Summer Lake part 1

       Warm cicadas and crickets hummed on that last summer afternoon. The Frederickson’s lake house stood on the outskirts of a wooded copse that overlooked a lake, their other fellow neighbors granting them such a day of peace by their much convenient absence.
       --
       Through the empty halls after school, janitors slowly crawling out of hiding, leashing their trusted garbage cans and carts around to each room for the daily hull, Gilbert and Caroline walked aimlessly and slowly without hurry towards the stairs bringing them down to the lobby, cutting through a side exit to reach Gilbert’s car.
       After four years here, it’s astounding how much memories, the few and many, remembered in between. The time spent attending for so long leaves one with the several imprints of flooded hallways, sneakers squeaking in between periods, snickers and laughter filling each locker and room like smoke and perfume. Posters hung, streamers, as if deflated like a balloon, touched from ceiling to floor- annual decorations adorning the ceilings and thresholds in preparation for prom. Neither two talked, as they followed a friend of theirs flamboyantly showering her boyfriend with doting sequences of compliments and remarks on her mobile.
       “I miss you, B.”
       “Oh, honey bunch, I miss you too. You’re the apple of my eye, my sweetums,” Caroline teasingly whispers to Gilbert.
       “You’re with- with who? -- oh, is he there…next to you? -- no, no, just wondering.”
       “Yeah, just me and my pals. Just hangin’. Nothing big, honey pie. Me and Matt and Bradley-” Caroline receiving a vicious glare from Sophie fades quietly into a sweet smile as she motions herself locking her lips with a key and throwing it over her shoulder. Sophie walks a bit faster ahead of the two, her voice once again bouncing off the stairs she descends, heading to her car early without so much of a goodbye.
       Permitted finally with sweet silence, Gilbert asks out of pure courtesy, “How long have they been together now?” Carrie had no need to turn her head to read the disinterest sloshing around his eyes.
       “3 weeks.”
       “That beginning phase huh?”
       “Honeymoon phase you mean?”
       “Yeah.”
       “Yeah… I’ve always wondered- does love develop in stages or does it happen all at once like how John Green described it?”
       “What do you mean?”
       “Like, does attraction happen first in infatuation, then that mutual self-disclosure, then to that other stuff?”
       “That other stuff, you say?” Gilbert scoffs.
       “Yeah,” Caroline ignoring his tone and continuing, “does love develop that way in steps, or are people just immediately enthused by another, then they develop it that way after?”
       “Who knows? Depending on those two, it could be sex first, then a bit of love trickling for his end. Doubt anything else goes on between them.”
       She sighs and looks at an empty passing display case, rolling her eyes.  “Rude.”
       “You know him.” Gilbert shrugged, looking straight ahead.
       A grunt affirmed the claim.
       Gilbert supplied the finishing touch of a, “Sophie knows what she’s getting into. Heartbreak is the only viable option down her road.”
       “Which I guess won’t be too long of a drive.” Caroline looks up at him for a moment, the slosh of neutral still staining his eyes, not even talking about this stuff stirs anything.
       As they head toward the lobby, Sophie ambushed the two of them from behind, hooking her arms around their shoulders, almost falling forward face first.
       “Damn it, Sophie! I told you to stop doing that,” he burst out, irritated at the surprise.
       “You two didn’t keep up with me. You know how I hate waiting.”
       “Brian doesn’t seem to care.” A glare passed to Gilbert now.
       “Hey, mister gray shirt and pants, is your lake house still open?” She stops and asks point blank.
       Gilbert stiffened at the mention as he felt Caroline perk up at the words lake and house. Clearly intrigued, she waited for Gilbert’s reply.
       Briefly apprehensive, then giving up, knowing she’d get it out of him in the end, he says, “Yes, unfortunately. Why?” Caroline’s eyes widen with amusement at the sudden aggressiveness in his reply, clearly not wanting to talk about it, but knowing Sophie, she’d ask next-
       “You should invite us.” Her way of saying, We’re coming.
       “Us as in?”
       “Brian and I.”
       “As long as it’s not Brian and Matt and Bradley and-”
       “Nope, just some one on one time between me and him.” She smiles with her cherry colored lips and starts walking again, leaving the two dragging behind.
       “How about us?” Us referring him and Carrie.
       “You can come too.” She states offhandedly over her shoulder.
       “Oh, well thanks,” he replied begrudgingly.
