Day 1 #3
Down the road from us, there’s a tiny convenience store called The Little Store—its actual name, I swear—that also doubles as one of the town’s two pizza places.
It’s dark, like the walls of our house; like the mossy insides and writhing bodies inside the white container of worms my father sends me to retrieve on the first day of vacation every year.
When I was twelve, I would ride my pink bike—balancing the plastic container precariously on my handlebars the whole way home.
Now, I steal Dad’s car keys from the little nail by the front door, and give a quick “I’ll be back” as the screen door slams behind me.
Through the open kitchen windows I can still hear the rustle of paper bags as Mom unpacks a week’s worth of groceries from the local market twenty minutes away, where she grumbles about everything costing twice as much as at home.
I walk alongside the house, down the little cement sidewalk that runs to the gravel driveway.
Straight ahead of me is the monstrosity—as my parents call it—that is Nadine and Charlie’s house.
They own Lake House A and B, and until two years ago, they also owned four more tiny shoebox rentals, before they tore them down to build their dream house.
Technically, this place is called Five Pines Resort, but with two houses left to rent it hardly qualifies, if you ask me.
Charlie is quiet and short, light on words but always quick to smile if you happen to see him out and about fixing something, which is rare.
He works a full-time corporate job at a bank an hour away.
Nadine is the opposite. She’s loud and eager to talk to you, though never about anything good.
Her blond hair is wild and she always looks like she’s about to board a cruise ship to some exotic locale.
Her clothes are loose and flowing and bright, and her lips are always hot pink or red.
It’s hard not to look at her, though I’m well practiced at it, now that she’s around entirely too much.
It’s a little strange, spending your summer vacation in someone’s backyard.
While the lake houses are small and plain, the home that looms over them is like Nadine—tall and wide, and strange in a way you can’t quite put your finger on.
It’s the color of a blueberry—not quite blue, not quite purple—with pale green shutters and a white porch that wraps around the front.
It looks like something that should be sitting out on a farm, not a lake.
Last summer, when the house seemingly sprouted out of nowhere during the off-season, there were a handful of yard decorations that sprang up with it.
A gnome with a red hat at one corner, a whimsical green toadstool by the back stairs leading down into the yard that faces A and B.
The strangest was a rooster, almost up to my chin, positioned near the front door.
But this year the house seems to have spawned a whole army of tacky ornaments.
They’re littering the gardens that circle the house, dotting the mulch with dogs, tiny girls in frilly dresses, and geese.
I can’t catalog them all without staring, and the walk to my dad’s car is over before I can appreciate even a fraction of them.
What is going on at Nadine and Charlie’s house?
And how could their daughter—pretty, fashionable, always-put-together Lindsay—let this happen?
My dad’s car—a silver SUV with dark windows and shiny chrome—is sitting along the backside of the little house, in front of a massive wall of firewood that lines the driveway.
Beyond it, the old metal swing set is bordered by tall grass, which Charlie has clearly given up on trimming.
It makes my twelve-year-old heart a little sad to see it neglected.
My phone buzzes, pulling me out of my lawn-gnome-and-swing-set-induced haze, and I swipe the screen to life as I open the door and push it with my hip.
Not even out of the driveway, and already my mom has texted me three more things she forgot.
And I’m not finding them at The Little Store—I’m going to have to drive into town, to the “big” market that is still little by normal standards.
Texting my mom a quick ok, I drop into the seat and twist the keys in the ignition.
Without warning, the car is filled with a deafening jolt of drums and screaming.
My hand flies for the volume knob, my heart in my throat. What the …
“Dammit, Asher,” I mutter, just as a messy mop of brown hair pokes up over the back seat. I startle again, not expecting that he’d be in the car. He cocks his head to the side and his blue eyes twinkle as a smile spreads across his face.
Like most epic rivalries, it would be impossible to pinpoint the exact reasons I loathe Asher Marin.
Maybe it’s the way he walks into my family’s cabin each summer—the one identical to his next door—and smiles at my mother as if he’s thrilled to see us all.
As if he hasn’t been dreaming of tormenting me for the last ten months, the way I’ve been dreaming of all the things I’ll do to him.
It could have been the self-tanner he put in my sunscreen when I was fourteen, or my frozen swimsuits when I was sixteen, or last year’s crowning glory, the cayenne pepper he laced my toothpaste with.
But those all came after. And there are so many that it doesn’t even matter what started it anymore. All that matters is that this summer, the summer before I go off to college—probably the last summer I’ll have to see Asher Marin for eight weeks straight—I’m going to finish it.
“Happy first day of summer, Sidney.” He meets my narrowed eyes and laughs, deep in his throat. And just as he clears the door and steps aside, I put the car in drive and peel out of the driveway, a bright red brontosaurus craning its neck around the house as I leave them behind me.