Four Summers

by Nyrae Dawn

  I set my paintball gun down.

  “One,” he says. Pauses. “You can do this. Run fast. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I nod again. Who knows if he can see me but once we step into that field, everyone will be able to. The lights are that bright.

  “Two.”

  Another pause.

  “Three.”

  As soon as the word leaves his mouth, I run. Run with everything I have. My chest hurts. My legs hurt. Nathaniel is right behind me.

  “Keep going. Shooting on your right,” he yells. I hear the pop, pop, pop of his paintball gun. I keep running. Brandon curses. Alec and Nathaniel are shooting at each other. I don’t pay attention. Just keep moving. As soon as I get there, I grab the flag and Nathaniel grabs me and jerks me into his arms. He lifts me up and we laugh, not a drop of paint on either of us.

  I sit in the dark, waiting for it to be time to meet Nathaniel. It’s like there’s electricity inside me. A live wire that’s flipping all around because I’m anxious to have another of our nights together and because it seemed so important to him that I meet him. I know it makes me sound bratty, but when he didn’t push for it sooner, it made me feel like it didn’t matter. I think maybe I wanted him to…maybe not fight for me to meet, but to pull for it. To show me he wanted it and he did and that means more to me than the knowledge that this will make it hurt more when he leaves. He’s here now and I don’t have anything else I look forward to.

  I’m taking this.

  Quietly, I push my widow open and crawl out. The “pillow me” is under the blankets. Not like anyone will check on me, anyway. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I hear Mom’s voice surfing on the wind as it drifts from her and Dad’s partially open window.

  “I’m so tired of this place! I tried to make it work, but I don’t want this life, Richard!”

  “We’ve been okay,” Dad replies. “Things have been better. We’ll close for a week or so and take a trip this fall. Get out of here for a while. This is our life, Tabitha.”

  “A life only you want! You and Charlie Rae love it here. This place fits you. I just…I want to take Sadie and go. You can go, too. We can sell and—”

  “No! I’m not selling. This is our past and our future. How can you just want to throw it away? And what about Charlie? You’re going to leave her?”

  “She can go if she wants.”

  I grab my chest. Fight to breathe. Tears fill my eyes and I turn to run. I stumble and fall, but get right back up again. They’re leaving? She wants to take Sadie and leave? Leave me? I stop when hope fizzles in my veins. I could get out of here. How could I want to leave Dad? I don’t. I love him. And it’s not that she really cares if I go or not.

  Her words hit me again and I dry heave. I fall to the ground again and cry. They’re going to leave and I’ll be stuck here. Then the guilt mixes in, making me nauseous. Is here really that bad? I don’t like it, but I would never just bail.

  “Charlotte?” Nathaniel’s voice comes from behind me. “What’s wrong?”

  I scramble to my feet, embarrassed that I’m on the ground crying. All I can think about is the fact that they’ll get out of The Village to find a new life, and then I hate myself for wishing for the same thing.

  Nathaniel steps toward me. I try to turn my head away, but he ducks and follows, tilting my chin toward him. “What’s wrong, Star Girl?”

  I watch him in the moonlight. His eyes look like they belong in the sky and I want to talk to him. I want to tell him things because I need to get the words out. Nathaniel has the key that can set them free before they eat me alive.

  I can’t talk to Dad, Mom, Sadie, or even Alec. Not about this, but more than anything I want to tell him. “I hate my life.” If there was a way to snatch back those words, I would. They sound so end of the world and I’m not like that. I’m a realist. I know how things work and I usually don’t run so high on emotions, but…I think he might get what I mean. I hope he will.

  “Wow…that’s pretty brutal.” There’s a laugh in his voice and it’s just what I need. It makes me smile when two seconds ago it felt like I’d never smile again. In this second, I’ll do anything to forget what I just heard. The thoughts are still there. They can’t disappear that easily, but they aren’t what I want to focus on right now.

  “I want to show you something,” I tell him.

