That night was the best and worst dream yet. We were at the lake, on the raft. He touched my leg.
Just as in a nightmare when you always come out of it right before someone stabs you or the train hits you or the plane crashes, I startled into reality right before we kissed.
That was it. (Pathetic. G-rated. Like I said.) But it felt so intense, I awoke wanting him even more. Like he’d come, then left. Like I’d snatched him away from my own self.
Kendall had been right. There were no answers to be found in the Camden Dreams. I needed reality, and hope, and forward motion. I needed what was actually possible. I was so serious about this, I made it a proper noun. The Possible. That was something I could commit to.
Then there was the boy, the real boy. It had been a whole year since that bad, bad night and Lukas was somehow still waiting for me.
So I turned to him.
THE SECOND SUMMER
(OR, EVERYTHING ELSE)
2
This is what bugs me about calendars: all those perfect, emotionless squares. Those squares keep coming, every morning after every night, whether you want them to or not.
When the square of the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend arrived—the end of my junior year—I stayed in bed overthinking exactly all of this.
“The lake! The lake!” yelled Danielle, running into my room and bouncing on the mattress.
“Yes, the lake,” I mumbled into the pillow. “But for the love of God, no bouncing.”
Mom came in and sat on the bed’s opposite edge. Her wet hair hung in tired clumps, fresh from the shower she always took the minute she came home from the hospital night shift. Her eyes hung, too. I was sure they’d somehow moved farther down her face in the last year.
Danielle kept bouncing. Mom did nothing about it, even though when I was her age, I wasn’t allowed to bounce. Because of, you know, the inevitable skull-breaking and waist-down paralysis that would result. Maybe bouncing had gotten magically safer in the last few years and I missed the memo.
“That’s right,” said Mom. “The lake opens today. I’m sorry I can’t go with you.”
Danielle stopped bouncing and crawled into my mom’s lap; my mom wrapped her arms around Danielle and leaned into her. At first glance they didn’t appear to be mother and daughter. My mother was a deep brunette, her features severe as if they were drawn with extra-thick Sharpie. Danielle, in her nearly white curls and pale pixie skin, resembled her dad, my stepfather, Richard. I didn’t match either of them, with my straight not-brown-not-blond hair you might recognize if you saw the photos I have of my father, who left when I was two. I’d recently cut that hair blissfully short, just below my chin, while Mom’s and Danielle’s hair was long.
It bothered me that the three of us females in the house didn’t look like a family. Maybe if we looked like one, it would be easier to feel like one.
“Let’s wait until your next day off,” I said to Mom. “Besides, the water will be freezing. I’ll do some crafts with Dani downstairs and we’ll be quiet while you sleep. And later if you give me a list, I’ll take her to the grocery store.”
My mother got a faraway look. I knew this was a tempting offer: one less thing to do today. An hour she could have all to herself, sleeping or watching Millionaire Matchmaker, which for her was basically like going to the spa.
“Arianna, no,” she finally said. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. I can’t let you hang around the house. You both need to be out, being active. I’ll pack up some snacks.”
She left the room. Danielle watched her go, then turned to me and bugged out her eyes.
“Maybe your guy will show up!”
“Shhh!” I lowered my voice, hoping Mom hadn’t heard her. “What do you mean, my guy?”
“You know. Your summer crush.” Now she smiled that evil genius kid smile.
“How do you know about things like ‘summer crushes’?”
“Because I live. In the world. Also I eavesdropped on you and Kendall talking about it once.”
“Well, that’s over, and you’re not allowed to talk about it. Actually, don’t even think about it. Don’t think about thinking about it.”
(That went for me, too.)
“You’re no fun,” said Danielle. Her expression turned sad and she added, “I wrote a letter to Jasmine about the lake because I wanted to know if any of her friends live there. But she didn’t come last night.”
Oof. I usually knew when there was a fresh note for Jasmine, Dani’s fairy pen pal. I’d slip into Dani’s room once she was asleep and grab it off the windowsill, then write back on special green vellum paper I kept hidden inside an old math textbook.
“You know what happens sometimes,” I told her. “Jasmine gets busy working at the fairy vet hospital and can’t write back for a while.”