It was July, warm, a few days too late for a Virginia Woolf novel, but we could still feel its residue on us like stardust. Red, white, and blue flags, red faces of uncles in tight blue polo shirts that strained to hide their barreled bellies, white wine poured too fast into elegant glasses while we should have been somewhere else, blasting music and emptying red Solo cups. Root beer floats on the shadowy grass, feeling like a kid at a party even though we both know deep down in our stomachs, unspoken yet going without saying, that our childhood is just out of reach, the feeling of what once was still lingering on our fingertips like the opposite of phantom pain. White fireworks lighting up the dark lake, white beneath our eyelids when we blinked. Sweatshirts invisible shapes somewhere by our side, relishing the first chill of the night as it cuts through one of the hottest days of the year. Small shiver, laughing at our goosebumps, saying I’m not cold but meaning I don’t want anything to change. Intertwined hands flashing red/white/blue//gone under the noise of fireworks displays. Counting breaths, counting seconds until our idle conversation lapses into muggy silence. One/two/three//gone. One of us saying, this might be the last time we’re at a lake without mosquitos. Music and half-drunk chatter drifting down the hill from the white gabled house, absent of origin by the time it reaches our ears, like a conversation entering our dream from a distant, waking room. Grass tickling our bare feet and arms, thumb over thumb, lightest of squeezes silently returned. Breezeless hair limp on the grass, still damp from afternoon sweat. Morning/noon/night//gone. The final crescendo of fireworks, whizzing noise and color, your face in and out of shadow. Belly warm with root beer and contentment, no shame in waistband unbuttoned. Everything vanished now in darkness, anchored only in sound and touch. Crickets. Quiet breaths. Our own voices and blurry, distant ones. In fifteen or twenty minutes, a call from the house that we will ignore, until the last warmth of the day melts away like a dropped popsicle on asphalt. Crumpled napkins sticky with fudge and melted ice-cream, empty cups spilled out on the lawn, shoes in hand and jackets draped over arms, following you up the hill with a stomach full and a heart bursting. But not yet; linger one more moment on the grass, laughter out of sync with our conversation, everything we feel but need not say stretched between us thick as taffy. The first star of the evening has long vanished into a vast plain of constellations, yet still we wish for the night not to chill, the lights not to shut off in the nearby house, room by room, the fireworks to always be only an instant in the past, their afterimage still brightening the night from black to dark blue. Seventeen/eighteen/nineteen//gone. Not vanished, only a moment too far behind.
Jessy Wallach is a rising senior at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, California. In addition to writing, she enjoys drawing, reading, and spending time outdoors.