       “No problem.” Opening the door graciously for us two, she skips to her black Volkswagen and starts the car, the radio blaring out 102.3 FM. “See you there tomorrow!” A careless wave of her hand out her rolled down window, and she’s gone. The squeal of her tires reverberating against concrete and brick.
       “Nice.” Carrie whispers to herself in awe at how easily she had just bossed Gilbert around.
       “I bet she had that whole thing planned out by the time we caught up with her.”
       Watching Sophie turn a left in the intersection, officially off school property, Caroline simply nods with a faint, “Probably,” and a light snort.
       “I guess you want to go too?” Caroline looks on as he continued walking to his car, his shoulders broad and tired. She imagined a cape snapping against his back in this wind, as if some lone hero.
       “Could I?” She calls back, still planted on the sidewalk. She felt mixed watching him taken advantage of just now, she didn’t want to add to that load. Sophie, though he cared to not think of her that way, was a cousin of his, and was told severely by his mother to ‘treat her nicely’. Cousin being a more disguising term in his book for step sister.
       Turning around, hands dug deep in his pockets, holding onto something, maybe,  hopefully, he looks up, the grey fading lighter and lighter into that calm blue again, he just smiles and nods, his hands slipping out, letting go of whatever he held close with a small shrug, palms up towards the sky in surrender.
       Caroline lightly jogs to his side and they continue their walk.
       --
       The morning sun gracefully raced across the sheets that enveloped Carrie, a welcoming breeze causing the curtains to billow above her head, shadows playing tricks on the floor. The scent of tree syrup and dirt clung to wooden framings of her room. Rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes and face, she inhales from her pillow, a scent of childhood she could barely piece together again in her mind, her toes and fingers tingling with some risen excitement that seems too premature for her to awaken again at her day and age.
       Everything felt infinite, and unimportant here, like the air is just hanging, unmoving. And for some reason, it scared her.
       Doors began to creak, groans and mumbles of good mornings blended with the unceasing chorale of birds and cicadas, the soft sigh of the wind weaving itself through the trees, rustling the fallen leaves across the ground.
       Step after step across her floor, her hair hanging down like a curtain, she stooped in front of the dresser mirror, her hands unceremoniously bumping into little knick knacks left to make the guest feel at home and welcomed. Her face inching closer and closer into the glass, she searched. Gossamer like brown hair framing her brown eyes, brows evenly curved above each epicanthic fold. Caroline felt something incongruous growing inside her, deepening its roots and tangles around whatever it decided to wrap around. Her core felt strangled with each second she stared into whatever she needed to recall, whatever bothered her the moment she set foot at Gilbert’s lake house late last night.  
       Spreading and clawing deeply within, that rapacious color tinting her eyes scurried across every tentative surface she had felt even the slightest unease with. That first unpalatable heart beat had only offset a maelstrom of inner insecurities as this seed developed and augmented into its own poisonous seed.
       “Caroline? You awake?” Two light knocks on the door that resounded like gunshots.
       --
       Gilbert was the last to get out of bed. Waking up, he knew this day was going to be a huge horrendous chore. He allowed himself a few more minutes in bed, gathering the sheets around him one more time before Sophie and Brian whined for breakfast. Shutting his eyes, he didn’t sleep. He searched his mind for something, something that felt missing. Cicadas running their daily tone outside his window, he conjured these sights and sounds and smells that reeled him back to what he remembered of this place as a child.
       --
       The Frederickson family of three arrived, one of many stays they made during the summer,  luggage in tow. Shucking their light jackets as they entered through the back; Sylvia fingering the vines intertwining through the wooden pergola as she passed; little Gilbert clung to his father’s pants leg, his pale skin belied his reclusive manner; John, his hand lingering on the back of his son’s head for a light tousle for encouragement, breathed in the mist rolling in from across the lake, the sun breaking through the tree line surrounding their house, the glare catching Gilbert’s unfamiliar eyes, turning away towards familiar khaki fabric.
       John’s mother had just passed away, and they could feel the brunt of grief nestling heavily on Gilbert’s shoulders. They were very close- the only actual time their son came alive revolved around their visits to her house. He stopped playing with the few acquaintances he made from school, and this minor period of running away from home surfaced, only to find him in trying places like behind the shed, up in a tree, asleep with his blanket at the park. Each time John had to come and find him, carry him home, Gilbert’s eyes had never failed to be found puffy. Distractions can always help thought Sylvia and suggested this lark.
