Chapter One – The Best Summers of My Life

We all know the basic premise of a romance story. We’ve encountered it numerous times in short stories, novels and movies. Likely, you’ve had it pointed out to you by some well-intentioned English teacher in their attempts to do you a great service by opening your eyes to literature’s tendency to reuse the same five or six stories constantly..

You are sick of the endless repetition. I know. We all are. I never thought I would end up telling you one of those stories. I never thought I would have lived one of those stories. But I am living it and I am telling it. Don’t say you weren’t forewarned.

Of course, there are some changes. This is my real life and, so, not quite as predictable as fiction’s typical fabrications. But my life has done its best to follow the basic model, and the principal elements of a basic romance story are still there: Girl meets boy. Something stands between said girl and said boy. Said boy and said girl are forced to interact. Boy begins to like girl, or the reverse. Soon the two are in a love which can only be described with words such as “madly,” “deeply,” “undeniably,” and other, equally cheesy, adjectives.

I can still remember that first summer, the summer we met. It was already mid-July. I was seven years old and awkward. My legs were gangly and my stomach pudgy in my blue bathing suit. I spent most of the summer lying on a pink striped Barbie beach towel beside my cousin Kenya. We spent our days soaking up sun, climbing trees and growing numb in the cold waters of the North Atlantic coast. My skin was permanently warm, and its golden tone gave away to brown where the freckles ran together. My skin had that thick, simultaneously dry and oily feeling of prolonged exposure to sunscreen, salt air, and beach water. A feeling easily recognizable by any beach bum, but hard to explain to those unlucky enough not to spend childhood summers by the shore.

It was six in the evening and still 75º that first time we saw him. Our bathing suits had been deserted for faded jean cut-offs and baggy tee-shirts and we were barefoot as summer mandated. From a perch atop of our favorite tree Kenya and I saw the wood paneled station wagon pull into the driveway. The car was stuffed with belongings and more were tied to the roof. A pick-up truck followed the station wagon into the driveway, its flatbed piled high with furniture. We watched as a man jumped from the driver’s side door of the truck and a family exited the car. The drivers of the two cars, presumably the parents, immediately began carrying boxes and furniture into the house. A teenaged daughter with obvious indifference to the rest of the family stayed near the car, not bothering to help. A set of twins a few years younger than me seemed oblivious to everything going on. The girl had loose strawberry blonde curls, and stood on the lawn sucking her thumb and clutching a teddy bear. A few yards away the boy, with a blue checkered hat and a smile, was pushing a fire engine through the grass. The truck matched his bright hair.

Then I saw him. He came back out of the house just as my aunt called us to dinner. Even in that brief amount of time he brought a smile to my face. His hair was darker than any of his siblings, and his tanned skin showed that he was outdoors as much as Kenya and I. Dressed in basketball shorts and an orange tee-shirt he rushed around, the only child bothering to help his parents.

Soon I had actually met Adam, and we all spent the summer together. The wide yard stretching between the two houses became our playground. Adam and Kenya’s brother James quickly took charge of everything. It would have made more sense for my cousin Ethan to take control because he was the oldest, but he didn’t care enough to bother, and his brother cared too much not too. We were usually joined by our younger siblings as well. Four in total: my sister Charlotte, my cousin Micah, and the twins. We were a large group, large enough to make our own games of tag, hide-and-go-seek, and pick-up anything. The evening hours always found us taking over the yard with a vengeance, retreating to our houses in dismay at bedtime. It was a wonderful summer. Looking back, I would label it a favorite, among all the summers of my life.

When the summer ended we went our separate ways. Kenya’s family returned to New York City. Mine boarded the train back to Jersey. And the Nausett’s made the long trek out to the Berkshires, the only family not to leave Massachusetts when summer ended. Our young minds were too naïve to realize the separation could be the end of a friendship. It never occurred to us that we wouldn’t see each other for months, in our minds we were still the best of friends.

The coming summers continued in the same manner. We exited our cars each June and began just where we had left off the previous August. We continued with our soccer games, kickball and tag. We climbed trees, and caught lightning bugs in washed out jelly jars. We searched for constellations in the stars we couldn’t see at home. We ate sandwiches too covered in sand to be considered edible.

