The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

39





“HE’S NOT AN ASSHOLE.” THE SOLIDITY OF THE wood dock soothes me, moors me to a world where at least I feel alive.

Mina’s floating on her back in the lake. She looks over, surprised, but then her face sinks into dullness, her eyes gun-metal gray.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore, does it, Sammy?”

It’s like she punched me in the stomach. But she’s right. “Will this go on forever?”

Mina sighs and looks up at the sky. “I don’t know.”

“Will it stop when they stop thinking about us?” The tranquility of our snow globe is beginning to irritate me.

“I don’t know.”

The smooth water reminds me of the swimming pool. “Is Kendra going to go through with it?”

“I don’t know, Sammy.”

Anger hisses up from my stomach like vapors from a tomb. “Why don’t you know?”

Mina looks me flat in the eye. “I. Don’t. Know.”

I want to slap her. The clarity of that thought scares me. She challenges me with her obsidian eyes. You can hear what I’m thinking. She nods her head. We stare each other down like rival tigers. The water is so still it makes Mina look like a bust on a mirrored platter. “Does it ever rain, Mina? Does it change? A dock. A lake.”

Curiously, the lake begins to tremble. Mina notices when waves start to lap at her chest. But I can’t slow down. My anger is a hurricane barreling through my ribs. “Billions of people arguing about God, and this is it? An unfinished memory. A sliver of puberty. This is what we get? Why did you stick me here?”

“Samantha, stop.”

It’s too late to stop. “What if you’d listened to your mother? Maybe you broke the rules and now we’re cut off from whatever was supposed to happen! What if now I’m stuck here for eternity? While everyone in the world slowly forgets I ever existed—”

My blood runs cold at the thought of such a fate. In tandem, my skin chills, like that instant when the sun dips behind the clouds. I cover my face with my hands and drop to my knees with a thud. It’s impossible to make out Mina’s reply over the sound of my tears and the rushing sound of rain.

Rain? My eyes spring open as the first drops hit my shoulders. The rain begins to hammer, much like the tempo of my heart, striking my cold skin the temperature of warm tears. Black clouds swarm in the sky, churning like the outrage in my belly. In the distance, lightning crackles in fury.

“Stop!” Mina’s trying to ride a lake turned into a dark roiling ocean.

The water is rising. I jump to my feet but it rises to my waist and then to my chin and I have to tread water. We’re swimming in a hurricane from hell—no dock, no land, no grass. Just an infinity of storm.

A swell rises behind Mina, like the tidal wave from my nightmare. She’s screaming something at me, but I can barely understand over the roar of thunder and water. She points at me, then at the sky. “You. You’re—” Her words are swallowed again by the wind. The glinting wave curls above me and I raise my arms to shield myself. Mina puts out her arms. “Your emotions! Sam—”

The sea dumps Mina on top of me and we go under. But Mina’s hands find me in the darkness, hooking under my arms, and drag me to the surface. Her face is twisted in remorse, lit up in flashes of lightning, as she struggles to keep us afloat. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

I try to consider what she said. My emotions command the water and clouds?

“I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time on it,” Mina sobs. “I—I spent all my time with you.”

With those words, the wind of the world is snuffed out. The waves drop and the water stills. Mina watches in awe as we find ourselves standing on the dock with the water draining to our knees, our feet, and then gurgling through the wood boards to settle into its prior level.

I reach out and put a hand to Mina’s cheek, already drying in the sun. “I thought about you every day, didn’t I?”

Mina nods. “I was horrified when you and Isabel got trapped in the water, terrified when I realized you might die. But then…then I was just so amazed that it worked, that I got you here. I knew, though. I knew that you’d have a million questions. You’re Samantha the scientist. You always have a million questions. I didn’t want to mislead you into thinking I had all the answers.” She sits down on the dock. “But that’s not to say I haven’t come up with some theories.”

I sit next to her.

“I think there’s a reason I ended up here.” Mina’s hand lingers at her throat; she’s thinking. “I think we were on to something with our research. Everything you taught me about thought, intention, belief. We must have been at least partly right. It gave me the power to hold on, and the power to create from my mind.” Mina looks up and realizes the clouds move now, drifting lazily across the sky. She grins at me. “And it kept us connected. The first time you tried to reach me, that’s the first time I learned I could go watch.” Mina’s smile widens. “And now you’re here.”

My heart is as calm as the lake. “Love lasts.”

“What?”

“The journal. What you wrote. Love lasts.” I clasp my hands together like Jesse always does when she gets a neon lightbulb of an idea. “Mina.”

“Yeah?”

“I know why I’m here.” I smile so big Mina can’t help but imitate me. “To bring you back.”