Caridad Cole

Summertime

“Hey! Quentin, right? You live down the street from me?” I nodded, in awe. It was Wendy, strawberry blonde hair shining in the sun.

“Do you think you could give me a ride? Sarah’s mom isn’t coming for us for another hour, but I need to get home to babysit my sister.” I think too many beats passed before I was able to form words, but somehow, it happened, and she waited.

“Um… I, uh, I only have my bike…”

“Great! I can ride on the pegs! Let me grab my backpack.” I stood there lamely as she pranced away from me, back into the sea of kids. For a moment, I thought she would never come back, that I was just daydreaming in the middle of the schoolyard. And then, she reappeared with her canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She was turned slightly, waving to all of her friends who were taking turns giving me questioning looks. I didn’t have anyone to say goodbye to.

“You ready to go?” I blinked at her. It was the most I could do. We walked over to the bike rack with a modest distance between us. We weren’t friends.

It occurred to me that I had never had another person on my bike. What if I couldn’t balance? What if she fell off? She would never speak to me again. I looked up and Wendy was watching me expectantly. I unlocked my bike, put my backpack in the basket, and walked it away from the rack. I can’t remember what she said next because I was focusing too hard on the weight of her perching behind me and her hands sliding onto my shoulders. We rode home in silence. There were a few times that her hair was blowing in front of my eyes and I was worried about losing control, but hopefully I didn’t show it. When I neared her house, she squeezed my right shoulder and pointed, as if I didn’t know exactly where she lived.

☀

I had hoped to see more of Wendy that summer. After all, I was her paperboy and still fooling myself. She was on my route, third to last stop. I would see her sitting on her lawn, reading some sophisticated, old book of poetry and sipping pink lemonade. She would wrinkle her nose at the taste, and then raise the glass again. I always wondered if she actually liked the drink or just the pink color of it that happened to always coordinate with what she was wearing. Wendy. When she wasn’t outside, I could see her when I closed my eyes. I could see her image floating between my eyelashes every time I blinked.

But that summer, I quit my paper route. I couldn’t ride past her house everyday knowing that she was in it with someone else. She was always in it with someone else, someone better than me. I wished she didn’t have any friends so she would just step outside and look down the street and see me waiting for her. I had nothing else to do and she had the world. I wanted to be a part of it, even as small a part as just being her delivery boy. But that plan was dead.

☀

On my first day off, I saw a hummingbird fall out of the cherry blossom tree in my backyard, and land right next to the birdbath my mother had planted. From inside the house, I could see it struggling, flapping its wings as quickly as it could, but not having enough energy to lift its own small body off of the ground. I looked around the living room to see if anyone else saw this happening. My father was reading the newspaper––delivered by my replacement––on the couch and my mother was attentively whisking something in a large bowl in the kitchen. I steadily raised myself out of the armchair and placed the record I had been cleaning on the table next to it. I opened the sliding patio doors and shut them carefully behind me. Neither of my parents looked up.

Outside, it was unusually humid and I wanted to go back inside. I would have been happy about the summer because that was when Wendy wore flowers in her hair and her mother bought her new tennis shoes, but I didn’t see her anymore. The hummingbird was incessantly chirping. I thought about it, wondered if I should climb the tree to see if its nest was still there, if I should pick it up. The chirping was getting fainter. I could tell that the thing had a broken wing because it was flapping pitifully from one side to the other. I crouched down to examine it closer. There were little droplets of water on its chest. I straightened back up, lifted one foot, and let it hover above the hummingbird for a moment. But without much more thought, I lowered my sneaker onto its little body, pressing down slowly with my toe, until the movement stopped. It would have died anyway, I supposed. In one swift motion, I looked up at the cloudless sky, lifted my foot away from the bird, walked back inside, and slipped my sneakers off in the doorway. I didn’t go into my backyard for the rest of the summer.

☀

On the first day that it reached one hundred degrees, Alan from next door threw a pool party. He was the only kid on our block with his own swimming pool and he nearly invited the whole class. Except for me, of course. I only knew about it because I could hear the laughter and splashing all the way in my own yard. I’m not sure he even knew we were neighbors. I was sitting outside reading under an umbrella because my mother was “sick” of hearing the television. She was always sick of something, it seemed. And she would hover around and make sure everything appeared normal and casual about our house. Even the plants in the window and the immaculately clean shutters on the outside of the house were for the benefit of passersby.

