Page 75 of Summer Love

“Twelve! Ladies and gentlemen, she’s going for twelve! It’s bold, it’s risky, it’s…”

The throwing stick lands a foot short of the pins.

“It’s a beautiful disaster. Next!”

People laugh. The kids all want a turn. Miles grabs the stick, resets the pins, takes the fives with a big grin, all in one continuous motion. He catches sight of me and shoots me a thumbs-up, still talking.

Farther down, Ruby and Hank are running a darts stand. Ruby’s in a sleeveless Motörhead T-shirt and studded leather pants. She’s got more earrings than I’d seen on her at book club. She throws a dart without looking—and hits the bullseye. Hank stands beside her, arms crossed, his leather vest stretched across a massive chest. He’s tall, bearded, a black bandana tied around his head. He chews a toothpick and takes the dollars without a word. Between them there’s a quiet ease that looks like forty years on the road together.

At the food stand, Yumi’s busy with cardboard containers of poke bowls—rice, raw salmon, avocado, sesame seeds, soy sauce. Next to her, Luke’s loading up open-faced focaccia: mortadella, mozzarella, arugula. He lifts a knife my way in greeting.

Noah’s behind the stand too, an apron tied over a too-tight gray T-shirt. An unlit cigarette behind his ear, he slices bread, passes containers, tidies whatever Yumi sets on the makeshift counter. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t talk to the customers. But he’s here, and he’s helping. Yumi says something to him. He nods without looking up.

I buy a focaccia from Luke and bite into it as I keep walking. The mortadella melts on my tongue, salty, perfect.

Ahead of me, a group of kids runs by, shrieking with laughter. Flip gallops alongside them, a piece of driftwood in his mouth. One kid tries to grab it—Flip speeds up, jukes, doubles back the other way. A chase across the sand. The dog’s in heaven.

The raffle’s at the end of the row of stands, just before the beach.

Sierra’s sitting behind a little table with an open ticket book and a glass jar already half full of folded tickets. She looks like she’s done this her whole life.

“Hey, Summer! It’s crazy—three times as many people as last year,” she says, flipping her braids over one shoulder.

I shouldn’t give a damn. It’s their school, their day, their community. But the line at every stand, the noise, the music, the laughter—I did this in two days. And I’m proud, which is a problem.

“Good, I...”

The words catch in my throat.

A yellow board rests on a wooden stand, set back slightly from the table, a red ribbon tied around it. A warm yellow, golden, a little faded at the edges.

“It’s the same color as your hair.”

Jace used to say that every summer, setting it on the sand in front of me or rinsing it off after a session.

My board. The one he used to lend me.

My eyes travel down the rail and stop on the right side, near the tail. The letters are pale. The black marker’s been eaten away by the salt and the years. The ink is washed out, half gone. But the writing’s still there:

J + S

Jace’s handwriting, not mine. The S a shade bigger than the J. He’d done it one morning, crouched in the sand, while I ran to grab towels. When I came back, he’d flipped the board over and acted like nothing happened. I let him believe I hadn’t noticed.

I look up. Jace is about thirty feet away, near the shed. Arms crossed, motionless, watching me. His face gives nothing away.

He chose that board.

Out of all the boards in the shed, all the longboards and shortboards, he picked that one, waxed it, tied a red ribbon around it, and now anyone can win it with a five-dollar ticket.

To be cruel? To get rid of a memory? Or to see if I still remember?

My eyes go back to the yellow board.

Early one morning, the summer I was seventeen.

The sound of a pebble tapping against my bedroom window.

I wake up. The sky is gray, the room still dark. A second pebble hits the glass. I know who it is before I look.