Page 70 of Summer Love

“Not the path in front of my school.”

“Technically, it’s in front of my house.”

She’s right. And that pisses me off even more.

I start moving one of the boxes when a guy already fried by the sun comes over, flip-flops on, beach bag over his shoulder. He digs through one of the boxes, between an ugly vase and an empty picture frame, and pulls out a little cherry-red wooden surfboard, hand-painted: a sun, a palm tree, California in round letters.

I freeze.

Pacific Star Park, the summer I was eighteen. The shooting gallery. Five shots, three targets, and I hit all three because I needed to show off in front of her. The guy at the booth handed me the board with a look that said, “That’s all we’ve got, kid.” I gave it to Summer. She laughed. She used to laugh a lot.

The tourist turns it over in his fingers, examining it like some beach trinket.

I step over and snatch it out of his hands.

“Hands off. That one’s mine.”

“Hey!”

But I’m already turning away, the little board clenched in my fist.

Summer hasn’t seen any of it. She’s still bent over her flower bed, her back to me.

She’s getting rid of it.

I go back into the trailer. Flip follows me, tail low. I toss the board on the bed, sit down, turn it over.

My eighteen-year-old handwriting, in black marker. The ink’s faded, the letters aren’t all straight.

Future Olympic Champion

Flip rests his muzzle on my right thigh.

I put the board away in the drawer under the bed and step back out of the trailer.

The retaliation doesn’t take long.

Around one, while I’m taking inventory of the wetsuits in the storeroom, the music starts up at Summer’s. Loud.

“FU,” by Miley Cyrus.

Fuck you, Jace Walker.

The sound’s too clean to be coming from a phone. I look toward the house. A Bluetooth speaker’s sitting on the living room windowsill.

I recognize the lodge’s backup speaker. Black, cylindrical, scuffed up from use.

Miles.

“Traitor,” I mutter.

Mid-afternoon, everything goes dead.

The fan in the front office. The mini-fridge. The charging light on my phone.

No power.

I already know where it’s coming from. I cross the yard and go through the Hayes’ gate.