  Nathaniel nods and I head down path that will lead us where I want to go. When I get there, I disappear into the trees. Nathaniel steps up beside me and grabs my hand. It’s not the way Alec and I have held hands before. Our fingers are weaved together and I like how his hand is a little bit bigger than mine.

  We don’t talk as we follow the trail into the night, each of us carrying a flashlight in our free hand. It doesn’t take long to get to the fort my dad made us when we were kids. It’s a decent size. Alec and I used to have secret meetings out here with our friends so it’s big enough for a small group of kids to stand inside.

  The little plastic table we used to keep out here is long gone, and the place is empty, but I like to come out here now and again. Alec and I used to play in the creek running behind the fort.

  “What is this place?” Nathaniel asks.

  “It used to be my hideout.” I shine the light inside. There’s no door or anything like that. “It’s not much, but when I was younger I used to think it was the most amazing thing in the whole world. I helped my dad build it.” That was back when I thought The Village would always be the place for me.

  “That’s cool. None of my friends back home have stuff like this. And my dad was always too busy to help us make one.”

  I nod at him. “Let’s go out back.”

  If I’m being honest, I’ll admit it’s a little scary out here at night, but I grew up stomping through this place. Kids party on the mountains in Lakeland Village. It’s just a part of our lives.

  When we get behind the fort, Nathaniel asks, “Why were you crying?”

  I sit down and he follows right behind me. “I thought you were so different that first day. I thought you would be scared to get dirty or something.”

  Nathaniel laughs. “Wow. Thanks. And you’re stalling.”

  I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. I let my light dance around the trees and look up to see the stars. “Why do I feel like I can talk to you?”

  “Because you don’t know me.”

  Maybe that’s true, but I also want to tell him I do. I do know him. Maybe not everything that matters, but I know him.

  “When I was little, I thought The Village was magical. We were so lucky, right? People paid us to stay here. We cleaned boats and took people on tours and I could swim all I wanted or explore out here. Dad and I would make things and Sadie and Mom would mostly stay inside, but they’d tease us and we laughed and everything felt okay. I never thought I wanted to leave.

  “And then as I got older, I realized that Mom hated it more and more every year and Sadie never really liked it and I started to watch the stars. It feels like nothing matters when I look up there, ya know? I used to dream about getting to study them one day, but I never really got the fact that I would have to leave to do it. When that occurred to me, I thought I would just be happy watching them. It was then that the stars became my magic instead of The Village.”

  For a second, I think maybe I should be embarrassed saying all of these things to him, but I’m not.

  “You don’t want to leave one day?” he asks.

  “No. I do. That’s the problem. It’s like, I’m suffocating here now. I love it, but I don’t.”

  “You only have a few more years till you’re off to college.”

  I shake my head. “Who would help Dad if I left?”

  “Can you just come home for the summer to help him?”

  “We’re open all year. It’s not nearly as busy, but there’s ice-skating on the pond in the winter. There’s an apple orchard close that people like to visit in the fall. Wagon rides take them ba
ck and forth from here to the orchard. We don’t get people who stay months at a time, except in the summer, but people do come.”

  He still doesn’t look convinced, so I add, “You don’t get it. It’s always been Dad and I versus Mom and Sadie Ann. He depends on me and he loves this place so much. He thinks I love it too and I do, but—”

  Nathaniel brushes the hair back from my face. “You want to follow the stars.”

  “I do… And planets. They all fascinate me.”

  “What happened tonight?”

  Automatically, I open my mouth to tell him. “I don’t think my mom loves my dad anymore. She said she wants to leave…to take Sadie Ann and go.” The words make it all too real again. My chest aches.

  “Shit,” Nathaniel mumbles and puts an arm around me. I drop my head to his shoulder and let a few silent tears trickle down my face. He doesn’t talk and that’s perfect. He just lets me be and holds me because nothing he could say would fix this. I'm grateful he seems to know that.

