The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

13





BY THE TIME ISABEL AND I MADE IT OUT TO THE porch, the salad they’d saved for us was wilting. Even if they hadn’t heard us, anybody could see I’d been crying my eyes out.

Isabel sat down next to Jesse, but I walked to the railing to look into the palm tree grove and the blackness beyond that must be the ocean. I breathed in the musty, salty night air. It was soothing—the sound of the ocean mixing with the hushed conversations behind me. Jesse had Isabel laughing quietly. I wasn’t quite ready yet, though, because I was still living in the echoes of a summer tragedy.

And I wanted to mull over Mina’s words Isabel read me from her journal. Why had I failed her? She left it to me to make her immortal. My journal was filled with notes Mina made about meditation, and things like white noise recording, often whole passages copied from books. She obviously hadn’t put any of that in Isabel’s journal. She picked me to do it. Ask Samantha, she’d told Isabel. Maybe she’d picked me because she thought I was the only one crazy enough to believe in it, but still she’d picked me. I thought of the physics tomes I’d shelved, the meditation sessions I’d attempted before leaving for Paris, and how I’d since abandoned my promise. I thought of the maple leaves. I was an a*shole. I’d been reading Mina’s journal like a magic eight ball for my petty problems instead of as an instruction manual of my best friend’s dying wishes. The last thing Mina asked of me. I wiped at my sore eyes.

“Sammy, honey?” Jesse called out from the table. “Sammy girl, now that’s enough. We’ve had enough tears today. We’re on vacation, dammit.”



After dinner, we lay under the stars on the beach, watching the black water curl and crash onto the sand. It was warm and humid, and the air was scented with the intersection of sweet vegetation and briny sea. Conversation babbled back and forth with the gentle lull of long-standing friendship.

I lay with my head in Jesse’s lap and listened to the laughter float above me while she played with my hair. Ever since I was little, Jesse had tucked me in at sleepovers, tickled my back and played with my hair. I let the gentleness of it soothe my jagged edges. I was starting to understand that Mina would’ve been appalled (not honored) if I didn’t appreciate my time here with them. It would be lemon in a paper cut, to quote one of her favorite sayings. I listened to Isabel tell some silly story about one of her admirers and I thought, how is Kendra surviving without this?





November 13

Samantha



If we somehow pull this off—what will it be like? Will you leave me messages, appear in my dreams, warn me of dark alleys?

Because I want more. I want you to sit next to me and laugh too loud at Rose’s Café. I want to see you finish your Ph.D. I want you to hug me when life hurts. I want you to be there at every Thanksgiving, on every crazy vacation with Lynette and Jesse. I want us to make mac ‘n’ cheese and frozen burritos in honor of our screwed-up latchkey childhood. I want you to visit me in Honduras for the artist residency.

I want you to outlive me. That’s what I want. I want you, Kendra, Isabel, everyone, to outlive me, because this…this is too horrible. Watching you die has to be worse than death.

I don’t feel like talking about physics today.

—Sam.