Summer Sweat (Spruce Texas)

She glares at me. “I’m not little!!!”

There it is. “Alright, Gems. Let’s go.”

The next hour is spent sitting on the rubber tire in our yard in the dark with flashlights pointed at our faces, stars and a crescent moon over our heads, and the pair of us coming up with the funniest, lamest, or scariest ghost stories possible. Sometimes it’s a joint effort, us both imagining it, and other times one of us takes the spotlight. We invented this silly game one Halloween when Gemma was sick and couldn’t go trick-or-treating, so I had to come up with a way to keep her entertained (and keep her from crying and feeling sad on my birthday, which happens to also be Halloween). I skipped going to a party with my friends, just to stay and keep her happy. We’ve been playing this game ever since, and clearly don’t need Halloween as an excuse to play it.

After the last story, we seem to run out of steam, then just sit on the tire together and point our flashlights up at the sky, as if it helps illuminate the stars. “Think the aliens up there in space are seeing our flashlights?” I ask, nudging my sister as I blink mine on and off. “Do you know Morse? Wanna flash ‘em a little message?”

She bites her lip and stares at the sky, flicking her flashlight on and off. She doesn’t answer.

I gaze at her. “Hmm. Are you … gettin’ too old to play ghost stories?” I start clicking mine on and off in sync with hers.

She stops and sets hers down. “I miss Toby.”

I stop, too. That’s unexpected. “Oh. Are you, like, uh … thinking about him or something?”

“He was nice. I want to be an actor someday. I think I’m gonna be an actor, just like him.” She starts picking at her flashlight, her brow furrowed.

“Hmm. Well … he isn’t gonna be around anymore, y’know. He moved away, lives a happy little seaside life on the beach now with his boyfriend.”

“I know.”

“Hey, why are you sad?” I flick her arm playfully. She ignores it. I frown. “Gems …?”

“You liked him, too, didn’t you?”

The more I try to put him and what happened behind me, the more everyone keeps pushing it back in my face. Still, my sister is different. “Of course I did.”

She stares at her flashlight. “But didn’t you … like-like him?”

I open my mouth, then stare at her, all my words sucked out. Finally, in a voice barely strong enough to startle a butterfly, I get out: “What do … you mean …?”

“It’s okay if you did. And maybe you’re sad about it because he went away with another boy.” She taps her flashlight against the tire, continuing to fidget with it. “But I think you’ll find someone who’s all yours. Someone who likes you back. Someone you can—”

“Gemma, what’re you talkin’ about?” I let out a sudden laugh. “You’re, like … You’ve gone and lost your mind or something. Did someone say something to you, or …?”

“No, nobody said anything.” She lets go of her flashlight and hugs herself. She still isn’t looking at me.

I look away, all the air having fled my lungs.

What is she expecting me to believe? That she thought this all up herself? Who’s been talking to her? What did they say? My foot bounces in place and my mind races. Obviously people said stuff to her at school. That’s the only reason she’s saying all of this.

The truth is, Toby is the only guy I ever kissed.

And it wasn’t a kiss I asked for, nor was it given. I stole it. It was a thief’s kiss. I forced it out of him. I didn’t deserve it.

But when our lips touched, everything inside me made sense, even just for one fraction of a second. I instantly wanted more. As he pulled away in shock, my heart ripped in half. Maybe a teensy, tiny part of me hoped I would kiss him again, just to see if it really was as amazing as it seemed, just to see if it wasn’t some chance thing that I liked it so much. It was, after all, a pretty messed-up day. I’d just pissed my pants in the middle of a classroom—thanks to Toby—but that’s a whole other story. The kiss is all I remember.

Now that he’s gone, all chances of another kiss are gone, too.

“I like the beach,” says Gemma.

I look at her. She isn’t the little girl I used to play dolls with. Is it just the seemingly small act of graduating high school that has me questioning everything? Suddenly I’m not sitting next to a girl I used to read bedtime stories to. I’m sitting next to a girl who is just a month away from turning eleven, a few years from being a teenager, and a few more from being old enough to drive a car. Sooner than I realize, she’s going to find someone of her own to kiss, too—someone she’ll be messed up about.