  We sit like that for a long time. He smells fresh like after the rain, but with a hint of something else. I hear him breathe and wonder if he hears me, too. Finally, after who knows how long, I can’t stop myself from asking the question that’s filled my head since Sadie told me.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Nathaniel stiffens beside me. It’s all the answer I need, but he offers one anyway. “Um… Kind of.”

  I chuckle and pull away from him. It hurts my chest, but it’s not something I didn’t know. “You can’t kind of have a girlfriend.”

  “I’m serious. We were together. We’ve been together since December, but when summer came, and we knew I would be leaving, we decided to take a break.”

  I sigh. “But you’ll get back together when you go home.”

  He looks like he doesn’t want to answer. “Probably.”

  I nod, not willing to let myself cry again. There’s no point. What will the tears do? It’s not his fault I like him. That I...what? Became infatuated with him the second I saw him? It’s so stupid. It serves me right that he 'kind of' has a girlfriend.

  “You’re so freaking cool, Charlotte. I wanted nothing to do with this place when my parents told me we were coming. Both Brandon and I were pissed, but we’ve had a kick ass time. You’re fun to talk to and I’ve never met another girl like you. You’re like…hell, you’re almost like my best friend.”

  Talk about ironic. Of course I would end up with another boy for a best friend. One who’s always been there for me, and the other who makes me breathe faster and my heart bounce. Who makes me feel like a girl when no one else does and who looks at me like he sees something that only he can see.

  One that if I gave into my heart, I would love.

  “You’re my best friend, too.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s Alec.”

  “He is. He’ll always be my best friend, but…I don’t talk to him the way I do you. We don’t talk about the sky and I never could have told him what I told you tonight.”

  Nathaniel’s quiet for a few minutes before he turns to look at me again. “Things would be different for us if we lived close, huh?”

  It’s not what I want. I want things to be different for us now, but I feel lucky to hear that. Because I believe it. I don’t know what it is, but I know he’s right. Things would be different for us if we lived closer. I wouldn’t be afraid to follow my heart.

  “Yeah…I think they would.”

  Nathaniel puts his arm around me again, and together we watch the night.

  It’s Thursday, August 8th, and Nathaniel leaves tomorrow. He and his family have been gone all day. It’s their last day here and we won’t even get to see them. Sadie Ann is mad. She’s locked herself in her room and even though I’m sad, I don’t let it get me down. What’s the point? It won’t change anything.

  I work with Dad around The Village. No one has said anything about what I heard the other night so I haven’t either. Part of me wants to, but I’m scared to hear the answer. Or of how I’ll respond, so I just try to forget it.

  Even though I don’t want to, I keep watching Nathaniel’s cabin, waiting for them to come back. Soon it’s dusk and Dad goes back to the house. I follow him and he kisses Mom on the cheek and I take that to mean she’s not leaving.

  She has this sort of resigned look on her face that breaks my heart.

  After changing clothes I go back outside, hoping to see their car, but it’s still not there. Nervously, I pop my knuckles, before kicking my shoes off to walk along the edge of the water. Joy bursts inside me when I hear footsteps behind me. Please be him, please be him, please be him.

  “Charlie. Wait up!” Alec calls and I let myself smile. I refuse to be disappointed. He’s still my best friend. He always will be.

  Alec catches up to me. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking a walk.”

  “Mind if I come along?”

  “Sure."

  We wander and talk about school starting next month. He’s excited about football and we’re going to be sophomores, and I know I should be excited about it all too, but I’m just not.

  “I’ve kind of been a jerk this summer,” he says after a while.

  I shake my head at him. “No, you haven’t.” And he hasn’t. Not really. There’s no rule that says he has to pick me first for games or that he can’t meet new friends. No matter what, I always know Alec will be here for me and he knows the same about me.

  “I don’t know what got into me. I…It’s not important, but you know I love you, Charlie. You’re my best friend and I didn’t work with you as much as I usually do and I didn’t pick you first—”

  “It doesn’t matter," I tell him. "And I love you too.” We’ve been telling each other that since we were three years old and both of us know what it does and doesn’t mean.