Two other kids from the neighborhood walked along the sidewalk in front of me, both carrying towels and flip-flops under their arms. They glanced at me and snickered like they knew I wouldn’t be attending the huge social gathering happening just over the fence. I heard the screen door open behind me and I sensed that my mother was standing in the doorway. Hovering, always hovering.

“Hi boys! You heading over to Alan’s today?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Oh! How about you join them, Quentin? Cool off a bit?” I turned around to look at her sharply.

“I wasn’t invited, mom.”

“I’m sure you don’t need an invitation to your neighbor’s pool party, dear. Come on! Get your swim stuff! Will you boys wait for him? How about you come in for some lemonade?” They gave each other a look. They didn’t want to come inside or walk with me to Alan’s. But they did and it was humiliating. My mother beamed.

Alan’s gate door was wide open, and before we even entered, I could see the impressive number of kids all crammed into his backyard. Everyone was wearing his or her best suit, all polka dots and zigzags and bright colors. My shorts were one size too small and fading with age. I wanted to leave, just spin around on my heel and tell my mom there weren’t enough hot dogs. But the three of us were spotted instantly, and I was ushered inside the gate. I didn’t have a single friend there.

Alan’s older sister, Nancy, was stretched out by the pool with a couple of her girlfriends. They were really something. I mean, they were seniors already. They all had giant sun hats that I had never seen before except in the glossy pages at the supermarket. And their toenails matched their bathing suits.

“Hey! Stop staring at my sister, you freak.” It was Alan and he was standing about five inches from my face.

“I––I wasn’t. I swear!”

“Who invited you anyway?” I hastily looked to my left, but the boys were gone. I wanted to disappear.

“No one did. But… I was just next door and I heard… my mom told me to come.”

“Your mom told you to come? So what? I didn’t tell you to! Do you even know how to swim, Quentin?”

“Yes…”

“Good! We’ll race then!” I was so confused and severely lacked the social experience necessary to know whether Alan was being friendly or still teasing me. Truthfully, I loved to swim, but I never got the chance. So, I nodded and followed him into the crowd. I felt like a clown in the ring, though. I wasn’t imagining the way everyone turned their head to watch me go by. I had foolishly thought I could have fun there, but it quickly became a walk of shame. A death sentence to the watery guillotine.

I dropped my things onto the poolside tiles and stuck one toe into the water.

“Don’t be a wimp, Wimp!” My body arched backward and lurched forward as I tried to catch my balance on the edge of the pool, but Alan’s hand was on my back. I could only hope that I made a big enough splash to completely soak him. When I surfaced, Alan was dry and he was sneering down at me. Several people were, actually. I stared at him until the creaking of his gate door distracted us. From my low angle, I could only see pink flip-flops and a clear beach bag. I had assumed that I would be the last person to arrive since everyone else knew to come earlier. She took her time entering. I think she was still talking to someone on the street. Alan ran over to her and grabbed her bag, offering her a glass of water at the same time. He was smooth. The two of them walked back to the pool area together, laughing like old chums.

Wendy. It was Wendy, there at that pool party, and I was the only one in the water and probably looked like a complete freak. How could I get her to think I was as cool as Alan?

“Alan! Are we still going to race or did you chicken out?” Wendy raised her eyebrows in surprise and Alan lowered his. I swam over to the side of the pool and waited for him to get in. Wendy, in her everlasting popularity, began her rounds of hellos.

“Hi, Quentin. Having a nice summer?” I was stunned, and nodded. Those were the days during which I became increasingly non-verbal.

“Alright. Let’s do this. Winner takes all.” I didn’t quite know what “all” encompassed. I expected to lose and this scared me a little bit. I was going to interject when Alan screamed, “Go!”

We were only swimming from one end of the pool to the other. It was not that far. Yet, Alan kept trying to push me with his legs so that I couldn’t go straight. I remembered my last swim lesson from second grade: the frog, the butterfly. My instructor had praised me for my underwater abilities. I held my breath and dove to the bottom, where I would continue this race away from Alan’s treachery. In just a minute or two, I would reach the end of the pool. I couldn’t see if Alan was ahead or behind me, so I pushed on. The faint sound of cheering permeated the rushing water in my ears. As soon as my fingertips grazed the wall, I pulled myself up to the surface again. Alan was not next to me in the water or in front of me standing outside of the pool. I thought I had won.

