Chapter Six
“ I can’t believe summer is almost over already.”
Mia hummed noncommittally at Kennedy’s comment, eyes pressed shut against the harsh glint of the afternoon sun. Sweat was already beading on her skin and she had just stretched out on her towel after climbing out of the water. The skin of her fingers was still wrinkled, and she was already thinking about jumping back in to escape the heat.
“It doesn’t feel over,” Lilly’s boyfriend complained, leaning back against her legs as she sat behind him. Bryce had been in love with Lilly since she’d first moved to town, but it had taken him until their senior year of high school to find the courage to ask her out, when he’d been the quarterback of the football team and a hometown hero. His parents were so proud of his athletic and academic success that almost everyone half expected Mr. Wheeler’s head to pop clean off his shoulders one day, but Mia secretly suspected having Lilly at his side was the thing Bryce was proudest of. They’d been inseparable ever since they’d started dating and Mia watched wistfully as Lilly caressed his cheek and rubbed a fresh layer of chalk white sunscreen into his warm brown skin.
He pressed a kiss to her fingers when she was done and tugged playfully on the ends of her hair. Bryce towered over Lilly’s tiny five-foot frame, long and lean from years of sports training, but his manners around Lilly were always gentle and quiet. The ferocity he showed on the football field disappeared whenever she was around.
They were an adorable couple, and it always sent a little frisson of jealousy through Mia to see them curled around each other so affectionately. She didn’t begrudge them their easy intimacy, but she did wish that just once someone might look at her with interest.
Nobody in this small town really wanted to date the pastor’s daughter and she was too focused on her classes to really notice anyone while she was at school. James was the only person she’d ever wondered about, and he certainly wasn’t interested in her.
“You two are so cute,” Kennedy said wistfully. She lounged on a towel beside Mia, eyes hidden behind the lenses of her sunglasses. “I don’t think you’ve stopped touching for more than five minutes since you started dating.”
“It’s because Lilly’s so sweet ,” Bryce said with a grin. He nipped playfully at Lilly’s thigh while she slapped at him and turned her face away in embarrassment.
Mia turned her gaze back to the water. It was obvious that they were talking about something intimate, but her knowledge about sex was restricted to the little she’d been taught in the school’s sexual education classes, which came down to nothing more than instilling fear of disease and pregnancy while insisting on abstinence. She rarely had a clue what her friends were talking about when they brought it up, but she was too embarrassed to admit it. She’d made an early commitment to wait till marriage before she had sex, and she knew it would make dating a challenge even if she could find someone who might like to try.
“Someday, when I’m done with college and I can move out of my parents’ house, I’m going to find someone who looks at me that way,” Kennedy mused. “Like I’m all she wants in the world.”
“You shouldn’t have to wait until you move out to do that.” Mia reached out, wrapping her fingers around Kennedy’s, and giving them a small squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Kennedy said. “It’s not your fault. Your Dad’s never made me feel bad with any of his sermons, not like the church my parents go to.”
“It’s awful that they think God’s love is a way to hurt and condemn anyone different,” Lilly said. “Are your parents still mad that you like going to church with us now, instead of with them?”
“Kinda, I guess?” She shrugged, unbothered. “It’s not exactly a secret that your church is the most open-minded one in town. They don’t agree with a lot of the stuff your dad says but church is church to them.”
Mia knew quite well that plenty of the older people in town were not pleased that her father chose to focus more on God’s love and forgiveness than his wrath, and that Kennedy’s parents were definitely among them. She’d never understood how two people with such a cold lack of empathy had managed to produce such a kind and loving daughter.
“We still have plenty of people like Mrs. Newberry, though, don’t we?” Lilly asked. “That woman uses her faith as a weapon on everyone around her. She’s been a total bitch to me—sorry, Mia—and I know she’d make your life hell and probably out you to your parents if she got the chance.”
Kennedy winced at the thought. “They’d kick me out, you know? That’s why I don’t date.”
“You could live with me,” Mia told her, not for the first time. “My dad wouldn’t let you live on the streets. He’s not like that, you know he isn’t.”
Kennedy smiled but shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want everyone in town gossiping about me or being mean to your family because of it.”
“It’s not fair that you have to hide who you are,” Mia assured her, wrapping her arm around Kennedy’s slender shoulders before turning her gaze to Lilly. “Mrs. Newberry is seriously still giving you a hard time?”
Lilly nodded; face wrinkled in dislike. “I think she gets worse every time the group agrees with one of my suggestions.”
Mia sighed. “It’s way past time for her to find some joy in her heart. Imagine spending so much time at church and leaving with nothing but bitterness and hate.”
“There’s far too much hate in the world,” Lilly agreed.
“More than I realized,” Mia admitted. “I feel so stupid because I thought that people like Mrs. Newberry were really horrible, and she is , but … but some of the stuff Gabriel’s told me about being in prison …” She shuddered.
“My cousin said things were bad,” Lilly agreed.
“It’s supposed to be a punishment, right?” Bryce asked. “It’s not like people go there to have a good time.”
Lilly smacked him in the arm. “My cousin got arrested for stealing a car. He doesn’t deserve the stuff that goes on in there. Besides, you know the system is incredibly broken and has always been racist.”
“You don’t have to remind a young Black man that the system is unfair,” Bryce said. “But he just straight up murdered his own father. You don’t think he should be punished?”
“He was a kid,” Mia said, cutting in before Lilly could answer. “A literal kid. I’ve seen the trial footage.”
“He killed his dad,” Bryce repeated, shaking his head a little in bewilderment. “Does it really matter when or why he killed him?”