  We meander down the lakeside for another few minutes before we turn to head back. The Chase family still hasn't returned.

  Alec gives me a hug before heading home. I eat dinner with my family and then go to bed. Just past eleven PM, a knock on my window wakes me up.

  Nathaniel.

  I hold up a finger for him to wait. He nods and disappears from my view. I slip on another shirt and some shoes before grabbing my flashlight and crawling outside.

  “Wanna go where we went the other night?” he asks. I grin when I see his dimple and his backward hat.

  “Sure.” I’m not sure how to feel right now, so I try not to feel anything.

  We head out to the fort, mostly quiet. Nathaniel tells me his parents dragged him and Brandon around all day even though he wanted to be here hanging out with me. His words make me smile as we slip into the night. Our night. I think I might always think of it that way. I’m not sure I’ll ever see another moon and not think of Nathaniel.

  A moaning sound comes from the darkness and I reach out and grab Nathaniel’s arm. There’s a little light ahead of us and he puts his finger to his lips as we sneak forward. We hide behind a tree and look toward the clearing where there’s a small fire and…holy crap! Brandon and Sadie are on the ground, under a blanket. Brandon is on top of her and I might be naïve and never kissed a boy, but it’s pretty obvious they’re having sex. Sex! I have no idea if it’s Sadie’s first time or not, but I don’t care. I turn away, my cheeks hotter than they’ve ever been. I can’t believe I just found my sister getting it on with a boy. I start walking away.

  Nathaniel’s jogging to catch up with me. It doesn’t take me long to find my fort and I’m scared I’m going to die right here of embarrassment.

  “My brother has game! Who knew,” he laughs and I swat his arm.

  “Oh my God. I can’t believe we just saw them having…”

  He cocks a brow. “Sex?” he supplies for me.

  “Yes!”

  At that, Nathaniel laughs harder “You couldn’t even say it. Damn, your face is bright red, Star Girl. I know it was awkward, but why are you embarrassed?”


  I shake my head, knowing I’m getting redder by the second.

  “It’s not like they saw us. Why are you so shy?”

  “Do you really have to ask that?” I bury my face in my hands. He’s so quiet I have to peek out, afraid he walked away.

  “Have you ever...” he starts.

  I drop my hands. “What? No! Of course not.” I can’t help but ask him the same thing. “Have you ever?”

  “No.”

  He doesn’t add the of course not.

  “Me and Roxi…we’ve messed around and stuff, but not that far.”

  “Okay, that’s enough for me!” I turn my back to him. It’s not like I want to talk about the girl he’s going home to. And of course she’d have some cool name. Roxi versus Charlie Rae.

  “What about you?” He steps up beside me. “Messed around, I mean.”

  Ugh. Why is he doing this? I think about lying, but know I can’t. “Nope.”

  “Nothing?” He says it like he’s shocked.

  “Thanks! Make it sound like I’m a freak or something.”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant.” He steps in front of me so I’m looking at him. “I just figured you and Alec…”

  Oh. “No.” I shake my head. “We haven’t. I’ve never even…” There’s no reason to continue because I already told him I haven’t done anything. Why embarrass myself more by repeating the fact that I’ve never even kissed a boy? But then, this is Nathaniel and I like talking to him and can’t seem to stop myself from continuing. “No guys have ever really been interested in me. They all assume Alec and me are together, or will be together. Who knows if that’s really why. Maybe that’s just an excuse because—”

  “—Charlotte,” he cuts off my rambling. And he’s looking at me funny, all serious. Like he was by the boats that day and suddenly my heart starts a stampede and my stomach feels wobbly, maybe the way someone looks if you’re looking at them through a pool of water. Little waves making everything feel off.

  “What?” I finally reply.

  Nathaniel steps closer to me, his voice low. “I wanna be your first kiss.”