Each summer was slightly different. As we grew older the differences in our age grew slightly more obvious and the nature of our play and our playmates varied. Ethan and James began spending more time with kids their own ages, and Charlotte, Micah, Colby, and Rhianne weren’t allowed to leave the yard without an adult.

None of that kept Adam, Kenya and I apart. We rode our bikes through the woods and into town. As soon as we had all passed the requisite swim test we spent every minute possible at the beach, the bright red swim caps which indicated us as unaccompanied children bobbing in the surf amongst tourist families and locals alike. We went fishing off the bridge, caught frogs in the marsh pond and learned to skip stones. We bought penny candy with nickels earned for chores and found on side walks. The three of us were together more than ever. We were inseparable.

Then one summer, the summer I was twelve and he was fifteen, the familiar station wagon pulled into the yard and there was no Adam. Over the next few summers he was in and out of the beach house, visiting for a week here and there, but it was never the same. Kenya and I stayed as close as always, but we were devastated by the loss of our friend. He had been stolen from us by summer employment and teenage-dom. The few times the three of us tried to hang out it was awkward, a forced attempt to relive old times. He was no longer interested in tag and tree climbing. He had become a teenager and we were still kids. He had deserted our childhood memories for new interests and Kenya and I were stuck behind watching from the distance. We were forced to retreat from the role of close friend to awestruck middle school admirers intrigued by the exciting life of an attractive older neighbor. We watched as he and my cousins went to the movies at night, learned to drive, and went out on dates. Finally when we were fifteen we realized our jealousy; Adam spent the entire summer at the beach for the first time since I was ten. He brought his girlfriend. I was only fifteen then, and I still remember her name – Ally Huntington. She was beautiful, and I hated her.

A long fast forward brings us the second favorite summer of my life. It was eleven years after we first met Adam, and as usual Kenya and I were at the beach. As we had since turning sixteen, we spent our days life guarding and tanning at the beach and our evenings gossiping. This would be our last summer at the beach as children. When we returned the next year we would be college students with new perspectives and new friends.

When summer ended we would no longer be spending most of our time together. We would no longer be sleeping in matching beds at the beach, working the same job at Rockport Beach or attending the same school. Kenya would return to New York City and start at Barnard and I would be in New York State as a freshman at Draper Tech. We would be in the same state, but that’s where the similarities to our futures ended.

Knowing that everything would soon change we threw ourselves into that last real summer in Rockport, determined to make it the best ever. We spent our life guarding money on cute clothes from the boutiques in town and on shopping trips to Boston. More often than our budgets allowed we indulged in seafood lunches and ice-cream desserts. We made the summer carefree to ease the knowledge that we had more cares than ever. We thought like adults but allowed ourselves to act as children. For one final summer.

Then suddenly the summer ended before it was really over. With a few weeks remaining in August, Kenya and I were forced into shoes and real clothes to eat lunch with Mrs. Nausett and her daughter Anastascia at the Manchester-By-The-Sea yacht club. Anastascia had been the sullen and languid teenager we had observed from our tree top perch as the Nausett’s moved to Rockport eleven years earlier and her enthusiasm had failed to rise since. She was still the frigid, standoffish and elitist creature I’d managed to label as such at the age of seven, though not in so many words.

I knew without a doubt that the lunch would be tormenting but I had no idea just how torturous a two hour meal could be until the day was over. Then again I had never been forced to dine with Anastascia and her mother-in-law. While Anastascia’s sullenness set her apart from the rest of her family who were friendly and welcoming it was immediately obvious that the elitist attitude was the norm amongst her husband’s relations, at least if his mother was an indication. And yet, it was not Anastascia or her mother-in-law Mrs. Carlisle who inflicted my pain, it was Mrs. Nausett.

By the end of the meal we came to the realization that I was entering the same school where Adam would soon be a junior. It was decided that we should meet up when we arrived on campus so that he could show me around and introduce me to his friends. I was far from excited about the prospect and from what I could gather from his mother’s end of their phone conversation neither was he. Unsurprisingly things were decided without our input, I knew that my arrival in Draper, NY would include a forced rendez-vous with my former best friend.