Snapshots of A Summer

By Maddison Bosch -2021

 Snapshots of a Summer- A Short Story 

The summer I fell in love with Charis Moore, I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out the organization system behind her bookshelf. I’d trail my fingers over book spines for hours, and it was just so Charis in that there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it: A Raisin in the Sun next to The Princess Bride next to The Hunger Games, Tolkien next to L’engle next to Chernow, and half the books had labels on the spines, liked she’d checked them out of a library lord knew how long ago and forgotten to give them back. 

Charis wasn’t much help, either; when I asked her about it, she laughed in that bright, quiet way she always laughed, and said that a magician never reveals her secrets. I told her that she wasn’t a magician, she was a librarian, and a bad one at that, and I would’ve laughed too except that suddenly her head was in my lap and I momentarily stopped breathing. 

Her eyes were closed, and I took the opportunity to look at her. I didn’t yet recognize the fluttery warm feeling that had taken up residence in my chest cavity, maybe just because it was Charis. Charis, who I had known since the gawky awkward phases of middle school. Charis, with arms and legs like sticks and hooded eyes the color of burnt caramel and skin a beautiful dark brown— the color of raw umber. That summer she was all sundresses and bleached blond hair, and her freckles had started to run together into spots and splotches all over her skin. I wanted to map out those freckles. I wanted to count them. 

Instead, I reminded myself to breathe and turned my attention back to the titles. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The Poet X. Carry On. 

*** 

That summer, we went out to the treehouse she had found in the woods behind her house, trekking along an overgrown path, sticks and rocks and dirt getting stuck in the space between our flip-flops and the soles of our feet. The treehouse looked ancient, wood gray and probably termite-ridden, and I half-joked that it wouldn’t be able to hold me— that I might not even be able to fit. Charis responded by standing on her tip-toes, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, and telling me I’d fit just fine. 

She fit just fine, like that: with her chin on my shoulder and her hands clasped at the center of my back. I tried to ignore the blood rushing to my face, the fluttering in my stomach that turned my hands clammy and my mouth dry. I tried to ignore the warmth in my chest at the realization that she always managed to do that— to make me feel just the right size instead of huge. (I looked huge, next to her, a fact that I was painfully aware of, but then, I looked huge next to everyone.) 

We both fit perfectly, though, and spent the afternoon giggling over crappy poetry on Instagram, and the afternoon after that making the treehouse our own— piling ratty blankets in the corners and

pinning up polaroids on the walls and running extension cords from her house so we could string up fairy lights. 

I couldn’t help but notice that in the glow from the fairy lights, her eyes turned to honey; I couldn’t help but notice that she looked beautiful. 

*** 

The summer I fell in love with Charis Moore, we ran into Mrs. Byrd from down the street at the community pool, and she told us we made an odd pair. I knew what she meant: I was large and round and pale, with dark hair and darker eyes. I was soft-spoken and I laughed too loud, and when we went to the pool I covered everything: I wore shorts and a t-shirt over a one-piece, and I dipped nothing but my toes into the water. 

Charis was everything I wasn’t, and she took the opportunity to practice her cannon balls; the bikini she wore was red with white polka dots, like Minnie Mouse, and every time she jumped in she sent up a spray of water that glittered aquamarine in the sun. 

The second Mrs. Byrd was gone, the second we had the clear blue water all to ourselves, Charis grinned so wide it had to hurt and splashed at me until I was soaking wet and laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Splashed at me until, figuring there was no point anymore in trying to keep my clothes dry, I jumped into the water too. 

We played Marco Polo, and for the first time in a while, in the best way possible, giggling, high on existence, with my best friend in the whole world, I felt like a little kid. 

*** 

On the last day of June, knocking, quick, quiet, almost frantic, came at my front door, and when I opened it to find Charis on my porch, I was surprised and then confused; we were supposed to meet at her house in twenty minutes. 

For a long moment I just stared at her, and my brain refused to process what it was seeing, because Charis didn’t look like herself; gone was her soft, sparkling smile, and her hooded eyes were red-rimmed, her face streaked with tears and snot. When she said my name, she didn’t sound like herself either; instead of loud and excited and confident, her voice rasped and broke and tapered off into a question: “Sarah?” 