“Get him out! Get him out! Someone, help him!” The girls were shrieking and the boys were yelling and I was frozen. Alan was face down, floating in the center of the swimming pool. A steady stream of blood drifted out from underneath his face, snaked between the boys who were now treading water in a circle around him, and blotted the clear waters around them. As they all tugged on his arms, I was frozen.

“Alan! You boys! Quentin, help them! Help him out of the pool! Grab him!” I didn’t know who was screaming at me. I hoisted myself out of the pool and walked backwards into the grassy area. My eyes were fixed on Alan’s body but I was repelled. I kept moving until I bumped into someone who looked just as startled as I was. It was Alan’s mother who had just come out of the backdoor of the house.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I… I don’t know what happened. I want to leave.”

“No! You don’t know what happened? You kicked him in the face!” She was yelling now. Behind us, one of Nancy’s friends was pulling Alan out of the water. I had recognized her as the lifeguard from the community pool two summers before. All the boys had pretended to drown just so she could save them.

“No, I didn’t… I won… I just–” I brought my hands up to my face in frustration and in the process, noticed the tiniest amount of blood on my right ankle. Alan’s blood. I tried to inconspicuously wipe it on the grass before his mother noticed. She turned back to me, sighed, and said, “Just don’t go anywhere. I’m going to call your mother.”

When I was four years old, I saw my great aunt in her coffin. She was pale and wrinkly and still. Even in my young age, I knew she was dead. You don’t just lie that still and come back from it. Alan looked the same, just as wrinkly and just as pale. But when Nancy’s friend pulled her mouth off of his, a stream of water came out of the side of his mouth and his jagged breaths made his chest rise and fall. That was my cue.

I grabbed my things from the poolside and ran out of there, hoping my longstanding record of invisibility was still intact. As I rounded the fence into my own front yard, I heard a small voice calling my name. I didn’t look back, though. I rushed into the house and up the stairs to my room, locking the door behind me. My mother called out my name. She was going to reprimand me; I was sure of it. I sat on my bed in my wet towel and shorts, thinking about the hummingbird from the beginning of the summer. I wondered what it felt like to have the life pushed out of you. Whether by shoe or by water, did it feel the same?

“Quentin! Are you all right? I just heard about Alan… about the party. You know, his mother is really not happy that you just left like that. Maybe we should go back over there together. Are you all right?” I sat up. She was right outside my door; I could hear her pacing.

“Yes, mom. I’m fine. But… I don’t want to talk to her. Can you just tell her I’m sorry? I think I’m going to read in here a while, okay? Can you bring me some dinner when it’s ready?”

“Oh… okay, sweetheart.” I waited until I heard her retreat back down the steps, and then I let out a sigh. I think I had been holding my breath for quite some time. And then I realized that I wasn’t really sorry. Alan gave me the hardest time out of everyone in our class. Maybe he deserved a kick to the face, and to feel the humiliation of losing, for once in his life.

The spot of Alan’s blood on my ankle was staining my skin. I wanted to wash it off but I couldn’t move. Instead, I rubbed at it furiously until it began to flake off, but there was an uncomfortable tenderness in the area. Under the red was purplish green. There was a bruise forming on my ankle, a little ghost-shaped bruise. I must have kicked him pretty hard, but it was worth it to cross the finish line.

I was shaken out of my thoughts by a commotion downstairs.

“Quentin! There’s someone here to see you! Don’t worry, it isn’t Alan’s mother!” She sounded strangely giddy, as if the president had come over to congratulate me on my victory. I hesitated, but I forced myself down the stairs. My mother was on the bottom step, waiting for me with a huge smile.

“What is it mom? Who’s here?” There was a pause, and then I heard a small sneeze from the next room. I jumped from the third step to the floor, sidestepped my mom, and halted in the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Hi Wendy…” I looked over to my mom and tried to send her a message with my eyes to please leave the room. Thankfully, she received the message.

“If you kids need me, I’ll just be in the backyard, all right?”

“Thanks, mom.” I hesitated for a moment, and then sat down next to Wendy on the couch. She had her legs politely crossed at the ankles, angled away from me. I clasped my hands together in my lap.

“So, um, how are you?” I think that was a good start.

“I’m, uh, I’m doing okay, I guess. This was a really strange day, huh?”

“Yeah. Strange.”

“Listen, Quentin. Everyone is pretty mad that you just bolted like that earlier. That wasn’t cool. Alan’s face is really messed up and you didn’t even apologize to him… I tried to call you back when you were running away… So I thought I should come over and warn you. Everyone’s mad.” I watched her eyes as she spoke, searching for the real reason she came over.

