She turns up the radio as we drive out of my neighborhood on the way to the aquarium. There are fewer commercials at four in the morning, and the ones that are there are weirder.

  “Find the love of your life with the power of a genuine psychic,” intones a woman over a faux Bollywood soundtrack.

  “I feel like I’d be good at that job,” Georgia says thoughtfully. I start giggling, which makes her laugh, which makes me laugh more. Nothing’s that funny, but it’s too early, and I’m too happy to be rational.

  Serena, Matt, Dave, and Devin are waiting in the aquarium parking lot when we arrive. Matt looks like his usual self, bored and shaggy, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen Serena without her sunglasses. Her eyes are a pale, watery blue. She climbs into the car toting a purse the size of a duffel bag. Matt jumps in after her, tossing a backpack on the floor, a tray of cupcakes balanced on his lap.

  “Y’all ready for this?” he yells, scooting up to put his hands on the back of my and Georgia’s seats. “Let me tell you. Gonna be epic.”

  “You brought cake!” exclaims Georgia.

  “As promised. Want one now?” He stretches practically his entire torso into the front seat to hand us both a cupcake. I set mine in the cup holder, but Georgia eats the icing off hers with a single bite, delighted.

  “Happy birthday,” Serena says from the back seat. I turn back to look at her; she’s pulled out a baseball cap and is snuggling into the door as if to nap, but she’s smiling.

  “Yeah, happy birthday, ladies,” Matt says.

  “Put on your seat belt,” I tell him. He sits back with a groan. As Matt is buckling, Toby’s car swings in, and the rest of the guys climb onboard. His window rolls down and his arm reaches out, long and gangly, and points forward like an explorer.

  The drive is just over three hours. If it were up to Georgia, we would go straight through without stopping, getting to the park half an hour before it opens, the first in line. She’s told me this is her style—no-nonsense, get where you’re going—and I said I was okay with it. Really, though, I would much rather have a nice, leisurely drive. Stop for a meal, take a break to get a drink at the gas station, and so on. But I’m not going to say that, because she’s driving, and also because I want zero drama.

  Fortunately, Matt and I appear to be of the same mind, because at six he declares we should get breakfast. He and Georgia spend about half an hour arguing about it—she says that cake is breakfast, and he wants a bacon-and-egg biscuit—before Serena wakes up and says unceremoniously, “I gotta pee.”

  And I say, kind of because it’s true and kind of because I want scrambled eggs, “Me too, a little.”

  Georgia throws up her hands in defeat, a dangerous move since we’re doing eighty-two on the highway. She says, “Whatever, okay. I’ll text Toby, we’ll stop.”

  “I’ll text Toby,” I say, quickly grabbing her phone from her.

  We stop at a fast food restaurant. “You know,” Toby says to the man at the register, gesturing at me and Georgia. “It’s these two ladies’ birthdays, so if you could do anything special for them…” The man smiles and shakes his head, but he gives each of us a kids’ meal toy with our meal. Georgia cheers. The toys are little planes, and she flies hers around from person to person as we wait for our food. I spin the tiny propeller on mine and dive-bomb Matt, who shrieks in faux-horror.

  We all crowd around a single table, though the only other people in the restaurant are a group of elderly ladies eating sausage biscuits. The sun is beginning to color the sky with pink and blue. I lean my head on Georgia’s shoulder. At this table with all my friends, laughing and together, I feel peaceful in a way I haven’t in a long time. I am exactly where I am supp
osed to be.

  “Isn’t this better than not stopping?” I ask.

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” she says, pouring half a cup of maple syrup on a pancake.

  We stop once more after that because someone in Toby’s car really needs a soda, and we get to the park just as it’s opening. We are not the first in line, but we’re close. When we get inside, Serena insists we get a locker to put our stuff in, which the guys moan about, but actually proves to be helpful. I hadn’t even thought about where I would put my purse when we went on rides. Shows you how much I know about amusement parks.

  It’s 8:15 and the park is starting to come to life, the sun low in the sky but strong, and as we wander down an empty path, Georgia spins around, arms outstretched.

  “I love this place,” she says. She walks backward, hooking her thumbs into the belt on her too-tight shorts. She tells me, “My parents used to take me and my friends here every summer for my birthday.”

  “I never knew that,” I say. We’re naturally splitting into our separate groups now, Dave and Devin having some kind of animated discussion about roller coasters, Toby and Matt scampering ahead of everyone and talking about music, Serena behind us on her phone. And Georgia and me. I take a step forward, she takes a step backward, moving together.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t, you know, want to intimidate you with my deep knowledge of this park.” I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. “But seriously, over there”—she points to a food stand whose owner is rolling up the metal grate—“that’s where you’re gonna get the best funnel cake in the game. And up ahead and around the corner twenty minutes is a gift shop where they always put the new people, so you can usually scam them into letting you buy stuff for cheap.”

  “As a gift shop associate, I’m offended you’d even suggest taking advantage of my brethren,” I say.

  “Oh my God, how thoughtless of me.”

  “Where are we actually going right now?” Serena asks, catching up with us.