She was wearing a rainbow pin, one that I had often seen in her bedroom, but never on her, never in public. I saw it and I understood, and then my heart sank. 

I didn’t ask her if it had been her parents because I already knew; I just pulled her into a hug and then towed her into my living room by her wrists. 

This time, as we settled onto my threadbare green sofa, I chastised myself into breathing properly when she crawled into my lap, sniffling quietly; instead of freezing up, I held her. Instead of just looking

at her, I pet her hair, and hoped it brought some semblance of comfort. I didn’t know what to tell her, so I didn’t say anything, and I hoped that nothing was enough. 

We watched old Vine compilations on YouTube, my phone propped up against Charis’ knee, until a smile started to tug at the corners of her mouth. And then we kept right on watching until my phone battery died, hours later. 

*** 

That summer, we gathered around the firepit behind Charis’ house as day turned to night and the sky turned orange and purple— me and Charis, and Charis’ brother and his friends, and also Charis’ parents, who were all suspicious side-eyes and pinched smiles but otherwise pretended the last day of June had never happened. 

Glowing embers drifted airily among smoke and soot, floating off into the night sky and painting Charis’ face orange. My fingers were sticky sweet from making s’mores, and I was trying to count Charis’ freckles, while Charis set marshmallow after marshmallow ablaze, and her brother smiled at me, showing just a little too much teeth. When I asked Charis why, she laughed like a bell and said he thought I was her girlfriend. I choked on my s’more and spent the next thirty seconds coughing, and when I got my breath back my face burned so much I couldn’t say anything. 

That was the night we tried to catch fireflies in our palms, stumbling almost drunkenly in the dark, giggling as grass tickled our shins. Charis’ brother caught one and almost immediately became bored with it. I caught one, too, and then Charis put it in a jar and called it bottled lightning. I laughed, always too loud, and told her it was more like bottled fire, because she insisted they were called lightning bugs and I insisted that sounded weird and by the end of the night it had become a running joke. Charis never ended up catching one, so I told her we could share mine, and when she pouted because that didn’t count, and, besides, we had to let it go eventually, I found myself wanting to kiss her, and I found that I wasn’t nearly as surprised as I thought I should have been. 

I’d fallen for her so slowly, so gradually, that it was like it had always been this way; like it had always been me, and Charis, and this summer, and this night, and the way she glowed in the firelight, and the sticky sweet marshmallow-brush of her fingertips against my skin. 

*** 

The summer I fell in love with Charis Moore, we made a tradition out of ice cream and movies; we’d eat the ice cream perched like birds on the low walls around the water fountain outside the movie theater, balancing in our shoes on the balls of our feet so we didn’t sear our skin on molten concrete. Then we would rush inside, forsaking popcorn in the name of settling into our seats with seconds to spare, hair damp around the edges from the fountain’s spray.

The day Charis, squinting against the sun, snickered at the chocolate dripping down my chin, I responded by pointing out the strawberry that had dribbled onto her sundress. Charis swore and scrubbed at it with her napkin while I giggled, and then she was laughing too, reaching toward my face to wipe at the chocolate stains. I pulled back a little, eyes blown wide… and finally lost my balance, tumbling backwards into the fountain. 

For a second, Charis and I just stared at each other. Then we were laughing again, so hard that I started to snort and tears started to pool in Charis’ eyes, so hard that our sides started to ache with it. Charis grabbed my hands and pulled me from the fountain, hauling with her stick-arms and legs like she had no upper body strength at all, and I stumbled, laughing, into her side, and then… and then she squeezed my hands instead of letting go. 

Charis Moore kissed me on the cheek— she kissed me on the cheek— and towed me into the theater, ice cream long forgotten, the both of us cackling and sticky and dripping wet. And through it all, even through the next two hours spent giggling quietly at the back of the theater in the dark, Charis never once let go of my hand. 

In that moment, everything was perfect. In that moment, everything was clear. 

The summer I fell in love with Charis Moore, I think she fell in love with me, too.