7
" Sorry.” I’m surprised and glad she doesn’t recognize it. I run my thumb back and forth over a crusty bit on the shoulder strap as a five-second version of the cake fight flashes behind my eyes like a movie stuck on quick search. Don’t cry over spilt frosting, Anna. “I just – I like this one.”
“What for?” she asks.
Just tell her.
“It’s from the – it’s just the–” I bite my lower lip.
Tell her.
“Anna? What’s wrong?”
Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that it’s from the first time your brother kissed me and made me promise not to tell you. And I was in love with him forever, and he was supposed to tell you about it in California, and we were all going to live happily ever after. I still write him letters in the journal he gave me, which he doesn’t answer, since he’s dead and all. But other than that? Honestly, it’s nothing.
“Anna?” She watches me with her sideways face again.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I – I’ll get rid of it later. "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
8
" So just over a year ago, there was this guy. I really liked him. I mean really – since I was a kid.”
“Did Frankie know him?”
“The three of us were best friends. We basically grew up together.”
“Complicated.”
“Very. So anyway, last year on my birthday, he finally kissed me.” Sam stays quiet, focused on his feet taking off and landing against the sand. It feels strange to tell him about this for so many reasons, but the words are coming too fast for me to stop, even if I want to. “We started hanging out all the time –
even more than before. Every night. Only we didn’t know how to tell Frankie, because we didn’t want her to freak or feel left out or whatever.”
“Makes sense,” Sam says.
“He thought it would be better if he told her himself, so I promised him that I wouldn’t say anything. But before he could talk to her about it, he–” I almost choke on the word, holding my hand against Sam’s arm to stop our forward motion along the shore.
“What did he do?” Sam asks.
“He just – he – I’m sorry. Wait.” The words of this story have passed a thousand times from my hand to the pages of my journal, but never from my lips to the ears of another living soul. I take a few deep breaths before I’m able to meet Sam’s eyes and say it. “He died, Sam. "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
9
" Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts.
Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after.
In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely.
I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too.
I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful… "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
10
" I follow the path we’ve taken so many times this summer – across the front, down the street, cut back through a neighbor’s yard, down the stairs to the beach, past the pier, through the campfire labyrinth, up to the deck of the Shack, and straight into Sam’s arms.
Without speaking, he kisses me hard on the mouth and I kiss him back, sobbing and crumpling into his chest like a broken puppet. "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
12
" And in this moment of pale dawn in the hours before we leave California, I finally realize what has been the hardest thing for me about Matt’s death. It isn’t that I lost a brother, like Frankie, or a son, like Aunt Jayne and Uncle Red. The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back.
For over a year, the letters were my only connection to him; the only evidence that I didn’t imagine our brief time as other. When I first saw my journal helplessly floating on the waves, I felt a loss so immediate and overwhelming it was like being back in the hospital lobby when the doctor told us they couldn’t fix him. One minute, the journal was in my hands, soft and familiar and real; the next minute, it was gone.
Just like Matt.
And just like Matt, I need to let it go. "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
15
" Dear Matt,
In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours!
You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you.
But you don’ t say anything.
Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy?
Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know?
No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did!
She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise.
Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always.
I’m going to find some red sea glass for you.
I miss you more than you could ever know.
Love,
Anna "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
19
" Oh my God, look!”
I stand and hold out my hand for Sam to inspect.
“Wow,” he says, taking the glass and holding it up to the sun. “Red is, like, the rarest color there is.
You’re totally lucky you even saw it.”
I take the deep red, half-dollar-sized piece from him and smile, looking out across the ocean. I told Matt in my letter before we left that I’d find a piece just for him, but now that it’s actually here, sparkling in my hand, I know he’d want me to do something else with it.
I raise it above my head and throw it as hard and as far as I can into the sea.
Let someone else have a lucky day, Anna.
Sam laughs. “Hey, crazy, what’d you do that for? You’ll probably never see something like that again in your entire life.”
“Right. But I did see it. And now someone else can, too. "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer