Page 21 of The Summer List

“Hey, listen.” She gives my hands another squeeze. “Everything is fine. She said she’s only staying for a few days, right? You definitely still have a house sitting job. She’ll be out of here soon, and then you can go back to having a nice, quiet mansion to yourself. Well, except for when Shal and I come bug you.”

I let out a half-hearted laugh and then suck in a long, shaky breath. I concentrate on the texture of the couch cushion underneath my bare legs, imagining I can feel each thread pressing into my skin as I ground down into the sensation.

It gets a little easier to breathe.

“It’s bad again, huh?” Priya asks, her voice heavy with concern.

I know what it means: it is my anxiety, and she’s right. It’s getting worse. Ever since graduation, it’s like my body has turned into a box full of firecrackers and life is just one big box of matches ready to set them off and turn me into a shell-shocked mess.

“It’s just a…weird time in life,” I answer. “It’s like we’re in limbo this summer, you know?”

She nods and slips her hands out of mine to cross her arms over her chest. “I get that. It’s kind of like we’re stuck between who we were and who we’re going to be, like there’s this whole new Priya I have to wait around until September to meet, when really I just want to be her now.”

A fresh round of firecrackers goes off in my stomach, and I clench my jaw to keep from telling her that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant is that my whole life is going to change in September, and I don’t feel ready to change at all. I’m not even sure I want to change, and the fact that our friendship was supposed to be the one steady thing we could count on to get us through all the upheaval feels a lot less comforting when she’s talking about how much she can’t wait to be someone new.

“Priya, do you—”

We’re interrupted by the sound of Shal swearing in the kitchen before she comes stomping back into the living room, her phone clutched in one of her hands.

“He cancelled.”

She rolls her eyes when neither of us knows what she’s talking about.

“The guy who was supposed to buy the joints for us. He can’t make it.”

When we still don’t react, she narrows her eyes and squints at us.

“Am I interrupting some kind of dramatic conversation here?”

I can feel the tension between me and Priya still hanging in the air, like the acrid threat of lightning you can sniff on the breeze just before a summer storm rolls in.

“Um, no,” Priya answers. “We’re just introverting, like you put it.”

Shal props her hand on her hip. “Well, do you introverts know anyone else who could buy us weed?”

Smoking a joint for the first time in my life now sounds way beyond my capacity for stepping outside my comfort zone today. I’m about to admit that when the squeak of the kitchen door sliding open makes us all go quiet. My breath freezes in my lungs as I listen to the sound of bare feet padding across the kitchen, getting closer to the living room with each step.

Shal turns to greet Andrea as she strides into the room. She’s got a towel wrapped around herself like a dress, and her hair is hanging loose, so long the strands almost reach the middle of her back.

The kitchen was too dark for me to notice last night, but in the daylight, the slight purple tinge to her chocolate brown hair is hard to miss. Other than the dye, everything about her looks the same as her graduation photo: eyes so deep brown they’re almost black, sharp features softened by the thick spray of freckles over her nose, and a mouth that always looks like it’s on the verge of twisting into a smirk that could set a whole city on fire.

Everything about Andrea King screams danger, like a blinking, ten-foot sign blocking off a crazy cliffside highway you know you shouldn’t drive down if you value your life but can’t help steering your car towards anyway.

“Uh, hey,” she says, coming to a halt beside Shal.

Shal lifts her hand in a wave. “Hey! I’m Shal.”

If I ever needed proof Shal is straight, I just got it. There’s no way anyone—even anyone as confident as Shal—could be attracted to women and not have some kind of stun gun reaction to seeing Andrea up close for the first time.

“Andrea,” she answers with a nod before looking over at me.

My throat starts closing up, like just a half second of eye contact with her has sent me into anaphylactic shock.

I think Priya introduces herself, but I don’t hear her speak. The stun gun effect is wearing off now, and my brain has started to whir with reasons why Andrea probably hates me or at least doesn’t want me in the house.

“Sandy said I could have friends over,” I blurt, the words all jumbled together in a heap of a sentence. I clear my throat and add, “Just, like, a couple people. Just so you know. She said it’s fine.”

Andrea blinks and then nods. “Uh, yeah, cool. Honestly, I’m not gonna rat you out for whatever you want to do in their house. I wasn’t even supposed to be here myself.”

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