The Summer I Turned Pretty

Toward the end of summer everything slowed down, and it started to feel ready to be done. It was like with snow days. We once had this great big blizzard, and we didn’t go to school for two whole weeks. After a while you just wanted to get out of the house, even if that meant school. Being at the summer house felt like that. Even paradise could be suffocating. You could only sit on the beach doing nothing so many times before you felt ready to go. I felt it a week before we left, every time. And then of course, when the time came, I was never ready to leave. I wanted to stay forever. It was a total catch-22, like a contradiction in terms. Because as soon as we were in the car, driving away, all I wanted to do was jump out and run back to the house.

Cam called me twice. Both times I didn’t answer. I let it go to voice mail. The first time he called, he didn’t leave a message. The second time he said, “Hey, it’s Cam.… I hope I get to see you before we both leave. But if not, then, well, it was really nice hanging out with you. So, yeah. Call me back, if you want.”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I loved Conrad and I probably always would. I would spend my whole life loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s. How did I say those things to Cam? How did I tell him that there was a piece saved for him, too? He was the first boy to tell me I was beautiful. That had to count for something. But there was no way for me to say any of those things to him. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I just left it alone. I didn’t call him back.

With Jeremiah it was easier. And by that I mean he went easy on me. He let me off the hook. He pretended like it hadn’t happened, like we hadn’t said any of those things down in the rec room. He went on telling jokes and calling me Belly Button and just being Jeremiah.

I finally understood Conrad. I mean, I understood what he meant when he said he couldn’t deal with any of it—with me. I couldn’t either. All I wanted to do was spend every single second at the house, with Susannah. To soak up the last drop of summer and pretend it was like all the summers that had come before it. That was all I wanted.