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know, I guess. But it’s not like they all liked me before. At least now, they all know I can beat Alan in a race.”

“Quentin… that’s not the point. Don’t you understand how badly he’s hurt?”

“Sure. I understand. Probably not as badly as he’s been hurting me since we were kids.” It seemed Wendy was not able to look me in the eye even though I couldn’t look away from hers. I could tell she was thinking a lot of things that she wasn’t saying. I raised one hand to place on her leg for comfort, but before I could lower it down, she looked up.

“The kids at school are really mean to you, huh?” I blinked. “Do you want to go take a walk with me?”

“I–I could do that. Yes. I’ll take a walk with you.”

☀

I was standing outside on my front steps less than ten minutes later, watching Wendy flutter about my yard. She wasn’t smiling but she was arranging flowers in her hair. Finally, she straightened up and looked at me expectantly, apparently ready to go.

I didn’t know if I was following her or she was following me, but we ended up by the lake in the next town over. We had been mostly silent the entire walk and I respected her solemnity. We sat side by side on the rocks, dangling our legs over the water. I thought our location seemed slightly inappropriate considering what had just happened, but I didn’t mention it. It wasn’t the right time. Wendy broke the silence first.

“Quentin? Have you ever tried to be friends with Alan? I know you’ve lived next door to each other practically your entire lives.” Her question confused me. Didn’t we all go to the same school?

“No. He only bullies me.”

“Oh.” She turned to me so that one of her legs was bent inward and slightly overlapped mine.

“Um, why? Do you know him well?”

“I guess not. He asked me on a date last year but I turned him down. My friends thought he was too mean.” I chuckled and she joined in almost immediately. This was going great. “Do you think he had it coming?” I nodded.

“Quentin?”

“Yes?” I looked up and her face was closer than it had ever been. Her cheeks were flushed from the laughter and her eyes were watery. She had freckles spanning across her nose. I hadn’t known that Wendy had freckles.

I met her eyes and she blinked, twice, and then leaned into me. We kissed, my first kiss. I probably didn’t do it right, but hopefully she didn’t care. As she began to pull back from it, I reached up to hold her head there. She made a muffled little sound of surprise and I kept kissing her. I slid my hand down over her ear and rested it in the nape of her neck, feeling her pulse. It quickened.

I couldn’t believe how nice she was being to me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe it.

“Quentin…” She breathed out my name in between kisses but I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to hear her say “stop” because I worried we would never start again. What if she just felt sorry for me, and this moment was out of pity? I couldn’t risk it. This was my one chance. I held her firmly in place with one hand and better angled my body to rest my other on her side. She kept trying to pull away. I could feel the resistance. I tried to telepathically tell her: “Wendy. It’s okay. This is good.” She didn’t hear it.

The hand on her neck slipped around the front of her throat to steady her. I thought that if I could just hold her there, she’d realize that she didn’t really want to leave me. I tightened my grip a little bit until her mouth relaxed into mine. It was perfect. Her body melted into mine and I held her close and tight, just like in the movies. I would protect her. When I finally pulled back from the kiss, her eyes were closed and she looked so sweet. I leaned in again to smell her strawberry hair and to kiss her strawberry freckles one at a time.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Wendy,” I whispered to her. I never meant something more in my life. “Do you want to head back now? It’s getting late.” She didn’t answer me right away so I started to stand up until her head fell into my lap. I whispered her name again and she didn’t answer. I touched the back of her discolored neck and she didn’t respond. I lifted her out of my lap, her head down, and she went limp. Her body sagged in my arms. Looking down at her, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

I carried her over to a weeping willow to rest. Under the tree’s shade, Wendy only looked like she was sleeping. I then walked back over to where we had been sitting on the edge of the rocks. I looked down at the dark waters below and only briefly thought about it. I wanted to know what it felt like to have the life pushed out of you, if only for a moment. I jumped in.

END

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Caridad Cole is a second-generation writer and filmmaker, raised in the backwoods of New Jersey. With a Pushcart Prize nomination and other literary recognitions, her work has recently appeared in The Poetry Lighthouse, Coffin Bell Journal, and An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color 2024 (EastOver Press). Caridad lives and works in Los Angeles, where she edits Moonday Mag and Chainmail Poetry. Find more at caridadcole.com or @astrocari on Instagram.