Page 33 of One Last Summer
6. Have a shitload of fun.
- Camp games! Color Week! Wish boats! Do all the stuff I loved once.
7. Be a great friend.
- Fix things with Sam.
8. Take a lot of LOVERS! Or at least have one passionate love affair.
Directly below it, I penned, Mack. Then I crossed it out. Then I wrote Mack?
Why had I included this on my list back then? I vaguely recalled the word “lover” being an inside joke that summer between me and Eloise, as we devoured her fat stack of romance novels. And I’d jotted “LOL” next to it as if to discount it further.
But I’d also written this letter right after my first true moment of raw lust, tangled up with Mack for a minute in the woods. I knew that somewhere, there was truth in this demand. So I tried to channel the Clara I’d been back then, and what she would have wanted from a lover.
Sex, I’d decided. Definitely, sex.
And that was almost certainly not happening after the very weird and intense encounter with Mack.
But we’d kissed, so that counted as something.
I turned the page again, trying to push out the memory of him with a new list.
ACTIVITIES TO ACCOMPLISH ABOVE GOALS
- Capture the Flag
- Friendship Bracelet–Making Party
- Color Week Relay
- Dessert Party
- Truth or Dare (for Eloise)
- Wish Boats
All things I’d loved as a camper, all totally easy to replicate this week. Pressing my hand gently on the page, I tore it along the edge and folded it up into a tiny square, no bigger than a matchbook.
It was settled then; I was getting my life back on track, and I knew exactly how to do it.
Sometimes it really was as easy as making a list.
16
“CLARA.”
The voice was barely a whisper, which meant that I could ignore it and keep sleeping. I’d somehow managed to sleep for a few hours without waking from racing thoughts, but I could tell even in this barely alert moment that my body felt anything but rested. My limbs were heavy and achy, like they had merged with the lumpy old bunk mattress and were now made of rusty coils and ancient foam. The only answer was to keep my eyes closed for the foreseeable future.
“Clara.” There it was again, still quiet but more insistent this time. I knew it was Sam, who’d been passed out wrapped around some giant, U-shaped body pillow when I’d tiptoed into Sunrise last night.
She was quiet for what felt a minute, maybe two, and just as my brain powered down and slumber sucked me back in, something soft smacked against my head. I groaned and reached a hand over my face, pulling off a bra as Sam let out a giggle.
With a low whine, I rolled onto my back, pushing my sleeping mask up an inch so I could peer one eye out from underneath. There was my old friend, sitting propped up in her little twin bed by the bathroom, sipping from a giant, sticker-covered water bottle through a smile.
“This is giving me flashbacks,” I grumbled, my throat still dry with sleep.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me excitedly. “I’ve literally been holding off for an hour. It was torture.”
