Page 26 of The Summer List

She has eyes like summer: filled with long, lazy hours sparking with the potential to turn into something unforgettable.

Only I’ll be gone before those sparks turn into fireworks. I’m leaving, and they must be meant for someone who isn’t me.

Someone who has whatever it is I don’t.

“Andrea…” she says.

Something about my name on her lips feels like magic, like she’s taken the sound that’s followed me around my entire life and turned it into an incantation I’ve never heard before.

My name is a spell, and it’s pulling me closer.

We’re way too close. Her eyes are the size of two moons, big enough to turn all my tides.

I must have gotten absolutely stoned out of my mind without realizing it because I can’t stop moving closer, and I can’t stop thinking crazy things about moons and sparks and her saying my name again and again and again.

“I HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT!”

Shal’s shout is so loud even Priya sits up on the couch, glancing around with bleary eyes and a bit of drool on her chin. Naomi and I scramble away from each other like we’ve been zapped by a mosquito rod, and I realize I’d been leaning over her while she’d been rising up to meet me. Our faces were only a few inches apart.

I do an awkward backwards shuffle until my back thumps against the side of the nearest couch. I sit there with my heart pounding in my ears as Shal stumbles across the lawn towards us with her arms held up like some kind of messiah.

“Enlightenment!” she repeats. “I have found it!”

Priya rubs her eyes and mutters something under her breath. Shal reaches the edge of the deck and clutches the banister while she climbs the short set of steps up to meet us.

“That’s…cool?” Naomi says.

Her voice is a little breathless, and the sound makes my heart beat even faster.

“I don’t really remember what it is,” Shal says, facing us with her hands on her hips, “but I found it halfway through Taylor Swift’s discography, and no one can take that away from me.”

I give her a short round of applause, since focusing on anything that will distract me from Naomi seems like a good idea. “Amen to that.”

Priya gives a disoriented shake of her head and stares at my hands. “Your hands sound weird. Am I still high?”

“I’m going to go with yes,” I tell her.

Shal navigates a path around us towards the house, moving like she’s trudging through piles of sand.

“Come!” she shouts. “I need snacks, and I don’t know how to work the fridge.”

I’m sober enough to know you don’t need to work a fridge, and the fact that Shal isn’t means she’s definitely going to need help in the kitchen. I push myself up to my feet, and even though the backyard looks a little hazy, it’s not nearly enough to justify how dazed I felt with my face so close to Naomi’s.

A shiver runs through me as I turn and head for the sliding door, ignoring every instinct in my body that’s screaming at me to look back at her.

I can’t look back. I have to leave this house. I don’t know what I’m missing in my life, but I know I’m not going to find it getting high at my dad’s house and using the nearest shiny, exciting thing I find to fill me up before I start feeling empty again.

I reach for the door handle while Shal stands waiting for someone with functional motor skills to pull it open, and I tell myself I’ll book the train to Toronto in the morning.

CHAPTER 7

Naomi

The first thing I realize when I look at the clock next to my bed is that I’m late for the cats’ breakfast.

The second thing I realize is that the cats aren’t in bed with me.

They’ve slept with me every night since I arrived, and they usually wake me up by kneading my stomach and meowing long before they’re due for their first meal of the day.

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