       Gilbert bolted upright in bed before the hypnagogia lures him deeper into a land he wished to never venture again. The sheets, before so grand and voluminous, now felt so thin and emaciated from past bursts of friendship over the years.
       --
       Brian sits on a cushioned chair at the dark cherry oak dining room table, currently the coolest room of the dwelling, his feet lax, resting on an adjacent chair, fingers texting away. Sophie graced his other side longingly, keeping vigil, waiting for him to take interest in her and off his phone, unhappy like a neglected pup.
       As Gilbert had guessed, Brian didn’t see Sophie as a serious option. She was cute, in a perky kind of way, like his mother’s shitzu Pekingese, what with her big eyes and blonde head. But that’s about it. He stuck around if anything interesting might happen, but Sophie was so stubborn, Brian was tired from actually getting a full night’s sleep, apart from her whining to grab her waist to cuddle.
       It was around 1 in the afternoon when Gilbert came back from his morning jog, malodorous of sweat, dirt, and salt. He briefly wiped his face with his sleeve and headed straight for the kitchen for a drink.
       “What’s got you so down and dirty?” Brian called. Taking his sweet time drinking over the sink and wiping his mouth with his immaculate shirt, his breathing slowing, Gilbert ignored the boy and asked Sophie directly with a more tolerable disposition, “Carrie anywhere?” Sophie shrugged and returned back to her vigil. Brian snorted silently through his nose, and typed, texted, tapped away at his phone. He stood up after one more text, coolly sliding it into his pocket, and side stepped Gilbert, whispering just loud enough for the whole room, “Check the canoes lately?” and left. Sophie followed suit and meshed her fingers with his, him reluctantly locking fingers as they went for a walk.
       --
       Carrie laid on her back, her eyes singed by the afternoon sun, the water‘s lulling rhythm beneath rocking her to sleep. Lazily, she covered her face with a single white sun hat she found in an empty drawer from the dresser in her room. It had a sad smell to it.
       She closed her eyes and thought back to what she remembered of this place, something long forgotten.
       --
       Carrie as a child was poignant. She saw things in waves where the other kids saw in planks. From how she acted to how she dressed, she could never seem to find anyone like her who could understand her. But you know, she knew she didn’t need to fit in as much as the other kids, for her mother told her that as she grew older, those who don’t warm up to others were simply scared when something unique and different came along, when they came across something they didn’t understand. Carrie held her head high, as she read of young Scout in her favorite book, but found it harder and harder each time school let out to recess and more and more the old forgotten swing at the end became her only mate. She fingered the curve of each linked chain, soothed the cracks in the plastic seat, even sang along to its creaks with each revolution. She knew of other kids who had it worse, like Cody who acted differently whenever he was around popular Timmy, until she’d watch him walk off the bus and run back to his mother, something he’d never dare show in front of him; Annie who obsessed over toys and games, talking of new shoes and shiny bracelets, only to come back to a raggedy home, too ashamed to invite any of her ‘friends’ over, even more so when she walked from the bus, unable to look her papa in the eye.
       Caroline’s parents took her to her father’s friend’s vacant lake house, her father wanting to meet Old Yawn she’d hear him recall. She could never forget the moment the Frederickson family walked into the living room, quiet and calm as the sea, smooth as waves. First entered a dark brown haired woman in a ‘watermelony’ sundress, she and her mother instantly embracing with kisses shared on the cheek.
       Next came Old Yawn, in which he lightly set a luggage case onto the ground before hugging her father, both wearing matching khakis as she observed. Unamused at the reunion, sitting on the couch, swinging her feet, mesmerized for a second how the sunlight glinted off the red sparkles on her shoes, she looked up to find a small boy lingering by the door frame. Seeing the grown ups occupied with what she saw as adult talk, she grabbed her sun hat, a few sizes too big, in which her mother, upon donning it on her daughter’s head at the store, broke into soft, emollient giggles, falling into her husband who too smiled at his daughter, and walked up to Gilbert.
       “Hi, my name is Carryline.” Her parents always told her that when she introduced herself to someone she’s never met before, she should be polite and clear. She held out her hand, a plastic neon green ring hanging loosely on her thumb.
       Gilbert, as if held taut by chains that dug deep into the floor boards, did not move, but looked at the girl that just spoke in front of him.