Mia lifted one slightly burnt shoulder in a short, dismissive shrug. She regretted ever telling them anything about Gabriel or what he had done. Every conversation about him somehow circled back around to that, and it was frustrating.
“You two have been writing a lot, haven’t you?” Lilly asked quietly.
“Yeah? He’s lonely. That was the point, remember?”
“Sure, we wanted to help some people out, make their sentences a little less miserable. It’s just … we all got car thieves or people locked up on petty drug charges and you got a murderer who is never getting out of prison.”
“Yeah,” Kennedy agreed. “Dan got picked up for possession charges, so he’ll be out soon. They might even parole him and move him to a halfway house before his sentence is over.”
Mia stared at her. “So?”
“I don’t want you to get too close with this guy,” Lilly explained. “He seems dangerous.”
“You said so yourself, he’s never getting out,” Mia reminded her. “He can’t hurt me. All he does is draw me pictures and talk to me about music and stuff.”
Lilly fell silent and a stern look from Mia kept the rest of them from speaking up again. The conversation turned to other topics as Mia leaned back in her chair and pretended to nap.
It irritated her, how quickly they’d dismissed him once they’d found out why he was in prison. She’d tried to explain to Lilly about her connection to him and her theory that God had brought them together, but Lilly hadn’t understood. Every conversation about him ended up much as this one had, and her worries had quickly gotten under Mia’s skin. She knew they loved her, but Lilly was being far too overprotective.
Mia let her mind drift as she listened halfheartedly to her friends as they talked about the last few fleeting days of summer and their return to college classes. It left her feeling strangely hollow and sad inside that Gabriel had missed out on all of that over the years, the good and the bad.
“Jesus Christ,” Alex snapped irritably. “You’d think keeping us in decent air conditioning would be considered a basic fucking human right in this heat.”
The dark wet spots down his spine and beneath his armpits gave silent witness to the truth of his discomfort.
Gabriel hummed, too hot and miserable to do more than that. The heat was intolerable in early August, leaving them all feeling like they were crammed into this hell like sardines in a tin can that someone had stuffed into an oven.
The whole place smelled like stale sweat and aggression.
His fingers left damp imprints in the paper as he read Mia’s most recent letter.
Gabriel,
Thank you so much for the drawing you sent with your last letter. I can’t believe you remembered my favorite colors and that daisies are my favorite flower! That was so sweet of you!
I have a wall full of your art now (I have to admit I’ve framed every single one of them because they’re so beautiful) but I think that one is my favorite so far. We’ve already written quite a few letters, haven’t we? It’s almost time for my classes to start and I can’t seem to figure out where summer has gone this year.
It’s a bit disappointing if I’m being honest.
Summer is supposed to be something magical, right? I didn’t feel any of that this year, it was just more days hiding inside for the air conditioning and hanging out at the pool with the same friends I’ve always had. It was identical to every other summer. I thought getting older was supposed to change things, but I feel stuck in the same place I’ve always been. Like I’m not really growing up and becoming an adult like I thought I would.
It seems like there’s something missing in my life, and I can’t figure out what it is.
Maybe it’s because I’m not really set on my major so I’m not excited about finishing school and starting my career?
I feel so restless, and I know I always end up rambling to you about something unhappy and I’m really sorry about that. I hate writing to you about this stuff, especially knowing that you didn’t get to have any of this for yourself.
You’d probably give anything to have the things I take for granted and it makes me feel awful. It’s so easy to talk to you and I forget that it makes me seem like an ungrateful brat when I whine to you about my life.
I wish you could have been with me at the pool today. I think that would have made it a great day for both of us.
Mia
If things had been different, if his parents hadn’t sent him to Richard’s or he hadn’t ended up running the streets for Seth … Maybe they would’ve met some other way in that hypothetical life, and he could have been with her.
Maybe he would have made something of himself, and she wouldn’t have been ashamed to be his friend if he had. He could have been someone she could introduce to her friends, instead of someone she had to hide. She’d never told him exactly what had been said, but he knew her friend Lilly had discouraged her from writing to him too often or sharing too much.
Just looking out for her, he knew, concerned about her safety, but it hurt, and it made him nervous. He didn’t like the idea of someone trying to take her away from him, this first friend that he’d had in so long, not when life had already taken everything else from him.
His mind slipped away, flashing back to his first days in juvie after he’d been arrested and how terrified he’d been when he realized that the inside of a prison might be all he ever knew.
He looked around, taking in the small cell and Alex still ceaselessly bitching about the heat, the putrid smell, and the inescapable feeling of hopelessness. He’d been right, this was all his life would never amount to, but he didn’t want her to know that, or how much it hurt him.
Mia,
You should know by now that I like it when you tell me about your life. Even the boring stuff is a welcome distraction from what happens in here. Nobody is happy all the time and I bet once you figure out for sure what your major should be, you’ll feel much better.
Do most people have magical summers?
I think that might be some made up TV bullshit. I bet your friends think their summer was pretty typical, too, even if most of us in here would love to hang out by the pool all summer. Our air conditioning is pretty unreliable, so it would be a welcome relief from the heat.
If life has its magical moments, I doubt they come on a schedule, it just happens when it’s the right time. There’s no fucking TV show or movie on Earth that would have predicted that this summer would be anything special for me, but it’s the summer you found me.
Your letters have become a bright spot in my shitty life. I’m happy that you get to enjoy your life so don’t waste any of your time being sad about me being stuck in here, okay? Promise?
You shouldn’t waste your life wishing for things you can’t have.
Gabriel
He stared at his last sentence and wondered if he would be able to take his own advice. There was always a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought for too long about whether she would keep writing to him once she went back to class.
What if she got too busy?
He’d gotten used to having someone to care about over the past several weeks and the thought of losing her now made his heart ache.