The Goodbye Summer

by Sarah Van Name

  “Oh,” Georgia says confidently, and then she calls out, “Toby! We’re going to the Pluto, right?”

  He turns around and gives her a thumbs-up. She turns back to me.

  “We’re going to our first roller coaster of the day. It’s a little one.”

  “Shouldn’t we go to the biggest one first, to beat the line?”

  She shrugs. “I guess, but then you don’t have anything to look forward to. This way, you build up the thrills. Always better to start small. At least that’s what I think, and Toby says since we’re the birthday girls, we get to pick the rides. I picked for you,” she adds as an afterthought, and I smile and shake my head.

  When we reach the roller coaster, we’re the third group in line. Matt waits on a bench and eats a hot dog, having informed us that he is “not a roller coaster guy, y’all, too fuckin’ scary. I’m not gonna lose a limb on some poorly inspected death trap.”

  I am not necessarily a roller coaster girl. In fact, I have never been on one, so I’m slightly concerned about this situation. But everyone is so excited—and making so much fun of Matt—there’s no way I’m chickening out.

  As the ride ends and the first group starts getting out of their car, Georgia pulls me aside and whispers, “Are you sure you want to go? You can fake sick if you want. I’ll tell everyone you have a headache.”

  “What?” I say, trying to feign surprise. “No, I can’t wait.”

  Georgia rolls her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “Seriously, are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. The dead-eyed twenty-something running the roller coaster opens the gates, and the group starts to file in. I look back at Matt, who waves at me, smirking. My stomach lurches.

  “I’ll hold your hand,” Georgia says.

  It’s not terrible at first. I’m sitting between Georgia and Serena, Toby and the other guys in front of us. I’m holding on to Georgia’s hand so tight that both our knuckles are stark white. I am about to ask what I should expect, but just as I open my mouth, the ride jolts forward.

  It goes up and up and up. I can hear myself saying, “Oh shit, oh shit,” and I can hear Georgia next to me saying, “Oh fuck, yeah,” and then after all that climbing, we’re at the top. We are there for maybe half a second, but the moment imprints itself in my head. This bright, blurry vision of the whole world spread out in front of us: the park, the forest, the highway, billboards and water towers. Apart from being on airplanes, I have never been this high up.

  Then we fall. I pretty much lose it. We fall, and we curve, and we climb and fall again, and repeat. Beside me, Georgia and Serena are screaming their heads off, and in the middle of this whirlwind a thought comes into my head—that this is the most I’ve ever liked Serena—and then it leaves my head, to make room for what’s really taking up space: sheer fucking terror.

  Turns out, I wasn’t lying to myself: I’m really not a roller coaster girl. I don’t know how long the ride lasted, but when it ends, I am frozen. Georgia and the others have already jumped out, giddy with adrenaline, when Toby notices I’m not moving.

  “You okay?” he says, inspecting me.

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, come on, we gotta go. You’re gonna be fine,” he says. He gently unlatches my fingers from the safety bar and picks me up—just like that—scoops me into his arms and carries me back down the path away from the ride.

  Most of me is still terrified, but a part of me is reveling in the feeling of being in someone else’s arms. There is nothing untoward about this—it isn’t cheating, it isn’t anything. But it feels like something. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close to any other guy, and it’s not so wonderful in and of itself, but it’s different, and different feels good. Then Toby readjusts me, I feel like I’m falling for a moment, I freak out, and the thought is gone.

  Toby lags behind the others a little bit, for which I am grateful. They are so, so happy. Georgia is bouncing around, giggling and shrieking, nudging her shoulder against Serena, who has the widest smile I’ve ever seen on her and is even laughing a little.

  I’m still pretty shaky when he sets me down on the bench. Matt sits there placidly. I tremble for about a minute before he holds out a half-eaten plate of funnel cake.

  “Not your thing, huh?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  “Me neither. Funnel cake?”

  “It’s nine in the morning. And you’ve already had cupcakes.” I thought I was too traumatized to speak, but I guess the audacity of having that much sugar this early has overcome my fear.

  “A nutritious third breakfast,” Matt says and sets the plate in my lap. I eat. It’s great.

  As I’m taking my fifth bite, Georgia turns toward me, and I can see her finally notice that I have not had a great time. Her face falls, and she looks like a miserable puppy.

  “Oh no, you didn’t like it, did you?”

  “It was okay,” I say, but I’m not convincing. She shakes her head.

  “I’m so sorry. I thought you would love it. I loved it.”

  “I know, you were so happy!”

  “I still am, but I’m not happy you’re not happy. Are you gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and actually, sitting on this bench, I can understand some portion of the thrill she’s feeling. I hated the ride, but there is a comfort in the fact of now being safe after I thought I was going to die. I do feel more ready for the day now, having had the funnel cake and gotten the roller coaster thing over with. Ready for twelve more hours of time with friends.

  And maybe some time getting to know Matt better while we sit on the sidelines together. “I am never doing that again,” I tell Georgia, but I say it with a smile, and she laughs and puts her arm around me.

  “I’ll never make you,” she says.