       Old Yawn and Sylvia quitened, subtly interested in how Gilbert would respond to little Caroline.
       “My name is Carryline,” Caroline repeated slightly louder than before, her hand tingling, nervous she had found another that wouldn’t like her. “What’s yours?” She stepped closer, two taps clicked on the floor, her open hand still offered.
       -Caroline exhaled deeply, as if she had been holding it since this morning. Her hand that was lightly gripping the edge of the old sunhat she found twitched slightly, the cicada’s hum seeming more deafening than relaxing. She couldn’t remember what happened after. Just something sad. If she didn’t remember it, she rationalized, she was better off not knowing. It’ll come to her when it comes.
       --
       “Hey, what was that all about?” Sophie demanded as the screen door thunder clapped shut behind them, blue faded boards under their sneakers causing the age of this house to creak and yawn at their departure.
       “Those two are weird. There’s something going on between them.” Brian looked straight ahead, a brief glance at the lake, and headed for the dirt path that most likely Gilbert had used to follow this morning, the dust under their sandals scattered and coughed around each imprint.
       “What do you mean going on between them? They’re just friends. I mean, yeah, at first, I thought those two were getting it on behind my back, but Gilbert totally won’t touch her. Like she’s a rabid dog or something.”
       “Why is he so inhibited around her anyway?”
       “Who knows, babe. Maybe that’s just how he is.” She clenched their hands harder, annoyed all he can talk about are those two.
       “Didn’t you say they met here as kids?”
       Sophie gave him an incredulously irritated look- for him to remember such a stupid detail like that, yet he can’t even remember their 2 week anniversary yesterday. “Yeah, B. Yes, they met here. During some hiking trip between their families or something.”
       Brian gandered at Sophie and her steamed head, and looked away, inwardly sighing to himself. Never enter a relationship expecting it to be loose-choose a girl that’s loose. Simple as that.  
       One last time, he scrutinized the careful blue sheen of the lake before the trees sheltered the view from the path.
       --
       “Caroline? You awake?” Brian knocked at her door, hoping she knew where the food was in this place. His stomach rumbled as he waited, shifting weight from one leg to another. “Yo, you there?” He knocked again, receiving nothing from the other end. Shuffling and muffled sounds wandered outside the door, his curiosity piqued, wandering what she could be doing when it was nearly an hour of the clock before noon.
       He was about to turn the knob when it was suddenly pulled away, a startled girl standing in the door way, gripping a hat at her side. Though her mouth was set finely and strict, brows carved lightly and strong, her eyes were screaming.
       “I’m going out to the lake.” She said flatly and glanced away into the hall, Gilbert’s door still unopened, she observed. Brian caught what she saw.
       “Where’s the-”
       “The food’s in the garage. Just bring in whatever you want to eat.”
       The two stared at each other. 3 months they had been together last year, a truth neither wants to rationalize any more than their desire for it to resurface. The thing about exes is that, they can never forgive those that they’ve wronged. Their sense of responsibility shattered when they failed to support the other in turn, and when they break it off, unable to satisfy the other in ways of intimacy, that stays with them. They hate themselves for not being able to help them in their time of need, and they project that guilt and hatred as if it was the other’s fault their relationship had faltered.
       Caroline shrunk and crumpled inwardly the more she looked and searched and saw it wasn’t in Brian either, whatever she was looking for. Just a bottomless void left to be swept up on his end.
       “If you’ll excuse me.” She gave him a brief smile that didn’t touch her eyes and turned away, leaving for the back door.
       “What’s going on?” Brian, though he hated it, knew Caroline when something was wrong. Why would he bother remarking? He didn’t need to raise his voice, he knew she was listening.
       “It’s nothing.” She smiled again, her hand catching her shirt collar for a second, a nervous tic he noticed during their time together. Want to spend the night? Want to go to the city? Dig into my parent’s stash? All numerous responses, that one same action every time.
       Brian watched her leave, the thumps of her footsteps dipping into the sting of the cicadas as they exited with a slam of the door.
       --
       Gilbert trudged through the brush to the dock, a ditch bordering the edge of the lake. The dried salt water stems around the wood stained brown as if rusted iron. A soft breeze blew across the lake, a hollow, empty sound that caused the boards to moan, wobbly from loose screws.
       2 canoes rested upside down, the water lapping at the tips of their red paint, their paddles thrusted into the dirt for easy access.