  The next few hours are a whirlwind, sometimes literally. Everyone else will go on any ride, so we snake our way through the park, stopping every three minutes for something new. Toby buys Georgia a lemonade taller than her face, insisting on paying for her food as a birthday treat, and half an hour later, we have to run around for ten minutes to find a bathroom. We go on the Tilt-A-Whirl; we can’t walk straight when we get off. Georgia and I fall against each other, giggling, the sweat of one another’s arms soaking into our tank tops as we wander on.

  Matt wins a tiny stuffed teddy bear and gives it to Serena, who carries it under her arm like a tote bag. I sit next to him while everyone goes on one of those drop towers, and he buys an order of fried Oreos for us to split, promising they’ll be incredible.

  “These are disgusting,” I say after taking my first bite.

  “Bizarre how you can be so right about roller coasters and so wrong about snacks,” he says, blissfully chewing.

  “Everyone else was excited about this trip because of the roller coasters,” I say. “I assumed they would be fun.” He shakes his head.

  “Not me. I know better. I’m here because it’s the last time we’re all gonna hang out together, and I love you guys.”

  “I love you too,” I say, oddly touched. “But Georgia said you were friends before this job. Don’t you think you’ll still be friends after?”

  He laughs a little. “Please. She’ll be back in high school and I’ll be…living with my parents, not doing anything. She’s not gonna want to hang out with me. Neither is Serena. Neither are you,” he adds pointedly. “And Dave and Devin are both going to college. I guess Toby and I will still be friends.” He screws up his face as if considering the idea, then shrugs and takes another bite of Oreo.

  “I would be your friend,” I tell him. It’s true—if I were staying, I would be. Matt can be a real asshole sometimes, but I like him a lot.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, really,” I protest. “And wait, I thought you were going to focus on your art.” I’ve never seen Matt this unc
ertain before, and in the middle of the color and sound of the amusement park, it feels out of place.

  “I say that, but I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He sighs. “Honestly, Caroline, I’m a fuckup. I don’t have a plan. I’ve just gotta figure it out.” We sit there for a long moment, watching the roller coaster curve and twist in the air. “But,” he says conclusively, slapping my back, “it’s been a great summer. Hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has,” I say.

  A few minutes later, Georgia and the others run toward us, laughing and out of breath. Serena’s hair is tousled, and Toby looks as if he’s been struck by lightning.

  “A bird nearly hit me!” he yells as they get close. “I was nearly murdered by a bird! A goddamn hawk!”

  “It was definitely a pigeon,” says Georgia.

  “It’s for the best y’all didn’t go on that one,” Toby says, putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “It was the highest one yet.”

  “We had a grand old time here,” Matt says, stretching out his legs. “What’s next?”

  We pass a fire-breathing performance, a cinnamon roll cart, and a booth where Dave tries and fails to win a bright yellow baseball cap with the Great Adventures logo. Georgia and Devin debate the merits of soft pretzels versus kettle corn; Devin ends up buying both, and they pass them back and forth as we walk, argument settled in favor of the kettle corn. Farther into the park, there’s a mini-water park—water coming out of towers and play structures built to look like a magical forest for kids. We get soaked. After this summer, the smell of chlorine is comforting to me, a balm.

  We walk for so long without passing anything I recognize that I begin to wonder if this place just goes on forever, before I realize we actually have passed these places before. This pizza stand looks different in afternoon light than it did in the morning; that roller coaster seems new when the line of people is five hundred deep rather than twenty.

  When Serena says she has to return to the locker to get more cash, I say I’ll go with her. Jake has been in the back of my head all day. He probably wants to know how the day’s going, figure out last plans for leaving. I get a headache every time I think about it, but I know I should be there for him. I told him I’d be checking my phone every once in a while, and it’s been too long.

  Serena and I walk mostly in silence. I don’t think she likes me very much. Then again, I don’t think she likes anyone. I try anyway.

  “You going back to school Monday too?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. Another thirty seconds of flat nothing.

  “Do you go to the same school as Georgia, or…?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have any classes together?”

  “A few last year. I don’t know about this year.”

  “Cool.” We walk quietly for another minute before I speak up again. “For ages I thought you were already in college.”

  “I’m glad I project an air of sophistication,” she says, laughing a little. “I am older than you, if it makes you feel better.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I turned eighteen in March. I got held back in first grade. Poor hand-eye coordination.”

  We reach the locker, and she opens it, digging past the paperbacks and makeup in her bag to reach her phone. Her fingers are a blur as she texts. I pull out my phone from the squished mess of my purse, expecting a barrage of texts from Jake.

  There’s nothing. No texts. No missed calls. Nothing. I even turn the phone off and back on again, draining precious battery life, in case it was some kind of software glitch.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. I told him I’d be busy all day today. I just thought that he’d want to be talking to me two days before we run away together.

  Serena hits send on a final text, puts her phone back in her bag, and tucks a twenty-dollar bill into her bra.

  “Who were you texting?” I ask.

  “My sisters,” she says. “They want to play a prank on my stepmom. I was advising them of the strongest hair dye available in your standard drugstore.” She tilts her sunglasses down at me and says, “Ready?”

  I look at my phone again and nod. “Sure.” I put it back into the locker and try not to inspect my thoughts on Jake too closely. I want to ask Serena about the prank, but she doesn’t even look at me once while we walk back, and I don’t want to intrude. I stay quiet.

  The group promised to meet us at the end of the Raging Dragon roller coaster, but when we get there, they’ve only just made it to the front of the line. Serena and I join Matt at a picnic table, and the next time the coaster starts, I try to spot Georgia in the cars. Once, I think I can see her black hair, but I lose sight almost immediately. The track spirals and winds through the sky, leaping and falling and rising again. From here, I can see the beauty in it. I’m still glad I’m not with them on the track.

  They join us at the table after. I split a soft-serve ice cream cone with Georgia, meaning she eats a soft-serve ice-cream cone and I take obligatory licks when she tells me to. It seems as good a place as any to reconvene before the evening comes on. It’s a little after seven, golden hour, the sunlight buttery and the shadows deep. We’ve managed to stick together so far, but now we’re breaking up into factions.

  “Let’s go to the hunting rifle game,” Dave says.

  “I have no interest in that,” Georgia says.

  “I wanna go to the gift shop,” Serena says. “I told my little sisters I’d get them presents.”

  “I kinda needed something at the gift shop too,” says Matt quickly.

  “I’m down for hunting games,” Toby says. “Given that I’m the only one of y’all who’s actually hunted, I’m pretty sure you’ll regret that choice, but your funeral.”

  “What do you wanna do, Caroline?” Georgia asks, turning to me.

  “I don’t really need to go to the gift shop, and I have no idea how to shoot a gun. So that doesn’t sound great. But otherwise, I’m down for whatever you want,” I say, and then add, “except roller coasters.”

  Georgia laughs and leans her head against my shoulder, smearing soft-serve on my tank top as she takes another bite. “Let’s go to the swings,” she says. “You’ll love those. You’re not afraid of heights, right?”

  “No, I just don’t like how the roller coaster jerks you all around.”

  “Yeah, no, you’ll love it. The swings aren’t as exciting, but they’re still really great. They were my favorite when I was a kid. And I think your tolerance of rides is about the same as mine was when I was eight, so…”

  I make a face at her. Toby claps his hands together.

  “Sounds like we’re heading our separate ways. Let’s meet back at the main gift shop at, say, nine thirty?” he proposes. “Park closes at ten.”

  “Kill fake deer!” one of the guys starts to chant, and they get up and go down the path to the right, Toby at the front. Serena rises and starts ambling to the left, and Matt hastily throws away his soda cup and follows her. Georgia and I are left alone at the table, Georgia munching on the last of her soft-serve cone.

  “I know I said we were going to the swings,” she says, “but I need some real dinner before that. And I know you do too, but you’d never say it. Right?”

  “Right,” I sigh. “But I am so fucking sick of pizza.”

  “Hot dogs it is, then.”

  We have to walk around for a while to find a hot dog stand, and we eat them at an identical picnic bench next to an awkward couple a few years younger than us. I can see their parents hovering a few tables over, trying to keep an eye on them and also give them some privacy. The girl is wearing a padded bra. The boy has braces. I look at the couple and look at my hot dog and think of Jake, and it’s like Georgia’s reading my mind.

  “How are you feeling about Monday?” she says between bites. My stomach turns over. “I won’
t judge you, I swear,” she adds. She looks down. “I know I haven’t always been so great about that.”

  Maybe it’s her admission of judgment in the past, and her promise that she won’t do that right now. Maybe it’s the long hours of walking in the sun. Maybe I’m just tired. But I don’t try to push away that nausea like I usually do. I set down my hot dog on the greasy paper plate and reach my hands out across the table.

  “I’m so scared,” I tell her.

  It feels good to say it out loud. I have never said it, not to anyone, not to Jake and not to Georgia, and not even to myself alone at night. Putting it into the world makes me feel everything more acutely—the growing sunburn on my shoulders, the rough wood under my wrists—while I wait for her answer.

  She takes my hands and intertwines her fingers with mine. Her eyes hold so much pity that I have to look away, down at our fingernails, her chipped blue polish and my broken French manicure.

  “You know it’s still your choice,” she says. “You decide, not him. You don’t have to go.”

  “I do,” I say, and I am so close to crying. “I want to.” Even to me, my voice sounds unconvincing.

  I keep trying to convince myself, but I can’t.

  I’m so ashamed by my failure that I try to unlace my hands from Georgia’s, but she doesn’t let me. She holds tighter and looks at me so hard that I have to look back up at her.

  “I’m here for you, whatever you do,” she says and finally releases my fingers. I look down and take a deep breath, eat the last bite of my hot dog. Georgia throws away our trash and comes around behind me to give me an awkward hug, wrapping her arms around my back.

  “I’m sorry for making you sad,” she says quietly.

  “Not your fault,” I sniff.

  “It is, sort of.”

  “Sort of, but…”

  “We can talk about it later,” she says. She bites her lip, both of us, I’m sure, counting the hours until Monday morning. There’s not much later left. “Tonight after we drop off Serena and Matt. Or tomorrow. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” I wipe away the tears and take one more breath. “Yeah. It’s cool. Swings, right?”